Irish Hurricane

5/7/2025 Seafood

We started the day watching a young alligator trolling for breakfast between finger piers in Thunderbolt. Twenty-eight miles and five hours later, we were impressed by a deep-sea catch being landed at Skull Creek, Hilton Head Island, where we’ll be docked tonight and tomorrow.

The charter captain said they’d been fishing the Gulf Stream. I imagine they’d been 50 to 75 miles offshore, a whole other world from our little intra-coastal puttering. There are many fish havens offshore the Southeastern U.S., but the Stream is a world unto itself, bringing clear blue water, a river in the sea, heading north after bending around the Florida peninsula from the Gulf of Mexico.

The charter and guides were busy laying out the fish to admire before cleaning and filleting them. I believe this is a snapper-grouper and Mahi mix, but don’t quote me.

Envy the people who are eating those filets tonight. Envy the alligator eating fresh crabs and shrimp from the creeks. Envy the heron who’s eating his own fat fish as he struts down our dock.

Envy the shrimp I got for dinner after I rented a car this afternoon, for a quick trip back to Statesboro tomorrow. While I Ubered to the airport Enterprise, dealt with Hilton Head’s roundabouts and rush hour snarls, and shrimp-shopped, Pete took his bike and Katie for a nice, long run. Maybe four or five miles, he said.

Skull Creek Marina sits inside a gated community of sprawling, not-quite cookie-cutter homes with manicured lawns heavy on pesticide-green grass and developer plantings: lantana, ornamental grasses, and azaleas, and South Carolina signature palmettos and oaks. This golf community has miles of winding roads, cul-de-sacs, dead-ends, and streets that loop back on themselves.

Imagine my surprise when, two hours after I left and having taken my own wrong turn to find the marina, I passed Pete and Katie still biking and running along. All of us were still a mile from the dock. They caught up with me at the parking lot.

Katie was still charging like a whippet on steroids. Pete’s watch says they went 8.1 miles. Later, over shrimp, I asked if he’d downloaded the island trail map.

“What?” he said. “You had a trail map?” It seemed obvious to me, but even if he had downloaded one, this remoter side of the island is beyond its borders. Tourists don’t come up here much. They’re farther south, near Harbourtown and Spanish Wells. Near the golf shops and beachwear shops and yes, the seafood markets and rental car companies.

Katie sucked down dinner and has been asleep ever since. Dreaming of alligators, no doubt. And brightly colored fish, and herons as they stalk their own dinner at the end of the dock. And asphalt trails that go on forever and ever, always on land.

5/6/2025 Charnal Rose

The Bonaventure Cemetery is a mile away from the marina. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places and worth a visit for its natural beauty- oaks and river bluffs; its statuary – angels, a 6-year-old Victorian girl named Gracie, and the Bird Girl made famous by John Berendt’s novel of Low Country voodoo and intrigue, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; and its luminaries.

Georgia’s first Governor is buried here – Edward Telfair, Founding Father who also signed the Articles of Confederation, forerunner to the modern American Constitution.

The Articles didn’t work very well. According to Google’s AI, their down sides included a central government with no mechanism to levy taxes that left our young country with outstanding debts dragging it down; no national court system, which led to a law enforcement nightmare; and “difficulties in regulating interstate and international trade” that led to economic instability.

*

But I digress. Bonaventure’s luminaries also include songwriter Johnny Mercer, and writer Conrad Aiken – plus 30,000 other souls who were luminaries to someone, I’d like to think.

Telfair died at age 71, in 1807, thousands of miles from his native Scotland – his remains were moved to Bonaventure from the family’s plantation in the mid-19^th century.

Johnny Mercer was the son of a prominent Savannah attorney/ real-estate developer. He died at age 66 from an inoperable brain tumor. He was living in LA; his body was shipped home. He’d once been in love with Judy Garland.

Mercer wrote the lyrics to the classic, Moon River. The song expresses longing, such as might have been felt by orphans living in the Bethesda Orphanage near the actual Moon River that winds along south of Savannah – in 2019 I caught a photo of the moon rising near that famed waterway.

