The Adventures of Green Eyes the Nordic Tug, Cruising in the Time of Covid--The Boat. Chapter 4

Green Eyes is a 1991, twenty-six foot long tug boat. We think we are the fourth owners. Her original name was Legacy. We don't know which owner changed it to Green Eyes or why. It doesn't matter. Green Eyes suits her, and it suits us just fine too. It was love at first sight, but I think the name influenced our decision. One of the nicknames my mother had for me was "Green Eyes" so as soon as I saw the boat, I thought of my mom. I loved that.

     The name Green Eyes is cheerful. At least the way children say it sounds cheerful. We've only been cruising and living on her for two months, but we have heard countless children from the docks exclaim her name the way they would say "Santa!" when spotting one at the mall at Christmastime, or "Horsey!" when choosing a seat on a merry-go-round. "Green Eyes!" is always accompanied by a smile and a hop, as if they wish to jump on board for the adventure. I think our tiny boat reminds children of a storybook character, perhaps Tootle.

Or maybe they may have seen photos of Theodore the Tugboat in Canada. We are pretty far north so this is more likely than not.

     But Green Eyes even makes grown ups smile and point. Honestly, we hear "Green Eyes!" happily exclaimed daily. It's sweet. The boat looks like a sweet boat. She's slow and a bit old (thirty years). Her engine is quiet, and, at a maximum speed of 7-8mph, she makes very little wake so she doesn't disturb other boaters.

We had a bit of attention from a patrol-type-looking boat as we neared the famous Mackinaw Bridge when we were cruising from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron the other day. It was cruising in our direction then suddenly spun around and came speeding towards us with lights flashing. Being raised Catholic, I immediately thought we were guilty of some wrongdoing. Scott never used to think that way (On our first date he told me he was a Frisbetarian. "We believe," he said with a grin, "that when we die, our soul goes up on the roof and we can't get it down."), but after more than 40 years with me, he too was ready to offer mea culpas if needed. I would recite the Our Father and Three Hail Marys. We slowed to idle. When the driver was about 20 yards away, he shut off his flashing lights, saluted, turned around, and proceeded under the bridge. We were never called on channel 16, (the channel the Coast Guard, marinas, and other boaters monitor) so Scott concluded, "I think he just wanted to admire the boat up close."

     It wasn't out of the question that we thought we might be doing something wrong. After all, we are power boat newbies. To me, almost all the systems on the boat are puzzling. For one, what is an Inverter? "Invert" means to turn something upside down. I don't want to be upside down anywhere, least of all on a boat. But the Inverter is a very important system on our boat. I know that because it groans periodically from beneath the couch. It, I think, enables lights and stuff to work whenever we aren't plugged in to shore power. It is only recently that I have stopped asking Scott before we pull away from a dock, "So, is the switch for the inverter supposed to be UP or DOWN? And what about the charger? UP or DOWN?" I still don't fully understand it, but I now know the proper positions of switches when we are underway, or when we are plugged in to shore power.

     Many years ago, when we were young, long before I had ever heard the term Inverter, we had a sailboat. A forty-foot Wharram designed Catamaran. We sailed it all the way from Santa Cruz, California to Hawaii. It did not have an Inverter. It didn't have any electronics whatsoever. It had an outboard motor, but we mostly propelled ourselves with sails. We steered by tiller. Scott navigated with a hand-held sextant, "an instrument with a graduated arc of 60° and a sighting mechanism, used for measuring the angular distances between objects and especially for taking altitudes in navigation" so says Wiki. It had a porta potty, which was entirely disturbing. I almost blew us up one day when I used household chemicals to try to disappear the odor. We carried spare water and fuel in jerry cans, which were lashed to the deck. We bathed by laying in the net between the hulls and letting the ocean wash over us. Seriously. We did that. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Different Drummer was her name. She was simple. The times were simple. We were simple. No. We were YOUNG. Anyway, a boat with just an outboard and a tiller is a whole lot easier to manage than a tug boat, even if the tug is only 26' long and 9' wide. Green Eyes has thousands more moving parts than Drummer did. Also, it has been a long time since we've owned a boat.

