Tag Archives: boats

Great Loop 2021 Gets Its Own Website

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I copy all of my Great Loop 2021 posts to a new website where I’ll be publishing all posts about the trip from now on.

I’ve been posting to this blog since 2003 and, over the years, it has accumulated thousands of posts. If you know me, you know that I have a lot to say. This blog makes it easy for me to get the things on my mind off my mind so I can think about other things. It also offers a sort of journal of the things I’m up to — something I can turn back to in the future to see what was going on in my life.

And I’ll admit it: I keep this blog more for myself than for readers. Regular readers come and go but I remain.

Long ago, when I was writing a lot of computer how-to books, I broke out the content related to those books and put them into their own website. It was Maria’s Guides for a while and Langer Books for a while and I think it even ended up in Flying M Productions for a while. Those sites (and my support for those old books) are gone. The content is around somewhere, but it simply isn’t worth maintaining websites for it.

I’m hoping that’s not the case with the first new blog I’ve created in more than 10 years: My Great Loop Adventure.

I bought the domain name a few months ago when I first started seriously thinking about doing the Great Loop. I set it up but didn’t really have the motivation to give it a nice design or the “branding” that everyone expects. Frankly, I didn’t have the creativity to do it myself or budget to hire someone else. Since I didn’t think it was attractive enough to share, I kept it under wraps.

In the meantime, I kept blogging about the Great Loop and my upcoming trip here.

One of the big “rules” for bloggers — back when blogging was a big thing and people bothered to share advice about it — is to keep your blog focused on one topic. That is impossible for me. I have too many interests and blog about too many things. Did I really want to maintain a dozen or more blogs just so that each one could be focused on a single topic?

The answer was no, mostly because of another rule: add new content to your blog frequently. I definitely did not want to write and publish a dozen (or more) new posts a week, which would be the minimum to keep the blogs alive. So I continued to publish about all of my interests in one blog.

The problem with that is this: if someone is interested about just one of the topics I write about, he might have to wade through weeks of uninteresting (to him) posts to find one that does interest him. And let’s face it; no one is really motivated enough to make a bookmark for a single topic (category) or tag on the site, although that would definitely solve the interest problem.

Great Loop cruising is a relatively new thing for me, however, and I want to reach as many fellow loopers as possible. The best way to do that would be to collect all of my Great Loop related posts in one blog.

And since I’ll actually be starting my partial Great Loop trip as a crew member on a 27 foot Ranger Tug on Tuesday, I expect to blog about my trip at least once a day. That’s a lot of new blog posts — far more than non-boaters want to see on this blog.

So yesterday, I copied all of the existing posts in the Great Loop 2021 series and republished them with their original publication dates on the new blog. (I left them here so links to them wouldn’t break.) And then I spent far too much time fine-tuning the blog’s layout and appearance to make it presentable. And I linked it to my Twitter account so my Twitter followers could still see the new posts as they were released.

Great Loop Website
Here’s what the My Great Loop Adventure website looks like now. I said it was “presentable,” not a work of art. If you have any interest in donating some design skills for a banner or custom icons, I’m ready for them.

At this point, I’m ready to stop blogging about my upcoming Great Loop trip here. I may, however, continue to blog about my boat shopping progress and other things of general interest to boaters.

I did make one change to this blog to help readers find new content on the new blog: I added a link to the RSS feed for My Great Loop Adventure to the sidebar. That widget will show clickable links to the most recent five blog posts there, as well as a link to that blog.

If you’re interested in new content about the Great Loop, I urge you to subscribe to that blog. You’ll get notified every time a new post comes out. (And, of course, you can unsubscribe at any time; your email address won’t be sold, etc., etc.)

And if you haven’t subscribed to my personal YouTube channel, please do. That’s where you’ll see the videos I create on the trip; I’m hoping to release a few every week, including more than a few from my drone, which is coming along on the ride.

Great Loop 2021: Tracking My Ride

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I use the Nebo app to keep track of Nano’s progress as it makes its way to our rendezvous point in the NYC area.

Nano, the boat I’ll soon be boarding for a nearly 2-month trip from New York to Chicago by way of the Hudson River, Erie Canal, and three Great Lakes, left the Portland area of Maine yesterday morning. I’ve been tracking it using the Nebo boating app since then.

Nano Off the Coast of Maine
I first picked up Nano in transit yesterday morning on my iPhone. It had left Portland an hour before and was off the coast of Kennebunkport.

Nebo is a popular system for boaters, especially those doing the Great Loop. I suspect it’s because the American Great Loop Cruisers’ Association (AGLCA), which I discussed in this blog post, offers discounts on the hardware you can install on your boat to automate tracking and trip logging. Indeed, most of the boats I’m seeing on the Nebo app are sporting the AGLCA logo as their profile pic — this is kind of cool because it makes it easy to see who may be on the same route as you. But while the automated features require hardware and a paid subscription to the service — which I assume offers additional features — anyone with a smart phone can set up the mobile app on a phone and enable manual tracking. It looks like that’s what First Mate Dianne did, since her account popped up on Nano as a crewmember yesterday, too.

