Bluebird is our sturdy, 44-foot trawler and floating home, built for long hauls and quiet anchorages alike. With cozy living quarters, a dependable diesel heart, and plenty of room for two humans, a dog, and a cat, she’s the perfect blend of comfort, character, and cruising capability.
We are a US Coast Guard Documented Vessel 947628 and our MMSI is 368187390. Our FCC call sign is WDM2362. We claim Baltimore, Maryland and St. Petersburg, Florida as home ports.
Bluebird was built in Titusville, Florida in 1989. The Nelson Trawler Company was a successor to the Thompson Trawler Company that built boats for shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico, many of which are still in service. Mr. Nelson built about 19 pleasure craft until he went out of business. Last I heard, the distinctive hull forms were languishing in landfill in Wales.
We are 44 feet long, 16 feet wide, and 24 feet high (before we remove the tower, which will get us down to 17.5 feet, and able to complete the loop). We have a 4.5 foot draft and a heavy keel protecting our propellers. We board from the side usually, have a lovely aft deck for hanging out, and a capacious bridge from which Hervey normally pilots the boat.
We run two Perkins 6.354 marine engines (the company also built engines used in London taxis and in Massey Ferguson tractors). They are naturally aspirated (non-turbo) and run easily at 1,800 rpms at 7.5 knots per hour. We are hard pressed to go any faster and topping 10 knots is usually a sign of a strong current behind us! We also have a bow thruster and a paravane stabilizer system (analog, with “wings” on either side and “hydrodynamic “birds” that run 9 feet below the surface on either side.) All our electronics are Garmin and are recent, and we have a Starlink system aboard for managing all our connections with you.
Here’s the poem that inspired our name. I first encountered it at the Bluebird Cocktail Lounge in Baltimore and it spoke to me:
The Bluebird
—Charles Bukowski
There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him.
I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you.
There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks
never know that he’s in there.
There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him.
I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up?
You want to screw up the works?
You want to blow my book sales in Europe?
There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I’m too clever.
I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there, so don’t be sad.
Then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little in there.
I haven’t quite let him die
and we sleep together like that with our secret pact
and it’s nice enough to make a man weep,
but I don’t weep, do you?
Published in Charles Bukowski’s 1992 anthology, The Last Night of the Earth Poems.
Bluebird's Great Loop Diaries 