Rick and Suzanne Rosenwald have been helping people all their lives. He’s a retired firefighter and she’s a retired paramedic and healthcare worker. It just made sense to them, after they completed an America’s Great Loop cruise, to volunteer as helpers for other Loopers cruising near their hometown of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan.
“As we were doing the Loop, there were so many people who helped us out with little things here and there,”
Suzanne says. “When you’re on your boat, you don’t have a car to go run and get things. You don’t have a way to go get a certain screw or a cord for the internet, things like that. Driving people to get these things is easy for us, and we enjoy it. We meet all kinds of people—just like when we were doing the Loop.”
The Rosenwalds are part of a volunteer program called Harbor Hosts that started about 15 years ago with the America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association. It began with what the organization calls “Gold Loopers” who had earned a gold burgee by finishing the Loop that runs along the East Coast, across to the Mississippi River, then south to the Gulf of Mexico and back to the East Coast (in any order or direction that cruisers choose). Today, according to Kim Russo, the AGLCA’s director, there are nearly 600 Harbor Hosts nationwide, including newer members still working on finishing the Loop themselves.
“It’s about providing local assistance,” Russo says. “It’s become a way for newer members who are still learning and preparing for the Great Loop to get engaged and pick the brains of people who are currently doing the Loop—get them into your car and take them to the grocery store.”
That’s exactly the type of thing the Rosenwalds have been doing for their fellow Loopers who pass through Sheboygan. These visitors are among the 150 or so boats that complete the Great Loop each year.
“We’ve taken people to grocery stores, Walmart, hardware stores, Best Buy,” Suzanne says. “Some people want to tour our local cola company. Some people want to see the golf course where the Ryder Cup was held. A lot of times, we take them to one of our local supper clubs, just to experience Wisconsin.”
The Rosenwald’s became part of the Great Loop community after attending a two-day seminar in Chicago in 2017. Rick had always been a boater, starting with a 15-foot ski boat when he was 18 years old, and trading up over the years to trailerable 27-footers that he and Suzanne would use for overnighting at cruising destinations around Wisconsin. She got him interested in the Loop after reading some articles about it. The two of them were sold on the idea after they attended the Chicago seminar and then headed to Alabama for an AGLCA rendezvous.
“That was nice because we could go on all different boats and see what we might want,” she says. “Then we started looking for a boat. That was back in the year 2017.”
They bought a 1990 DeFever 44 that they christened Fire Escape and decided to go for it. “Because I’ve enjoyed boating all my life, it was just the natural thing to do,” Rick says.
Their projected yearlong Loop itinerary then turned into a 4-year-long experience. They departed Wisconsin in October 2018 and were cruising south en route to Florida when they received a call that Suzanne had breast cancer. She flew back home for surgery, and they put the boat in Fort Myers, Florida, where she could get to the nearby airport for flights to get chemotherapy every three weeks.
That treatment, which got her healthy again, was followed by her parents getting sick and needing help. After her mother died and her father was settled, the Rosenwalds put their boat back in the water in January 2020. A few months later, in March, they cruised to Fort Pierce on Florida’s East Coast and were ready to restart their Great Loop adventure heading north—when they learned that the next marina on their itinerary was shutting down because of some new virus called Covid-19.
“They said, ‘Give us a couple weeks, everything will be all right,’” Suzanne says with a laugh.
Fire Escape stayed in Stuart, Florida, until 2021, when they finally were able to start cruising up the East Coast. But the Canadian border was still closed from the pandemic, and the DeFever was too tall to cruise the length of the Erie Canal. So, they were stuck again.
“We went across Lake Okeechobee five times, trying to get going back and forth,” Rick says.
After Canada finally reopened, they left Florida in April 2022.
“We left Fort Myers and kept going up to the Hudson,” Suzanne says. “We went past the Statue of Liberty. We made it up into Canada, the Trent-Severn Waterway—everything was just fun. So many people said to us, ‘Are you ever going to finish this Loop?’ Something kept telling me: Don’t give up.”
The memories they made were fantastic, they both say. “It was a great trip, a wonderful adventure with friends we’ll have for life—so many things we’d never have done if we hadn’t been on a boat,” Suzanne says. “We’d never have gone to a lot of those small towns. It’s a whole different perspective to see the country.”
They crossed their own wake on July 17. As they cruised toward the marina in Wisconsin, they were surprised to see a boat speeding toward Fire Escape from shore.
“We had a coworker of mine from the fire department on board as our deckhand, and he looked through binoculars and said, ‘Does your son’s boat have blue sides on it?’” Rick recalls. “He was in on it, but he played along.” Their two adult children, their spouses, and about 30 of their friends had arranged tables and food on the dock as a welcome-home celebration. “It was the coolest thing,” Rick says. “And then we could take down our white flag and put up our gold flag to show we had completed the Loop.”
Helping others do the same now brings them joy on a regular basis—and they’re far from alone as part of the Great Loop community of boaters.
“I just got a text yesterday from someone I helped,” Suzanne says. “They crossed their wake in St. Charles, Illinois, and now she wants to reach out and help other Loopers coming through too. It’s nice to see that in the world still, people helping each other.”
This article was originally published in the November 2022 issue.
