Tag Archives: boats

My Thoughts on the American Great Loop Cruisers’ Association

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Some thoughts after about a month of membership.

I’m writing this blog post mostly because I said I would elsewhere. I’ll try to keep it brief.

Great Loop Logo
The AGLCA logo and a map of the route(s) on the home page of the organization’s website.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’m interested in completing the Great Loop. In an effort to learn all I can about it in preparation for the year-long journey, I began looking for resources online. The American Great Loop Cruisers’ Association was one of the resources I found.

At first, there were just two organizational resources that interested me: videos about the Loop and the Rendezvous.

The Videos

There are a lot of videos and most were tagged $25 each, which really put me off. I honestly couldn’t imagine them charging members a fee to watch existing content, many of which appeared to be narrated PowerPoint slide shows. I assumed that the videos were free to members and it was one of the reasons I joined up.

I was wrong. The $25 per video fee was on top of annual membership. Yes, there are a handful of videos that I could watch for free and my registration to the Rendezvous (see below) included credits I could apply to two (I think) more. So simply joining the organization wasn’t going to get me much closer to seeing educational video content unless I was willing to dish out more money.

Video for a Fee
Is it worth paying another $25 to watch this webinar? I don’t know.

Understand this: I don’t mind paying for content I can learn from. But the price has to be related to the actual quality of the content. $25 to watch a 45-minute narrated PowerPoint slide show seems excessive to me. I understand that videos cost money to produce and host, but I also believe that they’d get a lot more views and likely take in a lot more money if they made the price more reasonable — maybe $5 or $10 each. At this point, I’m not terribly interested in spending $25 on a video that might or might not provide information I can benefit from.

The Rendezvous

The Rendezvous is an event held twice (or maybe three times?) a year. Normally, it’s held live at a location along the loop. For example, they’re planning an autumn rendezvous in Alabama and a new (I think) winter rendezvous in Florida. It’s designed for folks getting ready to start the journey, but it also seems like a good way to just pack in a lot of information.

Because of COVID, this spring’s rendezvous was held as webinars. That was actually good for me because it meant that I could attend without having to travel.

The Rendezvous includes social and educational activities: “docktail” parties, seminars, a vendor expo, etc. It seems like a good opportunity to network with other cruisers, learn about new products, get route briefings, and build a base of information about the trip.

I signed up for the spring rendezvous. It was conducted over a three week period with sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There was a midday (EDT) “Lunch and Learn” which was basically a vendor talking about his/her products. I learned about Waterway Guide, which I wound up subscribing to. In the evening (afternoon for me), there were route briefings, each segment focusing on a different part of the loop. The presenters were actual loopers who narrated their slide decks either in a recording or live. Some were excellent — the couple who talked about the Chesapeake Bay and the guy who covered the Erie Canal were very good. Others were good but could have been better. (These were not professional speakers.) At the end of each presentation, they answered questions we’d ask either live or via text.

There were also two “small group” sessions, which were handled like Zoom meetings. Those were nice because you got a chance to chat with a small handful of other loopers. In person social events would (of course) be better, but this was a good substitute.

There was an online Expo and Q&A sessions concentrating on specific topics. Unfortunately, they were held at the same time. I chose the Q&A session for the Erie Canal so I missed other sessions I might of benefited from, as well as the Expo.

I did learn a lot and the good presentations really fed my desire to do the trip. Unfortunately, I missed or arrived late for some presentations. I didn’t get the links I needed a few times and had to scramble to contact the office to get them. Other times, I simply couldn’t take time off to attend — after all, this was in the morning or afternoon for me because of the time difference. What’s good is that I can apparently watch (or rewatch) any of the presentations as videos without having to pay for them again.

Overall, I think it was worth the cost to attend: $165 (on top of the $89 AGLCA membership fee; you must be a member to attend).

Other Benefits

Of course, the annual membership fee includes other benefits that are listed on the website. The funny thing about membership benefits is that they’re really not worth much if you don’t need/want/use them.

But one of the benefits is discounts at certain sponsor locations. Waterway Guide is one of those sponsors and I used my AGLCA discount to buy my Waterway Guide membership, thus getting two very detailed guides about parts of the loop. I also used the discount to buy another book about the loop. If I use enough discounts, it should (theoretically) cover the cost of membership.

Another benefit is access to a member forum where members ask and answer questions. This is a typical forum like you’d find for any group, but these folks are mature adults who don’t troll and act like assholes. So if you have a question — no matter how basic — you can be assured that someone will give you a good answer for it without humiliating you. They also share information about problems along the route — for example, lock closures or fuel unavailability. They even share opinions about marina service and anchorages. There’s lots there and it can be found on the website or delivered to you via daily emails.

Full access to classified ads is also a benefit, and it’s one I took advantage of to get on the crew of a boat doing part of the loop starting later this summer.

There are Looper Lifestyle seminars held a few times a year at various locations along the loop. I suspect that these have been put on hold during COVID, but they do appear on the calendar for the future, so they might actually happen. Keeping in mind that a lot of folks live full-time on their boats, this is probably pretty informative for them.

Worth It?

I’m pretty leery of “associations.” I’ve been conned into joining more than a few that weren’t what I expected them to be.

Helicopter Association International (HAI) is a perfect example. This organization seems to cater to big helicopter operators while pretty much ignoring the needs of the little guy. I honestly believe that it was started by a bunch of guys who saw a way to make a living traveling around the country to host events while occasionally acting as spokespeople for the helicopter community. I got sucked into joining twice and let my membership lapse with a very bad taste in my mouth both times.

