From the Great Lakes to Yachting World
One of our favorite pictures of SV Fika that Chris took is featured in this awesome two-page spread in the January 2026 edition of Yachting World, an international magazine.
There’s something funny about reading your own story in a British sailing magazine.
The Great Loop, with its rivers and locks and Midwestern bridges, doesn’t exactly scream “bluewater glamour.”
And yet here it is.
Yachting World published a cruising guide article about the East Coast from Mexico to the far reaches of North America, prominently featuring the Great Loop (and many of Chris’ photos!). Alison was interviewed with a number of other sailors familiar with those regions.
Yachting World recently published a feature on cruising beyond the Caribbean, and included a section on America’s Great Loop, including our family’s year aboard Beneteau 423, Fika.
They talked about:
Sailing the Great Lakes
Unstepping the mast in Chicago
Trucking it to Mobile
River miles and Gulf crossings
Docktails and Looper camaraderie
The Loop is quirky. It’s unconventional. It can involve more motoring than most sailors prefer.
Your life is a story and I am honored when I can share parts of our story with others. I was interviewed for two magazines recently: Yachting World (January 2026) and Soundings (December 2025).
And it is absolutely worth it.
The article places the Loop alongside cruising Mexico, the Bahamas, and the U.S. East Coast, which is exactly how we’ve come to see it. Not as a separate category of boating. Just another way to explore by water.
Seeing Fika pictured in an international sailing publication feels a little surreal. But more than that, I love that sailors around the world might now stumble across the Loop and think, “Huh. That’s interesting.”
Because that’s exactly how it started for us.
If you’d like to read the article, here it is: Cruising the Great Loop
It still amazes me how far one small “maybe we could…” can travel.
