November 17, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
The alarm went off at 4AM yesterday. Actually it goes off at that time every day now.
Some retirement this is! If you want lazy days and restful nights, do not retire and go cruising on a sailboat.
We eventually talked ourselves into getting out of bed. It was cold – we have no heat since leaving the marina. We must manage our electricity wisely. (If we had a propane heater, then we would need to manage the propane wisely, too. It’s always something.) It was dark – we were not in downtown Baltimore any more. In fact, we were in St. Johns Creek, just off the Patuxent River at Solomon Island. We made 78 miles on Sunday, in the hope that such a firm break would assure us of not winding up in Harborview again at day’s end.
The cockpit panes were covered with condensation. Larry wiped them down while I got coffee going. We planned our strategy, and shortly after 0530 we were turning into the channel of the Patuxent. I had remained on deck to shine a flashlight on the day markers as we passed them on our way out, but at this point I went below to log our position. When I went back up to the cockpit, I grabbed the absorber we were using to wipe the cockpit panes. As I stepped out to the aft deck, I saw a boat behind us with flashing blue lights.
You know how you get all nervous when a cop with red lights flashing comes up behind, and then you heave a sigh of relief when he passes you and continues down the road to bother someone else. Larry and I watched this boat approach and we felt pretty sure it couldn’t be about us. Who know we were even here? And who cared?
As it turned out, it was the Coast Guard, and they cared a lot. They cared so much that they boarded us and asked us to show them all sorts of things. I wondered later if we had waited to leave until Tuesday, or maybe Friday, would they have made their quota for the week already? I don’t really know how it all works.
The good part was that the two young men who boarded us were polite, professional and thorough. They simply asked us to show them that we were in compliance with Coast Guard regulations – like carrying our registration, possessing the proper life jackets, and so forth. When they were done, they entered all the information into a Palm Pilot and printed us a receipt with the image of Larry’s signature on it.
We appreciate everything the Coast Guard does. We certainly could not complain about being boarded, although I sort of hope that if it happens again, it will be in daylight. Still, it is a good thing they are doing, and it was really nice to meet some of them personally in a situation where we were not in danger. We all count on the Coast Guard every time we go out on the water. Even though it unnerved me to be boarded, it was not a bad experience at all. I take this opportunity to say to one and all that if the people we met are representative of the Coast Guard, our country is well served.
Nonetheless, after they stepped over the lifelines and back onto their own boat, I breathed a sign of relief. It was just like spelling in the third grade. I always knew those words, and I could spell them forward and backward, but I worried every single week that I would miss a word. I was soooooo glad when the test was over. That is how I felt when our boarding was over. We looked behind us as they left and saw them approach another boat just entering the river. It was somebody else’s turn in the barrel. Whew!
Aboard No Boundaries
July 31, 2009
When my daughter or my son in St. Louis discovers in the midst of meal preparation a need for a green bell pepper, either of them can step outside, get in a car and drive less than a mile to the grocery store. They could discover the need for the pepper, solve the problem, and be back on task making dinner in thirty minutes.
Not so for us. We live and cruise on a sailboat, we have no permanent address other than our mailing service, and our car is an inflatable, soft-bottomed dinghy. When I discover in the midst of meal prep that I need a green bell pepper, I must either have one on hand or do without, because I am not likely to be near a grocery store. Even if a grocery store is less than a mile away, as when we were moored in the harbor in Camden, Maine, the process required to get to and from that grocery store would stop anyone from casually running out for one little thing like that.
When we were in Newport, a little boy waiting with his parents for a harbor cruise to start watched us getting in our dinghy. We were loading our shopping bags and trying to arrange everything so there was still room for us, and he watched intently.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“We’re going home,” I replied.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“We live on a boat. This is our car,” I replied.
When we need to get the “car” ready for a shore excursion, it isn’t as simple as jumping in the car parked in the driveway.
Because our dinghy is soft-bottomed, it can be completely deflated and folded up. We can tow it behind us if we wish, but we can also deflate it, fold it up, wrap it in a cover and strap it down on deck. When we are traveling long distances at sea, this is a good solution. It is certainly possible for anything on deck to become dislodged and blow away, but when this dinghy is wrapped up and strapped down, it is very secure. As we were transiting the Cape Cod Canal on our way to Maine, we heard a sailboat captain reporting a lost dinghy to the Coast Guard. He was towing the dinghy in a gale with thirty-five knot winds when it flipped over and became separated from the sailboat. He made the report in hopes that someone would find it on shore and report the discovery to the Coast Guard. It sounded a lot like wishful thinking, because the most common theft from sailboats is the dinghy. Still, my first thought was that a dinghy firmly compressed and strapped down to the deck was less at risk of such an accident than one dragged behind the boat.
However, the down side of our plan is that if the dinghy is strapped down securely for our passage, there is a big job ahead of us after we anchor. When we do decide to go to the grocery store, or sightseeing, or whatever, we must remove the straps, unfold the cover, spread out the dinghy, inflate it, attach the oars and the seat, and then lift it up over the side in order to drop it in the water. Inflating it would be a breeze if the battery-powered inflator ever actually had a charge when we need it; usually, Larry winds up doing it manually (which should be “footfully,” since he pumps it with his foot). Then we need to pull our “car” to the stern of the boat where our boarding ladder is located.
Ah, but we are not done yet. It is highly unlikely that we want to row the dinghy to the local town dock. It might be very close, as is the case when we anchor in Baltimore near the Safeway store, but more than likely, we will be far enough from our destination that rowing is not the most desirable solution. In this case we need the outboard motor.
