Call the Law!

Captain's Log: 7 July, 2014; Hour: 1930

As I was doing the radio show today, Alex the first mate was fueling up the boat. When he was finished he came to me in a break and asked for my American Express card which I gave him. He came back in the next break and said it was rejected. I checked my e-mail and I had a fraud alert on the card. When they saw someone traipsing across Florida charging large sums of money for fuel and groceries apparently the AmEx folks thought Bonnie and Clyde had stolen my credit card.

I used my AmEx app to confirm the purchases we had made over the last couple of days and thought that was that. When the card was denied a third time the marina people at John's Pass Marina in St. Petersburg called the police! 

I had Johnny B play a 'best of' while I got on the horn to American Express. You have to imagine the scene here. Not one, but two cop cars drive up. I'm sitting on the aft deck with an AmEx card in one hand and a cell phone in the other on speaker phone where I'd been waiting for 20 minutes for someone to take my call.

Oh, it gets better.

As I'm explaining all of this to the cops and letting them hear the on-hold message from the fraud division of AmEx, a gentleman walks up. Understand, I hadn't met the owner yet so I assumed he was the owner. No. He was the owner's attorney! So the owner wouldn't come down to the marina but he calls the police AND his lawyer.

I said, "Look, we're tied up here at your marina. We have full shore lines (which are heavy, by the way), we have water hooked up. All the lines are secured. It's not like we just filled up and dashed out into the Gulf of Mexico in a jet ski. We're not going anywhere."

The police got my driver's license and wrote down all the information. About that time I finally got someone on the line from American Express. I approved the fuel purchase at the marina and resumed my show on the boat.

That was our excitement for the day. Other than that, everything's going great. We're discussing tonight how to cross the gulf. We had planned to hit Tarpon Springs tomorrow then head out for Carrabelle after the show and travel the 16 hours across the gulf overnight. A sailor told Captain Bob that Carrabelle is a ghost town. Between the hurricanes and the bad economy, everything has dried up.

We'll go to the charts tonight and come up with another plan. We can always just hug the coastline of the Panhandle but that wouldn't be nearly as dangerous or as much fun. Plus, there's always the chance we'll be hit by pirates in the gulf.

I hope they take American Express.