The fastest Great Loop ever run. Four men — a desert racer, a Minnesota farmer and two software engineers, none with meaningful offshore experience — took a 2008 Contender 40 Express around eastern North America in 12 days, 18 hours, 10 minutes, hacking a full week off the previous mark. They did it on an all-meat diet, with a steering system that quit on the Erie Canal and an engine that died 700 miles from home.
They left Hajas's own dock in Islamorada, Florida at roughly 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday, July 9, 2025, and ran counter-clockwise: up the Atlantic coast and ICW, into the Hudson, west at Troy through the full Erie Canal to Lockport and Black Rock into Lake Erie, then Detroit, Lake Huron, the Straits of Mackinac, Lake Michigan, into Chicago at midnight, down the Illinois River to the Mississippi, up the Ohio, down the Tennessee–Tombigbee to Mobile, and home across the Gulf to the Keys.
Apart from three nights forced by Erie Canal lock hours and one two-hour weather stop, the boat ran around the clock. Fuel stops came roughly twice a day and were held under an hour — a four-man checklist covering fuel, ice, water, trash, and an audible confirmation of every fuel cap.
| Vessel | Lady Lor — 2008 Contender 40 Express, bought about a year before the run specifically for this trip |
| Power | Triple Yamaha 350 V8 outboards — 1,050 hp, run near 5,000 rpm for nearly two weeks |
| Fuel | 430 gal built in (210 center + 110 × 2) plus about a dozen 15-gallon jugs strapped in the cockpit — roughly 600 gal aboard; single fills up to 600 gal |
| Electronics | Twin Garmin hubs + iPad, Optimus (Dometic) fly-by-wire steering with autopilot, SiOnyx night vision, Seakeeper Ride, Starlink, Nebo tracker |
| Accommodation | Four berths — a V-berth plus two 24-inch berths under the cockpit. The shower and head aboard were never used once |
"I was looking explicitly for a Contender 40 Express… because I just thought it was the right ticket for this trip. It had all the features. In particular, a long range, big big fuel tanks."— Peter Hajas
| Peter Hajas Sr., 65 | Captain. Chicago-born, raised around Wisconsin and Minnesota water, moved to the Florida Keys about 18 months before the run. Professional-class off-road desert racer; a career in quantitative finance. |
| Kevin Selchow, 62 | First mate. Fourth-generation Minnesota corn and soybean farmer; Hajas's off-road racing co-pilot for some 50 races. Rigged the fuel-transfer system. |
| Peter Hajas Jr., 35 | Professional software engineer — the man who re-flashed the steering firmware mid-canal. |
| Eric Hajas, 32 | Math and software background; had done the April shakedown "mini-loop" with his father. |
By Hajas's own estimate, the crew's combined lifetime experience more than 50 miles offshore came to about five hours.
Planning to run 70 miles offshore to Morehead City, they lost Starlink, the weather closed in, seas built to eight feet and two of the four were vomiting over the transom. They bailed for Bald Head Island, North Carolina, arriving around 4 a.m. and sleeping about an hour. Those lost hours meant reaching Troy mid-morning instead of 8 a.m. — which cost them a third night on the Erie Canal.
"This trip is trying to make us check out day one."— Peter Hajas
Waiting at Lock 4, the engines shut down; on restart the 2008 fly-by-wire helm unit was dead. They diagnosed it under the helm in roughly 120°F heat with a test light, then ran a day and a half steering on autopilot alone, nudging one degree at a time through the locks. A replacement was sourced in Illinois, shipped to an AGLCA forum contact Hajas had never met, who drove it out to a free dock. Three components then had to be software re-flashed to matching versions — walked through at 10 p.m. by a Dometic technician who took the call while out on a date.
"Basically, we drove a day and a half without a steering wheel. Literally zero steering other than the autopilot."— Peter Hajas
Around 1 a.m., passing under a bridge, they clipped a submerged concrete pier and destroyed a prop. Minutes later, passing a barge at 40–45 mph with the GPS reading nine feet of water, they hit under two feet and stopped dead. BoatUS offered 10 a.m. at the earliest. A passing barge's prop wash rocked them free; Hajas dropped the outer two engines and dragged the boat roughly 200 feet across the bottom into deep water. Two of the crew slept through the entire grounding.
"In racing, we call that driver error. The boat didn't fail. We screwed up, not the boat."— Peter Hajas
The damaged center drive held for about 700 more miles, then seized 60 miles north of Mobile — the clunking started at 1 p.m. and it was finished 17 minutes later. No replacement could be found. Loaded, the boat wouldn't plane: about 10 mph at 0.7 mpg. They stripped the spare prop, moved coolers, anchors and gear forward, and three men lay in the bow as ballast so it would come up. At Port St. Joe a fishing guide helped them haul out and remove the entire center lower unit. Hajas puts the cost at about 30 hours — and believes a clean run would have been "10 days and something."
In northern Lake Michigan, Peter Jr. struck his head hard and came up disoriented, not knowing what day it was. They debated diverting to Wisconsin, chose Chicago, and watched him closely. He recovered and refused a hospital.
"I hadn't seen that look in his eyes since he was 9 years old… there was a serious fear-based confusion in his face. He's a 35-year-old man, and I saw this little boy in his eyes. That scared the hell out of me."— Peter Hajas
Hajas has eaten an all-carnivore diet for six years; he talked the other three into converting a month before departure. Provisions were exact: three pre-peeled hard-boiled eggs per man per day, four slices of microwave bacon each at breakfast, a can of tuna each at lunch, sous-vide steaks for dinner, jerky, and "meat missiles" — cheese sticks wrapped in prosciutto. Twelve days of food and not a bite more.
"You guys remember Cortez, when they got to South America and his guys were itching to go back home? And he's like, 'Burn the boats.' And I'm like, well, guess what? I'm burning the boats. We're only bringing 12 days of food, so we've got to do this thing in 12 days or else we're not going to eat."— Peter Hajas
Then nobody could eat. Exhaustion and seasickness killed every appetite; they came home with roughly 70% of the food, including 90% of the meat, each man five to ten pounds lighter. They still bought bacon cheeseburgers at fuel docks five or six times.
Robert Youens departed on his own solo record run three days after Hajas, and the two men spoke almost daily beforehand — trading spreadsheets, fuel math and logistics. It was Youens who convinced Hajas to add the jerry cans two weeks out. They spoke by phone during the run. Youens called to congratulate Hajas within an hour of him crossing the line — while still out on course himself.
"He's a super class guy, and I think in a different time, in a different life — had we met sooner, I think we would have been lifelong friends."— Peter Hajas on Robert Youens
No leg-by-leg splits, checkpoint times or official daily mileages have ever been published — only the total. The exact finish clock time and the named finish dock aren't public either. Great Loop times carry no sanctioning body; this is a tracker-verified, community-accepted mark. The Baja 500 and King of the Hammers wins attributed to Hajas come from a magazine profile rather than his own account or motorsport records.