Now this is living! Ft. Pierce FL

You may have noticed the long hiatus in High ZZ’s Cruising Blogs.  My only excuse is that upon reaching Florida, our “Trial by Ice” was finally over, and the real fun began!   I was “living the dream” too busy to write about it.  Those of you from northeastern climes will recall the winter of 2013-14 as a doozy.  Not the best time to transit the Inter-Coastal Waterway south from Virginia.   From Norfolk to Fernandina Beach, we recorded 17 inches of snow, ½ inch of ice, and 6 inches of rain at or below 45F (OK, not exactly freezing, but damn cold and miserable).  Our visits to Savanah and other Georgia and South Carolina towns were mostly washouts.  Even in St. Augustine, it rained 2 inches while we were there (but at least it was in the 60’s).  However, once we reached the St. Mary’s River, the weather, and hence our moods, improved greatly, the fun of retirement and living on our boat really started, and we left the stress of transiting ICW skinny water far behind and out of mind.   We got to sail/motor-sail much more…now this is cruising!

High ZZ’s is now tied up in Ft. Pierce, while we spend a few weeks at our house in South Venice.    This gives us time to reflect, recover our “land legs” …those sailors among you will understand that the first few hours/days back on land are wobbly and vertigo is common when showering on land.  We found the first six weeks on the boat taxing, scary at times, tedious at others, not as fun as we/I imagined.  But the last two weeks….Fantastic!

And, just as the Titanic discovered, we have discovered just the “Tip of the Iceberg”.  Our little trip down the ICW (we have logged 1,000 nautical miles on High ZZ’s so far) has become just the tip…that 2% of the iceberg sticking out of the water…just a very, very small fraction of what promises to be a fantastic adventure of cruising on a sailboat.   Deb is not quite sure; she enjoyed the travel and sightseeing, and the closeness/reconnection we have made as a couple working as a team whenever anchoring, docking, checking navigation marks…doing anything with the boat that two can do better than one, she is free from the shackles and stress of work, tight schedules, and now even the stress of leaving Linda back in Virginia….  But she is still intimidated by the size and complexity of High ZZ’s, and the thought of being off-shore and having to pull night watches seems overwhelming to her (all fears that will pass with experience and building familiarity).   Shep….well let’s just say that it was like your very first taste of chocolate ice cream…but just one of those tiny, crummy little tasting spoons that give you the briefest instant of cool icy, sweet ecstasy!    What a tease.  It has left me drooling like so many Pavlov’s dogs at the thought of MORE CRUISING TO COME. Let’s see the rest of that iceberg. Double, triple scoops…a chocolate ice cream banana split dripping in chocolate syrup!

You know all that talk about becoming a “paperless society”, and, if you are old enough, that “Paperwork Reduction Act” of 1980 and its 1995 Amendment?  Well we have been learning (seems we must be at least to Lesson 200+ by now) that, relative to cruising boats, such a notion is pure bunk!  Not that I should complain, as a former forester and wood-use pusher.   In November, when we purchased High ZZ’s, we started a file to hold all of the “Ship’s Papers”.   That file is now bursting at the seams and is becoming a major storage issue.

Boats of High ZZ’s ilk are usually “Documented” with the US Coast Guard.  This was a lengthy 3-month process with the exchange of no less than 10 pages of forms, just to receive our Documentation Certificate…which is good for only 1 year!  Agents charge $300+ to “sit on” the USCG and get this for you…I was too cheap, so I did it myself.  And I had to send them an additional “Priority Handling Request” form, when I learned in Feb. that they were just then processing Sept. 2013 documentation forms (since I sent High ZZ’s Documentation forms in December, it was not expected to be processed until this summer some time, long after we would be back from the Bahamas).  Then there is the registration of both High ZZ’s and “Following ZZ’s” (our Achilles inflatable dinghy) with the state of Virginia (more forms, and we have not yet received Following ZZ’s registration).  Then there are radio and electronics forms…heaps of them.  The Federal Communications Commission and international law requires vessels visiting foreign ports to have a Ship’s Radiotelephone Station License.  And, on top of that, anyone wishing to make a radio call using that station is required to have their own, personal, Restricted Radiotelephone Operator’s License….now go figure, why would you what a Ship’s Station License, if you did not want/need to use the radio?  Luckily, I have had an RROL since 1978, when I needed one as a private pilot.  Unluckily, I lost it overboard last year, and of course, in “reducing paperwork,” the FCC did not keep any paper records since the advent of modern computers.  Hence more forms to get a new RROL for Shep and another one for Deb.  Then there are the radio’s safety “distress calling” features, two of them (the VHF and the SSB), they need an MMSI Registration (Marine Mobile Services Identity) number….more forms.  Then there is another very important safety device, the EPIRB – Emergency Position Indication Radio Beacon, that needs its 15 character ID registered with NOAA.  And finally, not to be outdone, the US Customs Service needs an annual “Decal” for “User Services” so that when you leave and enter the US, they can check you in/out.  MORE FORMS!

