Can I Loop?

Can that boatactually do the Loop?

Paste the listing. We check it against the Loop's hard limits and whatever we hold on that model — and we tag every claim with how well it's verified, including the ones we can't answer.

Reserve founding access → See a sample dossier No card · no charge today · founding members get the lowest rate we ever offer.
What the hard gates look like
Can it physically do the Loop? the four questions, answered honestly
Air draft The one clearance you cannot route around is 19'6".
  • 19'6" The Loop's controlling bridge — Illinois River, mile 300.6. The one clearance you cannot route around.
  • 17'0" Chicago River. Over this you take the Cal-Sag instead.
  • 15'0" Erie Canal west to Lake Erie.
Height doesn't fail a boat — it decides which routes stay open. None of it can be answered until someone puts a tape on her with everything lowered.
UNRESOLVED
Water draft Most listings don't give a loaded figure. Under 5'0" is the preference; AGLCA prefers under 3'0" plus local knowledge for the inside New Jersey route, and sends everyone else outside. Ask for the design figure and the loaded figure — the delta is a function of hull form, not a constant, and nobody knows it until someone measures. ASK
Range Depends on tankage and the speed she's actually run at. The number to beat is Alton to Paducah, about 250 mi — the longest published run with no fuel stop. ASK
Length Inside every practical limit, and inside a 50′ personal ceiling. Length is rarely the thing that stops a boat. It is on the list because slip and haul-out billing use overall length, not hull length. CLEARS
These are the four questions, not one boat's answers. Everything a dossier says is read from the public listing and from owner testimony we captured elsewhere — we are not involved with any boat, broker or seller, and we have never seen the boat you're looking at.

We hold no measured air draft for any Mainship 350 or 390.

Nobody has called a yard. It's the oldest open gap in our notes on this hull family, and we aren't going to invent one from a brochure — a number nobody measured can't fail your boat, and that beats handing you a figure that only sounds like an answer.

What we hold on one model

Live from the shared model layer — the same rows a dossier renders, with the tiers and sources they carry right now.

CLAIM

The swim platform is a hull extension, and the originals flood

On the 350 and 390 the swim platform is an EXTENSION OF THE HULL — it displaces water and contributes buoyancy. So a platform full of water is not just weight far aft, it is lost buoyancy at the stern, which is why it moves draft and trim more than you would expect. The originals were foam-filled with no inspection access; water leaks in at the joint under the rub rail and saturates the foam. The foam slowed complete flooding but never kept them dry. Most have since been modified with access hatches, drains, or standalone bilge pumps. Source: Gdavid (Mainship 34 MK1 owner, 390 operator), Trawler Forum, 2026-07-23

QUESTION

Has the swim platform been opened up with access and drainage, or is it still original sealed foam?

An original sealed platform is a latent water-saturation risk — weight, trim, and eventually structure. A retrofitted one has been addressed. A listing will never mention this and a survey has no particular reason to look. Source: Gdavid, Trawler Forum, 2026-07-23

PATTERN

She wallows in a following sea, and the integrated platform does NOT fix it

Semi-planing hull; owners describe wallowing in a following sea. A Mainship 34 buyer asked whether adding an integrated swim platform would cure the same behaviour on his boat, and was told the 350/390 already ran that experiment. Gdavid: “it would increase the distance from the rudder to the back of the hull, decreasing steering effectiveness. This is basically what was done on the 350/390 and they don't handle any better in following seas.” Cartouche, who owned a 390 with the integrated platform: “it was still a bear in a following sea or a beam sea.” The platform looks like an improvement over the 34's bolted-on one, and on draft and displacement it is; on following-sea handling it is not, and it may cost steering authority. Source: Gdavid (390 operator) and Cartouche (former 390 owner), Trawler Forum, 2026-07-28

Two boats, side by side
The same questions, two answers scored live, not typed
1996 Sea Ray 420 Aft Cabin2007 Meridian 368 Motoryacht
Asking price $119,900 $224,800
Matches what you asked for 92%91%
How much of it is actually answered 16 of 17 9 of 17
The honest range 85–93% 51–95%
Price at or under $200,000 CLEARS UNRESOLVED
Close on the headline, and not the same purchase. One of these you know; the other you have barely looked at — and the only thing that says so is the range, which widens with everything nobody has answered yet. The one gate over its limit is the price, and it is the only gate you can negotiate, so it resolves as something to discuss rather than a red failure.

We don't replace the survey — we keep you from wasting one on a boat that was never going to fit.