The Duck Man of the ICW
We’ve been having amazing weather here in Oriental for the past week. After a couple of hot days post-Debby, the temps have been in the low to mid-80’s with just a light breeze and beautiful blue, cloud-studded skies. It was so nice that I decided to unpack my paddleboard and go for a little paddle. I knew that I had packages waiting for me at the hotel, so thought I’d kill two birds with one stone by paddling over to the main harbor and bring the packages back by paddleboard before heading across the river to check out a neighboring marina.
On my way to the main harbor, I noticed a very strange-looking sailboat in the anchorage just off the yacht club. It was in derelict-like condition, with big, very faded letters across the topsides which said “https://InfinityProject.Wordpress.Com”. There was also a man aboard, who happened to jump in for a swim just as I paddled by. But, perhaps the most unusual thing was a couple of geese that were honking while swimming around the boat, too. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but in hindsight, I wish I would have pulled out my phone to take a photo of his boat because it turns out that this guy, John Lawrence Kanazawa Jolley, is a true wacko with a very storied history.
Paddling my way back to my boat, now laden with my packages, I passed his boat on the other side this time and noticed a couple of large cages attached to the transom of his boat. The geese were still swimming around the outside of his boat (making a lot of noise) so I figured they were his pets/watch dogs. A bit strange, but hey, whatever works! I decided to check out the website sometime to see what this guy was all about.
However, before I had a chance, we had a little campfire party at the marina and one of my neighbors, Jonathan, mentioned seeing this guy earlier in the day coming ashore with the geese trailing behind him, heading for the Provisioning Company store. They struck up a small conversation, which Jonathan reported was very strange. I told him that the guy has a website and that we should check it out right now. So, Jonathan pulled up InfinityProject.Wordpress.Com on his phone, and boy oh boy did we have some interesting reading for awhile! (I suggest you check it out, especially the photos link at the bottom of the left sidebar menu.)
This guy is completely gone. Those of you who know my marital history know that I have direct experience with schizophrenia–specifically paranoid schizophrenia–and this guy reeked of it! You really owe it to yourself to browse his website to read his…I don’t know what you call it…insane free-association comments, unintelligible conspiracy theories? In short, he was living in a canoe for years, initially paddling across the continent, then for the last 10 years or so, paddling from Boyton Beach, FL to Washington D.C.
His mission is to get rid of all the dams in the world, and he reportedly stops at any local city council meetings he’s passing to make his arguments. He evidently plans to bring his vision to the federal authorities once he reaches Washington D.C. Somewhere in the last few years, he evidently traded in his canoe for the sailboat that I saw.
Oh, did I mention that he eats his geese?
Evidently, this guy is fairly well-known among perennial cruisers of the ICW, with websites like The Waterway Guide occasionally posting sighting reports.
He left Oriental the next day, but had told Jonathan that he planned to return in a couple of days. I hope he does come back, if only so I can grab a photograph of his boat to add to this page. But, I have no plans to get anywhere near him as I have very little tolerance for crazy anymore.
However, to give you an impression of what it is like to meet him, I provide these charming and humorous comments from a couple who ran into him in 2016:
“A Visitor to The Hague
By Lisa Suhay, The Virginian-Pilot, August 28, 2016
While watching waterfowl along The Hague here, I met an odd duck paddling a canoe. Because of him I learned that the “never talk to strangers” rule applies to birds even more than it does to people.
John Lawrence Kanazawa Jolley (aka Duck Man) of Boynton Beach, Fla., paddled up to me in his heavily laden, weather-beaten canoe as I stood beside The Hague at the foot of The Chrysler Museum of Art last Saturday morning.
An eye-watering, miasmic, funk of wood smoke, waterways, and profound eccentricity reached me while he was yet 20 feet away. The side of his canoe was emblazoned with “https://infinityproject.wordpress.com.” My husband chose not to partake of the impending column-worthy experience, moving swiftly away.
Shortly after “Hello,” Jolley launched into his personal narrative about living aboard that canoe for the past 10 years while “paddling across the continent.” His blog supports that. (FYI: According to the links I followed from his blog to YouTube, Jolley has quite a track record for getting himself in front of the city councils in the places he visits so that he can express himself.)
Mayor Kenneth Alexander and the Norfolk City Council can thank me later for this headsup.
Jolley said we need to undam all the rivers on the planet. He also wants us to collect rainwater in order to stop flooding. Then we need to get rid of all flush toilets.
However, Jolley has a superpower: He can go from zero to alien-Jesus conspiracy theory in the time it takes most people to think the words, “I wonder if I can outrun him?”
When he got to the part about how he has a plan to turn all the people who don’t roll with his ideas into a SPAM-like substance to be sold on store shelves, my husband materialized beside me. He suggested that Jolley move along.
Duck Man moved to the opposite shore beside the Hague Tower.
A couple of Intracoastal Waterway boaters passing by commented that they had seen Jolley a few weeks back at a marina in South Carolina.
“He has ducks in a cage on that thing,” the man said. “He showed us.”
“He roasts them,” the woman said. “He has pictures of it on his blog.”
An hour after the couple left I heard an overly loud, rhythmic, duck call coming from the canoe.