When not in use, the motor is mounted on the stern rail of the boat. As you might guess, Larry doesn’t grab the motor and carry it down the ladder to mount it on the dinghy. Instead, we have a block and tackle on our stern arch that allows me to easily lower the motor to the dinghy where Larry can screw it on securely. It isn’t hard to do, but it takes more time.
Next, I hand the gasoline can and hoses down to Larry. He attaches them, pumps up the gas pressure, and starts the motor. That is, if he remembered to take the key with him. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t. The key is stored in the main salon, so if he forgot it, I run down and retrieve it.
At this point, the dinghy is ready to take us to the grocery store. However, we must still get ourselves ready to go. We won’t be able to park the dinghy in the grocery store parking lot, so we must be prepared to get our groceries from the store to the dinghy dock. When we go shopping, each of us wears a backpack with several large tote bags inside. These bags hold more than the grocery store plastic bags, and they are more durable, also. We use the backpacks to carry heavy items like milk, meat, and cabbage. We put crackers, cans and bread in the tote bags. You would be surprised how much we can carry back with us at one trip. It would usually be an option to get a cab for the return trip, but these bags have worked well for us to date. And the cab solution doesn’t help with getting the items into the dinghy or up the boarding ladder at the boat. Our tote bags can be stuffed and stacked in the dinghy so that things don’t fly out or get wet from the spray as we go back to the boat. They don’t prevent things from getting wet if it has rained and there is water in the dinghy.
That situation presents another problem we must solve. Most of the time, when someone gets into a car to drive to the store, there won’t be water all over the floor. Often, when we get ready to ride somewhere in the dinghy there is water inside. Whether or not there is water when we start, we must be prepared for spray to fly in, and of course, it could rain. We have two small plastic storage bags just the right size for a pair of shoes, and a large bag that is big enough for our computer backpacks, or jackets or anything else we want to keep dry. Getting our “car” ready to go takes some time.
After we get ready, and after we do our shopping or computer work or whatever is the purpose of our journey we must return the same way we came. Arriving back at the boat, our first challenge is actually to grab the ladder. We are getting better at it, but it isn’t a guarantee yet that we will do it on the first try. Having grabbed the ladder, we must position the dinghy so that I can get up on the ladder and hitch the dinghy’s painter to the top rung, the one that doesn’t move. (Don’t ask me why the rope on the dinghy is a painter when the rope on the jib is a sheet. I live a nautical life, but I am still adjusting to the lingo.) Then while I stand on the ladder, Larry hands me one bag at a time and I hoist it up on deck. When everything is unloaded, we let the motor run the gasoline out before we stop for the day.
If we expect to use the dinghy again while we are moored or anchored, that is the end of the work on our “car” for a while. However, if this is the last trip, then we must reverse all our getting ready – hoist the motor back onto the stern rail, drag the dinghy around to the side, lift it up on deck, remove the oars and the seat, deflate it, fold it up, wrap it and strap it down.
It gives new meaning to the question, “Honey, is the car ready?”
Aboard No Boundaries
July 28, 2009
Some people travel to exotic places and pay people to guide them to the exotic sights. I think they all have wonderful experiences, and I have received all sorts of pictures and cards from people who took vacations that way.
However, cruising is putting us in reach of some fabulous sights for which we pay nothing extra. If anyone added up the cost of buying the boat and equipping it for blue-water cruising, it would quickly become apparent that this is not a free ride, but now that all the bill-paying is done, the sights seem to be free.
For example, when we sat in Cohansey Cove and watched cloud formations that looked like magic lanterns and erupting volcanoes, we felt as if we had been given the key to a fabulous treasure. All we did was show up, and the show happened without any effort on our part.
We have seen a lot of wonderful things along the way, but probably the most amazing thing so far is the whales.
As we passed Race Point off the tip of Cape Cod, we saw in the distance ahead a little inflatable boat sitting in the water. We noticed what seemed like unusual motion in the water, and suddenly it became clear to us that whales were breaching and diving there. We could tell that there were six or eight of the huge animals, and they were having a wonderful time. They were so near to our course that we didn’t need to change anything in order to watch them.
What amazed us, however, was to find that boats suddenly began zipping toward that spot from everywhere around us. Even a huge boat that we had thought was a ferry when it passed us earlier came rushing over to be close to the whales. Its decks were crowded with people yearning to see such a sight up close.
By the time we actually reached the site, only one or two whales were still there. They must have been tired, because they simply rolled over and slid under the water, never to be seen again. We were disappointed, of course, and it must have been disappointing to all those other boats, especially the one with as many as a hundred people aboard. However, as we looked around in all directions, we saw the spout of another whale, and once again a whale came up to the surface and then slid under again.
As we cruised northward, we saw this sight again and again. Once we watched as a whale glided along just under the surface, then spouted and came up to the top. We observed that most of the whales came up about three times before diving deep and showing us their huge tails. We must have seen a couple of dozen of them over the course of three or four hours. I don’t know what it would have cost to pay some guide to take us where whales were to be seen, but I don’t think any of them could have predicted that our course would be right where they were playing that day.
It was absolutely wonderful. And this sight is only of the many fabulous sights we have seen.
Today, as we left Seal Bay, a beautiful place we have inadequately tried to capture in photos, we saw a large group of seals sunning themselves on a huge rock. Until today, we had nothing but fog and more fog, so there was no sun to enjoy. Today, the seals and the people alike reveled in the gorgeous sunshine.