I’ve also had an unsatisfactory experience with Whirly Girls, an organization of female helicopter pilots. I blogged about my experience here, so I won’t cover it again.

So while I like being part of groups of people who share similar backgrounds or interests, I’m not the kind of person who will just pay up to be a member. I need the organization to satisfy my needs.

In this case, my need is for information. The AGLCA does satisfy my need, but there’s a lot of pay-as-you-go along the way. I’m starting out, my knowledge base was nearly blank. They’re helping me fill it in and I believe the forums will be very useful for getting questions answered.

The fee is $89/year with discounts for longer terms or a lifetime membership. Is it worth it? I think it might be, at least right now. If those videos were free to members, it would definitely be worth it.

Footnote:

Last night, I watched one of the webinars that normally costs $25 but was free for AGLCA members. To watch it, I had to follow a link to get a promo code, then log into Vimeo, click to Rent the video, and enter the promo code. It took about 10 minutes for the video to appear in the Vimeo app on my television, but when it did, was able to watch it on the big screen.

It was an Aqua Map app demonstration by the developers. Although the video quality started out pretty bad (on a 4K TV), either I got used to it or it improved because it didn’t seem so bothersome after the initial shock. The developers had recorded and edited a tutorial style video that showed finger tapping on a smaller screen and results on a bigger screen. That was pretty effective, despite the strong Italian accents of the presenters. They gave a good tour of the app, but spent (in my opinion) too much time on the “Master” features that I don’t think will appeal to average users. I still don’t know how they got river mileage to display; they showed the feature but not how to enable it. When the tutorial video was over, they answered questions that had been posted live during the webinar. This didn’t go as smoothly as it could have, but they were definitely trying hard.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I’d give the webinar a 3. That score reflects the length of time they spent on Master features and the difficulty they had answering questions quickly and effectively. It wasn’t a waste of my time, but I sure wish it hadn’t been 90 minutes long.

Was it worth $25? I say no. I hope the other ones I get a chance to view are better.

Great Loop 2021: My (First) Great Loop Adventure

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How I found a chance to cruise the Hudson River, Erie Canal, and Great Lakes from New York City to Chicago — without my own boat.

A while back, I blogged about The Great Loop, a boat trip I wanted to take before I turned 65 — which is still a way off. With thousands of miles of river, canal, and even ocean to navigate over the course of about a year, it isn’t a trip to be taken lightly. Not only would I need a boat capable of making the trip — and yes, I’ve been shopping for one — but I’d also need to build a knowledge base and skills to be able to do the trip safely. Although my self-imposed deadline was still years away, I’ve learned that the older I get, the faster the years go. I can’t waste time dreaming about it. I need to get my rear in gear and get to work.

It Started with a Crew Wanted Ad

I started building my knowledge base by joining an organization that provides support for “Loopers,” as Great Loop cruisers are known: America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association. (I blogged more about that organization here.) The AGLCA’s website has a number of features, many of which require membership to fully access. While browsing through it, I saw that they had a classified ads section. And while browsing through that, I saw that there were listings for Crew Wanted.

I’d never really thought about doing any of the trip as a member of someone else’s crew. I’m a hands-on person and I guess I kind of like being in control of things I get involved with. But I definitely lacked many of the skills and much of the knowledge I’d need to take command of a boat on a cruise like this. Perhaps being part of someone else’s crew could give me the hands-on experience I’d need to learn a lot of what I’d need to know a lot more quickly than I would without access to a boat.

The Nano
Capt Paul’s boat, the Nano.

There were two ads and I answered one of them. It was posted by Capt Paul, an experienced boat captain who had a 27 foot Ranger Tug — coincidentally the same boat I was interested in buying (although he has the older inboard engine model). He set up a FaceTime call, which I soon realized was one of many interviews he’d be doing to find crew members.

The Interview

The interview lasted about an hour. We discussed what he was looking for and my qualifications for the position.

He was looking for two crew members to accompany him from his home in the Portland area of Maine to the Stuart area of Florida. I originally thought he just planned to go down the coast, moving into the Intracoastal Waterway around Chesapeake Bay. But no! He wanted to enter the Hudson River at New York City, take that to the current incarnation of the Erie Canal, and cruise various Great Lakes to Chicago before heading south of the Illinois, Mississippi, and other rivers to get to the Gulf of Mexico and then cross central Florida in the canal system there. In other words, he wanted to do about 2/3 (or more?) of the Great Loop.

Wow. That was a bit more than my mind could take in. It would be a long trip — maybe longer than I was willing to commit to? I wasn’t sure.

The arrangement would be cost sharing. I think he wanted two crew members not only to deal with the locks on the canals — which are notoriously difficult for solo boaters — but to keep the cost of the trip down. I thought immediately of my friend Bill as another crew member, but family obligations currently have him tied up.

We spent a lot of time talking about my boating experience. I didn’t realize I had so much until I had to brag about it:

  • I grew up in northern New Jersey where my family had a series of small — think around 20 feet? — boats. We’d put in at the boat ramp under the George Washington Bridge and cruise on the Hudson. A common trip would go around Manhattan, but we also went as far north as just past West Point.
  • I’ve been houseboating on Lake Powell twice: a 7-day trip and a 4-day trip. I did a lot of the driving.
  • I’ve rented powerboats on Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and various other lakes and rivers throughout my adult life.
  • I’ve owned a pair of Waverunners, which I used on various Arizona lakes and in the Colorado River on an epic overnight trip from Lake Havasu to Laughlin, NV.
  • I’ve owned a small jet boat for the past 10 years, which I’ve taken on various rivers and lakes in Washington state and Arizona.
  • I took a 12-day “Learn to Navigate the Inside Passage” cruise a few years go where I was one of just four passengers learning about cruising.
  • I’ve been an active passenger numerous times on other people’s boats in various waterways, from inland lakes and rivers to the San Juan Islands.