The Orphanage is now a private prep school for boys. The orphans, long gone.

Conrad Aiken was a Pulitzer Prize winner and onetime US Poet Laureate whose writing can be so dark that Sigmund Freud reportedly once volunteered to psychoanalyze him. Aiken’s father committed a murder-suicide on himself and Conrad’s mother when the boy was 11. I guess that would do a number on anyone’s worldview. Aiken died at age 84 in Savannah, where he was born.

*

Today Pete, Katie, and I pedaled along the Wilmington River bluff in company with thirty thousand ghosts and a few tourists – groups on foot with guides, and others riding in golf carts with presumably higher-priced guides. Because we had Katie, I missed photographing Johnny Mercer’s grave, though I like the photo I could get, which is of a tour group listening to ghost stories.

Why do we do it?

Listen to stories of death, visit graveyards, look for ghosts? Are we trying to learn invisible ropes that soon enough, we’ll have to use? Or are we reading death like Daily Inquirer supermarket headlines – the crazy things people do that will never happen to us.

Here’s a nice line from Conrad Aiken’s classic, The Charnal Rose, in which his everyman Senlin considers the meaning of life. I had to look up charnal: it’s an ossuary, a place where corpses or bones are deposited, or an adjective describing something that is death-like.

A death-like rose. A boneyard. In the poem, Senlin wonders whence he came – and I suppose whence he will go.

Perhaps I came alone on a snow-white horse,
Riding alone from the deep-starred night.
Perhaps I came on a ship whose sails were music,
Sailing from moon or sun on a river of light.

Which reminds me of Johnny Mercer’s even better words:

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I’m crossing you in style someday
Old dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way

Tomorrow we’re on our way again, to Hilton Head. The three of us aboard Irish Hurricane – wherever she’s going, we’re definitely going her way.

5/5/2025 Thunderbolt

Short day today: 32 miles from Kilkenny Marina & Fish Camp to Bahia Blue Marina in Thunderbolt, Georgia. I drove while we moored and unmoored; some while we were in the ICW; and the fun part, going up on plane – 2500 rpm, 19 mph – as we turned into the Ogeechee River. It’s wide and deep enough there not to worry about shoaling or the serious horseshoe bends in the rivers. And I drove through Hell Gate, a very narrow and shoaled passage between the Ogeechee and Little Ogeechee Rivers.

We had more biting flies today, but the closer we got to Savannah, the fewer there were. This is a good thing for us but not the food web. Every insect pest out here on the marshes – mosquitos, flies, gnats – is as vital as the thousands of acres of Spartina grass that nourishes life: shrimp, juvenile (and adult) fishes, birds, dolphins, manatees, and everything other estuarine life. Including the alligators (we’ve seen one now, a bold 6-footer who barely batted an eye when we came within a few yards of him).

The big action today was suddenly losing oil pressure in the starboard engine. Pete called me up to the bridge and turned over the helm so he could run to the engine room and figure out why we’d lost pressure. This is not a good thing – without oil the engine will overheat and shut down.

As I took the wheel, the starboard engine was off. It’s easy enough to drive on a single engine, though you have to use compensating rudder to stay on course. Unfortunately, I quickly realized I had no throttle on the port engine, either. There were were, in the Vernon River, with the tide starting to pick up, on one engine that wouldn’t turn more than 500 rpm, or about 4 knots, our clutch speed.

I steadied on an okay course, engaged the auto pilot, and ran to the engine room behind Pete. We never did figure out what happened with the port throttle, which magically began to work again. In the end, we decided the starboard pressure gauge was bad, not the actual oil pressure. Though it magically got itself back online, too. Yet more things to run down and fix.

Otherwise, I cleaned – the bridge and sun deck, which were crusty with pollen build-up and general grime. It’s good to be shiny again!

We docked around 1400. As I said, I was driving, so Pete was handling lines. Katie took a proud position on her bow turf and waited patiently for the lines to go over while wagging her tail profusely at the dockhands. She’s really taking to the life.

