Ease and appreciation

One of the bloggers I am following finished off his latest post with a saying: “If things come too easy, they’re not appreciated as much”. On that basis our imminent arrival in the USA to start Looping will be the most appreciated thing we will have done in many a long time!!

Since my last posting, the well-oiled planning machine has found itself lurching from one crisis to the next whilst plummeting at an ever increasing speed towards D-day (Departure day) - now a mere 11 days away. Firstly, while taking our friends Charlie and Pauline out for a day final trip on Kindred Spirit, we discovered that the propeller shaft seals (which I had replaced last year while the engine was out) were leaking….profusely. Investigation resulted in the discovery that the engine was misaligned to the point it had destroyed the new seals ability to prevent the boat from remaining watertight – which is not a good thing when you are trying to sell it or plan to go away for a long time with it still in the water. After several weeks “discussion” with Cummins (who had put the engine back in after fixing it last year) accepted their “oops” and appointed a local engineering company to remedy both the alignment and the leak. This required the boat to be lifted out of the water and was finally completed yesterday. For the engineering-oriented amongst you, the alignment was out by 3mm sideways and 1mm vertically and 11/1000ths of an inch out of parallel, so the propeller shaft was rotating oval by a significant amount. (funny how a metric country still uses thousandths of an inch as a minor engineering measurement….but I digress!). This not only distorted the seals to the point that they became useless, it also stretched the polymer coupling between the transmission and propeller shaft to the point that it had to be replaced. Cummins refused to pay for it, citing that it was old and was probably failing due to wear and tear as much as misalignment. In the absence of sufficient time to argue, and to prevent further delay and the additional cost of keeping KS out of the water, I coughed up the $560 for the coupling and my respect for Cummins and their engines has now declined even further. I am now no longer as disappointed as I was that Silverton took the Volvo engine option instead of Cummins, when they built “Loopy Kiwi”.

The only upside was that we got a good look at KS below the waterline and could see that everything was still hunky dory before we depart. We also got to replace the zinc anodes so that she stays protected from corrosion while we are gone (or till she sells, anyway). We also got to check on how the Propspeed on the running gear was holding up after a year of immersion, and it looked like it had just been applied. Great stuff that Propspeed.

However also during this time, the sale we had for Carolyn’s Kindy, timed superbly to coincide settlement with our departure, fell over with no alternative offers in hand. The resultant panic in setting up a management structure in absentia (while we ain’t here) has preoccupied Carolyn to the extent that Loop planning, and any excitement or anticipation thereof has become quite secondary and somewhat inconsequential. At the time of writing this, a contingency (sort of) plan is (sort of) in place, but we’re not holding our breaths while we wait for it to be resolved completely. Not yet, anyway.

It’s a long weekend this weekend…Queens birthday, where we celebrate the birth of our Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II (yep – she is ours as well!!), even though it’s not the actual date. It is considered the last boating weekend before winter and this year it’s forecast to be a nice one so we would normally be off in Kindred Spirit with all our boating buddies to some quiet anchorage to relax. Instead, tomorrow we will be having a major garden cleanup with our Gardener. Last year when we did this, it resulted in 1.2 tonnes of garden waste being taken to the tip in Woody’s big red Van. If there was ever a reason to live on a boat, this is one of the best. I hate gardening with a passion….you cut it all down and it just grows back again (which is why we have a Gardener).


On a positive note, I have ordered our AGLCA burgee, joined up with BoatUs, ordered the inverter from Amazon.com to be delivered to the boat and have qualified for an Active Captain hat. For the uninitiated, you can only get a hat if you supply information to the website, such as anchorage info, updating existing data and writing reviews, for which you get points. When you get 250 points, you qualify for a hat. The hat tells people like Marina owners that you might write a lot of reviews - so they better treat you good! That's the theory, anyway.

I can’t help but wonder if perhaps we should have allowed more time to prepare and so avoided the last minute crises which will have us feeling that there is still unfinished business when we fly out on June 13^th. However logic tells me that even if we had had more time, the circumstances would probably be no different then to what they are now.