I also have a huge interest and tons of experience in navigation, on land, on sea, and in the air. Maps have always interested me and I have good map skills, even in this age of Googled driving directions. Hell, I’m nutty enough to put nautical charts on my iPad while on big ship cruises so I can track where we’re going.

Anyway, we hit it off well enough. Capt Paul seemed like a no-nonsense guy and I’m all for that. I apparently didn’t come off as (too) flaky and my experience seemed to score some points. I probably scored more on enthusiasm and apparent financial stability. He mentioned other interviews and we said our goodbyes.

The Plan

A few days went by. I had a chance to wrap my head around the trip. Capt Paul sent a planned itinerary with dates. I had some time constraints — I couldn’t leave Washington until after cherry drying season ended, which was at least two weeks into Capt Paul’s trip.

In the meantime, he found another crew member willing to do the whole trip with him and another willing to join him in Chicago. I had to hustle or I’d miss out.

We started emailing back and forth about me going from New York City to Chicago with them. I really wanted to do the Hudson River — the cruising grounds from my childhood — and the Erie Canal. In fact, I pretty much decided that if I couldn’t do those parts of the trip, I’d skip it. After all, I was facing a big expense just getting out there and back and a lot of work finding someone to take care of my pups while I was away. I may as well do the trip I wanted to do.

We played with dates a little. I found a pilot willing to take over for me in my helicopter if cherry season went long. Capt Paul agreed to wait until August 10 to depart New York City. I could arrive the night before and meet up with him and the other crew member (Dianne) at Liberty Landing Marina. I bought plane tickets to get out there.

And then, when he sent out an email to all the folks who had applied for the crew positions to tell them he’d made his selections, I double-checked to make sure that I was one of them.

I was.

The trip is a go.

Some Closing Thoughts

I have a lot more to share about this adventure now and will have a ton more to share in the future. But I do want to share a few thoughts as I finish up this blog post.

I guess the main point I want to make is this: if you want something badly enough, you need to make it happen. This is something my wasband used to say to me when I was a twenty-something on a career path I hated in corporate America. I took his advice to heart and have been doing so ever since. If you know me and my history, you know that I’ve been making things happen for myself for the past 35+ years.

I was in a Zoom meeting with other Loopers recently — blog post to come about the AGLCA Rendezvous — and mentioned my upcoming crew duties. One of the attendees who was also shopping (with his wife) for a boat wanted to know how I’d managed to get the chance to do it. He sounded — dare I say it? — jealous.

I answered a classified ad, I told him.

You can’t just wait around for opportunities to present themselves. You have to look for them. And then you have to take action to make it happen.

If I hadn’t needed time to think about the possibility — and difficulties — of doing the whole trip, I could have had Diane’s slot — or maybe we could have both been crew members for the whole thing. That’s okay because I’ve bit off exactly what I wanted to chew this time around, but it also brings home the point that if I’d delayed at all, someone else would have had my slot.

If you want something badly enough, you have to make it happen. I’m making this trip happen and I can’t wait for it to start.

The Great Loop

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I read a book about a trip I’d like to take.

Although it’s still very much winter here in North Central Washington State, my mind has been somewhat consumed with boating these days.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you may remember the post I did some years ago about an ill-fated trip to a friend’s house out in the San Juan Islands. (It was an ill-fated post, too. The friend I wrote about seemed to take great offense at what I’d said about him and another friend apparently read between the lines and thought I was blogging about her. My response to both: Really?) In the post, I mentioned my friend’s boat, which I really liked, and how I wanted to get a similar one.

Ranger Tug R-27
Spending four winters in a row in a truck camper has really prepared me for long-term living on a boat this size. It’s basically my camper on a boat.

Over time, I discovered the 27-foot Ranger Tug that I have my eye on. This boat has all the comforts of home — well, at least all the comforts of my truck camper — in a towable package. That means I could store it in my garage between long trips out on the Columbia River, Lake Chelan, Roosevelt Lake, the San Juan Islands, and the Inside Passage. I could even take it south for the winter — imagine spending December and January on Lake Havasu in Arizona?

I also began thinking of other adventures where I could take such a boat. I immediately thought of the Intracoastal Waterway up the east coast of the US. And then maybe up the Hudson River. And the Erie Canal to the Great Lakes. And wouldn’t it be amazing if I could find some way down the Mississippi back to the Gulf of Mexico and around the Florida Keys back to my starting place?

What I had just imagined was something that actually existed and had been accomplished by many people: the Great Loop.

The Great Loop

Per the America’s Great Loop Cruiser’s Association website,

The Great Loop is a circumnavigation of the eastern U.S., and part of Canada. The route includes the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the New York State Canals, the Canadian Canals, the Great Lakes, the inland rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico. “Loopers” take on this adventure of a lifetime aboard their own boat.

Great Loop Map
Here’s the map of the route. Note that there are two ways to get from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, two ways to get through the Great Lakes, two ways to get from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, and two ways to navigate Florida. This makes it possible to do the trip a number of different ways.

The website has a wealth of information about this roughly 6,000 mile journey, including many resources for learning about the route and points of interest along the way. Honestly, the website can tell you a lot more about the Loop than I can; I’ve only begun exploring it.

