Tag Archives: travel

Dealing with Wanderlust — On a Boat

Posted on by
15

I believe a cruising lifestyle is the answer to my current wanderlust needs.


The dictionary defines Wanderlust as a strong desire to travel. That sums it up perfectly.

I’ve suffered from Wanderlust my entire life. I blame my grandfather.

Inherited Wanderlust

My mother’s father had it bad, especially later in life when I knew him. Once he was retired to a life around his home, he used to do a lot of driving. I don’t know where he went, but I do remember him following us on vacation once. We were low budget vacationers and a typical family vacation would be a drive to a campground at a northeast US destination — we lived in northern New Jersey — where we’d set up camp and spend a week in The Great Outdoors. I don’t remember which trip we were on when my grandfather improbably turned up, hundreds of miles from home.

My dad, of course, had a case of Wanderlust, too. His case was a lot like mine in that it combined a need to travel and explore with a desire to do it in with a motor vehicle. (My family members were not fans of hiking or air travel; in fact, I probably do more hiking and air travel than my parents or siblings ever did.) When I was young, our family vacations took us up or down the Atlantic seaboard, from southern Maine to Virginia. Sometime along the way, my dad acquired the first of a handful of small motorboats for exploring the Hudson, East, and Harlem Rivers of the New York Metro area and toting along on family vacations to destinations with waterways. I can still remember the trip to Lake George in New York when a wheel came off the boat trailer and passed us on the highway, seriously delaying our arrival.


An unscheduled stop along the Columbia River near its mouth in 2018 gave me the opportunity to pick wild blackberries, which I enjoyed with my breakfast for the next few days.

For me, Wanderlust means exploring places I’ve never been before — and revisiting some of the places I have explored in the past and liked. I’ve done it in cars and on motorcycles and in helicopters and on boats. It usually starts with a map or a suggestion from someone else. A route is set down, plans and preparations are made, and a trip begins. But what makes my Wanderlust differ from most people I know is my need to change the plan and explore new things I take note of along the way. Driving with a plan of going from Point A to Point B and being led off the path by a sign pointing to a waterfall in a national forest or a date ranch in the middle of the desert or a hiking trail around a small mountain lake or a channel leading to a remote town known for good ice cream. Not having reservations so I don’t have to cancel reservations. Making it up as I go along. I can’t begin to describe the feeling I get when I discover a new place worth seeing, even if it’s just a nice place to have a picnic lunch.


Sometimes taking an unmarked trail through a coastal forest can put you on a private beach.

My Travels

I’ve dealt with my version of the Wanderlust my entire life. I’ve visited 49 of the 50 states — Minnesota eludes me — and a (rather disappointing) handful of international destinations, including Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and numerous Caribbean Islands. And a trip to Germany when I was in my teens — don’t forget that. I traveled extensively for business during the last job of my corporate life (Career #1) and even more for business at the start of my freelance life (Career #2). In between I took numerous vacations with my future wasband that involved travel, often piggybacking a vacation onto one of my business trips. While the business travel involved metro areas and business hotels, the vacation travel often involved rental cars, camping gear, and national parks. I’ve seen a lot of America — and not just typical tourist destinations.

Understand that I am not a fan of packaged tours. While I like the concept of cruise ships — a hotel where you unpack once and visit a different city every day? Sign me up! — I don’t like the floating cities cruise ships are or the typical cruise ship mentality of the other passengers. (How many people on the Alaska cruise had booked their low-deck inside cabin just so they could tell people they’d “done” an Alaska cruise? The same people who didn’t get off the boat at port cities because they didn’t want to spend any money.) I can’t see making a trip overseas for just a week — if you’re going to go to Europe or Asia or Australia, you should stay at least a month to make that travel time worthwhile, no?

My Wanderlust needs were severely frustrated for a time when I lived in Arizona with my future wasband. I was a freelancer who, between projects, had a lot of free time on my hands. My future wasband was tied to a 9 to 5 job that left only weekends available for travel. (In the end, he spent much of his limited vacation time traveling back east to visit his family.)


Following a sign to a ghost town near Beatty NV back 2005 gave me a chance to see this building in Rhyolite before it was fenced off to prevent further damage.

I did a lot of travel on my own in those days. I made three long distance helicopter trips in my Robinson R22 helicopter in the early 2000s: around the Grand Canyon airspace, to Eagle CO, and to Placerville CA. In 2005, I took a 19-day solo road trip through the western states in my little Honda S2000. One of my publishers sent me to its locations in Ventura CA and Colorado Springs CO to work for them and I’d usually turn that trip into a mini solo vacation. In 2008, I started traveling seasonally to Washington State (where I now live) to do the agricultural work I now rely on to make a living — I traveled more around the area then than I do now.