Around midday, I checked their location again. They were at a marina near Gloucester, MA, at the end of a waterway that cuts the small Rockport peninsula from the mainland. They were done traveling for the day.

I sent Dianne a friend request and she accepted it. We exchanged a handful of messages yesterday. She sent a few photos — including a lobster tank in a supermarket and a fishing boat from a NatGeo channel show — and reported that the ocean was choppy but sunny and “delightful.” I was delighted just reading her comments.

(Capt Paul has not accepted my friend request. Not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because he knows he’ll soon get his fill of me. I’m going to try hard to behave.)

This morning, I checked again, keeping in mind that I’m three hours behind them — Pacific Daylight Time here and Eastern Daylight Time there. They were under way, off the coast of Boston. I started taking note of other Looper boats in the area. Curiosity had remained behind in Gloucester, but Done Tacking was ahead of them in Cape Cod Bay. I began wondering if I’d see these boats along the way once I boarded.

Nano off the Coast of Boston
This morning, Nano was off the coast of Boston.

Nano in Cape Cod Bay
As I write this, Nano is close to shore inside Cape Cod Bay.

A little while ago, I checked again. Nano was now much closer to shore in Cape Cod Bay. (Done Tacking had already gone through the canal that separates Cape Cod from the mainland; you can see it near the bottom on the left.) I think Capt Paul’s plan had to been to spend the night at the mouth of the canal, but I don’t expect him to stick exactly to plan. My preliminary look at the weather shows rain in the area for the next few days; he might try to make some distance today in case he gets stuck at a marina waiting for weather to clear. I’m sure he’s considering the conditions and his options — much the way I consider weather and options when I’m doing a long cross-country flight in my helicopter.

Anyway, I’ll be tracking Nano as I continue to prep my home for my house sitter and pack up what I hope will fit into my luggage for the trip. I hope First Mate Dianne sends more photos. I believe she said she was going to blog the trip; I’ll try to get her blog’s URL so readers can see what she has to say about the trip as it happens.

Great Loop 2021: The Log Books

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I create a custom log book to track my time on the water.

One of my goals as I head into my “golden years” is to get charter boat captain certification. The endorsement I’m interested in is commonly known as a “six pack,” meaning that I can take up to six passengers for hire on a boat. While I don’t expect to make charter boating my fourth (or fifth?) career, I’d like the ability to be able to cover my boating costs by occasionally taking paying passengers on day or overnight trips.

(And yes, I know I don’t have an appropriate boat yet. I’m working on that, too.)

About the Six Pack

The official name for the captain’s certification I’m looking for is National Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessel (OUPV) of Less Than 100 GRT. The common abbreviation is OUPV 6-pack. According to the US Coast Guard, which oversees these certifications:

This officer endorsement is most appropriate for uninspected passenger vessels which by law are limited to six or less passengers for hire. These are usually smaller vessels and normally engage in charter fishing, whale watching, SCUBA diving, and tour cruises.

OUPV Near Coastal endorsements may be limited to 100 miles offshore, Inland or Great Lakes in accordance with 46 CFR 11.467 and the service provided. No OUPV endorsement is valid for International voyages.

There are a number of requirements to get this certification. Here’s a simplified list; you can download a more detailed list here:

  • U.S. Citizienship
  • 18 Years or age or older
  • Medical certificate
  • Drug testing compliance
  • Mariner fees paid
  • Sea service accumulated – 360 days
  • Sea service recency – 90 days in past 3 years
  • First aid course
  • CPR course
  • Exam or course completion certificate

Sea Service

The sea service requirement will be the toughest to meet and since it must be documented on the application, I’m motivated to keep track of it.

I’ve spoken to numerous people who have told me a variety of things about what constitutes “sea service.” One person I spoke to said that because he’d grown up boating with his family, all of those day trips could be logged as sea service. He said that even though he didn’t have a record of all of those days, he could make a reasonable estimate.

I’m in the same boat — no pun intended. My family had a boat that we’d often take on day trips on the Hudson River near New York City. In fact, a common outing would be a ride around Manhattan Island or down to the Statue of Liberty or up as far north as West Point. Later, when my family moved to Long Island, my family boated out in Long Island Sound. I have no idea how many outings we did as I was growing up, but I don’t think that 50 is an unreasonable estimate.

I also have boating experience as an adult on a variety of inland bodies of water including Lake George, Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Lake Pleasant, the Colorado River, the Columbia River, Lake Chelan, and Lake Roosevelt (in WA). Some of these trips involved overnight stays on the boat. Added up, I’m sure that would account for another 50 days.