A Challenge, An Adventure

If you know me well, you should know that I live for challenges. I’ve had three successful careers (so far) for a reason: I get bored easily. After an initial start in the business world as an auditor and financial analyst — what was I thinking? — my writing hobby turned into a career as a freelance writer. When that generated a bunch of fun money, I learned to fly helicopters, bought a helicopter, and turned that into a career as a helicopter pilot. These days, I’m keeping myself amused by learning jewelry skills and techniques, but I can’t really call that a new career — at least not yet. (Maybe in a few years?)

In each case, it was the challenge that drove me, even if I didn’t realize it. I always want to learn and do new things. I want to get good at them. When I can actually earn a living doing them, I’m rewarded and motivated to do and learn more.

Taking a boat on a 6,000 mile trip on rivers, oceans, canals, and lakes — now that’s a challenge.

I’ve always been a bit of an explorer. I bought a Jeep to explore the desert on the ground. I’ve used helicopters to explore the desert, mountains, canyons, lakes, rivers, coasts — you name it — from the air. In the past, I’d done boating trips with a focus on exploration: a rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, a house boating trip on Lake Powell, small boat trips on the Hudson, East, Harlem, Colorado, and Columbia Rivers, a 12-day cruise up the inside passage on a small boat. Imagine how much I could explore on a Great Loop trip!

Of course, there are hurdles to jump. Getting the boat and learning to pilot it safely and effectively is the first big challenge. Learning what I need to know to plan and execute a long boat trip is another. This isn’t something I would do without proper preparation. But as I research the things I need to know, I realize that it’s definitely doable. A real goal for my post-retirement years.

Reading First Person Acounts

I started my research about six months ago, before I went south for the winter. I searched for books about the Great Loop. There are a lot of them. It seems that many people who do this journey like to write books about it.

There are different ways to do the trip and a lot of them depend on the size and style of the boat you’re doing it with. I wanted to read books written by people kind of like me — not super rich, motoring in a smallish boat. (Yes, 27 feet is considered small for this trip.) A lot of the books out there were by couples in giant yachts and I didn’t want to read those. Chances are, I’d have a budget for the trip, which meant I wouldn’t be able to spend every single night along the way at a full-service marina. I’d have to boondock (the RVing word) or lie at anchor (the boating phrase) for at least half the nights. So I wanted to read books by people who had similar experiences to what I might have.

I sampled a few books in Kindle format and wasn’t very impressed. One of the drawbacks of this age of self-publishing is that anyone can do it — even if they can’t write. One book sample read like an infomercial for the book, with lots of repetition and apparently no editing. Another was similarly uninteresting to me, although I can’t remember why. But a third…well, I thought that had promise. I bought it and read it yesterday.

A Book Review

Crossing The Wake
Here’s the book I read first about motoring the Great Loop.

Crossing the Wake: One Woman’s Great Loop Adventure by Tanya Binford is almost the kind of book you might expect. The subtitle tells you that the book is about a woman’s trip doing the Great Loop and hints that she’s doing it alone (which she mostly did). I tend to shy away from women’s books because I have trouble identifying with the themes they usually include: the trials of motherhood, dealing with sexual discrimination, and fighting male dominance. This book, fortunately, didn’t have much of that — although it certain had more than enough for me. Unfortunately, as I discovered while turning page after virtual page, it didn’t really have what I wanted to read, either.

You see, although the author wrote this book about her journey, it read more like a catalog of fears, challenges, and social activities than a travelog. With virtually no boating experience, she decided she wanted to do the trip. To prepare, she moved from the Arizona desert to the coast of South (I think) Carolina and bought her young adult son a boat. Over and over again, she tells the reader how little confidence she had in her skills while she let her son do the piloting. She shares many anecdotes about needing the help of a man to do one thing or another. Yet she buys one boat after another to learn what she needs to know and build her skills. That’s admirable, but I don’t believe she had the skills she needed when she finally started the trip.

The first part of the book explains what she was doing for a living — she was a psychiatric registered nurse who was able to meet with patients through video calls (this was before the pandemic) — with side stories about some of her patients, co-workers, and bosses. It also covers some of her preparations, with lots of details of the (mostly) men who helped her and the (mostly) women who worried about her doing the trip on her own.

The second, longer part of the book was about the actual trip. Here’s where the definition of “solo” gets hazy. You see, although she was alone on her boat for most of the trip, she also traveled among other “Loopers” who she would see, on and off, throughout her trip. The book is one story after another about meeting this couple/boat here and that couple/boat there and having “docktails” and dinner and shore trips with all these people. It was a social report. There were very few details, especially in the first part of the trip, about navigation, points of interest, or the traveling itself. When she did try to give details, she fell short or used incorrect names. (It’s New York Harbor, not Hudson Bay (which is in Canada); the New York Thruway, not the New York Expressway and the Tappan Zee Bridge, not the Tappen Zee Bridge. These are the things I caught because I know them; how many other mistakes did she make?)

Along the way, she confirmed, over and over, that she was in way over her head on this trip, lacking either confidence or skills that she really should have had. And if that wasn’t bad enough, halfway through the book/trip she admits that the autopilot and radar don’t work properly. (I cannot, for a minute, imagine taking a boat on a 6,000-mile solo trip without an autopilot, let alone drive a boat in unfamiliar water in fog without radar yet the author did both.) Yes, she survived the trip, but I felt that she struggled with her own shortcomings to do so.

What did I want from the book? I guess I just wanted more details about the trip itself. More about navigation, overnight stops (other than to name them), unusual boating/navigation rules/situations. She did provide some of this, but not nearly as much as I wanted. Instead, I was treated to her stories about her bullying her mom on part of the trip, men who made passes at her, and her emotional turmoil when another boater she’d had a fling with found another non-boating woman and married her.

