Great Loop 2021 Gets Its Own Website

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I copy all of my Great Loop 2021 posts to a new website where I’ll be publishing all posts about the trip from now on.

I’ve been posting to this blog since 2003 and, over the years, it has accumulated thousands of posts. If you know me, you know that I have a lot to say. This blog makes it easy for me to get the things on my mind off my mind so I can think about other things. It also offers a sort of journal of the things I’m up to — something I can turn back to in the future to see what was going on in my life.

And I’ll admit it: I keep this blog more for myself than for readers. Regular readers come and go but I remain.

Long ago, when I was writing a lot of computer how-to books, I broke out the content related to those books and put them into their own website. It was Maria’s Guides for a while and Langer Books for a while and I think it even ended up in Flying M Productions for a while. Those sites (and my support for those old books) are gone. The content is around somewhere, but it simply isn’t worth maintaining websites for it.

I’m hoping that’s not the case with the first new blog I’ve created in more than 10 years: My Great Loop Adventure.

I bought the domain name a few months ago when I first started seriously thinking about doing the Great Loop. I set it up but didn’t really have the motivation to give it a nice design or the “branding” that everyone expects. Frankly, I didn’t have the creativity to do it myself or budget to hire someone else. Since I didn’t think it was attractive enough to share, I kept it under wraps.

In the meantime, I kept blogging about the Great Loop and my upcoming trip here.

One of the big “rules” for bloggers — back when blogging was a big thing and people bothered to share advice about it — is to keep your blog focused on one topic. That is impossible for me. I have too many interests and blog about too many things. Did I really want to maintain a dozen or more blogs just so that each one could be focused on a single topic?

The answer was no, mostly because of another rule: add new content to your blog frequently. I definitely did not want to write and publish a dozen (or more) new posts a week, which would be the minimum to keep the blogs alive. So I continued to publish about all of my interests in one blog.

The problem with that is this: if someone is interested about just one of the topics I write about, he might have to wade through weeks of uninteresting (to him) posts to find one that does interest him. And let’s face it; no one is really motivated enough to make a bookmark for a single topic (category) or tag on the site, although that would definitely solve the interest problem.

Great Loop cruising is a relatively new thing for me, however, and I want to reach as many fellow loopers as possible. The best way to do that would be to collect all of my Great Loop related posts in one blog.

And since I’ll actually be starting my partial Great Loop trip as a crew member on a 27 foot Ranger Tug on Tuesday, I expect to blog about my trip at least once a day. That’s a lot of new blog posts — far more than non-boaters want to see on this blog.

So yesterday, I copied all of the existing posts in the Great Loop 2021 series and republished them with their original publication dates on the new blog. (I left them here so links to them wouldn’t break.) And then I spent far too much time fine-tuning the blog’s layout and appearance to make it presentable. And I linked it to my Twitter account so my Twitter followers could still see the new posts as they were released.

Great Loop Website
Here’s what the My Great Loop Adventure website looks like now. I said it was “presentable,” not a work of art. If you have any interest in donating some design skills for a banner or custom icons, I’m ready for them.

At this point, I’m ready to stop blogging about my upcoming Great Loop trip here. I may, however, continue to blog about my boat shopping progress and other things of general interest to boaters.

I did make one change to this blog to help readers find new content on the new blog: I added a link to the RSS feed for My Great Loop Adventure to the sidebar. That widget will show clickable links to the most recent five blog posts there, as well as a link to that blog.

If you’re interested in new content about the Great Loop, I urge you to subscribe to that blog. You’ll get notified every time a new post comes out. (And, of course, you can unsubscribe at any time; your email address won’t be sold, etc., etc.)

And if you haven’t subscribed to my personal YouTube channel, please do. That’s where you’ll see the videos I create on the trip; I’m hoping to release a few every week, including more than a few from my drone, which is coming along on the ride.

Great Loop 2021: Tracking My Ride

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I use the Nebo app to keep track of Nano’s progress as it makes its way to our rendezvous point in the NYC area.

Nano, the boat I’ll soon be boarding for a nearly 2-month trip from New York to Chicago by way of the Hudson River, Erie Canal, and three Great Lakes, left the Portland area of Maine yesterday morning. I’ve been tracking it using the Nebo boating app since then.

Nano Off the Coast of Maine
I first picked up Nano in transit yesterday morning on my iPhone. It had left Portland an hour before and was off the coast of Kennebunkport.

Nebo is a popular system for boaters, especially those doing the Great Loop. I suspect it’s because the American Great Loop Cruisers’ Association (AGLCA), which I discussed in this blog post, offers discounts on the hardware you can install on your boat to automate tracking and trip logging. Indeed, most of the boats I’m seeing on the Nebo app are sporting the AGLCA logo as their profile pic — this is kind of cool because it makes it easy to see who may be on the same route as you. But while the automated features require hardware and a paid subscription to the service — which I assume offers additional features — anyone with a smart phone can set up the mobile app on a phone and enable manual tracking. It looks like that’s what First Mate Dianne did, since her account popped up on Nano as a crewmember yesterday, too.

Around midday, I checked their location again. They were at a marina near Gloucester, MA, at the end of a waterway that cuts the small Rockport peninsula from the mainland. They were done traveling for the day.

I sent Dianne a friend request and she accepted it. We exchanged a handful of messages yesterday. She sent a few photos — including a lobster tank in a supermarket and a fishing boat from a NatGeo channel show — and reported that the ocean was choppy but sunny and “delightful.” I was delighted just reading her comments.

(Capt Paul has not accepted my friend request. Not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because he knows he’ll soon get his fill of me. I’m going to try hard to behave.)