As we cruise, I see the work of God everywhere, and in the sight of seals and whales enjoying their world, I see God’s hand. There is so much about this world that nobody understands. How do so many creatures live so successfully without any humans to tell them what to do? How do they survive without manuals and government? One wonders, but for us, it is enough just to enjoy being part of the same world.
We can all be glad that people didn’t create the world. If people had done it, there would be so much sameness and uniformity that we would all be tired of it already. God’s world is full of surprises. Humans don’t do very well at predicting weather. Humans never know where a whale will appear. I am deeply thankful that God made a complex world that never fails to remind us that we don’t know everything yet. I love the surprises with which God has seen fit to bless us in our new life. Maybe it would actually be possible to predict weather and whales, but as far as I am concerned, I’ll take surprises over predictability any day.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 15, 2009
When we lived in Baltimore and cruised the Chesapeake Bay, we enjoyed quiet anchorages along the Chester River or other rivers that flow into the Bay. Chesapeake Bay is huge, but it is not deep as oceans go. In fact, there are large sections of the Bay that we could explore only by dinghy, because our boat needs seven feet of water to float. A boat with a deep keel is at a disadvantage in Chesapeake Bay. Some of the best-loved destinations have only five or six feet of water.
Another well-known feature of the Bay is that it has indifferent winds much of the time. A 12-knot breeze is much prized by sailors, because in the sailing season, it is not very common. Way too often people sit in fine sailboats with sails flapping for lack of sufficient wind.
Still, we loved the Bay. It was a wonderful home for us for many years. I came to expect that when we wanted to anchor, we would have nine or ten feet, maybe twelve at the outside. We became comfortable anchoring in ten feet of water with little or no wind.
Now that we have left the Bay anchoring is a different challenge. We discovered at Block Island that the anchorage had very little area with depths of ten feet, and those areas shoal rapidly to shallower depths. Most of the anchorage is twenty feet or more.
The first difference between anchoring in ten feet of water and anchoring in twenty feet is the amount of anchor rode required. The term “rode” refers to the chain or rope that attaches the anchor to the boat. We have 250 feet of chain and 200 feet of rope on our anchor, but in Chesapeake Bay, we never used much of it. The standard anchoring rule is to let out 7 feet of rode to 1 foot of depth. For a depth of 12 feet, we let out 84 feet of chain. That hardly stressed our capacity in any way.
However, the 7X1 rule in an anchorage at 25 feet of depth results in the deployment of 175 feet of chain. That changes a lot of things. In a big wind, the boat swings on a circle with a radius of 175 feet instead of a circle with a radius of 84 feet. In a crowded anchorage, it can be very interesting to observe if all the boats swing together or not. If everyone puts out rode according to the same calculation, theory suggests that they won’t collide. However, there are a lot of factors to consider. Some boats use chain, some use rope. Each boat’s profile and weight affect the way it swings. Collisions can occur, and then nobody is happy.
The second big difference is the wind. In Chesapeake Bay we were often challenged to figure out where the wind would be if there were any. As we cruise north, we are encountering much more wind all the time, and therefore more wind when we anchor. It makes a difference.
At Block Island, we were on a mooring for five days. We originally thought we might be there for a couple of days, but the days stretched on. By the end of the fifth day, we were almost ready to depart for Newport to get the remaining supplies we needed for our genoa repair. We decided to spend our last night at anchor instead of on the mooring. It would save a few dollars, and we like being at anchor. We chose a spot, the anchor stuck, and I settled down to sew.
The people in the catamaran nearby were not on their boat at the time we anchored. As they passed by our boat when returning in their dinghy, I could hear the woman complaining to her husband that we were too close to their boat. We had been there for several hours already. The wind was blowing about 15 knots, and we had swung back and forth, as is normal, several times. It was clear to us that our boat and their boat were swinging in synch. We were not going to collide. However, the woman on the catamaran did not see it that way.
At first, Larry and the other man talked about it, and Larry even offered to move, but the man said he thought it wasn’t necessary. The woman, however, did not accept that decision. She looked at our boat and screamed that we were coming closer and closer. There is a common word of wisdom that consultants learn early in the business: perception is reality. No matter what the truth of a matter is, the way someone perceives it becomes a personal reality, and everybody must deal with that reality. In this situation, the woman’s reality became an unbearable burden to everyone. The man finally got in his dinghy and came over to our boat to ask if we would go ahead and move. We agreed and soon found a different place that did not threaten this woman’s perceptions about our location. It was not a time for standing up for the truth; it was a time to make peace. We were slightly inconvenienced by the move, but here is the bigger truth: if we had not moved, neither that couple nor we would have had any peace all night.
The next morning we left Block Island and headed for Newport, a trip of about four hours duration. Once again, however, it was quite different from Chesapeake Bay. The anchorage in Newport is small and deep. We dropped our anchor in 25 feet of water again, and this time the wind was about 15 knots and gusting higher. The gusty wind complicated our process, because the boat needs to face into the wind when the anchor is dropped. The anchor does its work by digging in a direction that opposes the action of the wind. The wind makes it dig in more firmly, if the ground holds the anchor properly.
Gusty wind is a real problem, because once the boat is turned into the prevailing wind, a gust may be stronger and even from a different direction than the prevailing wind. It may push the boat away from the direction we planned. We may even go in a circle as we play out the anchor rode. That happened today as we set our anchor.