So some of you have asked: “Well what are you going to do with all of that time, out cruising, once you retire?”….Fill out blessed government forms….I am sure glad I did not try to do this in 1979, before the Paperwork Reduction Act!

We Finally Got It!

Blessings on the little man, horses few, but yes they can!  With thy merry humming make, and so much abuse thou can take.  With thy black tipped rudder still, pass the miles without much thrill.  With LCD bright on thy face, you light the way and mark our pace.  From the heart I give thee joy, for I was once a carefree, barefoot, boy…..

My great apologies to John Greenleaf Whittier, but I could not help thinking of the analogy, for I was once a carefree lad, bereft of concerns about how AP, CP and YP worked, and their general health.  Who are these characters you ask?   They are the devices that make our present life…well…possible, and give me so much time to think up bad poetry.   Let me start last in the alphabet (still mad about always going/doing/getting last in school).  YP, our trusty Yanmar Powerplant.  All of 50 hp and can still move a 14 ton object though the water at 6 knots against a 20 knot wind.  I marvel at the reliability of the modern marine diesel engine; it hums along merrily, mile after mile, just sipping fuel, relative to the job it does.   And none of our current activity would be possible without it.  You see, the big ditch, the Inter-Coastal Waterway has no room to sail.  In the 600 miles we have traveled so far, only about 20 have been sailing (and most of that motor sailing).   The ICW is far too narrow and winding to allow for much sailing.   And CP?  Our Chart Plotter.   I once thought paper charts and a compass were all that a sailor needed…but that was before navigating the big ditch.  I sailed for 35 years as an ancient mariner, before giving in to the electronic wizardry of a GPS.   Now, 15 years later, I marvel at the utility of a GPS tied to electronic charts…the modern Chart Plotter.   We have only been “hard on” once in 600 miles, and I must admit, only though the benefit of CP.   Without our Chart Plotter, its zooming capability, its ability to show the chicanes and sweeping turns necessary to avoid shallows from navigation aid to navigation aid,  well let’s just say that we would have gotten all of our BoatUS towing insurance back (30 years of premiums) all in the past month!  Although I look at them frequently to double check the marks (still not entirely trusting my life to those electrons), my old eyes have difficulty seeing the detail on the paper charts, and things happen way too fast to calculate bearings to the next mark, to look up and visualize it, and execute it…all before running into a shallow bit.  And finally AP.  Well, AP has relieved us of the tedium of “driving down the ditch.”   Because, let’s face it, following the long “magenta line” is really no different than driving down a long country road…1,000 plus miles of it from Norfolk, VA to Stuart FL. where we hope to jump off for the islands.  Though the scenery is beautiful and interesting, steering a 40 ft sailboat along a magenta line can become quite tedious…after 100’s of hours.  So AP, our Auto-Pilot allows us to leave the wheel, relax, look up from the CP, enjoy the scenery, and think up bad poetry.   Without AP, CP and YP, we would not think of doing this!

And “this” has finally reached Georgia…supposed to be the “deep” south, home of beautiful, warm winter weather…not this year (surely you have heard about Atlanta’s winter troubles).  We are waiting out yet another winter storm (but this time just 40 degree rain), in Isle of Hope, just outside Savannah.   Looking forward to a few days of sightseeing (perhaps seeing more of these”deep south” characters (pictured) like we saw on Hilton Head Island last weekend), sleeping in, not caring about tides and fetch.   We took all that the Carolina’s could throw at us, snow, ice, the trials of Lockwood’s Folly, Shallote’s Inlet, the “Rock Pile, Field’s cut….only to enter the supposed “most troublesome” portion of the ICW with the likes of “Hell Gate” and “Little Mud River”…with those names, sometimes, you just have to question a sailor’s sanity; but we have gone too far to give up now.  Onward and southward!