Great Lakes Boating

24 GLB | O c t o b e r 2 0 18 greatlakesboating.com These brief escapes for food also provided him with opportunities to escape from the boat for a short while and explore the many cities he would otherwise sail right by. Advice Of An Experienced Looper Always Have Fuel Before completing his journey around the Great Loop, one of the number one things that people reminded Barkus of was to always have enough fuel. During his travels, Miss Marianne guzzled about 10,000 gallons of fuel, so you can imagine for yourself why this might be an important piece of advice! Watch Out For Debris "If you cruise around in these rivers here, especially after it rains, there's all kinds of debris in the water. Once you get out in the open water it's usually fine," Barkus repeated the warnings he had received. "So you can't travel at night in an unfamiliar area; that's another thing you won't be doing." This piece of advice turned out to be especially helpful since things were often not where they expected them to be as they traveled along rivers, even with the time he had spent studying charts. "Another thing I learned was to use my radar to check the location of all of the cans going down the river, because we noticed like five of them out of place," Barkus advised. "The chart was showing them in one place while the radar was showing them off their mark, so it's really important to stay in the channel, otherwise you can run aground just like that." Pack The Essentials After completing his journey, one of the top things Barkus recommends to Great Loopers is to have a really good set of electronics and charts. "We used Navionics on a tablet and I had all of my Garmin charts, but I bought like $1,500 worth of charts before I went and had detailed charts of everything we were going to run into along the trip," Barkus said. "And it turns out that not just one of them work really well, so you need a variety of stuff to double-check and triple- check things." Barkus also started using the ActiveCaptain app about half-way through his trip and found it to be an extremely helpful source because of all of the advice that other Great Loopers had written, providing him with a huge advantage as he traveled through areas he couldn't possibly be familiar with. Life Of A Captain Stepping back on land in Chicago, Barkus feels invigorated by discovering just what he's made of. While growing up boating, then crewing as an adult, Barkus never imagined being the captain of his own journey. "I started out as a captain in a crew doing tow and salvage for eight years. After that ended, I was just kind of freelance captaining for a couple of years until I met this client and we hit it off really well and I still see a bright future with him, so this is where I'm at now." For anyone planning to embark on the Great Loop this fall, expect a life-changing journey instead of just a trip down river. Finding who you really are is no easy task, which requires planning and preparation and mind open to whatever the tide brings in. n

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