Still, we “stuck” on the first drop and that was a good thing. We were getting tired of going in circles trying to get in the right position.
Our new life as full-time cruisers has adventures and challenges. We learn a lot and we grow a lot in this life. Anchoring is only one of the many skills we are honing. Come back often to see what else we are up to.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 14, 2009
When I used to tell people that we planned to cruise full-time in retirement, they often asked, “But what do you do with your time? How do you occupy yourself when all you do is sail?” Some said, “Oh, that sounds so peaceful, just sailing along all day.”
Little did they know. For that matter, little did I know, either. Even though I knew that sailing required more attention and work than they realized, cruising in the North Atlantic Ocean required more than I realized, also. And as for staying busy? Ha! The trick is to sit down and stay quiet.
When we departed from Cape May, New Jersey, on July 7, there was a lovely south wind at 10-15 knots with a prediction of waves at 3-5 feet offshore. Until I was actually out there, I had only head knowledge of the meaning of such a prediction. The natural assumption when reading such information is to believe that the small waves will be about 3 feet high and the big ones might be 5 feet. That, however, is not what the prediction means. A forecast of waves 3-5 feet means that there will be more waves within that range than not, and higher waves up to three times that size are to be expected. Before I actually went offshore, I could only imagine what that meant. Now I have seen it for myself. It is important to understand the meaning of the forecast in order to understand the learning experience of riding such waves.
Our course was more north than east, which meant that a south wind was a following wind. A following wind pushes following waves. Sailors usually prefer wind and wave on the beam to wind and wave directly following, because waves approaching from behind wallow the boat. A 5-foot wave wallows the boat quite noticeably, and when some 3-foot and 5-foot waves run together to create a much larger one, the wallow factor is considerable. All that wallowing makes it difficult to stay on course, and it can even be tiring to attempt to sit still in one place as the boat wallows all over. The wallowing challenges the boat putaway plan, too, because every object that has room to move even an inch will do so. The wallowing goes in every direction, not just up and down, and items that were not loose and free to fly before departure may, in fact, find a way to leave their specified and planned locations to fly all over. It was a real learning experience to discover what didn’t stay where we put it. It was a lot of work after our passage was complete to find new ways to store things and to wonder if our new plan would work any better than the old one.
Of course, winds change and there came the time when the wind was on the beam at 15-20 knots and we were hoping to fly. People who have never sailed usually believe that the wind pushes a sailboat, and that is why they think following seas would be a good thing; a wind completely behind the boat would push it better. It is true that following winds push the sails, and that moves the boat, but while sails capture and use following wind, the boat can gain a lot more speed from a wind to the side or even somewhat in front. Winds to the side or in front do not so much push as pull the sail, which is designed like an airfoil, similar in concept to the design of an airplane wing that produces lift. When we observed that we had winds at 15 knots, gusting to 25 knots, on the beam, we knew that the sails would develop much more speed, and the ride through the water would be much smoother than with a following wind. We had our main up at the first reef point. We had our staysail deployed. We put on our gloves and let go the genoa. We could feel a small surge of speed as the genoa opened up, even though it was not tuned yet. When it was fully open, Larry wrapped the sheet around the winch and began to crank it down. The speed picked up. It felt so good. Bright sunlight on a deep blue sea. Whitecaps sparkling on all sides. Waves averaging about 5 feet and not a cloud in sight. We were doing what we came here to do. It was wonderful.
Suddenly there was a loud boom. Ka-pow! The genoa began to flap loudly. We ran to the starboard side of the boat where we saw that the sheets (the ropes that control the sail) had completely separated from the sail and were dangling over the side of the boat. The clew had given way and blown apart. The story of our retrieval of the sail is another story, but suffice it to say, repair was required.
Which brings me to Monday, July 13. After our 50-hour passage to Block Island, we were exhausted. The first thing we did after securing our mooring was to take a nap. Then we ate breakfast for supper and went back to bed. For two days we just lolled around and did nothing useful. On Sunday we walked around the island and enjoyed the sights. Then it was time to get down to business.
The business at hand was sail repair. When we were preparing for this life, one of our purchases was a Sailrite sewing machine. This machine is dramatically heavy duty, able to sew through layers of thick fabric without wincing. The presser foot can be released and tightened easily to accommodate layers and cording and so forth. It runs on electricity if you have it, but it also has a powerful wheel with a crank for hand power. The first time we used it, we needed to repair our old dodger when we were anchored out. We just took the sewing machine out to the aft deck and spread the work out there. Later, when we needed a new sail cover strip for our furling boom, we took the sewing machine out on deck to complete that work, because the cover must actually be sewn shut after it has been loaded into the boom.
Having arrived at Block Island and having recovered our senses after the passage, we proceeded to examine our wounded genoa. We discovered several problems. The one that looked the worst is actually the least important. The sail was made with a laminated fabric, and due to its age, some of the laminate was flaking off. We had already planned to order new sails in the fall, but we were not ready to do that yet. We could live with flaking laminate and still sail.
The problem that had brought us down was the broken clew. The clew is the corner of the sail where the lines that control it are attached. That corner is the point of greatest strain on the sail. It is reinforced with a metal ring and strong webbing sewed over the sail to absorb additional stress. The webbing inevitably frays, leading to inevitable failure. We needed new webbing, which we did not have. We could not repair this damage until we could obtain that material. Our next port of call is Newport, Rhode Island, a major sailing destination, where such supplies should be available.We must defer this repair.
