Voyages of Calypso Poet

This website was created to share our Great Loop cruise, Mississippi River cruises, and other inland and coastal boating experiences with old friends, new friends, and family. For visitors who don't know us as well, here's a little background information. 

Our Great Loop lasted from July 2002 to August 2003. We were experienced boaters before doing the Loop, but our expertise was in the rivers, mostly cruising on the Arkansas River and its locks. The Loop takes you through a lot of rivers, so that part felt familiar. Coastal boating brought new challenges, including the effect of tides and differentiating among multiple aids to navigation where channels converged or crossed one another. Going through 142 locks that year and docking at more than 150 different marinas and slips really sharpened our close-handling skills. Our observational skills were honed by murky river waters (hiding logs and deadheads), narrow channels, shallow coastal waterways (watch the color!), and of course, crab pots.

Since completing the Loop, we've cruised another several thousand miles on the Inland Rivers (Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, Tennessee, Cumberland, Tenn-Tom, St. Croix). Calypso Poet spent three years on the Tennessee River, but in the summer of 2007, we brought her back to Arkansas after a side trip up to Wisconsin and Minnesota on the Upper Mississippi. She stayed there until the fall of 2016, where we spent the fall and winter in Orange Beach, Alabama. In the spring of 2017, we headed back up the Tenn-Tom to spend several months cruising the Tennessee River again.

Gary is an Arkansas native, a family practice physician (now retired), science fiction buff, online game player extraordinaire (one of the masters at Worlds of Warcraft), and intrepid mechanic. If he can't fix something, it's not for lack of trying. 



Coleen grew up all over the middle U.S. (born in Wisconsin, attended schools in Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Arkansas, and Jamaica); her parents finally settled in Arkansas when she was in high school. She's a retired professor who taught at the University of Arkansas Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. Put her on the water, and she's happy.  

Our dog Maggie travelled many miles with us. She was a Cocker/Lab mix who liked to supervise our boat handling, particularly when transiting locks. She was also a great squirrel hunter, and she enjoyed searching for and locating the many varieties of squirrels on our journey. She also became quite adept at rating marinas for "dog-worthiness." She passed away a few years ago, but we've kept her ratings here for those of you who have dogs and are wondering how they adjust to extended cruising.

Along the way, we upgraded our boats, going from a 1997 24' Bayliner pocket cruiser to a 1999 Carver Santego 38 cockpit cruiser to a 2001 Carver 396 aft-cabin motoryacht (the Great Loop Boat) to our current boat, a 2001 Carver 466 aft-cabin motoryacht.



Long-term cruising is exciting, but it's also a challenge--mental and physical. We have gotten stronger, but perhaps more importantly, we have become wiser. You're going to have the most fun and handle the tricky parts so much better when you're working together as a team.