Great Loop Cruise Planning, Part 4: Planning Your Next Cruising Day

Great Loop Cruise Planning, Part 4: Planning Your Next Cruising Day

In this part of my multipart trip planning series, I explain how to plan for the next day of travel.


Note: Way back in January 2024, when Do It Now was parked at the dock in my dad’s back yard, I started a multi-part series about how I plan my Great Loop cruising. I got to the piece about my favorite part of planning — the next 7 to 10 days — and switched gears to write about other things. At this point, I think it’s high time that I return to the series and finish it off. There are only two parts left. If you haven’t read the earlier parts, use the links below to check them out. If you haven’t started yet, I recommend starting with the introduction. But if you’ve been on the loop for a while, you’re probably ready for Parts 2 and 3. – Maria


If you’ve read the other parts of my series about trip planning, you probably realize that each part tackles a smaller and smaller chunk of time. In the previous part, I talked about planning 7 to 10 days ahead. With that plan in hand, you should eventually be conducting each day’s cruise. While you might not think much planning is required, there are still some things you need to do before you cast off and get under way. That’s what this post is all about.

Plan/Review the Route

Sample Route
Here’s a segment of the route from my Dad’s house in Fort Pierce, FL, to the anchorage I planned to spend the night in just north of Vero Beach, FL. I can zoom in or out and tap icons to see what’s along the way.

If you haven’t already planned the route using your favorite trip planning tool, do that first. I usually make my daily route plans as part of my 7 to 10 day plan. That’s how I know how far my destinations are from each other. I use Aqua Map but a lot of folks use Navionics and a few folks might even use their boat’s chartplotter.

It’s important to take a close look at the route as the first step to planning the day. By following the route line you created, you’ll see what bodies of water you’ll be on, what bridges or locks are along the way, and maybe even whether there are No Wake zones that might delay you. You’ll also get a good idea of the kinds of bodies of water you’ll cruise on: rivers, lakes, canals, ICW channels, sounds, bays, inlets — you get the idea.

Take out a notepad and jot down the names of these points of interest in the order you’ll encounter them. Also jot down the approximate distance between them so you’ll get a good idea, while under way, what’s up next and how far ahead it will be.

The Aqua Maps screen grab here shows an example. Going south to north, I see a bunch of little islands on my port side, some power lines, two bridges, a caution (NTM), some more islands on the starboard side, and a spot where the channel splits and I need to stay to the port side. Familiarizing myself with the route before I start prevents surprises while under way.

Weather and Cruising Conditions

Checking the weather and getting an idea of what your cruising conditions will be should be near the top of any pre-departure check list. You’re basically gathering information to make a go/no go decision and, if you decide to go, to have the information you need to prepare for the cruising day. At a minimum, you should ask these questions:

  • What will the weather be like? Will it be one of those amazing cruising days with light winds, calm waters and blue skies? Or will it be rainy, windy, or stormy? Or something in between? The answers to these questions will determine whether you depart or stay put.
  • How will the weather be along your route? This looks at the weather more specifically for where you’re going to be. Suppose there’s a storm system coming up from the southwest that’ll pass through where you are right now around midday. You’re heading north. You might be able to avoid the storm by just getting an early start. Or suppose there’s a small craft advisory for high wind and waves just off the coast, but you’ll be on the ICW in a relatively sheltered area. You might not experience adverse conditions at all. Or maybe it’s the other way around: nice weather where you are in the morning but a storm moving in where you’re going later in the day. You might want to stay where you are.
  • St. Andrews Sound
    Transiting St. Andrews Sound is always a crap shoot. I’ve been through there three times now: once was smooth as silk, another time was relatively rough but tolerable, and the time in between was cabin-tossing, dog-puking rough.

    What will the cruising conditions be? I’m referring here to the possibility of rough conditions on a small part of your journey. The best example I can come up with is when I traveled south past Jekyll Island through St. Andrew Sound to Cumberland Island with a friend in autumn 2023. Jekyll Creek was perfectly calm and conditions were fine into Jekyll Sound. But the ICW channel ventures out into the Atlantic Ocean for a short stretch before turning inland again into the Cumberland River. We were only a few miles from the south end of Jekyll Island when the waves off the Atlantic became a bit too rough for my taste. We turned around, dropped anchor off the channel, secured everything in the main cabin, and made some changes to our route before trying again. Even if you’re fine with a little rough water, knowing what to expect can help you prepare the cabin and passengers for it.

Your answers to these questions will determine:

  • Whether you stay or go. Are conditions favorable for departure at all?
  • What time you depart. Do you need to leave sooner or later to avoid bad weather?
  • Where you go. Will you be better off cruising to a different destination? Maybe staying at a marina instead of a potentially rough anchorage? Or trying that anchorage the folks at Docktails told you about last night instead of the marina you’d originally planned on?
  • How you prepare the boat. Rough water might mean securing more cabin items than you usually do.
  • Where you drive. On my boat, I can drive from inside or from up on the command bridge. I prefer the command bridge, but not when it’s cold or raining.

Tides and Currents

Depending on where you are and where you need to go, tides and currents may play a part in your cruising day decision making.