The third problem needed to be addressed immediately. Much like the binding you might have at the edge of a quilt or blanket, the sail had a binding around its edge. The binding appeared to be intact with the exception of a few frayed spots, but it had begun to tear away from the sail because the thread that stitched it to the sail had rotted. This was a manageable repair.
We got out the sewing machine, oiled it and adjusted it as much as possible inside before taking it out on deck. We muttered a bit over the size of thread. It appeared to our untrained eyes that the V69 thread we had bought long ago from Sail-rite was about the same size as the thread that was used for the binding. It was also a fact that V69 thread was the only thread we had for this task. We decided that it must be exactly right.
We set the sewing machine on the cabin roof between the cockpit and the mast. The wounded sail was spread from the bow almost all the way to the aft deck. I began to sew at the clew around 1PM. By 4:30PM I was about 2 feet from the head of the sail when the bobbin ran out of thread. It seemed like a good time to call it a day. There appeared to be a couple more days of work, or one long hard day. We secured the sail so it wouldn’t be blown off the boat and planned our next move.
I’m not a professional sailmaker, and I never will be, but I looked at my work and felt quite satisfied. It was a great day. Nobody has a better place to work than I had. The day was sunny and briskly breezy. The sun was shining. All around were the blue waters of the Great Salt Pond on Block Island. When I tired of looking at the sail, I could look at boats of every description, the island, the water, the sky, gulls, and even people. I felt grateful to God for the opportunity to save our sailing summer by putting this sail back together with a simple sewing machine.
What on earth do we do all day when we are cruising full-time? We spend all our time doing what needs to be done to keep cruising. I’m sure that in time we will have some leisurely days. In fact, most days have some leisure time, although the 50-hour passage to Block Island had no leisure at all. We were lucky to get two-hour naps every so often. That is fine. I wouldn’t trade that experience for any amount of money, and I look forward to more such experiences. It is good to be fully engaged by something like that. Some people are never fully engaged in anything but daytime television. How sad!
In one sense it could be truly said that we work harder and longer now than we ever did as employees. In another sense it could be truly said that we are more free than we have ever been before. We are free people pursuing happiness as God gives us guidance to understand it. There could not possibly be a better life than that.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 11, 2009
When our engine failed about a mile out to sea after leaving Cape May, Larry felt justified in his concern that the diesel mechanic had not explained either the problem or the solution to our diesel engine failure. However, during their conversations, Larry had come to the conclusion that one possible explanation did exist, and he decided to pursue it. He began to work on the engine, and once again, I tacked up and down, more or less holding our position. About three hours later, Larry came back up into the cockpit and started the engine. It started. It ran. It did not stop. We left the sails up and we headed north. It was an act of faith to believe that the problem was actually solved, but we had to try. We couldn’t stay in sight of New Jersey forever.
After an hour or so, Larry felt confident that the engine was good to go. We turned it off and sailed. The evening came, and we were still sailing. Following winds do not give a lot of speed, and they wallow the boat a lot. If we were ever going to be seasick, this was the time, and to our great relief, we passed the test. We haven’t missed a meal yet.
When it came time to change course, we needed the jibs, which were on the port side, to cross over to the starboard side of the boat. All went well until the sails should have filled. Then we discovered that the staysail sheet (the rope that controls the staysail) was caught on something. Nothing we could do from the cockpit was successful in freeing that sheet, so someone needed to go forward.
At this point, we were probably forty miles from the nearest land. It was about 10PM, and there were two of us on the boat. It is no time for risky behavior. We both wear our lifejackets any time we exit the cockpit under way, or any time the water is rough or any time we are alone in the cockpit, and always after dark. So both of us had our lifejackets on. Larry attached his tether and tethered himself to the boat in order to go forward to see what was causing the staysail not to deploy on the starboard side.
Since it was dark, we turned on the spreader lights. Then he could see where the snarl had occurred, clear it, and return safely to the cockpit.
We try to practice safe behavior at all times. We never go on deck when the water is rough, as, for example when our following seas developed into waves consistently 8-10 feet high. We do not try to see what sort of stunt we can perform when blue water rushes over the bow. However, the next day, we were compelled to try some things that were pretty risky, because if we didn’t get this job done, we would have had nothing but tatters where our genoa (the large jib) used to be.
The morning of July 8 was beautiful. Our course was northeasterly, and we had a beautiful wind on the port beam, 15-20 knots, gusting to 25. The main and the staysail had carried us through the night. We wanted to take advantage of this good wind by deploying the genoa. That process takes only a few minutes, and soon it was fully spread out. Larry attached the sheet (the rope that controls the sail) to the big winch and began to crank the sail in to make it perform better. Suddenly there was a boom, and the big sail flapped free. The clew, the attachment point for the control lines, had burst. The clew is the most stressed point of the sail, and it is normal for it to experience extreme wear. We had not realized, however, the degree of wear, until it parted under stress, under way.
The engine was running as we had begun the sail deployment, and it continued to run as we considered what to do. If we had stopped the engine, we would have been adrift, out of control, and there was no telling where the boat would go. We needed to keep the engine running and the autopilot steering on a course with no charted obstructions while we pulled in the genoa and secured it. It wouldn’t be easy. This is the part that led us to what would otherwise be crazy and risky behavior.
Larry went forward first, tethered to the boat. He turned the furling reel by hand to reel in the genoa. It resisted with all its might, which is considerable, but eventually the sail was furled around the stay. However, it wasn’t going to stay there just to be nice. When Larry let go of the reel just for a minute, the sail was half unfurled before he even realized it. He grabbed it again and reeled it back.
