Life in the Slow Lane (The Pearl)

June 10 - Cruise Interruptions

"Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation." —Lois Wyse

We found out we were having another grandwonder on our way home from the boat last fall and knew we didn’t want to make any cruising plans for this summer. We wanted to have time to play with our granddaughter, and have time to help take care of the new baby. Some things are just more important than having fun on a boat…there aren’t too many things, but grandwonders certainly are! So this is going to be a transitional year for us…moving from the summer cruising we’ve been doing the past three years to winter cruising. For now our plan is to spend next January and February in Marathon (The Keys) and then go to Abaco in the spring…after that who knows.

We planned to be home by the time our new little grandwonder made his arrival, so we could be at the hospital for the joyful occasion. But this new little person had his own plan. We got the phone call last Wednesday morning at 3AM that Brytanie was in labor and he was making his appearance almost two weeks early. I’m sure it won’t be the last time he has plans of his own.

We had finished all the work we wanted to get done on the boat while we were waiting for his arrival, but we hadn’t quite taken the time to get home. I had a feeling we might need to leave a little earlier, so I packed all our clothes and took inventory of what we were leaving on Tuesday. After our son, Kyle, called with the good news, we loaded the car and shut down the boat in record time and were on our way home by 5 AM. It’s a 16 hour drive from Jacksonville, FL to Temple, TX and although we wanted to be there for the birth I hoped the baby would come quickly…and he did, very quickly. We weren’t even out of Florida when we heard he’d arrived. Thanks to modern technology we got to keep up with the progress and had a picture of our new grandson minutes after his birth. Not quite as good as being there, but still very exciting.

Graham Thomas Marshall arrived at 8:06AM (central time) weighing 7lbs. 8oz. and 20.5” long. Neither Brytanie’s parents coming from California or us from Florida could make it in time for Graham’s birth, but Stan’s sister got there just moments after he arrived and she made a great stand-in Mom and Grandma until all of us got there. He joins a large family on both sides and will definitely be surrounded by a lot of love the rest of his life.

We plan to return to the boat in the fall or even a short trip later this summer, but for now we are going to enjoy being grandparents to two of the most amazing little people in the world. We have a lot of hugging and kissing to catch up on.

Graham Thomas Marshall

June 3 – Small Vessel Reporting System

Lamb’s Yacht Center

Our plan is to go to the Bahamas next spring, so we’ve been doing a lot of research…reading everything we can online, in books and magazines plus talking to anyone we meet that has been there on their boat. One thing we knew we wanted to take care of this year was registering for the SVRS (Small Vessel Reporting System). This program is offered by the U.S. Customs & Border Protection agency to make immigration clearance for low risk recreational boaters easier on their arrival from a foreign port.

It’s a painless process…if you know a few things that aren’t explained well on the CBP (Customs & Border Protection) website. We tried several times to register online when we were in Charleston, but ran into the same problem each time. Their site would lock up when we tried to enter the information on our vessel. We tried calling the number on the website for information and even sent an email, but we got no response. Later we talked to a CBP officer on the dock, he told us we could register without the vessel and add it later. That seems weird…isn’t this called Small Vessel Reporting System? He also told us everyone on board needs to register…no where on their website does it tell you that! Maybe it should be called the Passenger Reporting System. So the secret is to register each person and schedule a time for an interview and bring your vessel information with you.

The SVRS is a free program. If you have a SVRS number all you have to do is call the CBP when you arrive back in an U.S. port. They will ask you a few questions and clear you, your passengers and vessel by phone. If you DON’T have a SVRS number you have to report in person to the nearest CBP office within 24 hours of your arrival. Our interview wasn’t much of an interview…we had heard they would take our pictures and fingerprint us, but that didn’t happen. All they did was take our boat information and issue each of us a SVRS number. The process was simple and painless.

We wanted to get registered in this program while we had our car, because the interviews are only done at certain CBP locations. Those locations can be hard to get to when you arrive on a boat. We found out that one of the easiest places to register if you don’t have a car would be Fernandina Beach, their office is close to the marina.

Vessels also need to have a DTOPS (Decal/Transponder Online Procurement System) decal. It’s a yearly decal (cost $27.50) that is required by the CBP for vessels 30 ft. or more in length that travel in and out of US waters. The decal will be displayed on our boat and lessen our chances of being detained or boarded for inspection by CBP. We’ll go online this fall and apply for the 2015 DTOPS decal, because it can take 4-6 weeks to arrive and we want everything done before we leave for the Keys after Christmas.

June 2 – Jacksonville, FL

Lamb's Yacht Center

"Sounds of the wind or sounds of the sea; Make me happy just to be."—June Polis

This past week Stan stayed busy compounding and waxing the upper portion of the boat. It’s been at least two years since he’s had time to do the job completely at one time. Once that job was done the boat had to be washed and scrubbed to remove all the dust that compounding creates. While he washed the boat I cleaned the inside of the boat…vacuumed, dusted and even cleaned cabinets. The Pearl is clean inside and out. Stan has a few little projects to finish this week and then we will be heading home to play with our grand daughter and welcoming the new addition to our family. Our cruising adventure will continue later in the year.

We took a little time to play this past week…well, maybe not really playing all that much, but at least we did go out to eat a few times. We were told the Japanese restaurant, Okinawa, was very good, so we gave it a try. It was our first experience at a Japanese grill house and we truly enjoyed the food and the show. I’m sure we’ll go back before we leave the area. Saturday we went to the farmers market on Riverside Avenue and enjoyed the free music and lunch overlooking the river. Saturday afternoon we drove down to St. Augustine to check out the Downtown Bazaar they have the last Saturday of the month. The bazaar didn’t turn out to be very impressive, but we had fun wandering around this great little city, doing a little shopping, looking at boats and enjoying a snack at Harry’s. St. Augustine was one of our favorite places on our way up the coast in 2011 and we look forward to stopping here when we move the boat south later in the year.

A few pictures of the completed cap rail