 
A trip around the Grand Canyon’s restricted airspace in the early 2000s in my R22 had me spending a night at Marble Canyon near Page AZ and remote Bar 10 Ranch 85 miles south of St George UT.

Getting divorced freed me to do more travel. I no longer had a whining, needy man child at home to hold me back. I visited family and friends all over the country. I did cruises. I did road trips. I enjoyed traveling more than ever.

But gradually, over time, I fell into a rut: stay at home all summer where I was on paid standby for my agricultural work and then travel south with my RV, usually to Arizona and California, to escape the winter dreariness of central Washington State. Sure, I did other trips once in a while, but I was definitely feeling the restraints of a routine — the one thing I just can’t tolerate in my life.

Cruising

I started thinking seriously about cruising — no, not the kind you do in huge floating cities — back in 2017 when I went to stay with a friend out at Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington. The trip didn’t go the way I’d hoped, but I discovered a lot about myself and other people and began to realize what I really wanted to do with my time: small boat cruising.

Of course, back then it was just an inkling of an idea. Since then I’ve done a lot of homework and taken a handful of trips. The homework taught me more about what was possible in a boat to cure my Wanderlust. I learned about the Great Loop, for example, which I saw as a lengthy exploration of waterways on the east coast without having to double back to a starting point.


Sunset from the dock at a state park marina in North Carolina, Spring 2022.

You need to experience it to understand it

There’s something about being out on the water on a quiet morning, watching birds and water animals while the day is born. There’s something about motoring slowly up a channel, rounding a bend to see something unexpected, waving at other cruisers you pass, watching dolphins play in your wake. There’s something about pulling a trap full of crabs out of the water and cooking them for lunch, or catching a salmon you’ll have for dinner. There’s something about meeting other travelers for “docktails” in the evening at a marina and sharing stories about the places you’ve been and the people you’ve met along the water. There’s something about watching the sun sink down into the horizon, hearing the clanking of pulleys and creaking of boats against fenders when a gentle wave comes by from a passing boat.

The trips taught me other things:

  • The 12-day Learn to Navigate the Inside Passage cruise with Northwest Navigation taught me all kinds of things about cruising slowly up the inside passage from Bellingham to Ketchikan: navigating waterways (of course), dealing with severe tidal currents, using autopilot and AIS, anchoring out, using tenders to reach shore, handling customs and immigration when crossing borders, etc, etc. I cannot say enough good things about this cruise and I hope to do it again one day, perhaps when my own cruising days have ended.
  • A 5-week crew member gig on a 27′ Ranger Tug on the Great Loop from Jersey City NJ to Alpena MI showed me the Hudson River, Erie Canal, Lake Erie, and Lake Huron, with many points of interest along the way. I also learned how the Great Loop could be done at a quicker pace, with few stops longer than a day. It was also my first taste of marinas and public docks for overnight moorage and the challenges of ground transportation at destinations. And finally, I learned that not all adults act like adults — which is why I didn’t stay on board beyond Alpena when I was supposed to be on board three more weeks and depart in Chicago.
  • A 5-week crew member gig on a 36′ Aft Cabin Carver on the Great Loop from Charleston SC to New Bern NC showed me how the Great Loop could be done in slow motion, with lengthy stops at marinas along the way. I learned a lot about navigating the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), the kinds of conditions I could expect with its tides and inlets, and how pleasant it was to drive a boat from up on a fly bridge. It was just me and the captain on board and we got along well, but I have to admit that the slow pace we kept was agonizing to me — I was really hoping to see more and get farther along the Loop.

David B at Garrison Bay
The David B at anchor in Garrison Bay. I was one of only four passengers on a 12-day trip in this 90-year-old wooden boat from Bellingham to Ketchikan.


A stretch of the ICW from the flybridge on a 36′ Carver.

These three trips helped me come up with a plan for my own travels: spend two to three years cruising on the east coast, mostly along the Great Loop, and then bring the boat back to Washington to explore waterways closer to home: Lake Chelan, the Columbia and Snake Rivers, Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, and the Inside Passage. By the time I’m done with all that, I should have the cruising thing worked out of my system — or be too old and crotchety to enjoy it.

Plans in Motion

To that end, I’ve begun making plans to acquire a suitable boat. After a lot of research, I’ve settled on a Ranger Tug R-29 CB, a 29′ tug/trawler style boat with a command bridge. The boat has all the features I need to handle something that size on my own — GPS navigation, auto pilot, fore and aft side thrusters, and command from indoor and outdoor stations — as well as the kind of amenities that will make cruising comfortable — full galley, head with shower, comfortable walk-around bed, accommodations for guests, large aft deck, solar panel. And did I mention the wine fridge?


