Two Louisville-area captains, one 26-foot rigid inflatable, and the fastest mark in the sport. Capt. Dustin Kidd — who ran the whole Great Loop in 2018 and turned that trip into a Highfield dealership — and Capt. Marc Crutcher, a sailmaker and marina owner from the Ohio River, shoved off from Kentucky Lake on Sunday, September 6 aboard White Lightning, a Highfield Sport 800 with Yamaha power. "Topping off before launch, the clock will start in a bit," Crutcher posted that morning. With two aboard, the mark that applies is the big one: Lady Lor's 12 days, 18 hours, 10 minutes, the outright Great Loop record.
Their position beams in by satellite every 10 minutes. It's plotted on our home-page map alongside a ghost of Lady Lor's real 2025 pace, replayed from White Lightning's own start — so at any hour you can see whether they're ahead of or behind the record. The crew's own tracker page, with a fuel fund and a virtual barrel head to sign, is at bourboncitymc.com/loop-tracker, and they post from the boat in the public Facebook group Great Loop 2026 White Lightning.
Kidd completed the Great Loop in 2018, before his 39th birthday: 333 days and roughly 6,124 nautical miles aboard Knot Kidd'n, a 1989 50-foot Chris-Craft Constellation, departing November 17, 2017 and returning October 13, 2018. Al Roker interviewed the crew on NBC's Today show mid-Loop. The trip convinced him the tender matters as much as the mother ship, and in June 2020 he and partner Bob Missi opened Bourbon City Yacht Tenders — now Bourbon City Marine Center — a Highfield dealership in Louisville, Kentucky that bills itself as "the Midwest's Highfield headquarters" and an AGLCA lifetime member and sponsor. This is his second Loop, and the first one against the clock.
Crutcher owns Unbridled Sailing, a Louisville sail loft and rigging shop founded in 2008 (sails, rigging, electronics, restoration and sailing lessons across Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee), and runs Juniper Beach Marina on the Ohio River at Prospect, Kentucky — the boat's home water. He sent the tip that put this run on the site: "Dustin and I are doing it. Launching today finally."
| Boat | Highfield Sport 800 — aluminum-hull rigid inflatable, 26′ 8″ LOA, 9′ 7″ beam, hardtop; rated for single or twin outboards up to 150 hp each |
| Power | Yamaha outboard power (Yamaha Marine is a sponsor; the crew hasn't published the exact rig) |
| Published performance | Highfield quotes a ~27 mph cruise and ~230 nm range on the Sport 800; the tracker showed 36.5 mph on the first fixes out of Kentucky Lake |
| Crew | Two — Kidd and Crutcher, sharing the helm |
| Start / finish | Kentucky Lake, at the Kentucky Dam end (Gilbertsville, KY); they cross their wake back here |
| Direction | Rivers first: up the Tennessee to Pickwick and the Tenn-Tom, Mobile, the Gulf, Florida, the Atlantic, the Great Lakes, then the Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee back to Kentucky Lake |
There's no two-person category on the Loop. A crewed boat runs in the outright class, and the outright record is Lady Lor's 12d 18h 10m — Peter Hajas and a crew of four on a 40-foot Contender with triple 350s, July 2025. That's a ~4,650-mile loop at about 15 mph including every stop. A 26-foot RIB with two people aboard, dealing with fuel range, locks, night running and weather, is a very different tool for the job than a 40-foot centre console with three engines.
The crew's own pages describe the run as "Captain Dustin's Great Loop" and a second Loop attempt; they haven't published a target time or named a record. But they tipped this site, they're running a timed satellite tracker from a fixed start line, and Crutcher's launch post says "the clock will start." We're treating it as a timed run and measuring it against the outright mark, which is the only category a two-person crew fits. If the crew tells us they're after something else, we'll re-frame it here.
The home-page dial and the map ghost don't use a flat average. They replay Lady Lor's actual 2025 GPS track — her real pace, hour by hour — rotated to start at Kentucky Dam and on White Lightning's launch clock. At any moment the question is: how far around the loop had Lady Lor got, this many hours in from this same point? One thing to know while reading it: Lady Lor ran the Tenn-Tom and the Gulf on a failed centre engine, unable to plane, so her pace through White Lightning's first thousand miles is slower than her Atlantic and Great Lakes legs. A lead built on the rivers isn't safe until they're past her fast water.
Nine partners, per the crew's tracker page:
| Highfield Boats | The boat itself |
| Yamaha Marine | The power behind it |
| CSE Marine Products | NeverSoft™ keeps the tubes topped up |
| Nautical Creations | The custom radar mount |
| Juniper Beach Marina | Home waters |
| Unbridled Sailing | Sailing lessons & rigging |
| Glow Script Marquee | The send-off lights |
| Bourbon City Emergency Response | Watching from shore |
| GOAT502 Digital | The website & the tracker |
Fans can chip in through the crew's "Fuel the Voyage" shop — a beer for the crew ($6), a gallon of fuel ($15) or a mile of the Loop ($25) — and sign the virtual barrel head, a nod to the real one friends and fellow Loopers signed on Kidd's 2018 trip.
This run launched on September 6, 2026 and this page went up the same day. It's built from the crew's tip, their tracker page and Facebook group, Highfield's published account of Kidd's 2018 Loop, and public business records for Unbridled Sailing and Juniper Beach Marina. Nothing has been published in the boating press yet. Engine details, the crew's own target, and any coverage or photos are welcome — send them in.