Cruising the Great Loop: From Miami to Savannah in a Princess V48
Having decided to fulfil a lifelong dream of cruising the Great Loop from Florida to the Great Lakes, expat Princess V48 owner Elliott Maurice sets off on the first leg of his epic adventure.
This is Part 2 of our Cruising the Great Loop series, make sure to read Part 1 first.
Carefully planning a trip that spans over 2,000nm, especially one in which the end destination is not the same as the one you started from, requires meticulous groundwork. Above all you need to make sure the boat is ready for the sheer rigours it will endure, along with an inventory of spares and tools to cover the most likely failures.
With this in mind I arranged for my Princess V48’s engines and generator to have a full 1,000-hour service, including checking the injectors, flushing the heat exchangers, polishing the fuel and cleaning the tanks. In addition to this I decided to completely replace Privilege’s 14-year-old Freon-based Cruisair air-conditioning system with three modern self-contained Webasto units.
Having ordered them back in January 2021, they finally arrived from a Covid-locked-down Germany just three working days prior to our departure date. Even with an army of engineers on board there was no way the boat would be ready to leave on time, forcing us to delay our departure by a day.
Article continues below…
Words and photos: Elliott Maurice
Having decided to fulfil a lifelong dream of cruising the Great Loop from Florida to the Great Lakes, expat Princess V48 owner Elliott Maurice sets off on the first leg of his epic adventure.
This is Part 2 of our Cruising the Great Loop series, make sure to read Part 1 first.
Carefully planning a trip that spans over 2,000nm, especially one in which the end destination is not the same as the one you started from, requires meticulous groundwork. Above all you need to make sure the boat is ready for the sheer rigours it will endure, along with an inventory of spares and tools to cover the most likely failures.
With this in mind I arranged for my Princess V48’s engines and generator to have a full 1,000-hour service, including checking the injectors, flushing the heat exchangers, polishing the fuel and cleaning the tanks. In addition to this I decided to completely replace Privilege’s 14-year-old Freon-based Cruisair air-conditioning system with three modern self-contained Webasto units.
Having ordered them back in January 2021, they finally arrived from a Covid-locked-down Germany just three working days prior to our departure date. Even with an army of engineers on board there was no way the boat would be ready to leave on time, forcing us to delay our departure by a day.
Article continues below…
Owner’s upgrade: How I turned my Princess V48 convertible into a coupe cabriolet
Great Loop: Meet the Princess V48 owner preparing for the adventure of a lifetime
Having also updated the software on the new glass bridge Raymarine Axiom MFD and Quantum Doppler radar, I discovered it had turned our autopilot compass into a useless scrambled mess. The quickest solution was to swap the unit for a new one and deal with the scrambled one later. Fortunately, I had allowed a three-day stopover in Port Canaveral in case of any mechanical failure, so the loss of a day was not an issue.
We departed for the first 187-mile leg after an early fuel up of 260 US gallons (984 litres) of diesel to top up to the tanks’ full capacity of 500 gallons (1,893 litres). The early morning start allowed us a clean, easy run across the Haulover sandbar and out through the notorious Bakers Haulover inlet into a rolling 2ft sea.
However, as soon as I engaged the new autopilot it sent the boat into a sudden spin; it seemed to think port was starboard and vice versa. As steering by hand for the next 180 miles wouldn’t be too much of an issue and on arrival we could probably find a dockside wizard to resolve the problem, we pressed on.