And frankly, I found her side story about a patient who had killed herself when she (the author) left her job to start the trip disturbing and unwelcome.

If the author happens upon this blog post and reads it, I’m sorry to be so brutal. But I’ve filed this book with most of the other “women’s books” I’ve come across. I probably should not have read it.

Did I get anything out of the book at all? Yes. I learned that a woman with very little experience driving a boat slight smaller but similar in style to what I want to buy completed the trip by herself.

If she could do it, so could I.

Making Plans

So I’ve set this up as a new goal for myself: motor the great loop before I turn 65. I have just over 5 years to:

  • Get back in shape. I’ve let myself go a bit and that’s causing aches and pains that I simply should not have at my age. Time to slim back down, get more exercise, and prep for being able to walk a very narrow gunwale.
  • Buy a suitable boat. That Ranger Tug is looking good, but I do have a friend trying to talk me into something else, so I’m not 100% sold on it yet.
  • Spend a lot of time on the boat to become an expert on handling it. This might sound weird, but to me, flying a helicopter in most conditions is like driving a car. I’d like to get like that behind the wheel of a boat. Practice — especially practice in challenging conditions like wind, currents, and rough water — makes perfect.
  • Spend some time with a boat mechanic. The goal is to learn the basics of what might break and how I can fix it — or at least enable to limp to a marina for a real fix.
  • Learn everything I need to know about navigation on the Great Loop’s waterways. There’s a lot to learn — including navigation on Canadian waterways.
  • Prepare the boat for a very long trip. That includes a last-minute tuneup of the engine and other systems and packing the gear I’ll need (and leaving behind the gear I won’t).
  • Get the boat to a starting point, launch it, and get under way. Whether I do this alone or with a travel companion depends on what’s going on in my life when the time comes to start.

Chapman Piloting & Seamanship
Chapman Piloting and Seamanship is the bible for learning about boating in the United States. I’ve got this book in print and in Kindle format and have been reading various chapters to immerse myself in boating information.

A lot of this actually ties in nicely with a related goal: getting my boat captain’s license. I’d like very much to be able to make a bit of income with this boat since it’ll cost so much to acquire and operate. (But still not as much as a helicopter.) Even if I make enough to cover my personal boating costs, I’ll be very happy. But to legally do that, I need the proper boat captain’s license, which requires experience on the water, training, and passing scores on a test. I’m already beginning to study for all that.

But whether I become a boat captain or not, motoring the Great Loop is a set goal. Let’s see if I can do it.

Early August Check In

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What I’ve been up to lately.

I know I haven’t been blogging much lately — other than to share my YouTube videos — and I apologize. I know a lot of folks come here to see what I’m up to and not necessarily to see big helicopters land in clouds of dust.

But regular readers should know why I’m not blogging: I’m keeping busy doing other things. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve been up to.

Cherry Drying

One thing I’m not doing lately is drying cherries with my helicopter. We haven’t had measurable rain here since June 28 and that’s the last day I flew.

This is both good and bad.

The good thing is that my helicopter is inching ever closer to the Hobbs meter number that will force me to bring it in for over haul. As I type this, I have 88 hours left until I must stop flying it.

If you watched my livestream video about helicopter operating costs, you’ll know that this required maintenance will cost about $250,000 (not a typo). I’ve been saving, but not that much. So I’ll have to go into debt to pay for that overhaul. (I hate being in debt.)

But because I’m hardly flying it at all, I realized that I can simply put the helicopter away for the winter and save those 80+ hours for next year’s cherry season, thus putting off the overhaul for a whole year. I should be able to save a bunch more money for it, thus reducing the loan I’ll need. It will also Eliminate the stress I’d feel trying to operate a helicopter tour/charter business when virus-related issues — social networking, the economy, etc. — might make it hard to bring in the extra cash I’ll need to keep up on the loan.

That’s the good side of this issue.

The bad side is that I like flying, especially when I can send someone an invoice when I’m done. Although I’ll get a few more flights in before I put the helicopter away — after all, I do have that YouTube channel to feed — it won’t be much.

Fortunately, all of my cherry drying contracts include a daily standby fee, so even if I don’t fly, I’m bringing in money to cover my personal and business costs.

Of course, the standby fee means I have to be on standby, available to fly 7 days a week during daylight hours. So since May 29, when my season started, I’ve been pretty much hanging around at home — or at least the Wenatchee area. (I guess a lot of folks are in the same boat with the virus running rampant throughout the country.)

During the busiest part of the season, when I had the most acreage to cover, I had four pilots helping me cover it. They left one-by-one as orchards were picked and there was less and less acreage to cover. The last one left about 2 weeks ago. Today I’m covering 34 acres by myself.

4 Helicopters
Here’s the view from my deck back on June 16; you can see four helicopters (including mine) parked in a cleared cherry orchard. The fifth helicopter was based in Quincy, covering one of my contracts there.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll have just one orchard of just 17 acres to cover until August 23. Even though the standby for just 17 acres is pretty low, I’ll stick around until all the cherries there are picked.

Cherry Driving

No, that’s not a typo. I spent a week driving cherries from an orchard to the packing house.

One of my clients was looking for someone to drive a pickup truck pulling a trailer full of cherry bins from their orchard to the packing house about 15 miles away. They knew I had experience pulling heavy trailers — after all, I lived near their orchard in my old 36-foot fifth wheel for several seasons in a row — so they offered me the job. I had nothing else that I had to do, I had to stay in the area, and I didn’t mind making a few bucks and learning about another part of the business. So I said yes.

