Who we are

We're Henry and Ellen — experienced boaters about to start our own Great Loop in May 2026 from Boston, aboard our boat Katz and Dogz, with our first mate Miller the dog.

We built Loop Captain because we couldn't find one free, all-in-one resource for planning a Loop trip — especially one that worked for our non-sailor friends who wanted to join the dream. So we built tools for ourselves… and quickly realized we had to share them. Loop Captain is free forever. This is our community service.

Six things you can do here

Loop Captain is built around six pillars:

• Plan — interactive map of the entire Loop, pick your route options and side trips, every facility on the map and clickable
• Video — cinematic flyover of your route as a downloadable MP4 (square, vertical, or widescreen), share to anywhere
• Learn — 79 in-depth guides covering every waterway, weather, boats, costs, customs, life aboard
• Tools — fuel calculator, bridge clearance check, trip budget, passage planner, seasonal planner
• Log — daily trip log with calendar heatmap, states-visited map, pace tracking
• Brief — daily morning briefing emailed to you on your trip with weather, waypoints, and what to know

The route planner

Click any segment to add it to your trip. Side trips snap in and out without losing your spine. Every facility — marinas, fuel docks, locks, bridges, anchorages, dock walls — is on the map and tappable for details. We track over 3,000 of them across the full route.

When you've got a route, the planner shows total distance, estimated days based on your boat's cruising speed, lock count, and the facilities along the way.

Cinematic share — show your trip

Generate a flyover video of your planned trip. Choose your boat (Helmsman 38E, Leopard 46 catamaran, sailboat, trawler — boats face the direction you're heading on screen), pick an aspect ratio (16:9 for YouTube, 1:1 for Facebook, 9:16 for Reels and TikTok), record, and share.

We use MP4 with H.264 baseline encoding so the video plays everywhere — drop it into iMessage and it just works on the other end.

Learn the Loop — 79 guides

Everything from buying a boat for the Loop to crossing into Canada with a dog to dealing with the locks on the Trent-Severn. Every article has hand-picked hero photography, inline cross-links to related guides, and a related-tools section.

Searchable. Browseable by category. Free to read; no email gate, no signup wall.

Public roadmap with voting

We have a /roadmap page showing what we shipped, what we're building next, and what's on the horizon. You can vote on items to tell us what matters most, and click "Suggest a Feature" to add your own.

We read every suggestion. The roadmap shapes what we work on.

Free forever

No ads. No subscriptions. No paid tier we'll upsell you to. Loop Captain is our community service to other Loopers — we want as many people as possible to learn about the Loop, get inspired, and one day cast off on their own adventure.

See something that could be better, or something that's just wrong? Tap the floating "?" button on any page and tell us. We read every submission and reply to most of them.

Fair winds. — Henry