It’s good to be “home”. I have many great memories of Thunderbolt – Coast Guard small boating during the 1996 Olympics; the boat forces were mostly staged here in Thunderbolt. Tubby’s Tank House was our go-to for post-ops beers. Pete and I have stayed in Thunderbolt for R & R both on and off Irish Hurricane.

Best of all – we got groceries today!

5/4/2025 Nothing to Eat

“There’s nothing to eat,” Pete said last night without looking up from his laptop. It was an hour past dinnertime, an hour before sunset.

I opened the freezer. “There’s lots of stuff.” Sapphire gin, chocolate chips, and a gold beer holder that only fits Stellas. Plant-based breakfast sausage, half a bag of Tater Tots, and five ice packs.

“What’s this slab o’ meat?” I held it up for his inspection, adding, “See, we have stuff.”

Pete had asked Thursday if we needed anything from Publix before we returned the rental car. But it was rush hour. I had interstate fatigue. I hate grocery shopping. “Nope,” I said.

True, when shopped at the NAS Commissary, the list included provisions, not groceries. E.g., commissary-cheap things, like crackers. Bulky-to-transport things, like TP and pita chips. Things too heavy to carry to the boat without a car.

Like canned goods. Like tuna fish. Like soup. Also true, there is plenty to eat.

*
After dinner, Katie and I walked to the historic district. I’ve wire-tied her artificial turf to the larger piece on the bow, which she is now using for leisure, so I’m encouraging her in other ways to do her business on the boat.

“You should be doing this on your grass,” I said during our walk. She looked at me blankly.

The path to the Jekyll Island Club is lit, but only the last few hundred yards, where streetlamps grace the adjacent road. Strings of other lights hang from the Club Pier— beach music drifted from it over Jekyll Creek. Channel markers blinked in the distance. I thought of Jay Gatsby watching Daisy’s dock. The green light across the water, the longing for power and wealth.

The Club’s iconic turret and porches are also prettily lit. I took a picture. Through my iphone lens I noticed the darkening sky and remembered the pitch-dark marina path, alligators, and snakes.

We reached IH just as full darkness set in.

*
Today is sunny, windy, clear, and clouded with biting flies with which I came to an understanding this morning.

They will die if they enter the bridge. I will do my best to prevent that by enduring the hothouse-like atmosphere generated within the bridge’s zippered isinglass.

Georgia’s winding, interconnected, and heavily shoaled creeks are not an ideal place to use auto pilot steering, so I only did so when enough flies broke the rules, and I needed to use the swatter. Soon, the deck was littered with their bodies.

Pete brought the dust-buster when he relieved the helm. To dispose of the fallen though I suggested he leave them as a warning to others. Katie trapped one or two to play with, which at least kept them from biting.

Now we are docked at beautiful Kilkenny Marina, thick with live oaks and a clutch of old, well-maintained Cracker houses. There’s a lovely sea breeze which is keeping most of the flies at bay, though I’m thankful we have screens on the sun deck and a/c below.

The slab of meat turned out to be the second half of St. Patrick’s Day corned beef. We still had half a head of cabbage, too, something which, as true sailors know, lasts forever, along with carrots, onions, and red potatoes.

Pete’s had them in the crock pot all day. Tonight, there plenty to eat. And after battling flies and sweating all day, I can’t wait to try it.

5/3/2025 Did You Hear That?

You Be the Judge of the Aft Cabin Noise

I slept deeply and well. Katie tucked herself between us until sometime before Pete got up. I pop my ear plugs out at 0815. He’s long done with coffee.

“You got up at 4,” I say, stretching. The breeze is still up.

“You didn’t hear that,” he says flatly, like I’m deaf. We have this conversation a lot. He hears things I don’t.

“Stern line,” he says, then “You didn’t hear that,” as though he didn’t hear me say, “No, I did not.”

He couldn’t sleep with the noise. He got up and added chafing gear, then different chafing gear. But the line is not chafing, it is straining – I can tell by the sound of it — from the wind and six-foot tide.

