Author: Steve

Well, it’s over. At least land life is over for the time being. One year, two years, or more – we’ll figure that out as we go. We moved on board full time on May 11, the day after my birthday. The house in Franklin, TN has sold, we closed on May 26. Estate sale has completed, that was held on May 15 and 16.

We are now in the process of wrapping up lots of loose ends before heading out. We use a mailing service out of Green Cove Springs, FL. With them, we actually have a street address that all our mail is sent to. After establishing that, we have now gotten our boat registered in the state of Florida, which is necessary before you can declare Florida as your resident state. Choosing Florida as our resident state was mostly the result of two points. The first and VERY important one was that it is a state that, like Tennessee, does not have income tax. The second point is that unlike the state of Tennessee, there was a mailing service located in Florida that can provide a physical mailing address, as opposed to a mailbox number, which is a requirement to declare residency if you don’t own or rent a physical residence. We don’t physically have the boat registration in hand yet, but the Clay County tax office did call me Friday and told me that it was completed and being mailed to my Green Cove Springs address. After it is received there and it has been forwarded to us at the marina here, then we will drive to Green Cove Springs to the court house to get drivers licenses and declare residency. Then it will be on to register to vote and get our trust that was set up in Tennessee reworked for Florida requirements. At the same time, we have told the marina here at Joe Wheeler State Park in Rogersville, AL, that we will be leaving here at the end of June. So it is going to be a very busy two weeks. With the apocalypse going on at the same time, it has really added challenges to say the least.

And so it begins, a slow cruising start, but a very busy time getting ready to go. By the end of June, the plan is to start a slow run down the Tennessee River to Green Turtle Bay Resort and Marina near Grand Rivers, KY. And no, that wasn’t a typo, going downriver on either the Tennessee River or the Cumberland River means that you will be traveling north. Tennessee rivers run north. For some reason. Anyway, we plan to stop in at Florence, AL , only about 20 river miles from this marina, for a couple days, we would like to visit some of the musical sites around the Muscle Shoals area. A lot of famous 60’s and early 70’s music was recorded in that area, and even though we’ve been located near there for almost a year, we haven’t had the time to really visit. After that, a couple days stopped at Aqua Yacht Harbor marina near Iuka, MS about 60 river miles from Florence Harbor Marina. We’re hoping to meet up with some old friends that we made in years past when we had sailboats at that marina. After that, we plan to leave AYH and make our way to the Pickwick Lock and Dam which is about 10 river miles from AYH. After we lock through there we will actually be in the Kentucky Lake pool, but about 75 river miles from Green Turtle Bay.

So this is where we are at this point. For now we’re busy getting ready for this life while living it.

Since it will be a while before we can start down the flooded river system, I’ll take a little time to tell about the boat itself. She is a 1999 Ocean Alexander Classico 48/51, meaning that it is an OA Classico 48 that was stretched to 51 ft. The original owner, who at the time owned the Ocean Alexander dealership in Sturgeon Bay ordered the boat and had her built to his specifications, adding about two feet in the master bedroom, and an additional foot in the salon. She was named Noble House, for the owner’s wife’s favorite book. We were to change her name to Legacy.

She is equipped with twin 370 hp Lugger Diesel engines, (detuned from 425 hp for reliability), and twin 8kw Northern Lights Generators. Top speed is around 12 knots, but cruising speed is roughly 9 knots. Stabilization was a must have on this boat, as my wife Kristin can be prone to sea sickness occasionally. Stabilizers are two hydraulically operated fins that protrude from both sides of the boat, rotating as needed to minimize the dreaded side to side roll. The starboard stabilizer is shown below during the out of water inspection.

The boat is also equipped with both bow and stern thrusters, making her not only the largest boat I’ve ever driven, but at the same time the easiest boat to dock. Between having two engines to help maneuver, adding the two thrusters to the mix almost makes it too easy! A HD DirecTV satellite system keeps cable TV at our beck and call, and a watermaker helps tremendously.

She carries 300 gallons of fresh water and a total of 760 gallons of diesel fuel.

