Trips of Discovery

Make the best of your journey, make some memories.

Trips of Discovery - For me, boating is never just about the destination, it's always at least as much about the journey.

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Experience Speaks

Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes – *SBFL – PLANNED – As my regular readers know, my inspiration to do the over 2,400-mile round trip on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) came from a 1958 National Geographic article titled, “Slow Boat to Florida.” Hence, this series of SBTF blogs. At the moment, we are in the planning stage. However, I am determined not to say at the end of our planned six-month-long trip, “We made too many wrong mistakes,” as Yogi Berra once said. So, as we are planning our ICW trip on our boat, Life’s AOK, my wife and I decided to seek out the wisdom of those who have done it before and let the...

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Smith Island, its famous cakes and all

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes – SBFL*4 – PLANNED – “Smith [Island] has no municipal building, no jail–indeed, no government,” wrote Allan C. Fisher, Jr., in his 1973 book, America’s Inland Waterway. The book is one of two information resources of the National Geographic that I am using for planning a journey and comparing how it was then versus how it is now in selected spots of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). I want to see how much, if any, the passing decades have changed these locales. You can reach Smith Island, as with all of my locations that I write about, by boat, of course, or by land, first going to Crisfield, Maryland, then...

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A general, bushwhacking, body booting, and $1,144,600 send me to Crisfield, Maryland

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes – SBFL* 3 – VISITED – What took me to Crisfield, Maryland, was an eye-popping $1,144,600, somehow tied to body booting and bushwacking, and it all started with a general. It has been an unexpected journey to Crisfield, Maryland. Decoys ducks and an Army Major General My journey was kicked-started by a great, 91-years-young, retired Army Major General, Warren Magruder, an avid fishing and hunting enthusiast. When I say avid enthusiast, trust me, he is. As was covered by The Baltimore Sun back in July 2010, he caught a black drum fish in the Chesapeake Bay that was 50-inches long, 36-inches around, and weighing about 70 pounds. His pedigree is equally...

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Before crossing the Maryland line

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes – SBFL* 2 – PLANNED – My Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Intracoastal Waterway trip was inspired by National Geographic authors Dorothea and Stuart E. Jones. (See SBFL) In their 1958 National Geographic article, they describe how they sailed down the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis and stopped in Solomons, Maryland, and then crossed the state line over to Virginia. My second source of inspiration, Allan C. Fisher, covered a bit more territory above Solomons in the Chesapeake Bay in his 1973 book, America’s Inland Waterway, published also by National Geographic. While I intend to follow the path of both authors in this 2019 boating season, I also plan to do a...