This is one of the boats currently available. I like its price and its low engine hours, but it’s missing a lot of little amenities that I need or want: a Bimini top for the command bridge, screen enclosure for the rear cockpit, generator, air conditioning, and trailer.

You can see a new version of the boat on the Ranger website. But no, I’m not buying a new one. (My budget is large, but not that large.) I’m looking at model years 2018 to 2021. The 2017 models have a Volvo D4 260 HP engine; Ranger went to the Valve D4 300 HP engine in 2018. Right now, there are 5 boats available and, as the market softens — mostly because of inflation and higher interest rates — I expect more boats to join them and prices to go down accordingly. The market was crazy tight back in the spring with boats selling nearly as quickly as they were listed.

(If you’re paying attention and have been reading my blog, you may recall my preference for 27′ Ranger Tug. I’ve gotten over that. After being on a 2017 R-27 with two other people last summer, I’ve decided that it’s simply too small. I know the R-29 sounds like it’s only 2 feet longer but it’s also 1 1/2 feet wider (8 1/2 foot beam vs 10 foot beam) and it has the command bridge space up top. Combined with that is the fact that the 2018 and later R-27s have an outboard motor, which limits living amenities such as hot water and battery charging. It’s designed as more of a day tripping or weekend boat than a serious cruising boat — something that was brought to my attention by the captain of the 2017 R-27 I was on last summer.)

I’m currently planning to make my purchase in September, so I’m trying hard not to dwell on the boats that are currently available; chances are, they’ll be gone when I’m ready to buy. I’ll spend the month of October getting it settled at a marina on the east coast, probably in Florida, where I hope to get some hands on training with a qualified instructor. Or, if I buy it in Washington, maybe I’ll get that training here in Puget Sound before having the boat moved to the east coast. This boat is trailerable and I do have a truck big enough to pull it. What I don’t have is a boat trailer big enough to carry it. I need to figure that — or the cost of having it moved — into the purchase price if I buy on the west coast and need to get it across the country.

The ultimate goal for this coming winter is to cruise long enough to get the experience days I need for my boat captain’s license. I’ll sit through a classroom course on the east coast, take (and pass!) the test, and submit all my paperwork to the Coast Guard. Then back home in spring for another summer of cherry drying standby service to earn a living. Then, in August, back to the boat and possibly take on paying passengers or crew members as I continue along the Loop. I’d love to spend August though October along the New York State and Canadian canal systems.

On the Water

I’ve created a brand new Category (or Topic) for this blog: On the Water. That’s where you’ll find posts about my boating activities. As I write this, this is the only post there, but I’ll try to go back to previous blog posts related to boating and add them to this category.

And if you’re interested only in Great Loop related posts, I hope you’ll check out the My Great Loop Adventure blog. That’s where I share day-by-day accounts with photos of my travels on the Great Loop.

There’s more to report — like new relationships with publishers that will help me fund my travels — but I’d rather save that for when it becomes a reality. Right now, it’s just a solid lead with a great outlook.

Making It Happen

There’s a lot to juggle here but challenges in logistics that require thinking outside the box really appeal to me. So I’m treating it all like a challenge with a specific, well-thought-out goal. And I’m going through the steps to make it happen.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll discover your Wanderlust, too.

About the Boat Trip(s)

Posted on by
2

A relatively quick answer to the question, “How was your trip?”

As regular readers might know, I was away for a little more than five weeks from late March through May 1 on yet another Great Loop boat trip. I began blogging it in a separate blog I started just to report the trip but I soon felt as if there wasn’t much to report so I let it slide. I’m still hoping to catch up, although as each day passes, it becomes a little less likely.

That should give you a sort of preview of what I’m about to report.

Better …

The trip was certainly better in many respects than my first Great Loop trip.

If you recall, that trip had three of us on a 27′ Ranger Tug. That would have been fine if we all got along well, but I almost immediately started having trouble with the other crewmember who remains one of the most difficult people I’ve ever had to deal with. (My ex-sister-in-law probably tops her, but not by much.) I was supposed to be on the trip for 8 weeks but had had enough long before I finally departed after just five weeks.