  • Are there shallow parts along the route that are best transited at high tide? This is definitely a concern on some parts of the ICW where shoaling is an issue. And the New Jersey ICW is definitely not friendly to deep draft boats at anything less than middle tide.
  • Are tidal or river currents going to make it difficult to transit an area? Or even leave the dock? My boat has been pinned to a dock in West Palm Beach because of currents; I had to wait for a tide change to move! And if you cruise in the Pacific Northwest, you’re probably very familiar with the tidal currents at some of the passes. This is the kind of information that you can get from good guidebooks, other cruisers, and locals.

The answers to these questions will normally dictate when you depart and what time you plan to arrive at potential trouble spots. You’ll need to adjust your cruising speed accordingly to stay on schedule.

Notices to Mariners

Make sure you consult the Notices to Mariners (NTMs) before starting your day’s cruise. It has important information such as bridge and lock closures, waterway closures due to flooding or military training operations, and other things you might need to know. Imagine starting out on a long cruising day just to be held up by a broken drawbridge.

Not sure where to get current NTMs? Start on the Coast Guard’s Local Notices to Mariners by CG District page. Click a district and then click a link to the PDF for the notice you want. Or if you’re the kind of tech-savvy person who knows how to access RSS feeds, you can subscribe to the districts you want and have them delivered to your laptop or tablet automatically when they are published. Get started on the Subscribe to Our RSS Feeds page.

Here’s a tip: Don’t rely on Aqua Map or Navionics or any other charting aid to provide you with up-to-date NTMs. Although Waterway Guide usually does a good job, it did not provide an easy to find the notice for the Dismal Swamp closure that affected me back in Spring 2024. I discuss this in the blog post titled “My Dismal Mistake.”

Bridge or Lock Schedules

Bridge Schedule
The Waterway Guide info in Aqua Map says that the bridge only needs to open on the hour and half hour — that’s a full 30 minutes between openings.

You should also consider any bridge or lock schedules that might impact your cruise. For example, when I left the Miami Yacht Club with a friend back in January 2024, we had to transit the Venetian Causeway Bridge which operates on a schedule. It would make no sense to leave the Marina at 10 AM if we had to wait until 10:30 AM to get through a bridge 10 minutes away.

Although locks don’t usually run on schedules, most are not open 24 hours a day. Getting to a lock before it opens for the day is just plain silly. Remember, just because the lock staff might arrive at 8 AM doesn’t mean they’ll open the lock for you right away.

As you plan for the day’s journey, take this into consideration to plan arrival times to correspond with any schedules that might affect your cruise.

Timing Is Everything

If you’re spending the night at a marina, what time do you need to check in? Many marinas don’t want you early but also don’t want you after 5 PM or 6 PM when they might be closed. You’ll need to plan your departure time and day’s journey to get you to your destination at a suitable time.

You might also want to consider other places you plan to visit at the destination. Do you need to do a grocery run? Maybe you’ll want to get to the marina before it closes for the night so you can use the courtesy car. Is your destination famous for its sunsets? Make sure you get there on time to park the boat and get to the prime sunset viewing spot. Or maybe there’s a farmer’s market near the marina or dock that closes at 2 PM. If you like farmer’s markets as much as I do, you’ll plan your cruise to get there on time.

You also want to consider arrival time if you’re staying at a free dock. As any experienced Looper can tell you, the free docks fill up fast. The trick is arriving after the previous night’s boats have left but before all the spaces they vacated have filled. (And I have to point out yet another benefit of having a small boat: they can just about always fit me in. The stories I could tell!)

Mechanicsville
The free dock at Mechanicsville filled up pretty quickly the night I stayed there on my southbound Champlain Canal cruise.

Putting it All Together

Plan B

You should also have a Plan B if you think there’s any possibility that you might not be able to complete the plan as intended. Stuff happens. What would you do if the forecast was wrong and conditions were worse than expected? Or if currents and conditions in your favor make it possible to go beyond where you thought you could, perhaps enabling you to visit a more desirable destination? Or if you arrive at the anchorage and decide it isn’t really where you want to spend the night? Or if some friends you met last week who are one stop ahead text you to tell you about a big event there that night?

Plans B, C, and D are nice to have, even if they’re just a few options that might need more research.

Putting all of this together, you should be able to come up with a plan for the day.

Take the notes you made at the start of your planning process for the day and make some notes about timing, conditions, and anything else you think might be important. Finish this up before casting off, possibly as a group effort with your companion(s). It makes an excellent pre-departure briefing.

These notes will guide you throughout your cruising day, keeping you on target to arrive at various places where you need to arrive at a specific time.

Plans Can Change

Did you learn anything from this post?
Keep me caffeinated so I write more!

No plan is set in stone! You can change any plan any time you want to. But you can’t change a plan unless you have a plan to change. Start with what you expect to do. If the situation changes, be flexible and change the plan accordingly.

In the next (and last) part of this series, I’ll discuss how plans can change because of circumstances beyond your control — and what you can do about it.

Unplanned Anchorage
Yes, that dot in the lower right is Do It Now. I did not plan to anchor here — I was going to drop anchor at the other end of this waterway. But conditions were perfect right here and I had a great place to take my pups ashore without bothering anyone. It was a great spot!

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