Active Captain

As follow-on from my last post, I find myself compelled to write one about Active Captain. For those followers who already know what it is and think “Duh – has he only just found out!!”, then my defence is that it is a well kept open secret amongst the US boating fraternity. I only found it by searching the net after finding an oblique reference to it in another AGLCA member’s blog that I am following. I have since done a search in the AGLCA forum and, while it says there are 109 references to Active Captain, none really detail what it is or what a brilliant, almost essential, resource it is for planning.

"So what is it then?" (I hear the uninitiated few ask). It is an interactive website that details marinas, anchorages and points of interest to boaties, displayed in formats of either road maps, NOAA charts, satellite images or satellite/map hybrids. You can move around anywhere in the world and view data without having to download individual pages or charts. Once you have registered for FREE membership, you can access the data for individual sites and add reviews or update the data yourself. You can even add anchorages or other points of interest yourself. It is a huge resource for any planning of boating activity and particularly in our case for planning the Loop, as the information for that part of the USA is very detailed.  I recommend anyone who didn’t know of it before now to go to www.activecaptain.com and join up.

Prior to finding Active Captain, my research required guide books, NOAA chart downloads one at a time, and hours on Google Earth. Active Captain rolls all of those up into one package and allows, or more correctly encourages, input from the members. I only wish I had found it earlier – it would have saved me an awful lot of time.

And yes, Kiwi boaties, New Zealand is there. No charts of course (NOAA doesn’t do charts of NZ),but most of the marinas and boat ramps appear to be shown. There is only one anchorage showing at present – Chamberlins Bay (North Harbour), Ponui – and that’s because I put it in to try the system out. It would be great to see all the anchorages around the country input as well as I reckon this is going to be of huge benefit to any passionate boatie.

23 DTG

Follow the Magenta Line

The Magenta Line is apparently a route that defines the Great Loop shown on many GPS chartplotters in the USA. There is a vigorous discussion going on in the AGLCA forum regarding the logic of following this line versus using traditional methods of navigation such as paper charts, observing navigational markers etc. Personally, I think I will try using all the above with maybe a bit of common sense thrown in.

When I began planning for the Loop a little over a year ago, the place-names on other Loopers Blogs describing their travels, such as “Cape Girardeau to Kentucky Lake”, meant as little to me as “Owhanaki to Waikalabubu” would mean to anyone unfamiliar with Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf. I found this quite frustrating so, since then, I have “virtually” cruised the Loop via Google earth, read all the waterway guides and checked out such place-names on maps and the intenet. Thus I have become quite familiar with them when I now read about them on AGLCA members blogs. But that was just me researching, and it struck me that readers of our blog may want to know exactly where we are, and where we are going, without having to go to all that trouble. Sure, the AGLCA website has a “Looper Locator” resource that we will utilise, but I figured on trying to make it as simple as possible so people don’t have to go to a lot of trouble to know where we are.

So I have put a Magenta Line on a map of the Eastern US which shows our intended route. On this one I have put some relevant data such as river names, but these will not be on later versions. As we cruise the Loop, I will track our passage in Red and add place-names of significance (I won’t put every stop, or the map would just get too busy). I hope it will help those who are geographically challenged, and be interesting to people (like me) who like to know where everything fits in. Calumet Harbour, just south of Chicago, is where we enter the river system and Indiantown is where we intend to finish “Stage 1”. The dotted line in the Gulf of Mexico depicts an alternative route (The Big Bend) to cutting straight across which we will decide on when we reach it. GICW is the “Gulf IntraCostal Waterway”.  


I will show earlier passage on this map of Lake Michigan that I used for our shakedown cruise route a couple of posts ago.

As anyone who has planned for this adventure will probably testify, there is never enough time for everything to be done as you would have liked before you embark, and our preparation is no exception. But as someone once said; “Time and Tide wait for no man”, and come 13^th June at 7.40pm NZST, the big silver bird will be taking us away regardless of how the best laid plans (of mice and men) often turn to custard.

Good days and bad days

After an abysmal summer of wind and rain, Autumn has turned out to be a pearler!! April was the warmest and driest for many years and, so far, May is following suit. This morning it dawned crisp and clear and still and I just had to get up and take some pix of the upper Waitemata Harbour and Auckland City from our upstairs deck. From the blogs I’ve been reading on the AGLCA website, we can expect a lot of the Loop to look quite similar and therefore familiar. Hopefully the weather will be kind and bring us lots of good days like this.

