Note: Those who are familiar with this site should know that I rebooted it in September 2024, so it’s a new work in progress.
Cappy Rick, Admiral Mia, and First Mate Doggy are living on a boat pursuing the Great American Escape Fantasy.
For many, and for a long time, the Great American Escape Fantasy meant lying in a hammock on a beach in the Bahamas. In fact, the Bahamas courted tourists with a photo of that scene and the advertising slogan, “Life is Complete in the Bahamas!”
Sorry, Bahamas, but we’re not ready for our lives to be complete.
This blog begins in 2010, when we formed the five-year plan that finally became a reality in 2018. (Yeah, I know — it took longer than expected.) We bought No Losses, our Carver 3207 Aft Cabin “Practice Boat”, to see if the live-aboard lifestyle was something we could do for an extended time — say, a week or two on the Erie Canal, and eventually the rest of our lives.
Over the next few years, we learned everything we could about boating, navigation, maintenance, and the lifestyle. Including docktails. Especially docktails.
We bought a share in a marina on the canal in Amherst, New York so we could learn more about the heavy-maintenance side of owning a boat, such as hauling, blocking, winterizing, bottom-painting, and, of course, docktails.
In 2018, we sold our beloved Carver 3207 Practice Boat, bought the new-to-us “live-aboard” boat, and brought it to our home marina in western New York state. Over that winter we alternated between fixing up the boat and getting our house ready to sell.
In July 2019 we sold the house and moved onto the boat at the marina, continuing to get her ready for the trip to Florida. We had a lot of work to do, but it didn’t stop us from taking a two-week “shakedown” cruise on the canal to Ithaca, New York on Cayuga Lake.
In the fall of 2019 we made our way to Florida via the IntraCoastal Waterway. According to the plan, in the spring of 2020 we were supposed to begin a year-long circumnavigation of the waterways of the eastern USA on America’s Great Loop.
However, Covid-19 had other ideas. Our Loop trek would take us back up north and across the Erie Canal. However, because of pandemic-caused maintenance delays the canal would not open for the 2020 season until late August. There might have been time to rush through the Great Lakes and Illinois River portions of the Loop, but we really wanted to take our time and enjoy everything the Loop had to offer, so we opted out of the original plan and stayed put for awhile.
We couldn’t have picked a nicer spot than Titusville, Florida — a city that retains its small-town, old-school Florida charm because it hasn’t been overrun and overbuilt to accommodate people … er … like … us … snowbirds. Yet.
But now, in 2024 and beyond, we find ourselves longing for adventure on the high seas and …
Well, maybe not high seas. Maybe just calm waters on the IntraCoastal Waterway, the Hudson River, and the Erie Canal.
The result of all this is a blog — Cappy Rick’s Wheelhouse — which is a dumping ground of thoughts from the brain of the angst-ridden product of suburban 1960’s upbringing who is still trying to figure out what he wants to do when he grows up.
The photos, thoughts, videos, posts, and other drivel on this site all originated from Cappy Rick’s strangely skewed outlook on life with help from Admiral Mia’s wonderful sense of humor. Even First Mate Doggy got in a few licks. For a couple of (or a few?) decades prior to 2018, Cappy Rick worked in the A/V systems industry but he stopped going to work there. Some call it Retired, but Cappy Rick is too busy.
He also performed music (guitar and vocals) for more than fifty years with a number of bands including several stints with touring road bands. His “swan song” band was a northeast regional tribute to Chicago called The Chicago Authority, which disbanded in 2023 after an incredible ten-year run.
He makes silly videos, and he maintains his online presence via the aforementioned websites and social media. Oh, and he wrote a novel called Almost Anything for Money: Mystery of the Missing Sister.
Cappy Rick is extremely happily married to Admiral Mia and is a slave to his First Mate Doggy, Robinson Crusoe — nicknamed “Crewy”.