     For the first two weeks that we lived aboard Green Eyes at the Elmwood Marina on Lake Michigan, we'd watch sailboats quietly come and go, drop their anchor in the bay, or hook up to a mooring ball in the harbor. "That looks so simple," I'd say. "Not many mechanical parts." It turns out that isn't really true because most sailboats these days come with hi-tech navigation systems. And they probably come with an inverter too. So when I looked at the sailboats and thought "simple" I really meant "young".

     But here we are, owners of a power boat capable of taking us around the Great Loop, a 6000 mile, year-long journey through North America's Eastern lakes, rivers, canals and inland waterways. We have no fewer than four screens telling us what to do, which way to turn, and at what depth we are nearly running aground. They give us course direction and compass heading. They tell us where we can fuel up or pump out (never could do that with the porta potty. But I'll get to a story about pumping out a different potty later.) The screens show ship wrecks and submerged navigation hazards. They show anchorages, marinas, and harbors of refuge--places one can duck into should the weather turn suddenly fierce as it is want to do at times on the Great Lakes. It DOESN'T tell you when to have the Inverter on. Scott says he likes me to have my own iPad open to Aquamaps charts just to have extra eyes on the route and depths. But really, I think he likes me to have it on my side of the navigation station (wheelhouse) so that I'm not bugging him all the time. "Are you on the pink line?"  I ask A LOT. Why is a GPS line pink? Because women ask for directions.

     So, back to that porta potty story. Green Eyes came equipped with lots of extras: a dingy and a davit, a Bow Thruster which helps give the boat a little push port or starboard when docking (I would have paid extra for the boat if I'd known how handy a Thruster can be), a full complement of tools, an extra propeller, several additional anchors, pots, pans, dishes, bedding, and last but not least, a wet vac. I noticed the full-sized wet vac the first time we flew to Texas to look at the boat. It was in the closet in the bedroom. For a tiny boat, it was a big wet vac. If we bought the boat, I wondered where I would store it other than in the only clothes closet on board.

     We loved the boat and all the extras that came with it so we gave an earnest money deposit and flew back to California. Several months passed. Covid arrived. Still, we needed to pay the balance and move the boat a two-day cruise away so we flew back to Texas in January. The amiable owner agreed to cruise with us to show us the ropes, which was so kind and generous, especially since he said he had other folks interested in the boat. We set off. Scott and Gerrit did all the driving. I took notes whenever Gerrit said anything about the boat, especially the Inverter. All the terms were new. I felt quite overwhelmed. Sometimes I went to the back of the boat and sat outside on a camp chair. I'd imagine us on the Great Loop. I made lists of items to buy for the boat to make it "ours". And I wondered again where I would store the wet vac.

     After two days, we arrived at our temporary home port in League City Texas, part of greater Galveston Bay. We sealed the deal to buy the boat and thanked Gerrit for all his help and instruction. It was invaluable. Then I asked him, "Gerrit, did you always store the wet vac in the bedroom closet? I mean, is there somewhere else on the boat we could store it? Did you even use it much?"

     "Well, I'll be honest Miss T (that's what he called me), we used it a few times to remove water in the bilges and in the lazerette, but it really came in handy the time the toilet was full to capacity and the marina pump out we counted on was not working. So we used the wet vac to empty the holding tank. And it worked really well. Believe me, my wife cleaned it out thoroughly before putting it in the closet."

     So many images sprung to mind at once.

     The first thing we did after waving goodby to the owner on the dock, was to vacate the wet vac. Scott, who thought it a creative use of a wet vac in an emergency started to say, "But, we might need it..." but I stopped him with a look. You see, I am not simple or young anymore so the odds of me using a wet vac to empty a marine head is pretty much zero. I'll stand on my tippy toes before I'll use a wet vac on poop.

     Anyway, Green Eyes may not be simple, but with her storybook looks and cozy rooms, and mostly because she takes us to new places, she makes us feel young again.