An hour later though, around 7am, this guy began to have a real BAD day. In perfect conditions, he has managed to sail out of the clearly marked channel to our marina and on to a sand bar. Perhaps he was following a Magenta line instead of watching the channel markers.

Since the tide had begun to fall, he was always going to get stuck and with tidal ranges at the moment around 3 metres (10ft) he’s going to be there for some time. By low tide at 1.30pm he is high and dry.

Still, its a nice day for a stroll on the sand, and you've got to do something to while away the hours.

If he is lucky, he should be afloat again around 7 o’clock tonight. So yes, we do have groundings in New Zealand too – in fact they are a regular occurrence up this way. But get caught just after high tide and you’ve got a 12 hour wait before you get off.

Everyone either goes aground sometime in their boating career (and yes, I have), or lies about it - but right here it soooo public. It can really ruin your day

The Great Rental Rort

Rort – a New Zealand/Australian slang term for “a dishonest scheme” or “to take unfair advantage of something”.

About twenty years ago when I visited the US on business, I began to use rental cars to get myself about and have continued to do so since then, for business or pleasure. I like driving in the USA (even though they drive on the wrong side of the road) and there are some places you just need to have a vehicle to get where you want. In the early days, I didn’t take much notice of the insurance requirements for rental cars, as the Company was paying and it was just another expense. The terminology used by Rental Companies I found confusing and varied from company to company and I had also thought that it was covered by my travel insurance. This misconception was dispelled in the early 90’s when I discovered that not only did travel insurance NOT cover for damage to a rental vehicle (it only covers any excess or deductibles), the public liability cover was also specifically excluded with relation to rental cars, which is how it still is today. My recollection is that back then there were State requirements for minimum insurance cover for Rental Companies and they had to provide that. However, rental companies still tried to upsell the unsuspecting tourist on LDW, CDW, EP, LIS and a million other acronyms that meant unnecessary insurance. Having said that, I have been there often enough and have watched enough law dramas on TV over the years to know that it is folly to drive on US roads without adequate insurance.

When I booked the car in Chicago online for the boat buying visit last year, there was a mention during the procedure about “insurance cover” being discussed by the agent when I picked the car up. When I arrived at the counter I declined the cover offered, believing that I was covered by minimum State requirements. It was not until the agent said “so you are fully responsible for any damage to the car or anyone you hit” that I understood I was pretty much obliged to take the additional insurance which at $12.50/day for the Collision and $13.99/day for the Liability, finished up costing more than the car rental!

To avoid being caught like this again, and because we will need a rental car to provision when we return, I have spent the past several weeks thoroughly researching what the US Rental Car Insurance industry is all about. It is grey and murky and, I believe, quite deliberately confusing. It appears now that the onus for meeting State requirements for vehicle damage or public liability is on the driver of any vehicle, and the rental company’s only obligation is to make it available, which they do……for a price. From what I have read, it has become a major money earner for them and staff are encouraged to sell as much as they can, by any means. However, there seemed to be a number of ways to avoid being stung by this, so I looked into them all.

Number1: You may be covered by your own auto insurance. This is probably so for a US policy holder, and I am covered here in NZ also. Unfortunately, I am not covered in the USA. So there goes that idea.

Number 2: Your credit card company may cover you. I have both MasterCard and American Express and both were cited in the research as providing rental cover if you use them to purchase the service. I rang MasterCard. “Nope – not with a NZ card”. I went the Amex website and Lo and behold. Yes….you decline the Rental insurances as you are covered by your Gold Card. (you can also buy it for $25 per hire if you only have a Green one).  But hang on, what’s this little superscript ² at the end? Aha....... ² in the fine print = “only available to residents of the USA, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico”. So there went no.2

Number 3: Get a Non owners Auto Insurance Policy. By paying an annual premium, you can get cover on any car you drive for about what you will pay for 10 days rental car insurance (allegedly). Supposedly, there are plenty of Insurance companies offer this and I emailed 3 without a response. Finally I rang an agent for State Farm Insurance picked at random from their website for Wisconsin. (Our telecom company is offering a rate to ring the USA that costs no more than $4.50 for up to 2 hours chat, so sometimes it’s worth ringing to sort these things out). After an interesting talk, he went away to check and here is his response:

I spoke with Underwriting to get a gauge on what we’ll need to get you insured during your trip.

