Every recognised Great Loop speed mark, by category — who holds it, in what, and when. With one exception, none of these are sanctioned by any governing body: they're self-documented, tracker-verified and accepted by the boating community on an honour system.
| Outright any vessel, any crew |
12d 18h 10m — Peter Hajas & crew, Lady Lor July 9–21, 2025 · 40′ Contender 40 Express, triple Yamaha 350s · Islamorada, FL Crew of four: Peter Hajas Sr. (65), Kevin Selchow (62), Peter Hajas Jr. (35), Eric Hajas (32) |
| Solo — and single-engine one rider, one motor |
18d 5h 23m — Martin Bysiewicz, Fast Marine New · Sep 4, 2026 Aug 17 – Sep 4, 2026 · 2026 Sea-Doo RXT-X 325 (one engine) · Sunshine Skyway, Tampa Bay, start and finish 5,255 GPS miles, ~12 mph average. One rider on one ski the entire way. Teammate Steven Fulladosa rode alongside on a second ski for most of the Loop but did not make the final leg — Bysiewicz crossed the line alone — which is why the solo label is debated. Cast your vote → Previous: 19d 13h 1m — Robert Youens, Ageless Wanderer, July 12–31, 2025 · 16′ Weldbilt jon boat, 60 hp Tohatsu, completely alone · ~4,800 mi, 64 locks, age 71. Stood 13 months. |
| Personal watercraft the Guinness category — ratification of the new mark pending |
18d 5h 23m — Martin Bysiewicz, Fast Marine New · Sep 4, 2026 Aug 17 – Sep 4, 2026 · 2026 Sea-Doo RXT-X 325 · Sunshine Skyway, Tampa Bay, start and finish · 5,255 mi Beat the standing mark by 4d 0h 17m. Bysiewicz has said Guinness has been hard to reach; until it's ratified this is the fastest documented PWC Loop, proven by their public GPS track. Previous (Guinness-ratified): 22d 5h 40m — David Fries, June 15 – July 7, 2024 · jet ski · Annapolis, MD start and finish · supported by Brent "Squirrel" Perry, mechanical support and chase driver. |
| 2022 — 28 days | Steve Hernden ("Tortuga Steve"), Cape Coral, FL firefighter and charter captain. 26′ Glacier Bay 2685 power catamaran Tortuga. May 15 – June 11, 2022. 5,401 miles, 73 locks, 2,772 gallons of gas at $13,552. Crewed in relays by family — brother-in-law, cousins, his father through the Great Lakes, his two children on the last leg. He went on to co-drive Robert Youens' 2026 attempt. |
| 2024 — 19d 19h 50m | Capt. Scott "Red" Flowers, a stage-4 melanoma survivor, running "The Great Loop Challenge" for the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation. 28′ Canyon Bay 28h with a Mercury V10 400 — the boat donated outright by builder Ross Toepel. Departed June 15, 2024, running 12–18 hours a day; $17,000 in fuel. Raised roughly $500,000 toward a $1 million goal. He ran the first Sharrow X10 prototype off the production line for the Detroit–Chicago leg alone, and measured an 18–20% fuel-efficiency gain. |
| 2025 — 12d 18h 10m | Peter Hajas and the crew of Lady Lor — the current mark, a full week faster. Full story → |
"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
| Human-powered | Peter Frank, 23, of Escanaba, Michigan — paddled the entire Loop solo in a 1982 Sawyer Loon decked canoe, no motor, running it clockwise (the harder, upstream direction). About 4,850 miles over roughly 16 months, finishing October 2025, in self-made 17th–18th-century clothing. He and Youens crossed paths on the Tennessee–Tombigbee. |
| PWC, unhurried | Mike Straub, a software engineer from Omaha, rode a custom Sea-Doo about 7,000 miles over roughly four months in 2022 for his 50th birthday — 6–10 hours a day, longest day 225 miles. |
| PWC, solo — first woman? | Kasey Perella of Sneads Ferry, NC — "Solo Ventures" — rode a 2024 Sea-Doo Explorer Pro 170 around the entire ~6,000-mile Loop solo in under three months (departed May 29, 2025), riding for the Brothers In Arms Foundation. Believed to be the first woman to loop solo by PWC. Full story → |
| Segmented | Scott Meyers, a Tulsa dermatologist, completed the Loop on a 24′ Bennington tritoon across four separate segments over four years — about 34 days of actual travel. Sometimes miscited as a 34-day speed record; it wasn't a continuous run. |
| Finished 🏁 | David Barber — "Bandit" · solo, SeaArk jon boat. Closed the Loop Aug 4, crossing his wake at St. Marks, FL — 4,884 miles in 25d 8h 39m. Chased the solo record (19d 13h 1m) and completed the full route. |
