Florida Bound

Nov 22, 2008
3,562
Endeavour 32 Portland, Maine
We arrived back on Strider last night after a four day, three night, drive from upstate New York in a one way car rental. Despite a drop off charge that is more than the rental itself, the cost is too close to that of two airline tickets to influence a travel decision. Visits with friends who we wanted to see anyway saved motel costs and dinner with my son in DC all made not subjecting ourselves to the nightmare air travel has become a no-brainer.

We found Strider in excellent shape. Brunswick Landing Marina is beautifully protected and not subject to much wake as evidenced by the complete lack of any sign of dockline chafe after more than two months sitting unattended. The only problem is an impressive amount of bird droppings. The all day rain today should provide a good head start on that clean up.

I must apologize to Florida for the title of the previous post. Craziness certainly isn’t confined to that state. Looking back at my explorations of state boating regulations, one thing stands out. Almost without exception, the first thing I have been told when calling an agency in both states on the phone has been wrong. The take home lesson is that, if you don’t like the answer, try to work up the chain and try again. My career in a transportation industry where I spent a lot of time helping clients with regulatory issues causes me to add one caveat to that. Don’t let the first inquiry be on the record via formal or written answer. Once someone on the lowest rung of a regulatory system goes on the record, the next person up the ladder will usually back them up.

In any event, despite what I was told more than once by officials in Maine, I found a Maine state registration in the mail at the marina when we arrived so I now have everything I would want to be able to show a boarding FWC officer in Florida and can spend up to 90 days there in full compliance with what some FL officials say is required. Is the state registration really required? I doubt that a meeting of the FL the officials involved could even answer that definitively at this point. As I’ve said before, the opinion I’m primarily concerned about is that of any FWC who decides to board Strider to check papers. I now comply with the most conservative interpretation of the law which is cheap peace of mind for the less than thirty bucks it cost me.

Thinking back to my turn around from Florida on my first cruise south and the rather poor impression it left, I realize that I actually enjoyed the Saint John River and the ICW as far as St. Augustine. The weather gets noticeably warmer just past Jacksonville so we will be heading south as soon as I return from a trip back to Virginia for a meeting about the research vessel at the end of the month.

I’m going to try and do a better job of keeping up with these accounts than on the last leg so watch for new posts and photos.