9 October 2015, Oriental, NC \u2013 24 October 2015, Riviera Beach, FL<\/p>\n
Trawler trip down the ICW<\/p>\n
It all started with an e-mail from \u201cTrawler School Captain Bob\u201d this past March saying he was\u00a0going to travel to Boston to give Trawler Classes there in the summer. He inquired if any of us\u00a0would like to charter the Miami Mermaid for a portion of the trip on the ICW. My wife and I\u00a0being former students of his trawler school in 2011 thought it would be a unique experience so\u00a0we e-mailed back and requested a portion of the southern Leg.<\/p>\n
We took the trawler class thinking about buying a trawler but due to the wealth of information\u00a0we received from Captain Bob\u2019s on the pros and cons we decided to buy a small house on the\u00a0water with a bay boat. Being a retired Coast Guard Officer we (my wife Betty & I) never strayed\u00a0far from the water, I currently am still a partner in a Management company dealing with ocean\u00a0going tugs & barges. But the desire to cruise the intercostal waterway has always lingered in\u00a0our bucket list so we jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n
The cruise was an irreplaceable experience and the fond memories will always be with us. In\u00a0reality we chartered the Miami Mermaid, charted the course, picked out the stops and\u00a0expanded our knowledge in navigation, not to mention the hours of hands on the helm.<\/p>\n
Captain Bob seemed to disappear after we got underway in the morning and reclassified \u00a0himself as Cabin Boy Bob which means he also bought the groceries, cooked the meals. (That\u2019s\u00a0when he turned into Chef-Boy-AR-Dee Bob and turned the saloon into a 5-star restaurant with\u00a0music, candles and wine).<\/p>\n
Our trips ashore in his dingy (Named \u201cMy Ding-A-Ling\u201d) were always special. We ended up in a\u00a0mullet festival in Swanville, a wonderful seafood dinner and then partying on a 75\u2019 trawler in\u00a0Charleston, a late afternoon carriage ride through the historic district of Beaufort then shrimp &\u00a0grits at Blackstone\u2019s Caf\u00e9 in the a.m. and a drink in Florida\u2019s oldest tavern the \u201cPalace Saloon\u201d\u00a0while at Fernandina Beach. Every day was an adventure whether ashore or at sea one day finds\u00a0us running at Idle speed through South Carolina\u2019s storm flooded waterway being shadowed by\u00a0the Marine patrol or Coast Guard to insure the NO WAKE zone was enforced as the water was\u00a0over the banks and into the homes or maneuvering up from the end of the Brunswick River\u00a0open to the Atlantic in 4-6 foot seas.<\/p>\n
The many homes we passed were unbelievable due to the architectural beauty and or\u00a0landscaping. It was like a daily boat show sharing the waterway with every kind of vessel from\u00a0multimillion dollar pleasure craft, other trawlers, river tugs and barges to sailing yachts of every\u00a0description.<\/p>\n
Sailing again with Captain Bob was a pleasure, we traveled around 800 miles ending around 50\u00a0miles short due to my coming down with a kidney infection but as he Medevac\u2019d me ashore it\u00a0all ended with smiles & high fives.<\/p>\n
Bon voyage<\/p>\n
Betty & Jerry Schambeau<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
9 October 2015, Oriental, NC \u2013 24 October 2015, Riviera Beach, FL Trawler trip down the ICW It all started with an e-mail from \u201cTrawler School Captain Bob\u201d this past March saying he was\u00a0going to travel to Boston to give Trawler Classes there in the summer. He inquired if any of us\u00a0would like to charter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trawlerschoolcharters.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}