| Ended | Robert Youens & Steve Hernden · 23′ Weldbilt, 140 hp, running 24/7 at the outright record. Ended July 20 at Erie, PA with cracked hull welds after 2,417 miles in 6d 22h — running dead even with the record at the time. |
| Finished 🏁 | Freedom Fighter — Veterans Against Suicide · stock 25′ Coast Guard SAFE Boat 25 Defender, two Special Ops veterans, for veteran-suicide awareness. A back injury ended their record bid, but they crossed their wake Aug 22 and completed the full ~4,880-mile Loop. Departed Grand Harbor Marina, Counce, TN on July 25. |
| Ended | Capt. Jason Decker — "Liberty Looper" · USMC veteran, War Eagle 2170 Blackhawk, solo, for Wounded Warrior Project and Tunnel to Towers. Launched Aug 4, restarted Aug 11 — ended Aug 12 after the captain was struck by a jumping fish and taken to urgent care. Track stays on the map. |
| Finished 🏁 | Capt. "Red" Flowers — Great Loop Challenge 2.0 · the 2024 record-setter (stage-4 melanoma survivor) crossed his wake at the Jacksonville inlet on Aug 29, 2026, closing a 7,162-mile custom charity Loop — launched Aug 8 from DeLand, FL on a Portā DARK:30 Velocity, twin Honda Marine BF350 V8s. For the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation ($1M goal) — not a like-for-like record attempt. Facebook |
| 🏆 New records | Fast Marine — Martin Bysiewicz · Sea-Doo RXT-X 325, with teammate Steven Fulladosa alongside for most of the Loop. Crossed his wake 12:37 p.m. Sep 4 back under the Sunshine Skyway — 18d 5h 23m, 5,255 miles from their 7:14 a.m. Aug 17 restart. New single-engine/solo mark (beat Youens' 19d 13h 1m by 1d 7h 38m) and new PWC mark (beat the Guinness 22d 5h 40m by 4d 0h 17m). Guinness ratification pending. Fulladosa did not make the final leg, so Bysiewicz finished alone; the "solo" label is still debated because a teammate rode alongside for most of the run — the poll. |
Some of the most extraordinary Loops have no engine at all. None of these are timed speed records — they're firsts and endurance feats, and they belong in any honest record book.
| Kayak first solo kayak of the Greater Loop |
268 days paddling · 1,643 hours — Mark Fuhrmann (also publishes as Mark Ervin) Departed Halifax, Nova Scotia 1–2 June 2022 · finished 2 August 2023 · ~6,800 miles Canadian, age 65, living in Oslo. Note this was the "Greater Loop" — the Great Loop plus a New England and Canadian Maritimes extension, a longer circuit than the standard route. Raised money for Doctors Without Borders and Captains Without Borders in memory of his late wife. |
| Canoe clockwise — the hard way |
480 days · 4,853 paddling miles — Peter Frank Escanaba, Michigan · 27 June 2024 – 20 October 2025 · 1982 Sawyer Loon decked canoe, no motor Plus 297 portage miles and 122 locks. 2,158 of those miles were upstream — he ran it clockwise, against the current, which almost nobody attempts. Age 24. He finished exactly ten years to the day after the car accident that nearly killed him. |
| Smallest boat AGLCA-reported |
11-foot Sea-Doo — reported to AGLCA in 2024 A 12-foot PWC was reported in 2022 (Mike Straub of Omaha, ~6,000 miles, no land support). Robert Youens' 16-foot jon boat is the smallest conventional powerboat to complete the Loop and the smallest to set a speed record — but not the smallest craft overall. |
| Most Loops | At least 35 Loops · ~230,000 miles — Ted & Sarah Pongracz 36′ Kadey-Krogen Manatee, Manatee — bought new for $87,000 in the mid-1980s, still the same boat, now on its fourth engine Ted was 85 as of 2026. The mechanism is the charm: they winter in Marco Island, Florida and summer in Michigan, and each round trip completes another Loop. It's their commute. |
| Platinum Loopers AGLCA burgee |
Awarded to anyone who has completed the entire Loop more than once. New Platinum Loopers per year: 12 (2021), 15 (2022), 11 (2023), 6 (2024). Roughly 2–7% of annual finishers. Burgee ladder: white = AGLCA member · gold = completed the Loop · platinum = completed it more than once. |
"People say, don't you get tired of going around in circles, and we don't — we love the trip, it's different every single year."— Sarah Pongracz
There is no fastest-Great-Loop-by-sailboat record. No one claims one and nobody tracks it — which makes sense, since roughly half the route is rivers and canals run under power with the rig down. About 8% of AGLCA members have sailboats, and most must unstep the mast to clear the bridges outside Chicago and in upstate New York.
