Harbor Pilots Take II

Hello, Cadre. It's 1129 and this is take two. It's almost 1130, so I shall begin. You know, this is Florida time, so I think we have a little more wiggle room. This is tiki bar country. Oh, man. I'm Kathy Joy. This is harbor pilots, take two. I sit over here. I have options. A couple of deck chairs. And you might surmise, and you'd be correct in surmising, that I am not in my home territory of Erie, Pennsylvania. Somebody's doing yard work across the causeway. This is paradise. I'm coming to you live.

Take two. Take one. I don't know why I'm usually on at eleven, you guys, somebody send me some love. Send me a wave. I need to know that I'm on because it shook my confidence a little bit the first take. I just really have a fun message for you today and hopefully a nurturing one as well. And timely. That's the lovely thing about Cadre. Each and every time I tune in, whether it's live or replay or a live that I love so much, I replayed it again and again. I learned something of value. Cadre is definitely a space and a place for people to encourage one another to learn and hone life skills and to feel not so alone.

I'm vacationing here in beautiful Florida, and it's a respite. I had it circled on my calendar since last April when I was recovering from my shoulder surgery. And I knew that this time was coming and it's been a gift and a blessing. Yesterday I went on a boat ride with my friend Karen, who's also visiting Florida, and the two of us got to ride. I think it was 2 hours out in the Gulf of Mexico and then 2 hours back to port to visit a beautiful island called Cabbage island. On the way there, I was able to talk with the captain.

His name is Captain Glenn. He gave me permission to share the very interesting and intriguing information he shared with me about harbor pilots and all things harbor piloting. It seems that before he was doing this pleasure cruise, which he does now, out of fisherman village in Punta Gordae, he was also employed in other places driving boats for harbor pilots. So he drove for a harbor pilot in the Hudson in New York City, Hudson Bay, prior to that, or maybe mingled in with that history of his job, was also piloting for a group in New Jersey in a place along a spit called Sandy Hook.

And this spit of land rests inside of a harbor in New Jersey. Captain Glenn explained to me what a spit is, and I also went online and looked it up, too. I'm squinting into the sun. Hope you can bear with me. And I'm not complaining. The sun is fabulous. A spit is a strip of land, a very narrow strip of land that emerges from the water when there are certain things in place, when the waters are shifting constantly, which they do in a harbor with all the boat activity and other reasons, this spit or this long piece of land emerges, and it's substantial, but not like a peninsula.

You can't drive on it. You can walk on it, you can swim off of it. And this particular one, he said, would sometimes be a place where boaters would run aground because they couldn't see it. Maybe it was at night. They didn't know they were getting near this bit, and they ran their boat around. m. shift, and so he would get called out of his cozy bed in the middle of the night for a distressed boater. And sometimes the waves were high, and sometimes he had to go onto open water, depending on where the boat accident had happened.

And he would have to throw rope over the side, haul himself to the person in distress, haul them back with himself and the rope, keeping their noses above water, and get into the boat, and then go for medical assistance if needed, and safety. Treacherous job, especially the overnight shift. He said that was more difficult, more challenging, because in the dark, can't see stuff. You can't always tell where the boat was marooned. Even though you have navigational equipment, all kinds of technology, it's still difficult when it's foggy, which it sometimes can be, and when there are waves and different elements that cause it to be quite a challenge.

He did the driving, and also he was a pilot, a harbor pilot, a person who went to assist others for many years. He also was in Hudson Bay, New York City. We talked a little bit about the miracle on the Hudson when the airplane pilot landed the plane without navigational equipment, really, he just eyeballed it, and not a soul was lost that day. If you remember miracle on the Hudson, Glenn was not there as an eyewitness, but he remembers it. We all do. You know, that's just one of those things in history that some of us still remember.

So Glenn gave me some great insights. He told me that harbor pilots don't just climb up the Jacobs ladder into the ship to steer it, to help the captain of that ship get in safely. They do lots of things. He said harbor pilots are also part of a.