At 0833 on Veteran’s Day Irish Hurricane completed the Loop while passing Daybeacon 32 in Boca Ciega Bay. It was from there we’d taken departure ten months earlier. That January morning was also cool and sunny — until we crossed under the Tierre Verde Bridge and encountered fog so dense we had to stop and anchor until visibility improved. I’d taken a swim. A heron landed on the rail. We had only come five miles.
Now, we were 6200+ miles into our journey. An impatient boater flew around us. Pete and I held on for the roll as IH bounced across the prop wash trailing the speedboat. Instantly, I felt we’d sailed into another dimension, to literally cross the wake we’d left astern ten months earlier.
We continued south along the Gulf Intracoastal, under I-275, then north into Tampa Bay. We passed the Coast Guard Base at Bayboro. I watched the 210-foot Cutter Resolute leave its moorings and turn into the Bay. Holiday small boat traffic ran every which-way. The cutter was aiming at our port side. I could imagine what was happening on her bridge.
I enlisted into sea service in 1979. Antsy. Wanting to get away from college. Longing to see the world. At the recruiter’s office in Cleveland, I stuck my finger on a pamphlet’s job description and asked if that one would let me go to sea.
I pointed to the quartermaster insignia – a ship’s wheel. The blurb said, primarily responsible for navigation duties on board a vessel, including maintaining nautical charts, navigating instruments, standing watch on the bridge as an assistant to the Officer of the Deck, and ensuring accurate ship positioning through visual and electronic means.
The recruiter grinned. “Sure will!” And indeed it had.
Now, I imagined the scene on Resolute’s bridge: a young conning officer in training trying to absorb and respond to the information stream I knew too well — special sea detail is a cacophony.
It is a siren’s song of navigation advice, engine room status reports, line handler and anchor detail reports, radio chatter, lookout and radar information concerning the other boats that are traveling every which-way, and someone calling out urgently to say just how close you are to shoal water. Add the voice of an experienced conning officer — likely one who writes your performance report — whispering in your ear and it’s a formula for high pressure and mistakes.
Meanwhile, the ship you’re in charge of churns ahead. The clock is ticking. I imagined this in my mind’s eye no differently than I’d done for decades. I did know a lot.
Then I reflected on everything I didn’t know, hadn’t known, and still wouldn’t know, maybe ever. But also the things I’d learned this past year.
I felt a wash of gratitude for our safe passage since January, relief that we were almost done, and deep respect and camaraderie with those we’d met – many far more seasoned than me.
They’d shared wisdom about repairs, boatyards, restaurants, and sites to visit, marina discounts, websites, apps, lock transit procedures, border crossings, small boat handling, tricks about navigating the powerful Western Rivers, tugboat operations, and on and on. They’d had our backs. I hoped we’d had theirs half as well as I turned IH toward our new home at the St. Pete Municipal Marina.
I watched on the cutter. IH was the stand-on vessel — Resolute should alter course, advice the officer-in-training was undoubtedly receiving. But under the Rules, everyone is responsible for safe navigation. Shipping and boating is a team sport, often practiced in near solitude.
Finally, the conning officer must have issued the necessary commands. The cutter slowed to pass down our stern. I eased IH through the breakwater. Pete, who will always be a far superior boat driver, relieved me of the helm as we edged toward the fuel dock. I went to the foredeck and readied lines, and waved to the dockhands.
I’d come full circle – on the Loop and in life.
Irish Hurricane 