Here’s the details. 

1. You must have a US Driver’s License.  There is a Dept of Motor Vehicles in Kenosha.  It should be fairly easy for you to apply and get one. Here is there website http://www.dot.state.wi.us/drivers/vehicles/index.htm
2. You must have a US address.  Setting up a PO Box for mail at the Kenosha Post Office is simple.  The Post Office is right down the road from the Marina.  Here is there website  http://www.yellowpages.com/kenosha-wi/united-states-postal-service
3. Once you have those, I can work with Underwriting to quote the Non-Owned Car Insurance policy.

 I wish it were simpler than that for you given all the other items you have to deal with before your trip.  If you have any other questions or needs I can help you with, feel free to give me a shout, I’ll be glad to help!

Since he also told me he thought it would be around $100 a month, I decided that it was all too hard, so there went the third and last option.

Which brought me back to the Rental Car Companies “insurance”. I began the exercise of comparing the various companies available at each location and dug out each company’s charges for collision and liability cover, and believe me some are well buried! In many cases the cover exceeded the rental charge before taxes and other charges and the totals varied dramatically. For example, a one day hire in Los Angeles varied between $56 and $108, but in several cases the insurance cover did not show on the on-line quote and was to be “arranged at pick-up”.(when you’re tired and stressed and just want to get out of there – so you’ll sign for anything!). However one rental company stood out from the rest as under “options” the “insurance” cover was pre-ticked and at the end of the quote the word “included” was alongside each of the optional items along with the statement that “this rate is guaranteed”. In the case of the rental for Kenosha their rate for 3 weeks and 3 days was $260 less than its nearest rival and $600 less than the dearest.

That Company is Hertz and accordingly I have made the bookings with them. Being the cynic I am, I have examined and re-examined the quotes to see where they are trying to rort me, but I cannot find anything. I have the quotes in writing and I am certainly prepared to argue profusely at the counter if there is any attempt to add further charges (or lessen cover). I am hoping that this is not the case as I am advising all of my fellow travellers to avail themselves of Hertz’s services as they appear to be the most “honest” of the rental car companies I have found to date – I hope I am not disappointed.

I guess time will tell and I will let you know.

42DTG

PS. You can also rent a GPS from rental car companies for around $12 -13/day. For 10 days worth of rental, you can buy one at Walmart.

The shakedown.

While I fully appreciate that it is important to not have a schedule or timetable for the Loop, I felt the need to plan a little more detail of the pre-loop shakedown, particularly since we have guests scheduled to arrive at specific times. The idea was always to cruise around Lake Michigan for a couple of months on our return to the USA and be in Chicago for starting the Loop around early August. As Charlie and Pauline will be arriving 3 weeks after us and will be with us for the following 3 weeks. I felt obliged to provide some kind of itinerary for their stay (always subject to change, of course, for factors outside of our control), so they would know what to expect while they are with us. Again, it was always the intention to head North up the Wisconsin side of the lake, as we would probably be coming down the eastern (Michigan) side when we do the Loop proper. I am lead to believe the Door Peninsular and Green Bay are very pretty cruising grounds and it seemed logical to use this opportunity to go and have a look.

So the plan now is:

Arrive in Milwaukee and take the boat straight to Kenosha, where we have a slip (marina berth) arranged for a month and where we will spend the first 3 weeks provisioning and modifying the boat to our requirements. We will need a rental car for this, so when Charlie and Pauline arrive at Chicago, we can pick them up and take them back to Kenosha and spend the next 5 days or so sightseeing around Milwaukee and Chicago areas. We will then leave Kenosha and “harbour hop” up the western lakeshore to Sturgeon Bay and the Door Peninsular, then Green Bay before finally dropping off Charlie and Pauline at Green Bay City to catch a bus back to Chicago and fly out. After that, since it is only around 50 nautical miles from Sturgeon Bay across the lake to the Michigan side, we will cross and then “harbour hop” down that side to be at the Calumet Harbour by early - mid August. Not only does this fit in well with our original plan, we will have actually begun the Loop when we reach landfall on the Michigan side of the lake. Also this timing gives us around 40 days to get to either Kentucky or Pickwick Lake for our next lot of guests, Dennis and Kathy, to catch up with us.