At this point, it was my turn to tether up and go forward. The bow of the boat is encircled with strong rails firmly anchored to protect anyone who goes there. The railing structure is called the bow pulpit. As we worked there that day, I thought that maybe it is called a pulpit because of all the praying that goes on there.
Each of us tethered ourselves to that pulpit. I knelt, the right attitude for prayer, and held on to the furling reel with all my might. Larry had the hard job. He needed to secure the genoa in a way that would prevent it from unfurling and therefore from shredding itself in the wind. He used a boat hook very much as if it were a crochet hook. He tied a strong cord to the hook and held it against the furled genoa as high as he could reach. Then, very carefully, he tied a series of knots around both genoa and boathook, sliding them carefully up as high as possible, working his way down the boathook until he got to the bottom. He tied the last knot and it was done. The genoa was furled and locked down. It wasn’t going anywhere.
The work was not as simple as it sounds when I describe it. While Larry was doing this work, the boat continued to move forward under engine power, steered by the autopilot, climbing up waves and sliding down waves. Waves came at the boat under the power of wind, currents and we don’t know what. They seemed to come from everywhere. Sometimes they crashed against the bow with great spray. Sometimes we dived into huge troughs between waves and then climbed high up the sides of the trough. The sun was shining. The sky and the sea were blue. Waves rose and fell. Whitecaps sparkled. It was a wild ride, but it was beautiful.
If anyone had told me to go that bow pulpit and stand there for an hour just to see what it was like, I would have told said that the whole idea was madness. I would never have gone there for entertainment. However, in this situation, I went there, because we could not afford to have our genoa shredded. We need this sail in order to sail with any power or speed. We plan to replace it, but even if a replacement were on order, it would not have made sense to let that sail self-destruct. We had to save it. So we did.
This is part of the learning that goes with our new life. We cruise, because we can’t not do it. It takes all we have to give, and it gives back 110%. You can’t outgive God. One of the pastors I knew in my childhood said that over and over, and he is right. We have responded to his leading into this life, and I have wondered often what it is we are supposed to learn or to do here. I am learning that part of the learning is about faith and commitment. We have faith in God and faith in each other. We are committed to the life we are called to, and determined to make the most of God’s provision for this life. He gave us this sail, and it is our job to make it work until God gives us another. This life is very much about showing our gratitude for what God provides and refusing to let any of it get away without serving its intended purpose. It would be unthinkable to fail to respect what God has given us in his gracious provision for this dream.
It was truly awe-inspiring to be on the bow of our boat in all that wind and wave and to be able to do what needed to be done. It makes me believe ever more firmly that God can and God will provide what we need when we need it from now until forever. Amen.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 19, 2009
When I was a child, I loved fairy tales, whether told in poetry or prose. Often when a situation developed in a bad direction, the storyteller would say things like, “Alas, poor Jack was doomed,” or “Alack, there was no hope.” That is how we feel after our attempt to repair the clew of our genoa.
The Sailrite sewing machine we purchased as part of our preparation to cruise is advertised with language suited to the Unsinkable Molly Brown. You would almost expect it to walk on water. We thought it would enable us to fix any sail problem that beset us as we cruised. We wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible, and we considered this sewing machine to be a key element in our bag of tricks.
Sadly, even Sailrite has its limitations.
When I undertook to mend the binding on the sail’s edge, my biggest challenge was simply to keep the fabric moving. Every few stitches I needed to drag that big sail forward again. Such exercise will keep you out of the gym, I can tell you. However, as far as the sewing machine was concerned, it was a trivial challenge. It stitched along merrily with never a shudder.
When I undertook to repair a binding on the foot of the sail with several layers of cloth that encased the leech line, that too, proved no big challenge for this sewing machine. I used double-sided seam tape to hold the layers in place, and the machine easily managed all those layers.
However, when it came time to make the most important repair, the replacement of the frayed webbing at the clew, the sewing machine hit a wall.
The machine has many wonderful features to enable it to work with layers and stiffness and so forth. I could completely disengage the presser foot and force it up another fraction of an inch in order to get the stiffened clew with its reinforcements under the needle. I could then re-engage the pressure and set a tight tension that would hold the stitching. I could not do any of this alone, because I could not hold the weight and the stiffness by myself and still crank the machine. Larry had to help me manage all that volume.
The powerful hand crank that comes with a Sailrite is a really wonderful accessory, because it gives us the flexibility to use the machine when no electric power is available, but in this situation, using the hand crank allowed more control as well. Sewing one stitch at a time, stopping after every stitch to be sure I was getting the desired result, was crucial in this challenging work.
Still, despite Larry’s help, and with his eagle eye on things, I was defeated in my effort to make this repair.
Before I asked him for help, I carefully placed my first strip of webbing and maneuvered all the pieces into the right place, gamely tried to roll that clew up to travel under the machine arm, and stitched carefully. On my third stitch, the bobbin popped out of the chase. I asked Larry to help me start over, and once everything was back in place, we opened the slot that hides the bobbin so Larry could see what was happening. I stitched one stitch, and all was well. I stitched one more stitch. Still good. Then I took the needle down again, and the bobbin popped out, preventing the needle from moving any further. Larry popped the bobbin back in. I stitched two more stitches before the bobbin popped out again.