For navigation, she has two totally separate sets of electronics for redundancy. One set is in the flybridge up top, the other is at the helm in the salon. Simrad chartplotters, Furuno radar, autopilot, Micro Commander electronic engine controls with auto engine sync, along with the usual array of depth finders, compasses, VHF radio, etc. I could go on, but this gives everyone but the extreme boat geeks such as myself a good overall idea of the vessel.

After deciding that yes, this is what we’re going to do, we had to decide on the boat. We already knew that a sailboat was out of the question. Sailing was fun, we had enjoyed it for many years, we had even raced, but the joy of pulling on sheets and lines to keep the boat on course and sailing efficiently had faded over the years. Therefore, a diesel trawler it was going to be! We needed to consider that we were going to be cruising many miles, and fuel economy had to be taken into account. We weren’t going to be in a hurry anymore, (since we aren’t going to have to be back at work on Monday!), so a slow trawler was the only choice for us. Next decision, how big of a boat do we want. If you are determined to do the loop, the loop forces a few mandatory restrictions on your choices. There is a famous bridge (for Loopers), just south of Chicago that you must be able to clear. It is a fixed bridge, and you must be able to go under that bridge. From the water at normal depth, it is 19 ft, 6 inches to the structure of the bridge. (Our boat can clear that by dropping the radar mast). Also 4 ft. draft, (depth of the keel below waterline on the boat) is ideal, but up to six ft. is possible. Legacy draws 5 ft., so that will limit a few possible side trips, but won’t jeopardize the journey in any way. Knowing that we were going to be living on this for at least a year and hopefully more, we knew we were going to need to live comfortably. In October of 2018, we attended the Great Looper Cruising Association’s Fall Rendezvous in Rogersville, AL. This is an event for people that area actually doing the loop, as well as those who are planning on doing the loop. This is a four day event, with training and learning sessions all day each day, and social interaction at night. They also hold a Looper crawl, in which Rendezvous attendees are able to tour the boats that the owners agree to participate. It was during this “crawl” that we realized that we needed to move up from what we had been considering, (40 ft.), to something more in the 50 – 60 ft. range. At the rendezvous, I made contact with a broker with Curtis Stokes and began some discussion with him about what I was looking for. I took his information, and we agreed that in the near future we would be speaking.

A few months passed, Michael Martin, (Curtis Stokes broker), and I talked over the phone and email several times. I had a pretty specific list of items that were must haves on the boat I was looking for, (stabilization was a BIG must have,), and a pretty large list of nice to haves, (a water maker was somewhere between a must have and a nice to have as water can be fairly expensive in the Bahamas). There weren’t a lot of boats that fit the specifics we were looking for, and many that did had problems that turned us off. I had seen a boat on yachtworld.com several times that had all the must haves, all the nice to haves and even some nice to haves that we weren’t specifically looking for. It was an Ocean Alexander 51, and Ocean Alexander was one of the two or three make of boats that we were interested in. Only problem was, the boat was in Sturgeon Bay, WI – northern Wisconsin and it was wintertime. I talked to Michael about it, it was now March, and he suggested that we might want to go up and take a look at the boat if we really were interested. Since the bays and lakes up there freeze, boats are hauled out for the winter and stored inside buildings, some heated, some not heated. Luckily, our boat was in a heated facility. Michael made the arrangements with the selling broker for a date to view the boat, Kristin and I bought plane tickets to Green Bay, rented a car to drive the hour to Sturgeon Bay, met all the players and entered the building, climbed the ladder to get on the boat and have a look around. The boat was immaculate. Everything looked brand new, clean, and obviously this boat had been meticulously cared for. We spent about three hours crawling all over the boat, down in the bilges, in the engine room, back in the rear bilge/generator room, this thing was perfect. We all split up, Michael, Kristin and I all went to a local restaurant for a snack and to be able to chat a bit. A decision was made that we were going to make an offer on the boat that day. Kristin and I had a hotel room at the Green Bay airport for that night, (Saturday), so Michael worked up an offer while he was waiting at the airport for his flight, sent it digitally to my iPad, we signed it and the negotiations began. We didn’t hear anything that day or night, Michael was flying home, so he was out of touch for a while. Sunday morning, Kristin and I turned in our rental car, went into the Green Bay airport to wait for our flight home. Alas, it wasn’t to be. The FAA had grounded the plane due to an overdue maintenance item, and mechanics were driving from Detroit to fix it. Yes, I said driving. I pulled up Google maps, did a quick search and realized that in the amount of time it was going to take these mechanics to drive from Detroit to Green Bay, we could almost be home if we rented a car and took off. And since this flight was our only chance to get out of there, (Green Bay is a tiny airport), if there were any delay at all, we wouldn’t be getting home that night, we decided to rent a car to come home. It probably was a good thing too, as negotiations began that morning as well. As we were driving south, Michael would call with their counter offer, we would counter back, and this went on for several calls. Finally it was becoming clear that we were not going to get anymore concessions out of the owners, an agreement was made to accept their last offer as we were driving through Milwaukee, WI, contingent upon a sea trial that would take place some time after Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan were clear of ice. Now all we had to do was wait, and during the wait try to find surveyor, (inspector), for the overall boat, as well as an engine surveyor to inspect the engines during the sea trials. There were four engines to inspect, two generators, and two propulsion engines. And in a place as small as this area was, it wasn’t going to be easy.