The controlling obstacle is a fixed railroad bridge charted at 19.6 feet at mile 300.6 on the Illinois River — unavoidable on either the downtown Chicago River route or the Cal-Sag alternative. One family documented the full mast logistics at about $6,000 across seven steps, with the rig off the boat for 56 days.
In 1898, Ken Ransom and three high-school friends — all eighteen — built a 30-foot gaff-rigged yawl named Gazelle in a woodshed behind the Ransom house and set out from St. Joseph, Michigan on October 27. They hand-towed her 48 miles up the Illinois & Michigan Canal ("we are our own mules," crewmate Art Morrow wrote), froze into the Mississippi for eight days in the Great Blizzard of 1899, passed the Statue of Liberty that September, and bought a horse for $10 to tow themselves the length of the Erie Canal, then sold it in Buffalo for $3. They were inspired by Joshua Slocum, who'd finished his solo circumnavigation months earlier.
Nobody formally tracks age records for the Loop. AGLCA's completion stats contain no age data at all, and Guinness has no category. What exists:
| Youngest aboard | Jaxon Parrent, age 4 — completed the Loop in 2010 with his parents and two older siblings aboard a 48′ Chris-Craft. AGLCA's then-director said she thinks he's the youngest; it's a 2014 article about a 2010 trip, so treat it as the best available claim rather than a settled record. |
| Youngest solo | Peter Frank, 24 — his own claim on finishing: "the youngest person in history to have ever done the Great Loop, out of any boat. And I did it in a canoe, backwards." Unverifiable — there's no registry — but recent and well documented. |
| Youngest skipper historical | Ken Ransom, 18 — in 1898, in a boat he built himself (above). |
| Oldest | Open — no documented record. We searched and found nothing. Ted Pongracz was 85 and still looping; Robert Youens was 71 when he set the solo speed record. If you know of an older finisher, tell us — we'll document it. |
AGLCA collects self-reported completions each year. These are boats that crossed their wake — the number of people is higher, and some finishers never report at all.
| Boats completing the Loop | 130 (2021) · 227 (2022) · 249 (2023) · 270 (2024) · 272 (2025) |
| Average boat length | ~40–41 feet every year. About half of all finishers are in the 40–49′ range; only 6–8% are under 30 feet. |
| Smallest / largest reported | 11′ Sea-Doo and 65′ (2024) · 12′ PWC and 59′ (2022) · 24′ and 94′ (2023) |
| Most common boats | Mainship dominates every year (29 in 2025), then Carver, Grand Banks, Sea Ray, Ranger Tug, Beneteau, Kadey-Krogen. |
| Typical duration | AGLCA's 2025 figure: 653 days average from start to completion — most Loopers take it in seasons, not one push. The association's own summary: the Loop "has been done in as little as 12 days and in as much as 12 years." |
| The association | ~6,300 registered boats, 10,000–12,000 individuals, ~500 harbor hosts, and as many as 400 boats actively looping at any moment. Founded 1999 by Ron and Eva Stob. |
There is no sanctioning body for Great Loop speed records. Apart from the Guinness-ratified PWC category, every mark on this page is self-documented — proven by public GPS trackers, photographs, fuel receipts and witnesses, and accepted or not by the boating community. The America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association publishes completion statistics and awards burgees, but does not certify times.
That informality is why category matters so much. Youens' 19d 13h 1m was slower than Hajas' 12d 18h 10m, but it was run alone, on one 60-horsepower motor, in a 16-foot boat — a different achievement, not a lesser one. Comparing a crewed 1,050 hp Contender to a solo jon boat isn't really comparing the same sport.
"I don't do Guinness World Records… That's the beauty of the internet and trackers and stuff. I got several people that can vouch for what we did, and it's kind of an honor thing."— Robert Youens
Spot an error, or know of a record or attempt missing from this page? Send it in — that's how several of the entries above got here.