CHAPTER NINETEEN: BREAK ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF MAHOGANY, DUDLEY'S

CHAPTER NINETEEN: BREAK ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF MAHOGANY, DUDLEY’S 

The bottom line is that you almost invariably get what you pay for. Oh, sometimes you overpay, because of naivete, acquisitiveness, or an irrational “need” to own a particular thing. And if you’re like me, a WASP, God created you so someone would pay retail prices. WASP or not, anyone who is traveling on the Intracoastal Waterway has a limited number of marina choices on any given day. At the high end, you pay $2 per foot per night for your boat, as well as electricity that runs at the high end between $10 and $20. At the off-the-charts high end, there are some marinas that charge more than $2 per foot, even in the off season.

The summertime is the off season, because Great Loopers and Sun Seekers travel down the Atlantic Coast in October, November, or December and travel back up the Coast in February, March, April or May. The ICW is crawling with trawlers, yachts, all manner of boats carrying folks to Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean when it starts to get cold. When it heats up, they can’t wait to get the heck out of humid Florida and back North. The Great Loopers need ten months to do the Loop from Florida up the Atlantic Coast, up the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, down the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico and back to Florida. They plan this 10 month journey, so that they have the best weather each marina has to offer. They definitely aim to be in the Great Lakes in the summer time.

Okay, so knowing that we are taking Slow Motion for our first ICW travel during the off season, we expect to pay less for marinas. The marinas should be desperate for our business, or at least somewhat eager to get it, right? Furthermore, the Great Loopers tell us in their blogs that in the off season we should bargain with marina owners to get better prices. We have Bob’s Book on marinas along the Great Loop. It lists prices, but only one price per marina. There is no high season price and no off season price. There are Boat US discounts of 5% or 10%, but the marinas apparently don’t really care that much about giving a price break in the off season. At least, when they were contacted for Bob’s book, they gave a one size fits all, take it or leave it, price.

 Now, as you know from my prior Blogs, I am not adept at price bargaining. The only bargains I ever “find” are ones that some extremely talented shopping friends stick my nose directly into. You know who you are. So my conversations with marina owners about getting a reduced price for the off season have been very  short: “Do you have a lower price for the off season?” “No.” Or sometimes the answer is “This is not the off season.” Since I have had no success whatsoever in bargaining for lower prices than those advertised, Art and I have started reserving spots at the marinas on the low end of the price scale. And we have quickly learned what that means: showers that are not clean, marina staff that has no experience tying up 50 foot boats, noisy neighbors on the docks outside Slow Motion, no courtesy cars, long, long walks to bathrooms that do not lock, distant grocery stores that require a car rental, non-existent WIFI, unprotected docks – like a Motel 6, only MUCH worse.

We thought we had gone as low as we could go on the “economy” end of marinas, until yesterday. After about 7 hours of traveling on the ICW, dealing with 5 foot depths, running aground (briefly) on a sandbar, waiting for 12 foot vertical height bridges to open on the hour or the half hour, we dragged Slow Motion to Dudley’s – seventy five cents a foot and 0 dollars for electricity. Or, I should say, Slow Motion dragged us to the rickety, fixed, wooden dock at Dudley’s in a 25 mile per hour wind and a wicked current. Fortunately, a grouchy guy and a young lad, Cameron, were at the dilapidated dock to help us. So we only had to fight for about 10 minutes to get Slow Motion tied up precariously. There were no cleats to wrap lines around. There were big old wooden posts in the water, with huge concrete bases, that the lines had to go around. To add another degree of difficulty to the Dudley debacle, we were docking at the lowest tide anyone at Dudley’s had ever seen. Never before in the history of Dudley’s were the concrete bases of the wooden posts exposed (Sure). Slow Motion was about to bang against the concrete, because Grouchy Guy kept telling the Admiral to “back it up”. Our fenders were not positioned to protect Slow Motion, so we had to try to push her away from the dock, against the now 30 mile an hour wind, to fit the fenders between the hull and the posts and concrete bases.

 So that’s what you can get for seventy five cents a foot. Did I mention that we were on the outside of a fixed face dock, exposed all night to the winds and the currents?  And the winds increased through the night. Art got up at 2:30 a.m. to check the fenders, because if they were squished by the wind pushing Slow Motion, or if they were moved from contact with the posts, we would have had major damage to the hull.

