Greetings! Thank you very much for your ideas and input at the Great Loop open forum during Trawler Fest Solomons. The rally concept has been pushed to the back burner at Trawler World in light of this consensus: What is needed most is an interactive communications link for people cruising and planning to cruise the Great Loop and other inland routes. Thus, Trawler World Great Loop List will be launched shortly, in the easy-to-use format employed by Trawler World List with which some of you are already familiar. Trawler World Great Loop List will be an electronic forum where e-mail is the communciations medium. It will be open to all interested persons, whether they own trawlers or not. It will be a free service to the cruising community provided by trawlerworld.com. Those who gave their e-mail address at the Solomons meeting will form the core group for the launch of Trawler World Great Loop List. Others, including those receiving copies of this message, will be invited to join. Complete particulars on how to sign up and how to participate will be forthcoming shortly. Regarding the rally concept, the word "rally" may be misnomer. Informal cruises in company and informal rendezvous anywhere on the Loop are what's most likely to develop first. In terms of an event that we at Trawler World might organize or help to organize, the best idea might be to designate a place like Grand Haven, Michigan, in late August as a meeting place for, say, one week, to offer the greatest flexibility to those cruising the Loop. The main social event and program might take place in the middle of that week, or at the conclusion. One Saturday to the following Sunday might work best as the time frame. But, first, let's get the e-forum rolling, about which I'll be back to you shortly. --Georgs ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Georgs Kolesnikovs Trawler World Productions Publishers of Trawler World Online at <http://www.trawlerworld.com> Producers of West Marine Trawler Fest & Expo in 2001 at Fort Myers, Florida, March 28-31; Clear Lake Shores, Texas, May 2-5; Poulsbo, Washington, June 6-9; Solomons, Maryland, September 26-29, and Long Beach, California, October 31-November 3, plus the all-new West Marine Trawler Fest Passagemaker Symposium in San Francisco on July 20-22, and, in 2002, the all-new West Marine Trawler Fest Inland Rendezvous in Grand Haven, Michigan, on August 23-25 Telephone: 905-837-0102 E-mail: mailto:georgs@trawlerworld.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------