“Maybe double the line?” I say. He glares. Because he knows this so much better than I do. Ah, the life at sea. What doesn’t kill you…

*
It’s been 18 months since IH has seen the stars overhead. I’m glad to be out from under covered docks, great as they are in Florida sun and hurricanes.

Before bed and squeaking lines, Orion was splayed across the twilight, flanked as always by Aldebaran, Capella, Castor, Pollux, and Sirius: the bull, the charioteer, the twins, and the hunter’s dog. Nice breeze, no gnats. Waxing quarter moon.

The marina put us on the fuel dock starboard side to. We have a sun deck view of the docks and shore ramp: sight-seers, dock-walkers, Loopers, cruisers, day-trippers. An old guy playing an accordion sat in front of the closed marina office.

Celtic Thunder‘s music ran through my head.

All God’s creatures got a place in the choir
Some sing low and some sing higher
Some sing out loud from a telephone wire and
Some just clap their hands or paws or anything they got.

*

After breakfast we hit the trails with Katie and our new folding bikes. Great trails of asphalt, hard sand, and boardwalk where there’s tidal marsh, through maritime forests, past mansions, marshes, and beaches, and around shopping areas.

Pete says the waterside places with their wide, green lawns had bands, lights, and partiers last night when he walked Katie. The New Gilded Age on ground once owned by Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and J.P. Morgan.

You can get a room tonight at the Jekyll Island Club for $578, parking included. In case you’re invited to a party. Which we weren’t — and me with my new black skorts.

The forests are Spanish moss-hung live oak fairylands filled in with saw palmetto and interrupted by salt marsh, all of it populated by ghosts: Mississippians and Timucua, Spanish missionaries, French explorers, English landowners, African slaves, Stateless Pirates, Southern plantation owners, Irish immigrant workmen, Confederacy and Union soldiers, wealthy Americans, shrimpers, and boaters.

Ghosts. Everyone reaches the end of the line, eventually.

We bike past ladies in pink studying phone maps as they mull the correct path. Retirees on rental bikes. Gen X-ers on electric bikes. Millennials on razors with kids. Dogs and squirrels. Gnats and the slow blackflies that plagued us yesterday with their painful bites.

Seagulls, terns, herons, songbirds, dolphins — and whatever it was they made to leap Tarpon-like ahead of IH’s bow as we crossed St. Andrew’s Sound.

Predators fishing the ebb. Shrimpers working their nets. Manatees grazing.

Fishermen in old tee shirts hang over Jekyll Creek from the fishing pier beyond IH’s bow.

All God’s Creatures.

5/2/2025: Friday

It’s bad luck to sail on a Friday. Mariners say this is so because Christ was crucified on a Friday. But doesn’t it make more sense that mariners made that up to get another night ashore? Sun’s over the yardarm. Five o’clock somewhere.

No matter. We have to be in Hilton Head by Wednesday. So, Friday it is.

*
Just after sunrise this morning Katie, I, and her artificial turf square took a last pass through the marina ‘hood. Good dog! Your grass! Treat! An hour later, though, she jumped ship during line-handling. She was making for the border by the time she realized I still had treats. She reluctantly returned.

IH was underway at 0745 to catch the ebb for the 25-mile run down the St. John’s River. I drove. So proud. So excited to pass one last time through the skinny CSX Railroad Bridge and the narrow little Ortega River Draw, both of which terrified me the first time we came through here, in 2021.

It’s also bad luck to sail with women on board. But here we are, Katie on her lookout bench and me at the helm while Pete stows lines.

I twisted the boat into the fairway (so proud!). Into the river (So excited!) Into a dead stop after 200 yards to let the CSX bridge close and two trains whistle past while I spun donuts for half an hour in that ripping ebb current.

Friday. Women.

So far today, the port engine gauge showed overheating (it’s not). The aft head door slammed shut so hard I was locked out (vice grips, screwdriver). The chart plotter shut itself down a dozen times (restarted, don’t know why). The iPad won’t charge (using more power than it’s getting).