Art secured the fenders and then tried to get a little more sleep, as the wind howled and Slow Motion rocked. As morning arose, the winds increased and the water was full of white caps. There was absolutely no way we were going to spend another night at “Dud”ley’s. And we had told them we planned to stay for 4 nights. See what the allure of seventy five cents a foot can do to otherwise safe and sane boat people?

We would have left at 6 a.m., but we had no place to go, and it was frankly pretty rough, given the high winds and the white caps. There is another marina, more expensive than “Dud”ley’s (who isn’t?), and it was really close. They said they had a space for us, as soon as another boat cleared out. We waited, and we waited, and finally around 10:30 a.m. the other boat cleared out. We couldn’t get away from the dilapidated dock of Dudley’s fast enough. But it was just as hard getting away, as it was tying up – in fact, harder, because the weather was worse. The Admiral removed all the ties. The only things protecting Slow Motion were the fenders, which had been really beaten up. The hard part was getting the stern to clear away from the concrete base and the wooden post and dock.

We thought we had escaped, but then I heard a loud popping sound, and something flew near my face. I thought we had lost a fender. As it turned out, upon inspection of Slow Motion at our safer marina, that damned dock at Dudley’s had taken a small piece of our mahogany wood from the stern of the boat. So all day I have been hearing Janis Joplin singing plaintively “Come on, Come on, Take it! Yeah, Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. Break another little piece of my heart now, baby, yeah.” It may just be a little six inch by one inch piece of mahogany that was ripped off, but dammit, Dudley’s, you took a little piece of our sweetheart – “you know you got it, if it makes you feel good.”

I would have channeled Janis and the blues all day, but the people at our new marina, Casper’s, were so friendly and welcoming that the blues melted away. The owner – the owner – of Casper’s helped us tie up, and he knew what he was doing. I was back to bumbling a little, throwing a line to the dock that fell in the water. But Casper, who introduced himself to us as “I’m the man”, was either forgiving or unruffled, or both. Casper’s entire family has taken us in. His wife and daughter run the store, which has more fishing equipment than most West Marine stores and much better prices than Bass Pro, according to Art. His sons helped us dock and gave us the keys to Swansboro, a town I intend to explore tomorrow (especially the shop that says “Ice Cream” on the outside).  They have all commiserated with us about the uncommonly strong winds – which usually occur in March, never in July. And Mr. Casper knew the guy who sold Art his fishing boat many, many years ago. That guy “lived on the edge” and died in a motorcycle accident, Mr. Casper reported.  

I have re-learned a lesson that I learned for the first time when I bought a Capezio shoe look-alike at a lesser price. If it’s cheap, it’s probably cheaply made and, like the Capezio knock offs, it will probably hurt you every time you use it. Bargains, yes. Cheap, no. It was serendipitous to find Casper’s marina, a real bargain, and to save Slow Motion from any further damage at dastardly Dudley’s. One piece of mahogany was already too high a price to pay. Slow Motion deserves better. This is an important lesson, Grasshopper: Avoid “cheap” at all costs. Protect the ones you love.

Two short bits:

1. Sailboaters pulled into Casper’s after we did, and the Admiral helped them tie up. It’s nice not to be the only big boat on the dock. And the captain of the sailboat was very grateful for the help. Boaters generally assist each other. It’s a community that we discover more about at each marina. Sure, there are Adam Henrys in every community, but most of the boat people we meet and most of the marina people we meet give us good advice and help us along our way. The kindness of strangers has never been more apparent nor more appreciated.

2. The local Coast Guard has a new boat toy, which they were showing off in the high winds and choppy waters of Bogue Inlet (where we are). This boat is 100 per cent made in America – two powerful 800 hp engines from Detroit Diesel. It does not have a helm or steering wheel of any kind. It operates with a “joy stick” instead of a helm (steering wheel) and throttle and transmission levers (gas pedal and brake). That means any child of five or older (Patrick, are you ready? How about you, Olivia?) can operate it. They were practicing pulling away from the dock and returning to the dock. The winds had increased to 40 plus miles an hour. We have a few photos. The four Coast Guard crew members were definitely acting like kids who got the neatest present for Christmas – in July. Yes, these are our tax dollars at work. A beautiful boat, and nobody gets hurt.

So let’s end this blog on a happy note with a little Creedence Clearwater Revival (Jeremiah was a bullfrog):

“Joy to the world, all the boys and girls now

Joy to the fishies in the deep blue sea

And joy to you and me.”