The Great Loop Experience - From Concept to Completion


Book Description

After almost 40 years of marriage and boating together, Captain George and Pat Hospodar completed a yearlong Great Loop odyssey aboard their boat, “Reflection”. This trip resulted in their first book, Reflection on America’s Great Loop, a personal, light-hearted, real-life account of the couple’s travels while circumnavigating the waters of the United States and Canada. Their newest book, The Great Loop Experience – from Concept to Completion, is a comprehensive guide written to help others plan, prepare, and successfully execute their own Great Loop adventures. It also addresses the questions that these authors/lecturers are most frequently asked by future “Loopers”. Some of the many topics covered include: selecting and equipping your boat, choosing your route, financial considerations and trip costs, managing your onboard life, vessel security, Customs and border crossings, boating protocol, locking procedures, safely negotiating the waterways, open-water crossings, and great stops along the way. This how-to guide not only informs and educates you, but also hopes to inspire those who want to one day make this wonderful journey! The Great Loop Experience has the information you need so that you can confidently and knowledge- ably cast off your lines for your own exhilarating Great Loop adventure!




The Looper's Companion Guide


Book Description

This is 2019's newest and latest Great Loop book release. From our 3-time Best Selling Great Loop Book author, Capt. John has produced an incredible Looping guide. This is a huge 8.5 x 11 x 335-pages with over 100 full-color Maps & photo's. Just read the reviews! Even previous Loopers are raving about this guide! This is the ultimate Great Loop planning & cruising guide as it helps you plan and prepare your self, your boat, and your budget for this epic adventure. It takes the 'guess work' out of planning it, and the 'stress work' out of cruising it. You will be cruising America's Great Loop safely with comfort & confidence. Includes planning, preparing, budgeting, boat buying, equipping, and provisioning your boat. But, the revolutionary game changer is Capt. John's 'numbered' 5,429-mile x 140-travel day and destinations route and itinerary. Cruising the Loop doesn't get any safer or easier than this. Just follow in the wake of Capt. John and his fellow Super-Loopers on this favorite Great Loop route that takes you (by the numbers) from one incredible destination to the next, while leaving you at a free dock, safe anchorage or people & pet friendly marina every single evening before dark. The route takes you to over 100 "Looper Favorite" destinations and gives you all the best detours as well as the top 10 most popular side-trips. One reader called it: "Confidence in a can!" Another reader said, "It's like having your own personal Looping Instructor at the helm." This 140-travel day route guide is strategically planned to work for those in fast boats as well as those in slow boats. It gives a priority to marinas that are the most people & pet friendly, offer a courtesy car or free shuttle, onsite or nearby restaurants. It gives you each and every travel day's distance, fuel range, bridge heights, controlled depths and known depth issues. It includes each day's way-points, free dock & wall locations, safest anchorages and best marinas (with Mile markers & phone numbers). For those new to cruising long-distance, you get a complete run down on actual 2018 cruising costs with cost comparisons on the most popular types & size vessels suitable for cruising the Great Loop. From the most frugal and fuel-efficient boats to the most flamboyant and accommodating vessels, from sail to power, one engine or two, large and small - Capt. John and his group give you a real heads up on what you can expect your cruising expenses will be both on & off the water. He makes it easy to determine a much better Looping budget based on our own lifestyle, boat type, size, and speed. If you have a reluctant spouse in the house, this will change that as well. The large size combined with the full color maps and photos make a beautiful Coffee Table book and conversation piece. You won't just be happy with this purchase, you will be THRILLED! Get it now, and get ready to be more excited than ever for a safe, comfortable and amazing voyage around America's Great Loop. Your "Looper's Companion Guide" purchase on Amazon comes with a free Kindle version.James A.Peoples, CEO, ANCHOR PUBLISHING




100 Great Stops on America's Great Loop


Book Description

America's Great Loop is an extraordinary boating journey of over 5000 miles using the linked waterways of North America. This book is a guide to 100 of the charming waterfront towns and cities along the way and has information on more than 150 additional stops and presents them in the order you will find them along the way.




Once Around Is Not Enough


Book Description

If you want the best, this is it. Thoroughly and clearly, "Once Around Is Not Enough" gets straight to the point covering the fundamental necessary skills, routes, boats and equipment choices required for cruising the Great Loop safely. Yet, it goes far beyond the basics to give you a huge cruising advantage that comes only with years of experience, and Capt. John has more of it than anyone we know. "Once Around Is Not Enough" provides a wealth of straight forward information including answers to the TOP 100 most FAQs about cruising the Loop. Plus it contains 100 more valuable cruising tips & suggestions. All presented in a way that is uniquely, interesting and easily readable. Everything in this book is useful, and Capt. John shares it in a most humble and easy to understand way. From the Intracoastal to the Inland Rivers, from the Docks to the Locks and from cruising comfortably to cruising legal, Capt. John prepares you for cruising America's Great Loop like no one else can or ever has. You get it all. . . from 'Looping boat' requirements and restrictions, mileage and fuel range requirements, best equipment, amenities onboard, best routes, best places to stop - including where the Whales are - and how to save the thousands of dollars when making this voyage. We are so convinced that this is the best, containing all the most essential information you need to plan and prepare for the safest, comfortable and wonderful journey around America's Great Loop - we'll give you your money back if you can show us one better! James A. Peoples, Chief Editor Anchor Publishing




Good to Great


Book Description

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?




Crossing the Wake


Book Description

Crossing the Wake: One Woman's Great Loop Adventure follows the waterlogged travels and travails of a woman willing to risk it all in a quest to bring some adventure to her life. A beautifully honest account of riding the waves of a journey, both physically and emotionally grueling, author Tanya Binford recounts her arduous six months with amazing detail.After leaving behind her work as a psychiatric nurse practitioner and saying goodbye to her grown children, Tanya Binford was ready to cast off. With an itch for sailing that had taken root decades before, she was finally ready to put her dreams into action--not even a lack of any real sailing experience could stop her!-----"Bittersweet, yet triumphant. The story that must be experienced."--Sean O'Boyle AM, Australian composer and conductor




I Am a Strange Loop


Book Description

Argues that the key to understanding ourselves and consciousness is the "strange loop," a special kind of abstract feedback loop that inhabits the brain.




Chapman Piloting & Seamanship 69th Edition


Book Description

Chapman is the foundation reference for all boaters and sailors with essential information on boat handing and seamanship skills on coast and inland waters. With three million copies sold, Chapman Piloting & Seamanship is the one comprehensive resource boaters at all levels of experience trust for everything they need to know to set out on the water. It addresses the best traditions of seamanship with cutting-edge practices, gear, and technology. Along with 1500 color photos, charts and drawings, this edition includes: Navigating by day or night in any weather Trailerboating Getting underway or returning to a marina or mooring under power or sail Anchoring and weighing anchor Operating a gas or diesel engine—inboard, outboard, or sterndrive Using radar and communicating by radio Sharing the water with other boats Handling lines and making them fast Reading the weather and keeping your crew safe with the latest advice on safety equipment The 4,200-entry index makes it easy to quickly access any topic, and the glossary and source information directs the reader to vital information on weather, tides, and aids to navigation. Used and recommended by the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the U.S. Power Squadrons, and other boating educators, Chapman is today—and has been for more than a century—the boating book of record.




The Sense of an Ending


Book Description

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.




The Fourth Turning


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.