A Father's Dream Becomes Lemont Couple's Bucket List Adventure

LEMONT, IL — Loral Jagman and Brian Brown have only been married for five years. But they both knew that charting a course that would mean committing to living in close quarters for the better part of a year may be enough to put their relationship to the test.

The Lemont couple had previously spent smaller amounts of time on exploring waterways along the United States' southeastern coast in preparation for a bigger bucket list trip. But when it came to extending the boating adventure to four times as long as they had ever ventured away from home — while also remaining away from family and friends — it was something they both had to want.

Yet, Jagman and Brown are now within 1,000 miles of completing a 6,000-mile boat trip on their 34-foot Mainship Pilot that will ultimately take them from Florida’s southern tip, up the eastern seaboard, up into Canada, and eventually to a finishing point in Racine, Wis. Although the journey has had its challenging moments, the adventure has —relatively speaking—been smooth sailing.

Give or take a few bumps along the way.

This weekend, the couple is scheduled to cross over into Canada as they eye the finish line of America’s Great Loop Cruiser’s Association’s one-year journey that entices sailors to test their mettle in more ways than one. After leaving from Seneca in August 2022, Jagman and Brown have charted a course that Brown says his late father once dreamed of sailing himself in the early 1980s when Brown was still a relatively young man.

But the fact that his father died before completing the trip only inspired Brown to pick up the quest in his father’s honor. What started as an homage to a fellow boat lover has led to the adventure of a lifetime for a couple that admits that this trip certainly won’t be their biggest or best, but instead, an amazing journey that allows the couple to experience the United States and its history from a whole new perspective.

“I think our family – I don’t know that they 100 percent understand it, honestly,” Jagman told Patch on Tuesday from a marina in Clayton, New York, where the couple will sail from to enter Canada. “They’re like, ‘When are you coming home?’”

While the Great Loop course is set by the association that organizes the sailing excursion, planning is left to individual boaters. Brown, who worked in the marina industry for more than 20 years, oversees the navigational aspects of the trip along with piloting the boat, of course. Along with Jagman, Brown checks (and then double- and triple-checks) the weather to plan for what the couple could encounter on any particular day.

But there are also more routine tasks such as laundry and grocery shopping that must be accounted for and that must be completed in various ports in order to ensure success over the long haul. On a typical day, the couple will tackle 40 miles and will occasionally push the distance they cover to 70 miles — traveling at speeds of 8 knots — before calling it a day and starting over the next day.

Brown says that routines still must be followed. Before setting out for the day, he checks his routes on an iPad and his chart plotter before looking over the boat’s engine to make sure that everything is as mechanically sound as possible. Jagman says she has never been as consumed by weather as she has been for the past year, but while sailing conditions are a must-know, other aspects of the couple’s daily existence can’t be ignored.

“You’re still living,” Jagman said. “You still have to do all the stuff you normally do and get from Point A to Point B.”

She added: “It’s kind of an addiction. Every day is different.”

As the boat’s captain, Brown says the daily routine of the trip has brought its share of uneasiness.

“I feel anxiety every day, and I’m being honest about that,” Brown told Patch on Tuesday. “It’s basically an everyday challenge.”

Getting from Point A to Point B takes a great deal of planning, which is where Brown’s family history has served him well. In addition to working in the boating industry for the better part of three decades and being the son of a boater, past experience has paid dividends in the Great Loop trip.

But there have been points of the adventure, Brown said, that high tides and rough weather have made him consider calling off the remainder of the trip and picking up where the couple left off at a later time. But despite staving off a summer storm or choppy waters in the Chesapeake Bay or along the coast of South Carolina —the memory of finishing off his father’s bucket list trip and a timely adult beverage at the end of a long day — has kept him (and the trip) on course.

Brown admits that when he was in his early 20s and his father first mentioned the Great Loop, the idea of the bucket list trip didn’t do much for him. But as he got older and, especially after his father’s death, the mission of tackling the year-long trip found a special place in his heart.

“Those memories stayed with me, and I said, 'You know, I’m going to do that trip,’” Brown said. "I’m doing it.”

Boaters traveling on the Great Loop can identify one another by the white flags that each vessel displays during the trip. The flag is embossed with a map of the Great Loop, which upon completion, will be swapped out by a gold flag with an identical design. Although Brown and Jagman won’t allow themselves to take anything for granted this far into their journey, they can sense that the end is coming and that within a matter of weeks, they will return to their normal lives of children, grandchildren and neighborhood friends.

The couple recently returned to the course after spending two weeks back in Lemont, where they had not been since January for a holiday break from the Great Loop course. But for Brown, who admittedly had his moments of thinking about giving up, the fact the finish line is so close has brought the original mission back into clear focus.

“I’m the type of person that complacency always bites me in the butt,” he said. “So I had to be on point all the time.

“But you have days when you reach the end of the day and nothing (bad) happened, and maybe a dolphin was in our wake for a few minutes, or you see an eagle – those are the times when you sit back and say, ‘this is awesome.’”

Teamwork has been key for a couple that has their sights set on circumnavigating the entirety of Lake Michigan for the summer or in Canada before possibly taking on the Great Loop again in the future. One day, Brown said they will settle for a more traditional year-long motor home trip to the West Coast and back. But for now, the boating life is the only manner of transportation for him and his bride of five years.

And for the next 1,000 miles and for the foreseeable future, the couple has discovered that as long as they are together, life on the water — no matter what body of water it may be — is the life for them. The gold flag that will soon, Lord willing, be evidence of a completed mission and a checkmark on a bigger bucket list that will carry them decades into their marriage.

But for now, finishing his particular journey has brought its own rewards.

“(The Great Loop) has kind of changed our perspective on (trips) — at least it has changed mine,” Jagman told Patch on Tuesday. “Travel does that anyhow. Travel opens your mind to all kinds of things, and this trip has been no different.

“But we just can’t be weekend boaters. I don’t think that’s in our blood anymore.”