On this trip, it was just me and the captain on a 36′ Carver and we got along fine. I know we had differences in opinions on politics — he watches/read Fox News — but as long as he didn’t bring anything up, I didn’t have to either. We both like to visit museums and the like and we did some of that together. One thing I learned not to do with him was to take walks through the port towns if I expected to shop; he was not interested in that at all and I felt pressured to walk slowly but shop quickly. We also ate a lot of meals together on the boat, which saved a ton of money. Speaking of money, he covered all the costs of fuel and marinas so this trip was a lot cheaper and that’s good, too.

… but also worse

It was also a bit disappointing when compared with my first trip.

On that trip, Captain Paul’s primary interest was covering as many miles as we could so he could stay “on schedule” and finish the trip quickly. As a result, we were moving on the water more than half the days. I was able to log 23 sea days in five weeks. We covered over 1,200 miles.

On this trip, Capt John and I spent a lot of days at marinas. There was five nights at Charleston, six nights in Georgetown, and three nights each at Southport, Carolina Beach, Swansboro, and Beaufort. This pace was a lot slower than I’d expected. While these port towns were nice, most of them certainly didn’t provide enough entertainment for the number of days we were there — especially since we didn’t have access to ground transportation other than bicycles once we left Charleston. In just over five weeks, I was only able to log 13 sea days covering 325 NM.

What I learned from this is that I’d like to do the trip slower than Capt Paul but faster than Capt John. I’m thinking that one or two nights in each port town — perhaps with more stops along the way — is more in line with what I’d like to do.

Real Life Experience

I got valuable real-life boating experience on both trips.

The first trip taught me about travel along major rivers (the Hudson, the Niagara, the Detroit, and the St. Clair), dealing with locks and drawbridges on the Erie Canal, and travel on some pretty large lakes, including Lake Erie and Lake Huron.


A passing boater sent us this photo of us grounded. The situation got worse before it got better; we were there for about 4 hours before the tide finally lifted us free.

This trip taught me more about navigating tidal waters, including those with extensive shoaling. I experienced what it was like to get grounded — twice, although we were able to get ourselves out quickly the second time. I also experienced tidal flows and currents, although nothing like what I experienced years before on my Inside Passage trip.

Both trips taught me about marinas — we never once anchored out on either trip — and what I can expect to find at them: dockhands that do or don’t know what they’re doing, dockmasters who care or don’t care about boaters, types of floating or non-floating docks, fuel docks, restrooms, showers, laundry facilities, marina shops, ground transportation — the list goes on and on. We stayed at some really great marinas and a handful of crappy ones on both trips.


Here’s the boat at Carolina Beach State Park Marina. I liked this marina, but I didn’t like being stuck there so long. The very valid excuse was weather, although we could have left the day before the weather arrived.

I went on short dinghy rides on both trips. Capt Paul’s dinghy was incredibly impractical in that it was stowed on the deck under a piece of furniture and had to be inflated and the two-part motor charged and attached before use. Capt John’s dinghy was affixed to the swim platform and was more practical, although the motor had to be attached and the fuel loaded on board before it could be used. I’d take Capt John’s solution over Captain Paul’s any day. But since we never anchored out, we didn’t really need a dinghy so I didn’t get much experience with either one.

Food

Both trips taught me about the importance of having food on board.

On Capt Paul’s boat, the only meal we ate on board was breakfast and it was limited to cereal or bread. When we arrived at a port, we were usually very hungry and the first order of business was finding someplace to have lunch. Sometimes it was difficult or nearly impossible, especially after Labor Day when a lot of places seemed to be closed for the season.

Capt John, on the other hand, wanted to eat every meal on board. The trouble is, boats don’t have very large refrigerators so we really had to plan accordingly. Capt John liked to make huge meals in his crockpot so we wound up eating the same thing multiple times a week — and beyond, although I stubbornly refused to eat leftovers over a week old. (Ick.) Those leftovers took up a lot of space in the fridge so we couldn’t buy the kinds of fresh vegetables and other ingredients I like to have on hand to cook meals. We also didn’t have much freezer space because, for some reason, Capt John liked to make and store ice. We didn’t use much so we always had about a week’s worth. (For my own boat, I’ll make sure to have plenty of nonperishable foods on board, including canned soup, stew, and sardines; crackers; pasta and pasta sauce; and canned meal ingredients.)

Ground Transportation

Of course, the main challenge to having food on board is getting it there — without ground transportation it’s difficult to go grocery shopping. While Capt Paul had no way to get around when we parked at a marina, Capt John had two nice little folding bikes. I got the experience of shopping with him and filling our little backpacks with as much as we could stuff inside them so we could pedal back to the boat and fill the fridge.