Our intended anchorage will be taking a 15-knot beam wind by midnight, so we’re going to keep going. Fernandina is full due to the Shrimp Fest. St. Mary’s, too. Instead, we’re heading for Jekyll Island for two nights instead of one. That means crossing a windy, rough, low-tide St. Andrew’s Sound late in the day.

Katie will have gone eleven hours without a walk. Good dog! Your grass!

*

Still. Our huge ugly salon sofa is history. I have an actual writing desk with a window. Katie’s new yard is rolled out on the bow, her potty square zip-tied to one end, and she seems to love watching the scenery from the lawn. Sniffing the shrimp docks, Snuggling her bone..

And bad luck? Just another day underway. We’re already over the Georgia line and should be in Jekyll by cocktail hour. Happy Friday!

5/1/2025 Red Car Green Car

For two days we’ve played red car/ green car, an engaging game of moving life events around to get everything done, e.g., our Subaru garaged at home, 184 miles from where IH is docked. Real-life Tetris. We’re moving aboard.

I’ve got two more appointments in the ‘Boro: dental and a cardiac stress test.

The dental tech says, “Ya’ll live on a boat? Didn’t you see that boat crash in on Youtube?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, which is all you can say from the dentist’s chair.

She shakes her head. “Y’all be careful!”

“Uh-huh.” (Here’s a link in case you missed it. Not a BWI, under investigation..)

The stress test is fine – I assume the electrical storm on the monitor was an equipment malfunction. Besides, it only lasted a few seconds.

A few hours later we’re southbound on I-95 in the rental car and grinning because it’s the last time we’ll be making this 3-hour batshit drive flanked by spring breakers, elderly Floridians, redneck locals, and trucks, all of us flying along at 80 mph because hey, accidents don’t happen to any of us.

We fly by exits – Savannah, Darien, Jekyll Island, Fernandina – that will take us a day to pass on boat time. There’s something to be said for slow.

We stopped at Home Depot to pick up artificial turf for Katie to use on the boat. Never mind we’ve been on land for 18 months and haven’t bothered to train her to use it. She’s smart. She’ll pick it up.

At the marina we drop off the herbs which, with three small orchids, will have to fill in for roses and blueberries, which I will miss, along with the Buddha and wind chimes. Return the rental car, borrow the marina car – a land yacht of a Caddie approved for dog transport. Pick up Katie at Happy Hounds. Return Cadillac keys. Red car green car.

Thank Lamb’s front desk. Thank Happy Hounds. Thank our dockmates (whom we’ll really miss). Thank the mechanics. Thank you Jax for everything but your interstates.

I cut off a piece of turf for some Just-In-Time training during Katie’s evening walk. She startles when I slide it under her bottom trying to catch her pee. Her expression says, Are you f-ing nuts? We have better luck with #2. I gave her a treat and praised her profusely for going on your grass!

“Gonna be a long day tomorrow, Babycake,” I say. She ignores me. Such a teenager. What. Ever.

Back at the boat, we walk the turf to the bow. I point to it, smile, and say your grass! again. She smiles back then lies down on it.

She’s been underway exactly once for less than three hours. Tomorrow we’re making for Jekyll or at least Cumberland Island on an outgoing morning tide. We’ll see…

9/26/2022 before the storm

We moved aboard full time in June 2022; our longtime St. Pete home sold a month later. The good news about having no “dirt home” is you don’t have to take care of it. The bad news is, it’s not there to take care of you.

My rotator cuff was repaired in mid-August. I might have been able to stay aboard IH during those first weeks of intense pain and immobility, but St. Petersburg Municipal Marina, our home dock, was a fixed structure. The tides put our swim platform or boarding step level with the dock only about a quarter of the time; otherwise, boarding required a big step and hand up (or down).

Without a house, we needed an AirBnB recovery rental. So, while I was thrilled to be out from under house/ lawn/ pool care, I was less enthusiastic about living in a costly, cramped BnB.

