Free guides to the Great Loop

The numbers that decide it

How tall can your boat be? 19'6" at the Illinois River is the only clearance you can't get around. Everything else costs you a route, not the Loop. Read it → How much water can it draw? Under 5' is the working answer — but it's a preference, not a wall. Over it means a signed waiver, not a refusal. Read it → How far between fuel stops? One leg sets the number: Alton to Paducah, about 250 miles. And a range figure without a speed attached tells you nothing. Read it → Single or twin engines? We don't answer it — owners are split and anyone who declares a winner is stating a preference. The efficiency argument, though, doesn't hold up. Read it → Can that boat even reach the Loop? A dam without a lock is a wall. Two lakes ninety minutes apart by road can be a few hundred river miles from the Loop — or a truck ride. Read it →

The boat itself

What engine hours tell you Almost nothing on their own. Without the fuel type and the years behind them the number misleads — and low hours is not the good news it reads as. Read it → Can you take a dog? Yes — but the two things that decide it are how she rolls and how he gets aboard, and neither one is in a listing. Read it →

Before you spend money

What a dossier looks like One real listing taken apart: every claim tagged for how well it's verified, and the gaps stated rather than filled in. Read it → Should you buy a project boat? The ones that fail arrive at the salvage yard full of the parts bought to finish them. It isn't the money — it's the hours, against everything else you do. Read it → What a survey costs, and when to book $2,000–3,500 all in, and there are three surveys rather than one. The closing date you negotiate decides which surveyor you get. Read it → What decides whether you can insure it Insurers trigger on the manufacturer's stated length, not your measured LOA — and they may want documented training hours before they'll write it. Read it →

On the water

What to feel for on a sea trial Sixteen things worth deliberately noticing. The numbers are the easy part; a spec sheet can't tell you whether you'll still want to be aboard on day forty. Read it → The four kinds of lock you'll meet The longest stretch of locks is the easiest one, and the Erie is the hard one. That's the opposite of what most people expect. Read it → Can one person handle this boat? Almost nobody Loops solo; nearly everybody Loops as a couple. The Coast Guard has a name for the case that actually applies. Read it →

What the record actually shows

What boats actually finish the Loop Five years of AGLCA's own data, read together for the first time. Mainship leads every year — and don't read the five totals as a trend. Read it →

Things to take with you

The sea-trial checklist, as a PDF Printable, free, no signup. Take it to the boat. Open → The sample dossier, as a PDF Built fresh from the live renderer every time you ask for it — so it can never drift from what the product actually produces. Open → A sample dossier What we produce for one specific boat, with every claim tagged for how well it's verified. Open →

What we didn't do: we haven't run the Loop, and we haven't surveyed anything. What's here is published figures — mostly AGLCA's own, linked so you can check them — read alongside the accounts of people who have done it. Where those people disagreed, we said so instead of picking a winner. And if something here is wrong, tell us — support@caniloop.net. Somebody already has, and that page now says so.

What this is based on

Each guide names its own sources at the foot of the page.

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.