The truck was a 2004 Ford F350 4WD diesel pickup remarkably like my old green truck (RIP). The trailer was a dual axel with 4 wheels per axel flatbed with a gooseneck hitch that had been customized to hold eight stacks of plastic cherry bins.

Cherry Trailer
Here’s the rig I drove, nearly loaded, parked at the orchard’s loading area. Shade and mist help keep the area cool. Each bin of cherries is hosed down and then covered with a water-soaked foam pad to help keep them cool.

Cherry bins measure roughly 4’w x 4’d x 1’h and hold about 300-340 pounds of cherries. For the first bunch of runs, they stacked the bins 5 high so I was carrying 40 bins or 13,000+ pounds of cherries. This turned out to be the challenge: controlling speed for the first 8 miles of the drive to the packing plant, all of which was downhill.

Of course, before I left I also had to strap down those bins, which required tossing coils of ratchet tie-down straps over the tops of the bins and fastening them on the other side. It would not be good if I took a curve too quickly and the bins tumbled off.

One off my clients went with me for the first run so I’d know how to do it. I almost immediately got into trouble. The roads in the orchard are narrow and twisting and there was a hairpin curve I had to negotiate. I was so focused on the curve that I didn’t register the loose gravel in the middle of it. When I braked to slow (from about 10 mph), the wheels locked up and I came very close to sliding off the road into someone else’s orchard.

Oops.

Backing up uphill with 13,000+ pounds behind me on loose gravel wasn’t easy. I threw it into 4WD and had to use a foot on the brake while I pressed the accelerator to actually start backing up. I only needed to go back about 5 feet and managed to do it. Then we made the curve and were on our way.

I did not make that mistake again.

It took 45 minutes to get to the packing plant and they were stressful minutes. The setup had the braking distance of a freight train so I had to go very slowly any time there was a chance I might have to stop.

But then I was pulling into the delivery entrance and stopping at the entrance check point. I unfastened the tie downs while they took sample cherries and did a bunch of paperwork. Then on to the offloading area, where a team of forklifts took those 40 cherry bins off in less than three minutes. (And no, that’s not an exaggeration.)

On most trips, I came straight back, but on a few trips I needed to pick up (and strap down) empty bins or bins full of the foam pads they use to help keep the cherries cool in transit. Either way, the trailer was so light that I was able to get back in 30 minutes.

I made three runs the first day and two runs each of the next six days. I started at 8 AM — three hours after the pickers started because it took that long for them to fill 40 bins of cherries — and was usually done by noon — two hours after the pickers had finished and gone home. (They can’t pick cherries when it gets hot out and that week was very hot.) Although most loads had 40 bins early in the week, by the end of the week I was taking 44 bins (4 stacks of 5 and 4 stacks of 6). That’s nearly an extra ton. I got pretty good at controlling speed and handling the load and had no mishaps.

Along the way, I learned a lot about packing cherries. I think that was the best part of the experience; learning new things.

Cherry & Blueberry Picking

Like every year I’ve been up here during the summer — including years before I actually moved here — I always manage to get out for some cherry and blueberry picking.

I pick cherries after the growers have picked, “gleaning” what the pickers missed. I actually picked a lot more this year than I usually do, starting early with rainier cherries in an orchard near my home and, more recently, at the same orchard where I did my cherry driving. The key is to get to the orchard within a few days of picking; if you wait too long, the cherries are so far past prime they’re not worth picking.

Blueberries
My first batch of blueberries.

I pick blueberries at the same orchard where I did my driving gig. The orchard owners have about 400 blueberry bushes that they don’t harvest commercially. Instead, they invite friends to come pick when they like. The season lasts well over a month — the blueberries on a bush don’t all ripen at the same time like cherries or other tree fruit do — so I can go weekly and bring home enough to freeze and still eat blueberries all week. I usually bring a friend and chat while we’re picking.

I bring my pups along on these outings. Like Penny, they enjoy running around the orchards, sniffing for mice and other rodents. It’s good to get them out someplace other than home where they don’t need to be on a leash.

Getting Out On the Water

Amazingly, I’ve only been out on the water three times so far this summer, but all three trips were real wins.

The first outing was in my own little boat with two friends. I blogged about that here, so I won’t repeat any details.

The second was paddling with my friend Cyndi and her dog. This was Lily and Rosie’s first time out on a kayak and, at first, they didn’t know what to make of it. I had life jackets on both of them and had them tethered to the kayak with expanding leashes and it’s a good thing I did! Lily took two dives into the water and Rosie took one. In both cases — their first times swimming! — their life jackets gave them plenty of floatation and I was able to reel them in with the leash as they swam back to me. We paddled around the estuary at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia Rivers. The water was high so there were lots of channels to explore. We even got a chance to stop on a beach where Rosie surprised me by swimming out to my friend Cyndi who called her from the shallows.

Paddling
Here we are, paddling in the estuary. By this point, the girls knew the drill and stayed on board.

Fish
Here I am with Cyndi, holding up the six fish we caught.

The third trip was with Cyndi and her husband Matt on their fishing boat. I woke up at 2:45 AM so I could meet them at 3:30 for the hour+ drive to Pateros. We were on line at the boat ramp at 4:45 AM and joined the crowd of salmon fishers near the mouth of the Okanogan River upriver from Brewster by 5. I can’t believe how close the boats were to each other, trolling along on silent motors, pulling one sockeye salmon after another out of the river. We hit our limit of two sockeyes each by 8 AM and spent some time trying for chinook, which requires a different line setup and technique. After a half hour with no luck, we called it quits. I was happy! I took my two fish home and filleted them, freezing three large fillets and leaving a fourth for dinner. I also cooked up the bones for fish broth and made myself a nice salmon chowder with garden veggies and the trimmings from my filleting work.

