Trivia: Greenville was where the levy broke in the great Mississippi flood of 1927. The flood was so bad, that before the levy breaking news got to New Orleans, the Army Corp blasted the levy just south of NOLA. Flooding three southern swamp Parishes. supposedly saving NOLA.
A few years back a guy from Northern NY was fishing on the St. Lawrence River, there's good fishing there. He decided drop his anchor and fish. Unfortunately for him, he did not clear customs first. The Canadian authorities seized his fishing boat, fined him about $1000 and created an international incident. Eventually it all got sorted out and he got his boat back, but the State Department had to get involved.
My wife has a friend, John from Canada, who met him. John has a son who has a form of Autism and the Muppets were his favorite show. They went to visit NY and walked by the Sesame Street Studio, but found it closed. They were very disappointed and turned to walk away when John's wife declared, "I don't care, I'm knocking."
Another “I regret I can only give this post one like” post.
That blog write up convinces me that, 1) it still is not easy to check in with these dudes, and 2) I'm going to have to crew a teenager with big thumbs and infinite patience to get that digital app to work.
An American registered vessel, with an all American crew, may sail between any two American ports without any official formalities, if they never clear into another (or actually pass through the waters of, though this was pretty hard to enforce before satellites) country. In other words, you could sail from Newport, RI around the world nonstop (or around the Cape to Frisco) and not have to clear in.