When I began looking seriously for a Great Loop boat, I wasn't simply shopping for transportation.
I was looking for a home that moves.
I wanted enough room to live aboard comfortably for extended periods, space for family and friends to visit, good visibility from both an upper and lower helm, reasonable access to the boat's mechanical systems, and a layout that wouldn't make long-term living feel like camping.
The Mainship 430 checked a remarkable number of those boxes.
Chasing Horizons has three staterooms, two heads, a full galley, generous salon, upper and lower helm stations, a large flybridge and enough outdoor space to remind me why I wanted to do this in the first place.
And beneath all of that are the systems that make the adventure possible — engines, generator, batteries, plumbing, electronics and approximately 69,000 other things I'm about to become much more familiar with.
Chasing Horizons at a Glance
Year: 1999
Make & Model: Mainship 430 Fast Trawler
Length: 43 feet
Beam: 15' 6"
Draft: approximately 3½ feet
Power: Twin Caterpillar 3126 diesels
Fuel: approximately 500 gallons
Fresh Water: approximately 250 gallons
Accommodations: 3 staterooms • 2 heads
Helms: Lower helm + flybridge
Tender: Highfield inflatable
Home Port: Sandusky, Ohio
MY HOME ON THE WATER
For extended stretches of the journey, Chasing Horizons won't be someplace I return to at the end of the day.
She'll be home.
The aft master stateroom gives me a private living space, while the forward and guest cabins provide room for family and friends to join portions of the adventure. The salon and galley become the living room and kitchen, the flybridge becomes the front porch — albeit one with a considerably better view — and America's waterways become the backyard.
That's one of the things that attracted me to this particular boat.
I don't want to simply travel the Great Loop.
I want to live along it.
GETTING HER READY
Buying the boat was only the beginning.
Before Chasing Horizons heads north from Florida, there is plenty of work to do — mechanical maintenance, cleaning and detailing, electronics, communications, safety equipment, organization, provisioning and learning systems that are still new to me.
Some projects are significant. Others are surprisingly boring.
All of them are part of transforming a 1999 trawler into my boat and my home.
I'll share some of that process along the way — including what works, what doesn't, what I learn, and probably a few projects that seemed like much better ideas before I started them.
WHY “CHASING HORIZONS”?
A boat name should mean something.
For me, Chasing Horizons captures what this next chapter is really about.
There's always another horizon ahead — another town, another anchorage, another waterway, another person to meet and another place I've never seen.
You can never actually reach the horizon.
Maybe that's the point.