It was time to ask for help. I called the Sailrite number, expecting to get someone who would tell me that I needed to make some small adjustment I had missed. Instead, after listening to my tail of woe, the support tech, actually the manager of the Annapolis store, told me I had hit the limit of the machine. It does a lot of things very well, but repair of the clew with its stiffened reinforcements covered with layers of cloth and webbing were simply beyond the capabilities of the machine. The behavior I observed was the machine telling me that it could not do what I had asked of it.
This was very discouraging news. Quantum Sails has a loft in Newport, and that is actually where we obtained the webbing I was using. Their sail maker had given me tips and advice that helped me to plan my work. But sadly, alas and alack, I could not complete my project. We could have engaged their services to make the repair instead of buying the webbing from them. At this point, it was obvious we had to go back and engage their services after all.
Larry and I shook our heads and mourned. I picked up my tools and supplies. Larry brought the machine below and put the sail away. I felt completely exhausted, as if I had run a long race, and I asked myself why I was so tired. Then I realized that it was the spiritual depletion due to my disappointment. I was thrilled and happy when I was working on my project, because I thought I could save us a lot of time and money. I didn’t like to discover that there was a limit to what I could do with that sewing machine. I really wanted it to be the equal of the huge sewing machine I saw in Quantum’s loft. Reality is sometimes extremely unpleasant. When hopes are dashed, it may be a spiritual wound, but it has physical consequences. I felt as tired as I felt after our 50-hour passage.
No point crying, however. I can sing “alas and alack” as long as I like, and it won’t change anything. Time to get moving. Time to do what it takes and go forward. As the Bible says, we must gird up our loins and hie ourselves to Quantum tomorrow. We already know that their production schedule is about over, so we devoutly hope to squeeze our order into the early part of their repair work. Enough of “alas and alack.” Time to move on.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 4, 2009
Happy Birthday, America! May you still be the land of the free on your next birthday!
A marvelous thing happens when you exit the C&D Canal and enter Delaware Bay.
As you approach that exit, you are looking forward toward a view defined by the banks of the canal. For a mile or more, you look down that visual funnel toward what looks like a shore with houses and trees. However, before you truly exit the canal, you pass between a pair of stone breakwaters that push out into the Bay. Beyond the breakwaters, you see nothing but water in every direction, including the direction where you once thought you saw houses and trees.
It is waterworld. In fact, the illusion that grips you is a feeling that the water is encroaching on those breakwaters. It is as if you are in the center of a huge encircling wave. As you pass out of the canal and into the Bay, the impression remains that you have entered a world where nothing matters but water. We have been at sea where no land could be seen, and that is an impressive experience the first time it happens. This is different. Somehow, the contours of the canal banks and breakwaters change everything. There seems to be water above and below and all around, and all of it is coming your way. You don’t really escape for probably a mile.
Today we are truly passing out of sight of land. It is just past noon on July 4, and when I was still in the cockpit a few minutes ago, I could see no land except a hazy bubble of trees along the western horizon. We will exit Delaware Bay soon, and eventually every hint of terra firma will fade away. We will truly be at sea.
This is what we worked and dreamed for. When we left Harborview on May 1, we would never have predicted it would take two months to get here. Today the duration of two months fades unimportantly away. We are here. The dream is happening. The champagne is in the fridge. We are moving forward. All around is water, and that is a good thing. Sailboats love water. Our poor sailboat has been a prisoner far too long. It must feel like a bird let out of a cage. I know I do!
July 2, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
In the navigable waters in the USA, we spend a lot of our cruising time looking for markers. Usually we watch for red and green buoys. We remember the sailor’s mantra, “Red, Right, Returning,” and we get a little confused sometimes in rivers or canals, trying to remember if upstream or downstream is “Returning.”
Sometimes we argue, not about which marker we need to find, but rather about which marker we have actually found. We seek a red marker “6L” and I shout “I see it.”
“Where?” asks the captain.
“Over there,” I say, pointing.
“Where?” he asks again.
The problem is that I am standing on the port side of the aft deck while he is sitting at the helm. When I point to the silhouette I can barely distinguish as a red marker, from his perspective, my finger appears to be pointing somewhere else altogether. From our different starting points, the light and shadow on the water do not look the same. It may take two or three “sightings” before we agree that we are both looking at the marker we wanted to find.
Differences in point of view color our lives in many ways. I remember when my mother acquired a wonderful sewing machine that made fabulous embroidered designs. What fun she had with all those designs! She put arrowheads on stitched-down pleats. She decorated my clothes and my doll’s clothes with frieze lines and flowers. It was wonderful.
However, she did not want to exclude anyone. To share the joy, she made a set of colorful string ties for my brother. She made them in every color imaginable. She embroidered them with all the designs her machine could make. She stitched. She pressed. She spread them all out on the dining room table for everyone to admire. And each morning as my brother headed out for school, she looked him over and asked, “Did you forget your new string tie?” She dug in his drawer to find just the right tie for that day’s shirt. I think that my mother and my brother saw those ties from two different points of view.
Today as we transited the C&D Canal, we encountered a problem. The railroad bridge with only 45 feet of clearance was down. The top of our mast is 55 feet above the water. In my opinion we need 70 feet to feel safe, and if I were asked about it, that is what I would say. “We need 70 feet.”
The captain, however, tells it like it is. When the bridgemaster asked for our height, Larry said, “55 feet.” But then he added,”We would really like 70.” That made me nervous. The bridgemaster had already told us that men were working on the bridge, so I worried that he might not want to move that bridge one inch more than absolutely necessary.