And then there’s the Learn to Navigate the Inside Passage cruise that I went on back in 2019. This was the real deal: I was one of four people on a 65-foot, 90-year-old wooden boat that cruised at the breakneck speed of 6 knots up the Inside Passage between Bellingham, WA and Ketchikan, AK. For 12 days, I was a “crew member” while we learned about navigation and piloting from Captains Jeffrey and Christine. The following year, I joined them again for another 4 days on the water in the San Juan Islands. According to Captain Jeffrey, all this time could be logged.

David B at Garrison Bay
The David B at anchor in Garrison Bay.

It’s that time that was most valuable given that of the 360 days I needed on the water, 90 days of service had to be on Ocean, Near Coastal, or Great Lakes waters, depending on the kind of charter services I wanted to offer. Because I wanted to offer Near Coastal charter services in the San Juan Islands and possibly on portions of the Great Loop, I needed that Near Coastal time.

And my upcoming trip would be a huge addition to my sea service time. After all, I expected to be on the boat for about two months. That’s a lot of days of near coastal and Great Lakes time.

Finding a Book to Log Time

Of course, the best way to keep track of the time I could include in my sea service submission to the Coast Guard was to log it — much like I already log the time I fly to maintain a record of currency for my pilot certificate. With that in mind, I started looking for a “captain’s log” or “crew log” book.

And I found a lot of books that I just couldn’t see working for me.

The trouble is, most books were designed for either commercial boat captains or pleasure boaters:

  • The commercial captains’ logs had lots of form fields for entering daily boat and engine check information, weather, departure, destination, and miscellaneous paperwork information. This is the information you’d expect to be part of a legal record of every single day or trip on a commercial vessel. I simply didn’t need all of those form fields.
  • The pleasure boaters captains’ logs had less detailed forms but not much space for including a narrative of the trip. They didn’t seem concerned with logging time as much as logging where the boat went and who was on board.

I wanted something that combined features from both flavors of books, something where I could log each day of the journey and take notes for blog posts or other written accounts. And rather than enter detailed vessel information on each page — after all, I expected to be on the same handful of boats as I built my time — I wanted vessel details listed separately. I also wanted pages that summarized the days logged by month and by vessel.

So I designed my own book.

My Captain/Crew Log Book

Creating my own book pages wasn’t a big deal once I knew what I wanted on each page. After all, from about 1995 to 2012, I did layout of about half the books I wrote using a variety (over the years) of desktop publishing software: QuarkExpress, PageMaker, FrameMaker, and InDesign.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with desktop publishing software for a while now. In my later days of writing books, I used Adobe InDesign to do page layout and then to generate PDFs and ebook format files for publishing. But when InDesign went from a pay once software package to a subscription software package, I simply stopped using it. I couldn’t see paying monthly for a software package that I only used a few times a year.

Just before I began tackling this design project, however, I got my hands on Affinity Publisher, a desktop publishing package that was inexpensive and didn’t require a subscription to use. I decided to try my hand at using it while doing this project.

It went remarkably well. Affinity Publisher was similar enough to InDesign that the learning curve was relatively easy for me. When I got stumped, I used its online help feature to figure out how to do what I needed to do. Little by little, I built up the master page styles that would make up my book. Then it was just a matter of adding pages.

Some of the design choices I made include:

  • 8.5 x 5.5 page size. This is half a standard “letter size” sheet of paper. It makes the book relatively small.
  • Spiral binding. This makes it easy to lay the book open and, if necessary, to remove pages.
  • Double sided log pages. The recto (right side) page has the form to detail the entry and it’s followed by half a page of lines for notes. The back of each page has more room for notes. Again, I wanted to be able to include a lot of notes for each logged day. I chose this format instead of spreads — where the start of each entry would be on the verso (left) side and the rest on the recto side — because I wanted to be able to remove pages if necessary. I’m still not 100% sure about this decision; I think it would work either way.

    Log Book Pages
    A log page spread. The entry starts on the recto page and ends on the following verso page.

  • Simple summaries at the beginning of the book. I could add entries here as time went on.

  • Vessel Info
    There are three double-sided Vessel Info pages that I can use to enter details about up to 12 boats.

    Vessel details at the beginning of the book. Each vessel could be listed on a half-page form at the beginning of the book. This keeps those details off the log pages. I write the vessel name in the log page and then can cross reference it to details in the vessel list.

Log Book Cover
Here’s the book’s cover, with a nice photo of Nano on it.

I got a high-res photo of the boat I’ll be on this summer, Nano, to put on the cover.

I used a service called Printivity to print my books. I submitted a properly prepared PDF, made my payment, and waited. At my request, a representative got back to me to answer some questions and, with the information she provided, I fine-tuned some options.

Although the books were affordable to print, shipping was costly. To get the most bang for my buck, I ordered four copies. I figured I’d give the extras away to my fellow crew members, if they’re interested.

The books arrived two weeks after I submitted the PDF and paid for them. They looked pretty darn good for a first effort. I’m looking forward to making entries in mine during the trip.