By September, though, we were back aboard. Sling and all, I managed to get underway twice – for a quick yard haul-out and return. St. Pete is about halfway up Tampa Bay — about 20 miles from the entrance — in Pinellas County, which is a peninsula bounded by the Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The yard trip took us down the Bay, under the Skyway Bridge, and into smaller Boca Ciega Bay.

The yard trip was a test of my seaworthiness. We’d hoped to take IH to Fort Myers in mid-September for a week or so – family wedding, fun times, afternoon cruises – but decided last-minute my shoulder was still too fragile and a two-hour drive beat a three-day cruise with my arm still in a sling. I reluctantly cancelled our reservation at Legacy Harbour.

On Friday 9/23, we locked the boat, hopped in the car, and headed south for the weekend. The hurricane map Floridians constantly watch showed nothing but a small tropical wave in the Caribbean. We were good to go.

We had a fine time seeing family and friends the next day.

But Sunday morning, we awakened to National Weather Service warnings that a lethal Category 5 hurricane was heading for Tampa Bay. We looked at the “cone of death” with disbelief — hurricanes traditionally don’t pop up like afternoon thunderstorms, yet satellite images showed how quickly the massive heat engine was gathering moisture, windspeed, and forward motion.

We take hurricanes seriously, including storm surge predictions. We’ve lived in the Southeastern US and Caribbean for decades and know hurricanes are not to be messed with. Hurricane danger lies more in the water it pushes and drops than the wind it generates. As well, the storm’s aftermath demands at least as much consideration as its passage.

Clearly, Ian would cause catastrophic damage wherever it came ashore. So, while we knew the forecast would be refined in the next few days, we headed back to St. Pete to prepare ourselves and Irish Hurricane for a worst possible case.

All the way home, we kicked ourselves for having driven the car instead of taking the boat to Fort Myers. “Dang. We could’ve sat the whole thing out at Legacy,” I complained. I love the boat and love to have family aboard. It seemed that we should have cruised south after all.

I checked my phone’s radar and Windy apps. Irish Hurricane lay directly under the storm track. We waited for the hurricane hunter update with crossed fingers, but like most things in life, you have to best-guess your plans based on experience and current facts.

It was sunny and windy as we drove up I-75, crossed the Sunshine Skyway, and made our way downtown. We made checklists as we drove.

Our household goods were already in storage on high ground in Tampa. Valuables we kept aboard IH needed to be gathered, and extra fenders and lines deployed. Loose gear needed to be stowed and photos taken of every space and piece of equipment from the engine room, to the insides of cupboards and drawers, and to show how we’d secured the boat to her moorings.

I did the light work as my tender shoulder permitted. I assembled a go-box no differently than we otherwise would have done, including papers, passports, hard drives, photos, medications, and a few irreplaceable sentimental items. I took photos with an eye to the insurance claim we assumed we’d be making in a few short days.

A 12-to-17-foot storm surge up Tampa Bay would devastate the entire urban area. (Count your blessings if you’ve never seen or worse, lived through a hurricane and its destructive aftermath.) If the predictions were accurate, nothing would be recognizable, or maybe even remain, after Ian had his way.

Meanwhile, Pete buffered the hull from the cement dock and wooden pilings to which IH was secured, using every fender we owned. He added extra mooring lines and doubled them all.

I gathered foodstuffs and tableware, assuming wherever we landed may be short on open restaurants, and those would be struggling to serve long lines of evacuees. I pulled together Looper’s things – food, toys, bedding, and leashed.

On the dock, we chatted with fellow boaters. who were making similar preparations to the power boats on our seaward side of the dock and to the smaller, lighter sailboats opposite. People were shuttling belongings to cars backed into the marina’s loading zones, and stopped to discuss mooring line strategies and trade phone numbers.

The weekend boaters were removing valuables and doubling lines. Some liveaboards planned to stay put as the storm passed. Others would stay with friends or check into downtown hotels. We booked reservations seventy miles away at a pet-friendly hotel. We notified the marina office we’d complied with mandated preparations, and where we’d be as Ian passed.

