Air draft has one hard limit. Draft doesn't — it has a comfortable range, a couple of places that ask for paperwork, and one stretch that wants a very shallow boat.
Every published figure points at the same place. AGLCA's own guidance is that your boat should "not have a depth much greater than 5'0"." The Rideau Canal is maintained at five feet. The Trent-Severn runs a controlled depth of six.
But here is the part that gets left out. AGLCA also says, plainly, that many boats drawing more than five feet have completed the Loop. Over five feet is not a refusal — on the Trent-Severn it is a waiver you sign before you enter.
So this is a preference, not a gate. Deeper costs you paperwork and attention, not the trip.
The Intracoastal Waterway through New Jersey. AGLCA's own description: "not well maintained and not well dredged. A shallow draft (less than 3-feet) and local knowledge is preferred to safely navigate it."
Most Loop boats don't have three feet of draft, and that's fine — the alternative is running "outside," a few miles off the coast, with several inlets to duck into for the night. It's a weather-window decision rather than a draft problem. But it's the tightest published number on the whole route, and almost nobody mentions it.
| Draft | What it means |
|---|---|
| Under 3'0" | The New Jersey ICW is open to you as well |
| Under 5'0" | Clean. Everything published sits here |
| Over 5'0" | A signed waiver before entering the Trent-Severn. Watch the Rideau's five feet |
And the usual advice about it is wrong.
You'll be told to expect your loaded draft to be meaningfully deeper than the listing. That isn't reliably true, and the reason is hull form. A wide, beamy boat has a large waterplane area, which means high pounds-per-inch immersion — load her down for cruising and she sinks a couple of inches. A narrow, deep hull shows a great deal more.
So the honest instruction is "confirm the number," never "expect it to be worse." You don't know the delta until someone measures it, and it varies by boat.
⚠️ The same physics runs the other way, and people get caught by it: you can't reliably load a beamy boat down to duck under a bridge either.
A swim platform full of water shifts a boat's draft more than a full cruising load does.
It's one of the few things that genuinely moves the figure — and a platform holding water is telling you something else as well, because the drains aren't clearing. Look at it after rain or a wash-down. Standing water means blocked or badly sited drains, and that's the more expensive of the two findings.
AGLCA's published guidance and route-segment pages for the numbers, and boat owners for the design-versus-loaded point — the part no published figure covers. We haven't measured anyone's boat; the clearances are AGLCA's and the rest is what owners found once they were loaded and moving.
If we've got something wrong, tell us and we'll fix it — support@caniloop.net. A correction from someone who has actually run it is worth more than anything we can write.