The ground transportation experience was about what I expected. It had been very frustrating to be without ground transportation while traveling with Capt Paul — we wound up doing a lot of walking in heat and humidity. The bicycles, although not perfect, we must-have equipment for a trip. When it comes time for me to equip my boat, I’ll be including putting my battery assist bike with its little trailer; I expect shopping and just getting around to be a lot easier.

Other Stuff on Board

The only thing about this trip that I had a real problem about was the amount of extra stuff Capt John had on board. We had numerous fuel containers, and spare cushions, and several folding chairs and tables. We had two barbecue grills. We had a cooler we never used. We had two sets of 50-foot long 30 amp extension cords. We had tons of extra line, some of which was frayed and should have been discarded. There were buckets of rags and cleaning supplies in addition to the cabinet full of rags and cleaning supplies. This extra stuff took up space on deck, making some of the seats unusable. And I don’t even know about the extra stuff that he was storing in his cabin.


There wasn’t anything on board that was more of a pain in the ass than these cord “donuts.”

He was also big on gadgets. He had these special things I called “donuts” to roll up the 30 amp power cords but although they were attached to our main cords, we never once used them to roll up the cords. Instead, they just dangled, often in the way, on deck or on the dock when we plugged in. He also had these gadgets for adjusting the length of the ropes holding the fenders in place. They would have been a good idea if they worked properly, but they didn’t. They got stuck in the open position, dropping the fenders to the lowest position, often when you were trying to raise them before docking. And yes, he had a device with the sole purpose of making hard-cooked eggs; he ate three of them daily and cooked up 2 dozen at a time so there were always some in the fridge.

I am the clutter queen at home, but after living on a boat with so much clutter for 5 weeks, I’m going to make sure I don’t have any more equipment than I really need on my boat.

Docktails

One of the things I really liked about Capt John was how social he wanted to be with other “Loopers.” He would actively search for them at the marinas and, more than once, invite them for docktails — drinks at our boat. The way docktails work is that the folks you invite come with their own drinks and, often, a little snack like chips to share. You sit on the aft deck or inside, if the weather is bad, and chat about your trip to date. It’s a great way to learn about points of interest along the way, good (or bad) marinas, and hazards. We had at least five couples over for docktails on our trip and they were all different and interesting.

Captain Paul, on the other hand, seemed to have no interest in meeting other boaters. Even when we were at marinas with numerous other “Loopers,” he kept to himself. I was kind of shy and didn’t feel that I should be inviting strangers over to his boat — especially since he turned in so early some nights — so I completely missed out on any opportunity to meet other boaters. I’m really looking forward to having my own boat and inviting others over for docktails and a chat.

The Bottom Line

Although this most recent trip did give me plenty of marina experience and other general boating experience, it didn’t give me the number of sea days I was really hoping to earn. I earned 23 days out of 35 with Capt Paul and only 13 out of 40 with Capt John. Yes, it cost a lot less money, but my time these days is worth more than money. This was the most disappointing thing about the entire trip.

Was it worth it? I can’t say yes but I can’t say no. I can say this: I won’t do another trip like this unless I know I’ll earn at least one sea day per every two days of the trip. That means one thing: the next trip will have to be in my own boat with me calling the shots.

Now all I have to do is find and buy the boat.

Prepping for My Next Boat Trip

Posted on by
2

I start gearing up for my next crew member gig.

Just a quick note to let regular readers know that I’m gearing up for my next boat trip and will be blogging a lot less here and a lot more on My Great Loop Adventure blog. The posts there are not automatically copied here, although they are listed in the sidebar of this site. If you want notifications about new posts there, be sure to head over to the Home page there and use the Subscribe form to sign up.

This new trip is as a single crew member with Capt John on his 36′ Carver as we navigate north up the Intracoastal Waterway from Charleston, SC. Capt John takes things slower than Capt Paul did, so in the five weeks I’m on board, there will likely be fewer stops and less distance traveled. But I’ll gain a lot of new boating experience, as I detailed in today’s post on that blog. A quick visit to the site and you can also learn how I met Capt John and got this amazing opportunity to join him.

I hope to be blogging this upcoming trip on a day-by-day basis as I did for my summer trip along the Erie Canal and Great Lakes. But I’m also hoping to do a lot more videos; I might post links to them here, but I’ll definitely share them there.

I’m excited about this trip and the things I’ll be learning along the way. Although I’ll miss my pups, my home, and my jewelry shop — where I’ve been getting a ton of work done lately in preparation for a Mother’s Day art show right after my return — I always welcome the opportunity to do and learn new things. This trip was too good to pass up and I’m really looking forward to sharing what I learn with others.

I hope to see you in the comments there!