We packed the car as much as possible, ready to leave in the morning. Then, like millions more, we began bingeing weather news: Baynews-9 storm updates “on the 9’s” and The Weather Channel where Jim Cantore and his colleagues were reporting to windy or dead calm beaches from Key West to Florida’s panhandle. We constantly checked our weather apps and marveled at the storm’s rapid intensification while trying to guess its track.

We walked Looper around 2100. The night was stifling hot, humid, and still — the proverbial calm. Across the street in Straub Park, homeless folks were being gathered for evacuation inland. Traffic was light at the normally bustling Pier Complex.

I looked around at St. Petersburg’s beautiful old live oaks and banyans, its lovely waterfront and Beach Drive storefronts. I knew it could all be destroyed in a few short hours. I hoped the storm would turn and strike elsewhere, even as I knew that if it did, our good fortune would be someone else’s destruction.

We are all so helpless, I thought. The sea, sky, and weather teach us that lesson when we’re young, and reinforces it every day. I don’t think any of us slept well that night as we tossed and turned, listening for the wind to shift, and anticipating the uncertain future.

11/23/2021 sleeping in

Kenny, Ricky, and Awilda, who eliminated our home and pet worries for a solid ten and a half months

It’s great to lose the past ten months’ usual routines: get up early, make sense of the weather, radar, and wind-prediction apps, plan logistics, select a destination and a Plan B just in case, then enter and double-check electronic track lines.

For a while anyway, we won’t need to troubleshoot, or break and stow water and power shore ties, or cast off and secure fenders and mooring lines – at this marina, four on either side to secure IH between pilings and slip.

We’ve replaced our bedraggled AGLCA burgee – the first-time Looper’s standard – with a crisp, new gold one. We haven’t decided if we’ll make this trip again. Because of Covid, we bypassed Canada – the Trent-Severn Waterway, Georgian Bay, and the North Channel. We’d love to make that passage. The future will tell.

We’d also like to check out smaller loops that eddy away from the main route — to the Dry Tortugas, the Bahamas, Montreal, and Maine.

But today we are satisfied to be docked in downtown St. Pete. The Pier Park’s undulating aerial sculpture is a quarter mile to port. South Straub Park and downtown’s glitzy skyline are astern. The North Shore Trail pedestrian parade passes a hundred feet from our sun deck vantage point. Tampa Bay is just beyond the breakwater, off of our bow. Irish Hurricane is docked bow to the sea, ready to leave again when we are.

In the meantime, we wish seafarers everywhere fair winds and following seas, and a safe arrival home. Without you, and dozens of families and friends who have followed along on emails, texts, and Facebook posts – traveled with us vicariously – we may never have begun our journey, let along been able to return home intact.

In particular, we’d like to make special shout-outs. To Awilda, Kenny, and Ricky – we’d have been lost without your patience, good will, and caretaking of house, home, and pets. To Janet and Holly – who kept diligent track of our progress, ready to notify the authorities if we disappeared. To Julie and Shantell, who offered tremendous moral support and moving help after my Mom died in April. To Captain Bill for getting IH through the Welland – and us to Buffalo! And many, many others.

Here are our 2021 stats:

6250.61 Miles Traveled
6.1 MPH Average Speed, including lock and dock delays
34.3 Statue Miles Average Daily Travel
18 States
2 Countries – USA and Canada (innocent passage)
72 Locks Transited on 11 Inland Waterways
297 Days/ Nights AFHP (Away From Home Port)
182 Days Underway – 115 In Port
162 Marina Nights, 10 Mooring Ball Nights, 20 Free Wall Nights, 105 Anchor Nights
841.4 Engine Hours Each (Port and Starboard)
105 Nautical Miles (Longest Day, from Hoppie’s Marine to Burnham Light on the Mississippi River)

Along the way, I managed to swim 141,030 yards in America’s waterways: ocean, lake, swamp, canal, and river waters plus the occasional pool.

It’s good to be home!

11/11/2021 crossing our wake

Return to point of origin, Boca Ciera Bay, Pinellas County FL

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.