The 2024 Great Loop speed-record holder did it again. Scott "Red" Flowers — a stage-4 melanoma survivor — set the outright-style mark of 19d 19h 50m in 2024 on a fundraising loop for children's cancer, then came back bigger in 2026: the Great Loop Challenge 2.0, with Honda Marine as title sponsor, on a longer custom route for the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation. He crossed his wake at the Jacksonville inlet on Aug 29, 4:38 p.m., closing 7,162 miles in about three weeks. A charity endurance run, not a like-for-like record attempt.
Flowers launched from the Lake Beresford Yacht Club in DeLand, Florida on August 8, 2026 — an inland Florida start on the St. Johns River rather than a coastal one. The plan was an ultra-endurance, ~7,160-mile marine marathon around an expanded loop of the eastern U.S. waterways, running long days and nights outside of planned stops — and he closed it at the Jacksonville (St. Johns) inlet on Aug 29, 4:38 p.m., about three weeks after launch.
Because the route is substantially longer than the ~4,300–4,800-mile lines the speed records are set on, this run can't be compared head-to-head against Lady Lor's outright mark or Robert Youens' solo mark. It's its own thing: a bigger, sponsor-backed charity loop, tracked live for anyone to follow.
We plotted Red Flowers live because it was one of the biggest Great Loop runs of 2026 — but with no record-pace "ghost." A ghost only makes sense when a boat is running the same water as a record. On a ~7,160-mile custom route there's nothing to race mile-for-mile, so we showed his live position, his track and his start point and left the pace dials to the boats chasing a mark. Since the finish his card lives in the "completed" section of the home page.
| Hull | Custom Portā DARK:30 Velocity |
| Power | Twin Honda Marine BF350 V8 outboards — Honda is showcasing their efficiency and reliability over the run |
| Sponsor | Honda Marine, title sponsor of the 2026 Great Loop Challenge |
Flowers first ran "The Great Loop Challenge" in 2024, setting a mark of 19 days, 19 hours, 50 minutes — departing June 15, 2024 and running 12–18 hours a day, burning about $17,000 in fuel. He raised roughly $500,000 toward a $1 million goal for children's cancer. His boat, a 28′ Canyon Bay 28h with a Mercury V10 400, was donated outright by builder Ross Toepel. On the Detroit-to-Chicago leg he ran the first Sharrow X10 prototype off the production line and measured an 18–20% fuel-efficiency gain.
"Ross didn't just build me a boat at cost — he donated the whole thing. I about fell out of my truck when he said that."— Capt. Scott "Red" Flowers, on his 2024 boat