We purchased Cheers in June 2020 in Stuart Florida and brought her to Lake Erie via the Erie Canal after a brief layover in Baltimore due to Covid. We enjoyed Lake Erie for 3 seasons from our home marina Cedar Point. Winters were spent doing maintenance and upgrades in heated storage at Son Rise Marina in Sandusky. I retired from Columbus Fire in April 2023 and Louise went part time with Nationwide with a new job allowing her to work remotely. We moved aboard Cheers full time in May 2023 and continued our journey June 1st.
Our Blog starts at this point to document our journey. We travelled back East thru the Erie Canal and into Lake Ontario thru the Oswego Canal. We visited the Thousand Islands area before entering the Trent Severn Waterway. This brought us into Georgian Bay and the North Channel. After a couple months we headed west into Lake Michigan and south to Chicago docking in Hammond Indiana where we waited for the locks to reopen.
Americas Great Loop Cruisers Association (AGLCA) organized flotillas for the 300+ boats waiting to head south. We left Hammond on October 5th 2023 in flotilla 2. Travelling on the rivers was interesting but challenging requiring long days, often arriving at marinas/moorings in the dark. We met many fellow loopers along the way south and attended the AGLCA Fall Rendezvous at Joe Wheeler State Park.
We arrived in Mobile Alabama for Thanksgiving and crossed the Gulf a week later. We visited friends and family in Punta Gorda before heading south. Christmas was spent at Marco Island on our way to Key West. We enjoyed being stationary for a month at the Perry Hotel and Marina at Stock Island. The weather was warm and we had visitors every weekend.
The next leg of our travels started mid February and took us to the Bahamas. We visited Bimini, Nassau and the Exumas and made it as far south as Georgetown before heading back north. We enjoyed a week at anchor in Black Point during Regatta week. The Exumas ended up being our favorite destination of all our travels.
We arrived back in the US on April 2nd 2024 in Ft Lauderdale and continued north to Stuart Florida a couple weeks later completing Americas Great Loop. Our trip continued north with extended stops in Jacksonville and Baltimore. Our goal this summer was to make it North to Maine however we came up a little short making it to Boston with stops along Long Island, Block Island, Martha Vineyard, Newport and Provincetown. Our daughter visited us in Boston and we were able to walk to many of the historic sites.
We started our journey back south mid August hitting ports we missed along the way and revisiting some of our favorites. We arrived back in Jacksonville on November 11th 2024 for a two months stay at Port 32. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to our beloved travel companion, RIP Roxie. January brought cold weather to northern Florida so it was time to head south. We made it to Ft Lauderdale on February 20th where we waited for a crossing window back to the Bahamas.
We crossed to West End Bahamas on February 27th and spent 4 weeks visiting the Abaco Island chain. We enjoyed our time in the Abacos hopping from port to port avoiding high winds. Some of our favorites were Green Turtle Cay, Treasure Cay and Hopetown. We returned to the US on 3/22 arriving in Ft Pierce.
Our trip north brought us back to Port 32 in Jacksonville for the month of April. We continued north on May 2nd 2025 hitting all our favorite stops along the way arriving back at Anchorage Marina in Baltimore on June 14th. We planned on returning to Lake Erie in July however the Erie Canal was closed due to high water from heavy rains in upstate NY. While visiting family back in Ohio and found a condo we loved and decided to offer Cheers up for sale. Within a couple weeks Cheers was sold and we were in contract to buy a condo in Ohio.
Cheers was delivered to her new Owner Jim Buckley from Texas in July 2025. Jim plans on completing Americas Great Loop in 2026 and visiting the Bahamas in 2027.
