No Boat Travel
The big four-day rendezvous event concluded this evening with an awards dinner after another full day of lecture and seminar sessions. We were up and out for our 8:00 Show and Tell as we needed to attend all three of today's Show and Tells to qualify to enter a drawing for a prize given to a lucky person who attended every session offered throughout the week.
Other than attending the Show and Tell sessions together, Clark and I split up and went our separate ways today. He attended the lecture series on route segments between Florida and Norfolk, Virginia, and I attended the seminars. Today's seminars included topics that I found worthwhile for me. The prior days' seminars were geared toward the planner / non-looper. As a looper already in progress I did not need to attend sessions offered before today that covered such topics as what boat to buy or what to pack for the trip.
Today's topics covered
- selling a boat on your own or through a broker,
- budgeting for and tracking expenses on the Great Loop,
- understanding the capabilities of the Waterway Guide website tools,
- utilizing the greatloop.org route map,
- handling medical emergencies on board, and
- touring Dauphin Island in Mobile Bay.
I found all the sessions quite interesting. Even though Clark and I have no plans to sell our boat at this time, even that session was interesting as it provided useful hints for future reference.
We signed up again today to allow folks to crawl all over our boat in the "Looper Crawl". However, Clark decided it would be fun to participate in the dinghy races at 4:00, so no sooner did we open the boat for viewing than we had to close up the boat for about an hour while we went and joined in the fun at the lodge gazebo.
For the dinghy race we had no advanced information on what to expect other than the rules were to be a surprise. As soon as we heard that, on day one, we turned to each other and said, "Blindfolded!" We guessed correctly on the blindfolded part of the instructions. What came as a big surprise was the "drive the boat in reverse" part of the rules. When we arrived at the starting point for the race, only two dinghies were present - ours and one other. Two other boats had signed up but had not shown up yet.
The planner of the race explained the rules to us
- captain blindfolded and facing rear of boat to work the outboard
- dinghy driven in reverse
- first mate navigates by verbal command only -- no hitting or touching the driver and no thumping the side of the dinghy
- travel out to a buoy a couple of hundred feet from the dock, go around the buoy and return to starting point
Clark was a bit concerned with the handling of the dinghy in reverse - at too fast of a speed it goes sideways. We agreed that I would say things like "turn right 45 degrees", "turn left 90 degrees" which surprised me because I thought he would want me to say starboard and port, but right and left was fine. We took it rather slow and easy to maintain a good course. At points I told Clark to accelerate - sometimes he listened other times that wasn't so clear to me.
Upon our return I could tell that we had severely disappointed the person running the event because we got in the dinghy and did exactly what we were supposed to do, i.e. drove out to the buoy, went around the buoy, came back and docked the boat - all with Clark blindfolded. Other than the fact that we did not draw an exact straight line from the dock to the buoy and back again, I expect that it did not even look like Clark was blindfolded to someone observing us from shore.
Now, I am not boasting. I am simply stating facts because the second couple that got up to participate (Knot Sew Easy) did the exact same thing that Clark and I did with one exception - they did not dock their boat. As it turned out docking the boat was not part of the competition, we just had to cross the finish line. Clark and I might have won the race had we understood that small detail as Clark refused to go fast when I told him to as he wanted to be sure he could land the boat. Ah well - second place is not a bad place!
Three other participants showed us how the planner expected the race to play out as not one of them managed to get their boat around the buoy. The third boat in line (after ours and KSE) had a center console dinghy with a steering wheel. They went in circles and came dangerously close to careening into a 50-something foot boat docked near the race course. At one point they appeared to be moving at a rather rapid rate directly for the dock. Shortly after that the first mate called out that they quit.
The fourth couple out borrowed the dinghy from KSE since they did not have one. I was surprised to see the wife take the outboard controls and the husband become the navigator. My guess is that their thinking was that she would listen to him better than he would listen to her instructions. The down side of their arrangements became pretty clear when she had to ask how to work the outboard. They got just about 30 feet out from the start line and then just went in circles very quickly as she seemed to have a great deal of trouble understanding how to control the boat speed. At some point the boat took off in the wrong direction headed for boats docked along the side of the race area. I was concerned that they would crash into a boat. Instead they managed to wedge themselves in between a boat and a dock. After that they too called quits.
The fifth couple out were two captains who decided one would steer and the other navigate. The wife of the navigator stood next to me watching and told me her husband is dyslexic. She did not expect it to end well. The route they took away from the dock was like a sailboat tacking in the wind - first they went right then they turned 45 degrees and went left then they turned 45 degrees and went right ... I have no idea but in an odd way it was at least getting them out there. (In all of the bizarre cases of circles or zigzags I thought it would be interesting to hear the instructions being given.) Then, all of a sudden, their engine failed and they could not get it restarted. Ultimately they had to call quits and row back to the dock -- the dinghy ran out of gas because the connector to the gas can became disconnected during the race.
Shortly after we returned to Sea Moss to see if any looper crawlers wanted to see the boat, we had a few couples board the boat for a look-see. A boat broker participating in the rendezvous came by with a couple in tow to show them our boat since it is the same make and model as one he has for sale down the road a few miles. The only difference is that the other boat is a single engine and is a year older model than ours. We happen to know the boat, which is currently named Aunt Aggie, as we met the current owners of the boat just before they completed their Great Loop trip. The broker was very happy that we let him show our boat to them.
After all the excitement of the day, at the awards ceremony at tonight's dinner, we learned that Knot Sew Easy won first place in the dinghy race. For their achievement they won a very nice canvas travel bag. Other awards given out to rendezvous attendees included several bags, hats, and t-shirts as well as a couple of gift certificates. Certificates of appreciation were distributed to speakers, et al.
Even without winning the dinghy race, Clark and I certainly did not come away empty-handed from the event as, over the course of this four-day event, we won or received long-sleeved and short-sleeved t-shirts, multiple tote bags in a variety of shapes and sizes, bottle covers to keep our drinks cold, cell phone "wallets" that attach to our phones and hold a credit card for convenience, a captain's log book, several handy notebooks, discounts at marinas, and one-year's free membership renewal in the AGLCA for attending every one of the Show and Tell sessions.
Pictures of the AGLCA event at Joe Wheeler State Park were taken by the Curtis Stokes yacht brokerage firm via drone during the course of the event. Pictures of boats were taken as boats came in on Monday. When we arrived on Tuesday, however, the wind was gusting too much for the drone to be flying, so our boat was not captured individually. In a picture of the Joe Wheeler State Park - Lodge the dock where our boat is docked is shown on the right side of the picture, but our boat is not captured in the photo. However, finally, the sunset at Pier 600 photo shows Sea Moss on the far side of the dock. We are the seventh boat from lodge.
An AGLCA Group Photo was taken yesterday - by camera, not drone. Clark and I barely made it into the picture but we can be seen on the left-hand side of the photo. Since we were late arriving, we are standing at the edge of the group.
Since so many boaters will be leaving here tomorrow it may well be a mad house. I suggested to Clark that we stay here an extra night to let the crowd thin. As I talked with others today, it appears that a number of captains (or their mates) had similar thinking as I found several of us who will be leaving here Monday instead of tomorrow. When we leave here Monday, we will be heading upstream to Chattanooga instead of downstream on the way back to the Great Loop route.
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