Gardening

My garden is bigger and more productive than ever this year. This spring, I finally pulled out the last pallet planter I’d built, replacing it with one of the plastic cherry bins I’d bought as raised garden beds. That brings the total count to 11. (I have one more bin to install, but I need to do some deconstruction on a flower bed to fit it in; that’s an autumn project.)

Veggies from my Garden
Here’s one evening’s side dish, brought in from the garden. I washed and chopped all of these, then roasted them with herbs in the oven. Delicious!

What did I plant? Let’s see. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, onions (2 kinds), beets, radishes, scallions, tomatoes (3 kinds), asparagus, potatoes (3 kinds), sweet potatoes (2 kinds), peppers (4 kinds), eggplant (2 kinds), horseradish, spinach, carrots, strawberries, zucchini (2 kinds), yellow squash, pattypan squash, cucumbers, delicata squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkins, corn (2 kinds), green beans. Well, I didn’t plant the green beans — they planted themselves and have been doing so for the past four years.

Potatoes
Have you ever seen a red potato this big? That’s my hand under it — and my hands aren’t small. I pulled it out of my garden last week.

I’ve been harvesting a little of almost everything and planting more beets, carrots, scallions, and radishes any time a bed empties and onions every time I pull a row. The only veggies I buy at the supermarket now is salad greens and broccoli (because it’s all done now). Everything else comes out of the garden and, frankly, I can’t keep up with production so I’m giving a ton away.

The 11 chicks I got in April are just getting ready to start laying. I just started an egg subscription service for neighbors: $10/month gets you a dozen eggs delivered to your doorstep once a week — if you give back the cartons. When I have all 16 chickens producing, I’ll be getting a dozen eggs a day and will need to do something with them. There’s only so much quiche a person can eat.

Cooking

Brisket
I finally found a brisket recipe I felt able to follow — with some modifications — and made this. Not bad for a first try.

Like most of the folks stuck at home this summer, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking. Some of it is an attempt to use up some of the produce coming from my garden or the orchards and blueberry patch where I pick fruit. Others are attempts to make something I’ve always wanted to try making.

Cake
The cake tasted even better than it looks, but what was I thinking?

When I make something that freezes well, I portion it out, vacuum seal it, and put it in my garage freezer so I always have a quick meal available on those days I don’t feel like cooking. I made a blueberry zucchini cake recently and wound up giving nearly all of it away to neighbors and friends. What was I thinking when I made a cake that big?

Other Stuff

I’ve also been making and selling jewelry, although not as much as I’d like. I think I’ll save that for another blog post.

I’ve also been doing a lot of video editing for my YouTube channel, but I’ll whine about that in another post, too.

But these are the main things I’ve been up to this summer. When the weather is nice, I’d rather do stuff outside than sit in front of a computer typing up a blog post and that explains why I haven’t blogged so much.

I will try harder to blog more in the future. I find that my blog posts are the best way I can remember the things that went on in my life years after these things happen. My blog is my journal and I really do need to stick with it.

Boating with Friends, 2020

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Another day out in the boat reminds me how much I like being out on the water.

Way back in the autumn of 2011, I bought a 1995 Sea Ray Sea Rayder. This is a 16-foot jet boat with a 130 HP engine that can get it up to the whopping speed of 30 MPH on smooth water. It has five seats, a canopy that shades the three back seats, and the ability to pull a water toy but not a water skier. It’s the third boat I’ve owned — the first two were WaveRunners that I owned for a while in Arizona — and I actually bought it in Washington when I still lived in Arizona. I spent so much time just sitting around during cherry season that I thought it might be fun to have a boat in the area to take out on the Columbia River.

Boat in Garage
Here’s my little boat, tucked into its spot in my exceedingly large garage.

Fast-forward nine years. I kept the boat all this time (despite a bizarre episode at one of my two divorce trial dates in 2013). When I built my home, I made sure that my garage would have space for it. I used it a few times every season — some would say not often enough to own a boat, but I didn’t pay much for it and it’s cheap to keep. I took it to Arizona with me for the winter back in 2016/17 and had some fun with it out on Lake Pleasant and the Colorado River. And I continue to use it a few times every summer.

I would have taken it out a lot sooner this season if it weren’t for the battery. I was having a heck of a time getting it charged and I was starting to wonder whether it needed replacement. Pulling the battery out of the boat while it was on the trailer was not something I could do alone and I never seemed to find time to get the boat into town so it could be checked. Eventually, I realized that the problem wasn’t the battery — it was my battery charger. I bought a new one the other day, hooked it up, and voila! The battery charged up to 100% in just a few hours and I was ready to take it out.

Boat on Jeep
The boat is a lot easier to launch from the Jeep, which is currently topless while I wait for the new top to arrive.

I made plans with a two friends to take it out on Wednesday morning. The weather has been awesome here — unless you’re a cherry drying pilot — and although it tended to get a bit warm and windy in the afternoon, it was pleasant enough in the morning. One of my friends is a neighbor and I picked her up at 9 AM in my Jeep with the boat in tow. (It’s a lot easier to launch with the Jeep than my truck.) After stopping to top it off with fresh fuel, we drove to the boat ramp in Wenatchee behind Pybus Public Market.

