[NA] Robert Youens - The Great Loop record attempt

Mahneuvers

Mahneuvers

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Mahneuvers
Anyone else watching Robert's attempt to break The Great Loop record? It's epic and coming down to the wire. I hope I have balls like his at 71.
 
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16 foot Jon boat. 19 days. 6,000 miles. He's about to do it.
 
found a youtube interview while he was passing through the Charleston area.

one of my daydreams is to do the great loop.... but if I ever do it it'll be on the slow plan. Maybe even spread it over a couple of years on a liveaboard
19 days in a jonboat. Hard to imagine that it's even possible

so let's see
6,000 miles/19 days = 315.78 miles per day
gotta sleep some...stop for fuel and provisions, etc.... so lets say you can run 16 hours per day. I feel like that would be pushing it pretty hard
315.78/16 = 19.73 MPH average speed required.

wow. interesting guy
 
I was thinking about it. A few years ago I got the chance to take three weeks straight off work
We took our Class C motorhome from NE Florida to the Grand Canyon and back. We were on the road for 19 days, I did all but about 10-15 miles of the driving.
There were a few days where we just more or less stayed put. I had to stop about every third night to get off the road. I was fine and could have kept going...but I can't imagine 19 days straight...and a jon boat can be punishing. A rough ride and weather exposure.
 
That’s amazing. I know someone who did it but took many months as they weren’t in a hurry
 
I don't know if true, but, rumor had it so many people were watching him he crashed Garmin tracker. I've been a little obsessed monitoring his progress for many reasons but partly b/c my wife and are thinking more and more of spending our first year in retirement completing the loop. Three moments stand out to me. First, he fell asleep in South Carolina in the dark and drove his boat a good bit up into a tidal marsh. Extracting the boat was quite an operation. He damaged his boat to the point he required a welder. Offshore from OC MD to NY harbor had to have been intense. There have been a lot of stories here from @EdFred and others about the great lakes and I learned boating there in many ways is more dangerous than bluewater. He was extremely lucky with the weather in Lake Michigan able to cross it versus hugging the shoreline.

My favorite part was this picture. Peter Frank is in the foreground. Just as unbelievably, Peter is completing the loop in a canoe, clockwise, which means he's paddling ~1,500 miles up current! He's a little over a year into it. Peter and Robert met up this week in a Tennessee lock.
1754048579541.png
 
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eman1200 said:
Sounds about as exciting as watching someone fuel up a 172.
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Apparently ChatGPT cannot index/search POA. I asked it how often you have disparaged 172's in this forum and it couldn't answer. Maybe it ran out of memory the result set was so large.
 
I say it shouldn't count if you use canals. Portage or yeet yourself off Niagara. :D

I've wanted to float the Upper Missouri from Great Falls to...eh somewhere, probably take out at Fort Peck Lake.
 
Brad W said:
...so let's see
6,000 miles/19 days = 315.78 miles per day
gotta sleep some...stop for fuel and provisions, etc.... so lets say you can run 16 hours per day. I feel like that would be pushing it pretty hard
315.78/16 = 19.73 MPH average
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He traveled 12.9 mph for 19 days, 13 hours. He had a top speed of 35 mph. He didn't travel 2 days. He had to sleep, had a ton of locks, the SC wreck, etc. He was full throttle the entire time!
 
Mahneuvers said:
Shocking @SoonerAviator hasn't chimed in as I'm pretty sure he's a big boater!
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Lol I was just showing a co-worker the story on this guy today. Quite an accomplishment given any metric (age, type of vessel). I'm surprised that aluminum boat was big enough to hold this guy's cajones! I'd love to do the Great Loop some day, and could even put in at the Port of Catoosa just East of Tulsa.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Lol I was just showing a co-worker the story on this guy today. Quite an accomplishment given any metric (age, type of vessel). I'm surprised that aluminum boat was big enough to hold this guy's cajones! I'd love to do the Great Loop some day, and could even put in at the Port of Catoosa just East of Tulsa.
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You are on my list of people I would love to meet in person.

EDIT: I'm not great on a tablet. I had explained why I wanted to meet. Awkward!
 
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Saw a Youtube video the other day of him finishing his voyage, escorted by a crowd of boats. He said he read about the previous record holder's trip and thought , "I could do that faster than that", so he did.
 
lbfd101 said:
Saw a Youtube video the other day of him finishing his voyage, escorted by a crowd of boats. He said he read about the previous record holder's trip and thought , "I could do that faster than that", so he did.
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Tohatsu outboard engines got some pretty good publicity out of his trip as well.
 
Youens has a new Jon Boat and is doing the loop again this year but this time with another captain. A guy named David Barber is going to attempt to break his solo record this summer.
 
thanks for posting that. I saw some of the vids of his prep work on the new boat but I had no idea he was running it now.

this run is a little interesting to me...but not nearly as much as his last one fascinates me. I think the solo part and the simple part appeal to me more.
 
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