60 DTG (days to go)

Anniversaries and Milestones

It was a year ago last Saturday that we joined the AGLCA and planning for our Great Loop adventure got underway. At the time it seemed such a long time before we would begin, but it is now only 64 days and still so much to do.


This year is also the 150th Anniversary of the “Albertlanders” arrival in New Zealand and celebrations were held over the Easter break. "Albertlanders" was the name was given to a group of colonists who settled at Port Albert, on the Kaipara Harbour, north of Auckland during 1862/1863. At the time the provincial government in Auckland was offering Special Settlement Schemes to encourage development in the north. This particular proposed settlement was named "Albertland" in honour of Queen Victoria's consort who had died the previous year. You can find out more if you are interested on  www.albertland.co.nz.  My lot came aboard the first ship, the “Matilda Wattenbach” in 1862, and began farming at Wharehine (whare = house, hine = woman…..figure it out for yourself!) where we have been ever since. This is also where my sister, Woody’s aunty Lyn, lives and where she will look after him while we are looping. Remember Woody? He’s our Swedish Vallhund and hasn’t had a mention for some time, so here's a pic:

On Sunday there was a regatta at Port Albert and while we were there we were approached by a lady who asked how old our “Val” was. It is unusual for people to immediately recognize a Val as they are usually mistaken for Corgis cross-bred with “all-sorts-of-guesses”. But, of course, it turned out she owned one. She was local to the area and promised to bring her “Sal” (the Val !!??!!) to visit Woody at the farm while we are away. We got to see a pic of Sal on her cellphone – she is just a shorter version of Woody, as most of them are. Then we then went to the Port Albert Domain for the country fair, and Lo and behold a bloke came up and asked if our dog was a Val!. Turned out he had one too, although his was black and white, which is not considered a “true” colour for Vals and, even though he is pure blooded, he would not be permitted to breed or show. (they’re kind of fussy about that!) Still, it’s unusual to come across a Val owner at any time, but 2 within an hour… at Port Albert!!!!! Unprecidented!

My Grandfather was an amateur photographer as well as a farmer at the beginning of the last century and the majority of the photos you will find of the area during the early pioneer days were taken by him. Here is one of his photos (scanned off a calendar) that shows the farmhouse, which he built over 100 years ago, on Christmas day 1919. This house is still standing and is where Aunty Lyn now lives and where Woody is going to stay while we are away. My Mum, who died at the age of 95 nearly 4 years ago, and who was born in this house, will be one of the little tykes somewhere in the pic - she would have just turned 7 at the time.

On 31st march I closed down my import/distribution Company and in doing so, became unemployed for the first time in 45 years. There is still some tidying up to do but the phone just gets answered, “Hello, this is Phil” now. Carolyn’s Kindy is on the market and last week she took her staff out to celebrate the 19th anniversary of its opening on the 5th April 1993, with the same staff she had employed back then. On top that she ran the kindy from our house in Massey for the 14 years before then, so she will be retiring after 33 years in that business – which freaks her out a little. 

I have prepared as best I can for our arrival in the USA, but there are still a lot of unknowns that we will encounter on arrival. We still have no idea what is actually on the boat and what we will have to buy when we get there, but we can sort that out in the shakedown/provisioning phase before the Loop. The baggage allowance of 23kg (50lb) each on the airplanes is somewhat of a limiting factor, so we need to be careful what we bring with us. In the meantime we have things to sell, store, give away or dump as anyone who has prepared for this adventure will understand, and the list of things to do seems to get more additions to it than things crossed off as they are done.

Still, the countdown is on and on the 13th June it will be like the catch-cry in the old children's game of hide and seek….”coming, ready or not”.