I have to take a moment to rave about the free boat ramps and riverfront parks and trails we have in the Wenatchee area. The waterfront is managed by the local public utility district — the Chelan PUD — which manages the dams that give us most of our cheap, renewable power. As a public utility, they use our utility fees to maintain their systems and build/maintain a series of public parks along the river. There are two different boat ramps within 12 miles of my home and others farther away to access other dam-locked bodies of water on the Columbia River. The parks have paved biking/walking trails, softball fields, tennis courts, picnic shelters for group gatherings, volleyball courts, a swimming beach — the list goes on and on. The Apple Capital Loop Trail is an 11-mile paved walking/running/biking trail that loops on both sides of the Columbia River, with several access points on either side and extensions to other parks on the East Wenatchee side. All of this is free to use with plenty of free parking.

Anyway, I launched the boat while Teri watched over my pups. We tied up at the floating dock between the two lanes of the ramp and waited for Cyndi to arrive. Although there were a few cars with boat trailers in the parking lot, no one else was launching or coming in. While we were waiting, I cranked the engine until I got the boat started and let it idle for a while, which is something I don’t like to do, given that this jet boat doesn’t have a real idle. (When the engine is running, it is propelling the boat.) I shut down until Cyndi arrived, loaded everyone up, and after an iffy start due mostly to me not remembering if the button had to be IN or OUT for choke, putted out into the river.

My usual boat use in the area is to motor on up to the Rocky Reach Dam upriver from town, cut the engine, and drift back. I do this mostly because the boat can be loud under power and it’s no fun shouting back and forth to each other. It takes about 15 minutes to reach the dam and that day, we hit some mildly rough water in a windy spot along the way. As a jet boat with its weird rudderless steering, it operates best on glassy smooth water. This wasn’t a big deal and we motored right through it to more smooth water beyond. We didn’t get right up to the dam, but we did get close enough to see that they had multiple flood gates open. The water would really be churning at the base of the dam and we didn’t need any of that. So I cut the engine and welcomed the silence. We immediately started drifting back at a rate of about 3-4 miles per hour.

Motoring in my Boat
Cyndi took this photo of us just getting underway up the Columbia River. That’s Teri next to me, holding my pups. This was their first time in a boat and they didn’t know what the hell was going on.

The awning was up and Teri and I were under it. Cyndi sat in the bow, soaking up the sun. My pups, wearing their life jackets, walked around the boat for a while. Lily was a bit whiney and I held and comforted her for a while. When she realized that it was what it was, she finally settled down.

Pups on a Boat Pups on a Boat
Lily and Rosie were a little uneasy when we first stopped, but soon caught on that there was food to be had and begging to be done. Penny’s old yellow life jacket fit Lily perfectly; Rosie got the slightly larger one I bought for her in preparation for a kayak outing. (We still haven’t done that yet.)

We’d brought snacks and popped open the coolers. We chatted about all kinds of things: dogs, politics, the virus, fishing, camping, boating, traveling. Teri and Cyndi, who had never met before, seemed to hit it off well.

Repositioning the Boat
Cyndi took this shot of me holding both pups while gently guiding us away from shore and back into the main channel of the river.

All the time we drifted, we watched the scenery change around us. The air was cool in the shade. We saw bunches of buoys and, later, a police boat with a few guys on board tending to some others. We never figured out what that was all about. There were some other boats on the river — mostly the big aluminum fishing boats that are so popular around here. The salmon are running and although we weren’t there at the best time of day for salmon fishing, some folks were apparently trying anyway. A few times we drifted so close to the east shore that the boat got caught in a calm spot and stopped drifting. One time, it even headed back upriver. Each time, I’d push the button to start the engine, shift into forward gear, and move back toward the middle of the flow.

I know none of this sounds very exciting and it wasn’t. But it was restful and pleasant. It was nice to get out with friends someplace other than one of our patios or decks. It was nice to be on the water, which is something I’ve always enjoyed.

Columbia River
Cyndi took this shot looking back up the Columbia toward the Wenatchee River confluence. It was a perfect day for boating.

Cyndi had to be back by 12:30 for an appointment that afternoon, so at 12:15, I started up the engine again and pointed us back toward the launch. By that time, we were less than a mile away and I kept to a slower speed, which is not like me at all. I had a little bit of trouble getting the boat pointed into the launch area with the current pushing us so hard past it; jet boats don’t steer well at slow speeds, especially when fighting wind or a current. I have the boat rigged so I can bring it into a dock by myself and was pleased that neither passenger tried to “help” when I didn’t need help. I pulled up next to the dock, tied off from my seat, and killed the engine. Smooth. After a year, I still had it!

Cyndi left right away and Teri and I took care of the boat and pups. I did a great job backing the trailer in (if I do say so myself) — the Jeep is a lot easier to back up without a roof and rear window. Soon I had the boat on the trailer and, when I pulled out slowly, the boat positioned itself properly between the two fenders. I parked it in the shade of a tree in the parking area and pulled everything out, closed up the top, and put the cover on it. Teri tracked down my pups who had wandered off to find a place to pee. We all climbed into the Jeep and headed home.

Pushing the Boat
It’s a lot easier to push the boat into the garage than back it in. Why work harder than you have to?

I dropped off Teri and her cooler at her house, then went home. It was already getting hot and I wanted the boat put away before it got too hot. I unhitched the boat in my big driveway apron, turned the Jeep around, and re-hitched it using the front tow ball on the Jeep. With a little maneuvering, I pushed the boat into the end garage bay where it lives, unhitched it again, and backed my Jeep into the garage bay at the other end.

When I checked my watch, I was very pleased to see that I’d been able to get the boat out of the water, drive it 12 miles to get home, and put it away in less than an hour.

I need to take it out more often.