For those that may not know about purchasing a boat of this size, a short explanation of the process. None of this is mandatory of course, in reality, you can walk up to the owner and without even looking around the boat, offer a check and sail away. Of course, you wouldn’t do this with a house, and with a boat of this type, you’re literally buying a small city. You will be producing your own water, you will be producing your own electricity when away from the dock, you have your own waste treatment plant, there are a lot of complicated, (meaning expensive), systems, and you want someone knowledgeable to inspect these items and put them through the paces. An inspection usually begins with a haulout. This means that the boat is lifted out of the water so that the surveyor can inspect the hull beneath the waterline for damage, water intrusion, etc. At this time, he can also check props for any prop damage, check prop pitch, etc. Usually at that time, the boat is placed back into the water, taken back to its slip and the inspection of the rest of the boat begins. In this case, since the boat was already in its carriage for the winter, the need for haulout wasn’t necessary, I just needed to make an extra trip to Sturgeon Bay for the hull inspection as well as the overall boat inspection. I found a surveyor, we all agreed on a date for the survey, my broker, Michael Martin, the selling broker and I all traveled to the boat for the inspection. As was expected, everything went perfectly. Some minor issues, nothing to break the deal. Now we just had to wait for the bays and lakes to thaw so the boat could be placed back in the water and we could take it out on the sea trials. This is where all the systems are given a work out, making sure all work as expected. By the time the sea trials were scheduled, I had found someone in Milwaukee that could do the engine surveys, so another trip up for all parties, and a couple hours out on Lake Michigan putting the boat through the paces. Again, everything went as expected, and when the oil samples from engines and transmissions came back a few days later showing all was well there, the paperwork was signed and the deal was negotiated over the following week. It was time to bring our new baby home. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas. Extreme flooding on the River system that we would be using to bring her home had locks closed all through the middle of the country, on the Illinois River as well as the Mississippi. So, we had to leave her in Sturgeon Bay for a couple months before we could begin the journey.

It all began in Bonaire, a small Dutch owned island located not too far off the coast of Venezuela, in 2001. My wife Kristin and I are SCUBA divers, and Bonaire is a SCUBA diver’s paradise. One afternoon after a day of diving, we were having drinks by the water’s edge at the Buddy Dive resort’s bar enjoying the view of the water and the many sailboats anchored nearby. Kristin asked me if when we retired if I would ever be interested in doing something like cruising the world on a sailboat. My reply was, of course! Now, at this point in my life, the only sailboat I’d ever been on was of the booze cruise variety where the sails were only deployed to make the half looped tourists feel like they really were sailing. Somewhere in the conversation, she mentioned that if we were going to do this, then we would need to know how to sail. We discussed this dilemma for a bit, when I finally told her, “when we get back home, if you’ll find someone to teach us to sail, I’ll learn to sail”. At that time, we lived in Collierville, TN, a suburb of Memphis, and Pickwick Lake on the TN river wasn’t too far away. She accepted the challenge and after we got back home she found an extremely patient and trusting man, Ned Smith, to teach us how to sail. He had a small, and very fast racing sailboat that we spent the weekend learning the basics on. He even sent us out on our own that Sunday afternoon. (Remember I said he was a very trusting man?). Anyway, long story short, I loved it, and vowed that I was going to own a sailboat, and it wasn’t going to be very long before I owned one.