Then the bridgemaster told us that as soon as he could see us, he would raise the bridge. That really put me in a spin. We could see that bridge right in front of us. When exactly was he going to see us? Would there even be time for the bridge to be raised high enough? I didn’t like this plan one bit. What was he waiting for?
He told us to proceed, so we did. It seemed to me that we were awfully close to that bridge when the bridgemaster came back to say that he could see us and was starting to raise the bridge. “You don’t need to stop and wait,” he said. “Just keep moving. You will have plenty of room.” Easy for him to say! He was sitting on this monster steel bridge that we could not damage if we tried. We were asked to proceed toward it as if it would simply be where it needed to be when it needed to be there. Talk about a faith challenge!
My faith was weak. We moved forward, and I saw the bridge inching up ever so slowly. Of course it was slow. How many gazillion tons does it weigh? I was standing on the back deck looking up. I kept waiting to see that bridge rise higher than the top of the mast, and it wasn’t happening. Finally I screamed. “Larry, stop! Stop! You have to stop!”
Larry slowed the engine, and I saw him try to make a sharp turn away from the bridge. “You have to stop! We’re going to hit it!” I was frantic. I could hear men’s voices shouting, “Keep going! Plenty of room! You have twenty feet.”
I kept looking at the top of the mast. There was no way we would go under that bridge. I expected to hear a horrific “Bonnnggggg!” at any moment. Again I heard the voices. “You have forty feet! Keep going!” Then amazingly, I looked up and saw the underside of the bridge. We were suddenly through it and no disaster. We waved to the men and shouted “Thank you!” They waved and shouted “You’re welcome. Happy sailing!”
I am pretty sure that I am the subject of dinner table conversation in a half dozen homes tonight where the men who were working on the bridge tell about the frenzied screaming woman who nearly created a disaster when there wasn’t one. From where they stood, they could see that we truly did have plenty of clearance. They were standing on a bridge pier almost at the level of the top of the mast. I was standing at the bottom of the mast looking up. From the deck of the boat, looking up, the top of the mast looks much more than 50 feet away. When we came to the next bridge, which is reported to have 150 feet of clearance above the water, I watched as we approached the bridge. Even there, knowing that the bridge was 150 feet above, it still appeared to me that our mast would never go under it until we were finally there.
It is a real metaphor for life. How often have you faced a situation that appeared insoluble from your perspective only to have a friend say something like, “What if you looked at it this way?” As long as I lacked the ability either to get a new perspective on the relationship of our masthead to the bridge or the ability to have some faith in the bridgemaster, I was doomed. We face a lot of situations in real life that are like that. We lock in our perspective on the problem, and we have no faith in anyone else. We stand rooted in our self-centered universe and refuse to trust anyone to help us. The next time I come to a bridge, or to a seemingly insoluble problem, I will try to trust the perspective of the folks who are in a better position to see the truth than I am.
6/29/09
Aboard No Boundaries
I know that by the time you read this post, it will be long past the date of departure. I am just trying to keep the timeline straight. Keep reading, please, and come back every day or two for updates.
Ever since May 1, we have worked and worked on the boat with one goal in mind: to get out of Chesapeake Bay and go north. It has been much harder to achieve than we imagined on May 1. I have chronicled for you some of our adventures, but I have left out a lot of the tedium. Let’s face it. A woman standing in front of a pile of lines, bags, buckets and assorted paraphernalia struggling to figure out how to fit them into an impossibly small space does not present compelling drama. Anyone who ever tried to help a teenager clean his room has already been there, and it was not fun.
However, today we have put a lot of those tasks behind us. The ones that remain look manageable, and it even looks as if we might be done in a day or two. We are starting to say, “Maybe tomorrow, or at least the next day.”
Yesterday we came back to Baltimore for a few supplies and to visit with friends one more time. The fuel dock was our first stop, and we had expected that with the fuel would come a free pumpout. That is an advertised benefit we count on. However, as sailing luck would have it, what we expected was not exactly what we got. The fuel dock attendant told us that the pumpout machine was broken and the parts were on order. AAaaaggghhh!
The solution was to go somewhere else and pay for the service. We decided to go the Baltimore Marine Center, located right beside the anchorage where we wanted to spend the night. The wind was blowing very hard toward their dock as we arrived, and we cruised past it once to assess the situation. Unlike the dock where we had bought fuel, BMC does not have fenders along the whole length of the dock. They have four fenders at each pump and nothing for long stretches in between. You had better get it right when you dock there.
We circled a second time trying to get a good feel for the approach. Then we turned to face that dock a third time, thinking we had it well planned. However, as we approached the fenders, but probably ten feet before the first one, a gust of wind threw us forcefully against the unguarded wood of the dock. There was a sickening screech. Then we arrived at the fender and we were certainly close enough for me to jump off and try to tie down the boat.
Unfortunately, the same wind that had slammed us into the dock had now taken it into its head to shove us away. I wrapped the spring line around a cleat and dug my feet in, figuratively speaking. Larry briefly put the engine in reverse to fight back at the wind. Then ever so slowly the boat responded to our direction and sank gently against the four fenders. I cleated the spring line, grabbed the stern line as Larry threw it and cleated it quickly before running to the bow to catch that line and cleat it down. We had arrived.
That scratch is repairable, and I always say that an unmarked boat hasn’t had any adventures. We have had a few, and both we and the boat have some marks to prove it. May it always be so.
Tomorrow, or the next day, we head north. If we have any more adventures, we will be sure to let you know when we connect with cyberworld again.