Are there good boats?
Sea Tiger seemed like a good boat. Notwithstanding the Clemson logo on the salon doors and orange tiger-paw on the boat’s transom. I’m a Georgia Southern alumna – I can say things about the Big C. The logo would have to go, I thought as I studied the boat’s listing on Yacht World’s website.
But the boat itself seemed good. Her hull sweeps gracefully from the waterline to the pulpit. She has 360 walk-around decks. Her rails gleamed. Her canvas and isinglass were (and are once again) new. Twin screws, twin rudders, reliable diesel engines. A boat that can take some seas.
I showed Pete the listing. “This one seems good,” I said. It’s huge, he said flatly. “Yeah?” I said, “If you want me to live on a boat, it’s not going to be a thirty-foot trawler.” I thought of my desktop computer and imagined myself typing essays while we cruised glinting blue waterways under sunny, rainbow-filled skies.
***
A few weeks later, in February 2019, we drove up to South Carolina to take a closer look. Sea Tiger had decent electronics and an immaculate engine room. Tons of space. A walk-around queen bed. Washer-dryer, full-sized refrigerator, two heads. Plenty of room for guests. A wide swim platform equipped with a freshwater hot and cold shower. The view from the bridge was (and is) great.
During sea trials, the boat got up to 22 MPH. We had to yell over the February headwind and diesel roar. But that was nothing new – we both served aboard big, fast, seagoing Coast Guard cutters and were used to it.
Inside, the boat was immaculate. Her owners had cleared out their stuff. Sea Tiger was a Navis Rosa, a clean slate, ready for new adventures. She bobbed gently and swayed a little as the Sampit River swept past Georgetown’s 300-year-old waterfront.
She had just completed the Great Loop so her air draft at 19’ had proven able to clear under all of the route’s bridges. Before that, she’d been a dockside retreat in Georgetown, for mostly absent owners.
She felt like a good boat.
***
Every vessel is fingerprinted by its natal boatyard’s latitude and longitude, its keel heading during construction, materials used, and specifications. Every vessel is as unique as a baby and ages into itself based on its experiences. The aging process imprints energy onto the boat in both visible and hidden ways.
Outwardly, you see dings and scrapes where a dock landing was a little hard, for example, or a brown ICW mustache after she’s cruised inland waters too many days in a row, or rust stains where even the finest stainless steel is losing the war against the elements. Or new canvas, paint, or fixtures.
Inwardly, the boat carries another story, of its ghosts. Like many mariners and boatmen, I am superstitious. I believe this is true.
A vessel carries the words and attitudes of past and present captains and crews. The moods of parties and tragedies. The effects of sunshine over and dark waters under the bridge. She carries the energy left by heroics, adventures, and sorrows. She absorbs climate and weather, anchorages and marinas, hurricanes and starry nights.
You can feel it when you step aboard.
“This is a good boat,” I said to Pete after Keith and Kay had left us alone. “It’s not that big,” he said. “Yeah,” I nodded.
We signed the papers a month later, on Pi Day, March 14, 2019.
“We’ll take good care of her,” I said after the four of us posed for a snapshot and Pete and I and Keith and Kay hugged our good-byes. It was a raw, windy day in South Carolina. Kay said, “It’s bittersweet.”
“I know,” I said, thinking of the last boat my family owned, a 25-foot Catalina sailboat we’d had to leave in Puerto Rico when we transferred back to the States. She and I turned to look at the admittedly big Carver 445 that Pete and I now owned. I shivered in the wind.
***
I imagined we’d keep the boat for a year or two. Three on the outside, depending on when Pete retired and we could cruise in earnest.
Our plan was to sail the boat back to St. Petersburg and cruise locally on weekends or short trips down to the Keys or up to Florida’s Big Bend and Panhandle when we had a week or two off. That way, we could practice living aboard in close quarters. Looper, our trauma-rescued and sensitive Carolina dog could get used to being underway. The cats could adjust to Julie, the house-sitter.
We’d rechristen her as the Irish Hurricane – an old, politically incorrect, and ironic nautical term for an overcast day with drizzly skies and no wind, the opposite kind of day most boaters want to be out on the water. Weather Pete and I love nonetheless because we are quiet people.
A name we love because we are prone to Irish Exits, slipping away unnoticed from a party, meeting, or other assembly.
A name we love because rowdy boaters think it’s some kind of powerhouse alcoholic beverage which earns us a lot of hoorays from other boaters, particularly in Florida on St. Patrick’s Day.
Our plan was to cruise America’s Great Loop in 2021, from Florida to Northern Ontario’s storied and beautiful Georgian Bay before heading south through Lake Michigan, Chicago, St. Louis, then back to the Gulf of Mexico and home.
Then we’d put her up for sale.
That was six years, 20,000 statute miles, and – I’m not going to lie about this – a whole lot of dollars ago. Before Covid. Before we installed radar and auto helm and a bow thruster and a better swim ladder and new propellors and shafts and cutlass bearings and isinglass and screens and canvas. Before we took her through locks 200 times.
Before my mom and brother died. Before I got a new shoulder and new hip. Before Hurricanes Ian and Helene and Milton. Before Looper died and Katie came aboard. Before one cat ran away and the other one died. Before Julie moved on and Awilda and Kenny and Ricky came then left again.
Before the sunny September day outside of Montreal, when I was driving. Nearby Canadian boaters turned to see IH’s name – which they cheered in French. Someone noticed the wife at the helm easing IH’s graceful sweeping hull toward the lockwall, the pulpit almost over their heads in the small, crowded space – which they filmed as the women among them cheered even louder.
Six years ago, before I earned my USCG 100-ton Captain’s license. Before we moved back to Georgia. Before we decided it was time to close this book. Before we left our own story on IH’s.
Before we knew she is indeed a very good boat.
Irish Hurricane 