The search began. Kristin was envisioning a small Hobie Cat style sailboat, but my sights were on something a little bigger. We ended up finding a 23 ft. Santana sailboat that we could actually sleep on, and it even had a porta-potty on board! Very soon, the need to be able to stand up inside the boat started becoming a priority, so we ended up buying a 34 ft. Catalina. After a fire destroyed that sailboat, we moved to a Catalina 380.

Now, during this time, we kept our boats at Aqua Yacht Harbor, which is near Iuka, MS on the Tennessee River. It is also right at the entrance to the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway. Every year, starting mid summer through fall, we kept meeting these folks that were passing through, doing something called the Great Loop. The more I heard about it, the more intrigued I became. (For anyone that doesn’t know what the Great Loop is, just google it, there are mountains of information on it). Anyway, I told my wife that someday we were going to do that, to which her answer was always a good-natured, sarcastic laugh. A job transfer moved us to the Houston, TX area, we had our Catalina 380 shipped to Galveston Bay, and our sailing continued. Unfortunately for Kristin, cancer returned for her a couple years after getting the boat to Galveston Bay. (She has now been cancer free for 12 years). It was going to be a long year, and not much if any boat usage was going to happen. We really hadn’t discussed the sale of our Catalina 380, but as I was sitting in Houston’s rush hour traffic coming home from work one Friday afternoon, my phone rang, and it was a yacht broker. Someone had seen our boat, talked to some of our dock neighbors and found out about our situation and he was interested in buying the boat. The broker wanted to know if we were interested in selling, to which I answered, no. She replied that if I changed my mind to give her a call back. I got home, told my wife about it, and we had a laugh about it and didn’t think anymore about it…..yeah, right. I had laid awake that night thinking about things, and apparently Kristin had too. We talked about selling the boat the next day, and it seemed to really make sense. For the next year, we would be paying dockage fees, insurance and electrical usage on a boat that we weren’t going to be able to use much at all if any. And anyone that has been around boats knows that if you don’t use ’em and maintain ’em, they go to crap very quickly. I called the broker back on Monday, a deal was made within a couple weeks and we were boatless.

Fast forward a few years. Another job transfer had moved us to Franklin, TN, a suburb of Nashville. Still not too far from the TN River, just a different lake. And understand that throughout all these years I had been constantly talking about doing the Great Loop for a year and after that, spending the winters in the Caribbean, and the summers up in Canada. I wanted to follow 80 degrees. Just like my father before me, I absolutely HATE cold weather. At this point it had been about 8 or 9 years since we’d owned a boat, but I still was pushing a plan to live aboard for a few years after retirement. And retirement was approaching fast. One beautiful Sunday spring day, we took a ride in the convertible and ended up stopping at a marina on a lake nearby. We walked the docks, had lunch, and headed home. Over the next few weeks, Kristin kept talking about the marina, and the boats as well as the boating life. I said, “you’re actually missing the boating life, aren’t you?”. She replied that indeed she was. A light came on in my head, and it was shining brightly. Over the next year or two, we talked a lot about it, and she finally decided that it was something she was interested in doing, the Great Loop year 1, then (if I can make sure she’s happy), do the Caribbean and Canada thing after that. I will tell you that she made me a very happy man over the course of that decision! Those are the beginnings of this dream of mine, and somewhat reluctant tolerance of hers. My goal is to make her wonder why she ever resisted in the first place!