This morning, I checked again, keeping in mind that I’m three hours behind them — Pacific Daylight Time here and Eastern Daylight Time there. They were under way, off the coast of Boston. I started taking note of other Looper boats in the area. Curiosity had remained behind in Gloucester, but Done Tacking was ahead of them in Cape Cod Bay. I began wondering if I’d see these boats along the way once I boarded.

Nano off the Coast of Boston
This morning, Nano was off the coast of Boston.

Nano in Cape Cod Bay
As I write this, Nano is close to shore inside Cape Cod Bay.

A little while ago, I checked again. Nano was now much closer to shore in Cape Cod Bay. (Done Tacking had already gone through the canal that separates Cape Cod from the mainland; you can see it near the bottom on the left.) I think Capt Paul’s plan had to been to spend the night at the mouth of the canal, but I don’t expect him to stick exactly to plan. My preliminary look at the weather shows rain in the area for the next few days; he might try to make some distance today in case he gets stuck at a marina waiting for weather to clear. I’m sure he’s considering the conditions and his options — much the way I consider weather and options when I’m doing a long cross-country flight in my helicopter.

Anyway, I’ll be tracking Nano as I continue to prep my home for my house sitter and pack up what I hope will fit into my luggage for the trip. I hope First Mate Dianne sends more photos. I believe she said she was going to blog the trip; I’ll try to get her blog’s URL so readers can see what she has to say about the trip as it happens.

Helicopter Cherry Drying at Hyperspeed

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Another video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

Here’s something completely different. I decided to experiment with the GoPro Hero 8’s “hyperspeed” feature. It’s basically a smoothed out automated timelapse. I had the camera set up in the nosecam position and went flying. It was late in the day and a huge rainstorm had rolled through. All of my clients wanted service. The three of us took off, intending to get it all done. But the wind was howling. Turns out that another thunderstorm had formed behind the one that had just passed. Between the lightning and high winds, it was too much to fly in. We all set down to wait it out. The nosecam caught the lightning stikes.

Although I set down over an orchard almost immediately, I had to pick up and move away. My phone kept ringing and there’s no way I could answer it while hovering over the trees. To make matters worse, there’s no cell signal in the canyon I was flying in so I had to come out to the mouth of the canyon each time I answered a call. I finally got back over the trees and managed to dry one whole block before the lightning spooked me enough to land.

I landed at another orchard. One of my crew landed where he was flying and the other landed with me. We waited it out, then departed to dry one more block each before it got too dark to fly. Overall, the mission was pretty much a failure, but I know my clients understood. I got no complaints. We wound up flying the next day, too.

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Note: This is the 1080 FHD version of this video. An ad-free 4K UHD version is available to channel Members and Patrons at the Access Premium Content level. It’s my way of thanking them for their financial support to this channel.
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Mesa to Sedona by Helicopter, Part 3

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Another video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

Join me and fellow helicopter pilot Dave as we fly from Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ (FFZ) to Sedona, AZ (SEZ) along the Salt and Verde Rivers and through the Verde River Valley. I’ve cut this hour+ flight into multiple parts, each highlighting a specific area of our flight. In this video, we begin at Bartlett Dam on the Verde River and fly right up the river, over Bartlett Lake, Horseshoe Lake, and the river itself. You’ll also get to see one of my favorite back-country dirt strips out in the desert. The autumn colors are on display along the river, but everything is dry and desert-like. The video ends when we break out of the canyon into the Verde Valley just south of Camp Verde. Along the way, you’ll hear our in-cockpit conversation about what we’re seeing, along with quite a few conversations about flying and owning/operating helicopters.

Dave is an airline pilot who was working through his helicopter rating. At the time of this flight, he was a private helicopter pilot; he got his commercial helicopter rating a few weeks later. Dave and I split the cost of this flight; I flew to Sedona and he flew back.

Many, many thanks to channel members and Patreon patrons. It’s your membership dollars that made this flight in Arizona possible.

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NOTE: This is the 1080 HD version of this video. An ad-free 4K UHD version of this video is available to YouTube Channel Members and Patreon Patrons at the Access Premium Content level. You can become a YouTube Channel member here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLGD_GbGsS6YKK_Ekx0QMqQ/join

A Quick Helicopter Pickup/Dropoff

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Another video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

Here’s a quick video of one of my cherry drying crew, Indy, landing at my house to pick me up and then fly me back to our landing zone. The backstory is simple: he needed to get his car moved up to my house. He could either drive up to my house and drive back to the LZ with me and then I’d drive home — total time elapsed 45 minutes — or fly up to my house, pick me up, take me to his car, and let me drive it home (total time elapsed less than 20 minutes). I let him decide and I think he chose wisely.

He wasn’t quite sure where to land when he arrived. Although the spot he first attempted was okay, it isn’t particularly level and that tends to freak some pilots out. Moving to the gravel works fine, but it’s also a bit unnerving for folks who aren’t accustomed to landing so close to a building. (For the record, he had about 30 feet between the main rotor blades and my deck.)

His departure was quite different from mine. He elected to pick up and then back up away from the house before making his turn. Again, he wasn’t that close. But when in doubt, do it the safest way. I think being that close to the house was kind of unnerving. When I depart from that spot, I usually pivot over the grass and dive into the valley to gain speed before climbing out or descending to that landing zone. Whatever works and is safe, right?

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Note: This is the 1080 FHD version of this video. An ad-free 4K UHD version is available to channel Members and Patrons at the Access Premium Content level. It’s my way of thanking them for their financial support to this channel.
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