ICW
What Larks!
Merry Christmas to all! Your gift: a recycled blog post!
December 25, 2017 -- Vero Beach, Florida
Merry Christmas to everyone out there from Matt, Lucy and Hastings
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| Happy holidays from Vero Beach |
Capt. Matt --
There is absolutely nothing I love more than reading Lucy's old posts on this blog! Today as a special treat I want to share my all-time favorite: her take on our first trip all the way up the ICW in 2016. So, your gift for the holiday season, I present: Distraction, Despair and Betrayal on the ICW.
Capt. Lucy --
July 2016
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| You don't want to be distracted, or you'll be grumpy! |
I thought the intracoastal would be terribly dull and boring. Not so. It’s a little dull, then extraordinarily exciting, then there’s betrayal and deception followed by war. And every once in a while you have to pay attention.
For instance, in the Cape Fear River (which is on a red right returning system, opposite the red-land-intracoastal system) there’s a channel for an army installation. If you get confused and go into that channel, you get blown up. It’s a mistake no one makes twice. Or, if you are enjoying Cape Fear River, you can keep going to Wilmington. I’m sure it’s lovely there, but it’s a dead end!
Matt has an app “Active Captain”. This app overlays on a nautical chart on his phone. Boaters add reviews of marinas, anchorages, routes, and hazards to navigation. A lot of them can be quite negative, so we like to call the app “Grumpy Captain”. Matt likes to entertain us by reading out upcoming hazard reviews. "Ooooh, prepare yourself for grumpiness", he’ll say. "At marker 35A some grumpy captains ran aground. One says to hug the green, but the other says to hug the red and if he’d hugged the green he’d be even grumpier." “So, stay in the middle of the channel?” “Yeah, that would be good”.
I know what you are thinking. How hard is it to stay in the middle of the channel? Well, it’s impossible. You could be in the middle of the channel and everything is hunky dory. Then you see a pod of dolphins, or you have to bat at a fly, or you have to have a conversation with the dog about the flies, and suddenly, you’re running aground or headed the wrong way. You could be so enamored with reading grumpy captain’s tales of woe and laughing to yourself, that you yourself run aground. Or you could be caught up in one of the worst conspiracies of deception and despair that has ever been perpetrated on mankind and you are simply unable to cope with straight lines while you angrily wave your arms and pout.
Let’s say you’re a cruiser, and grocery getting involves dinghying miles to shore against the waves. You arrive at the dinghy dock soaked and march a mile to the grocery store. You purchase delicious, wonderful almond chocolate chip granola bars, march a mile back to the dinghy, and dinghy back to the boat.
The next day, while headed between the markers, you open said granola bar with a smile. But that smile quickly turns to revulsion and disgust. For nestled in between the delicious, life-affirming nuggets of chocolate are a betrayal called raisins. Raisins used to be good back when they were grapes, but some miscreant perv set them in the sun and made them into vile yuck berries. To add to the horror, unsuspecting granola bar eaters think they look like delicious wonderful chocolate, but they are the exact opposite of chocolate.
So, while you are retching and stamping on the vile imposter granola bar, who can cope with details like channel markers and currents and bridges? Who can head in the right direction while writing an angry letter to your congressmen, and the President, and creating a petition for the banishment of all imposter dried fruits that could be chocolate instead? Now you’re aground, and wondering why Grumpy Captain didn’t warn you of the danger of yuck berries at Red 44A.
2 comments
A great read indeed. Thanks for the gift. We miss you too :)
ReplyDeleteWe've been missing you guys as well! I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that a Japanese-engine building Santa brought you all you asked for! And Happy New Year!
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