“Quaaaack. Quack, quack, quaaak!”
An off-white duck I’d been photographing broke from the flock to make a beeline for Jolley. It replied, “Quaaaack. Quack, quack, quaaak!”
“NO!” I shouted at the duck and the caller. “Stop!”
I’m vegan. This was the duckpocalypse.
Oh, where’s a gargantuan, 50-foot, inflatable, yellow, mama duck when you need one?
I clanged cow bells. No luck.
The duck went to the canoe and didn’t return.
The canoe glided under the footbridge. Billows of smoke began to emerge. It rose up to mingle with the love locks on the bridge.
Alas, poor duckie. Let her experience remind us to be careful about talking to quackpots in canoes.”
My Next-Door Neighbors
When I arrived in Oriental at the beginning of July, I noticed the boat next to me looking quasi-derelict. It has a bunch of junk on deck and in the cockpit, the cockpit cushions and a lot of the wood was badly torn up. But, there was an air conditioner mounted in the companionway, so I figured the boat wasn’t abandoned, but perhaps the owner was just in the middle of a bunch of projects. I was introduced (or met) the sailor on the other side of me, and the sailing in the cabin cruiser on the far side of my next-door neighbor. They were both liveaboards. But, no one knew anything about the owner of the boat next to me. The one advantage (I thought) to not having someone living aboard next to me was that I had the finger pier all to myself; I didn’t have to worry about my bicycle or paddleboard getting in the way of someone on that point trying to get on and off, for example.
Imagine my surprise when returning to my boat one night about a week later, to see something glowing in the cockpit of that boat and realized that it was an iPad being held by a man sitting there. I couldn’t make out much about him, but said hI, and he replied with the same. Well, I thought, I guess there is someone living on that boat! I modified my use of the finger pier accordingly.
But then a couple weeks went by where I never saw him. (In fact, I’ve never seen him since.) The boat’s windows are covered, as are the hatches, so there is no way to see in or out of the boat, so any lights on inside would not be visible. I wondered what his story was, and what he could be doing, day in and day out, just sitting inside his sailboat. After all, I start going stir crazy after being in my boat just one day and have to get outside to get some exercise, socialize, and see something other than the inside of my cabin. But this was now weeks and I had only seen him once, not even off the boat, but sitting in his cockpit.
But, I was in for another surprise. One day when I happened to wake up very early, right at dawn, I decided to go for a walk around the harbor. As I was climbing out of my boat, I saw a heavy-set women stepping off that boat onto the finger pier. She was wearing what looked like pajamas (those pajama-looking outfits that you see women wearing sometimes) and flip flops. We exchanged a quick greeting, then she bee-lined it down the finger pier and down the main dock toward town. I mean, she was walking very, very quickly. I figured perhaps she had to go to the bathroom badly or something. As I was strolling about 50 feet behind her, she suddenly took a nasty spill onto the dock. One of her flip-flops must have caught on the cock or something. She let out a large yell as she tumbled onto the concrete dock. I yelled, “Are you okay?”, but she evidently didn’t hear me or was too embarrassed, sojust got up and kept going. “Okay,” I thought, so there are two people living on that boat. I haven’t seen her in a month! What the heck do they do in there all day and night? (But, more surprises were to come.)
A couple of Saturdays ago, around 10 pm, I heard a few voices coming from the finger pier. Since there was never any activity coming from the other boat, I though maybe it was there for me, trying to get my attention. So, I opened the companionway and looked out, only to see a young teenage girl and the same lady (mother?) climbing onto the other boat. I assumed that perhaps this was a split custody type situation where the child was visiting for the weekend or something. I suddenly felt very sad for the kid who had to descend into the bowels of that boat, and God only knows what that must have been like. I never saw the girl leave, but assume she did after the weekend was over.
One other time in a similar situation, I discovered the woman, the same teenage girl, and what looked like a 10-year-old boy leaving the sailboat and walking down the dock toward the marina office. This was very early in the morning. This was about two weeks ago, and since I have not seen anyone else on the boat.
Then, during the recent campfire party (the same one where we were researching the Duck Man of the ICW) low and behold, who should walk past us but the lady and the two kids, towing a portable pumpout machine.1 It was at least 11 pm, so it took me a second to recognize them, but then I explained to Jonathan who they were and what I had observed. He said that he had just met them earlier that evening. He was told by the lady that they were a family of five and had been living on the boat for 3 years! Jonathan and his girlfriend, Morgan, had been living in the marina, just a few boats away, for many months, but it was the first time he had even seen them. The mother said that the husband was on disability and so never left the boat.
This was and is so astonishing that I almost find it hard to believe. What kind of life can these kids have? Not only is this boat incredibly small for a family of five, but they are never outside! This os a 34-foot boat. If you take away the cockpit, there is probably less than 200 square feet of living space inside. For five people. Who never leave. WTF!?
I guess it’s just another example of the eccentric human behavior that one sometimes encounters among cruisers!
(But, I’m completely normal.)
- For boats that have a holding tank to store human waste, when the tank gets full, it must either be emptied with a vacuum-type machine at a marina, or pumped into the water if offshore at least three miles. ↩︎