Aboard No Boundaries
July 14, 2009
Anybody who has simply blown a puff of air on the surface of water knows that water responds dramatically to the movement of air. Weather is very much about the movement of air, namely wind. It is also about water and temperature and many other things, but on the ocean, the movement of air and its interaction with water is the first and most noticeable component of weather.
It takes a very smart person a lifetime just to begin to understand weather. That is why I pay attention when a man with thirty years of experience talks about the weather. Even he will have a hard time explaining big trends for a whole season, but I don’t have much time for someone with a college degree and a lot of chutzpah. That person needs to grow a little.
So do I.
Mariners need to understand weather. If they miss the signals, they can easily wind up in life-threatening situations. However, if they do not know what the signals mean, they can see them and still be in trouble.
On the evening of July 8, we cruised eastward south of Long Island and marveled at a huge cumulonimbus formation above the island far in the distance. We were about 36 nautical miles south of Long Island at sundown. We had observed this cloud for a while, trying to figure out if we would intersect the part where rain was falling. We observed that the cloud fanned out into a brilliant red sky at sunset, and we remembered the old sailor’s wisdom: Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. We thought what we saw meant a sailor’s delight for sure, because it was red with intensity. In fact, there was a huge panorama in the sky that looked like a brilliantly painted desert scene, with lots of red.
Furthermore, the weather forecast was for 10-knot winds, and we had already seen the windspeed fall before sundown. The forecast indicated 2-4 foot seas and mild winds. We watched that cloud for an hour. We looked at its position relative to our course, and we concluded that we might follow it. We might even catch up with the tail end where the clouds appeared to be breaking up. We thought we knew what was coming. We had a lot to learn.
About 9PM, I went below. There is a whole school of discussion about the right length for watches in a boat crewed by two people, but for now, our watches are two hours. I expected to sleep until 11PM when I would take my turn on watch. I expected mild rocking as the boat cruised through the night. I had inappropriate expectations.
I was just laying my head on the pillow to sleep when I heard a roar and the boat rocked violently to starboard. I lay there for a few minutes, thinking that perhaps it was an errant gust that would settle down. It didn’t. The boat rocked wildly. I continued to hear the terrible roar. I put on my lifejacket and went back to the cockpit.
The sea was raging. That is the only word for it. Larry had turned off the autopilot, because it could not handle the violence of the wind and water. The waves were huge, and I refused to allow myself to speculate on their height. The wind was overwhelming. I could not see the windspeed display and I refused to ask Larry what it said. I put on my sailing gloves, because I expected to need to help change sails. We were traveling under engine power with a reefed main and a staysail. Every so often we heeled violently to starboard. Finally, Larry said, “That was enough fun for me.” It was time to haul in the staysail.
Our boat is well-designed for two people to manage. In fact, one person can manage pretty well, because most of the lines are led to the cockpit. However, the furling lines for the staysail and genoa end on deck just outside the cockpit under the 6-inch bulwark at the edge of the deck. In order for us to furl the staysail, someone had to bring that line into the cockpit, because neither of us had any intention of trying to stand up and work on deck in that maelstrom.
I unzipped the cockpit curtain directly across the deck from the end of the staysail furling line. I hung out of the cockpit, crawling across the deck with my hands while leaving as much of my body inside as possible. I grabbed the furling line and retreated to the cockpit with it in my hand. I pulled on that line as hard as I could after Larry released the sheet. I could only barely move that sail. The wind had the sail in its teeth, and it wasn’t letting go. Larry was trying to steer us into the wind, and I was trying to furl the staysail, but I wasn’t strong enough. Finally, Larry took hold of the furling line and pulled. He let go of the wheel for a few seconds and his extra strength brought the line in. I cleated it quickly and the staysail was secure. We stopped heeling, but the tumult of the water continued.
It was a startling surprise. Nothing we had read about weather and clouds had prepared us for this. Nothing we had previously experienced had prepared us for this. The North Atlantic Ocean was free-wheeling and accountable to nobody as trivial as either or both of us.
Larry searched for a course that would alleviate some of the stress. The direction of travel relative to the wind at any time will very much affect the experience on the water. Eventually he found a course that gave us a little relief from the terrible pounding. I emphasize, only a little. It was the least violent choice that didn’t turn us around to go backward. At that point, Larry, the captain, ordered me to go take my nap, so he could have one later. I followed orders.
You might think that nobody could sleep in such a situation. I am learning that I can sleep when I have the opportunity. The first night we were out I remember that I felt that God was rocking me to sleep. I slept deeply and restfully. This time was the same. I had confidence that God would go with us through the night. I had confidence in Larry’s navigation skills. I knew he would call me if he needed me. I fell to sleep quickly. The next thing I knew he was calling me for my watch.
The tumult was still terrific. We seem to be traveling under that big cloud at about the same point where we first intersected it. Maybe we intersected on a course and speed that kept us in the same relative spot for a long time. Whatever it was, the huge wind and waves continued all night. They actually continued into the next morning until we entered the Block Island Channel. We still do not know how we would have known to expect this storm. There was no rain, no thunder, and no lightning. Just ferocious wind and huge waves.
The delightful thing about it all was the way the boat handled the seas. It was tipped over again and again, but it always righted itself. It slid down waves. It climbed up waves. It rode over waves. It was wonderful to see. We felt that we had discovered a whole new side of this boat that we never knew about. This boat will keep us safe if we have the wit to be sensible.
Which comes back to what we have to learn. We can see that a lot of reading and some informed speculation combined with official weather reports can still lead to the wrong conclusion. We know that we have a lot to learn. Still, we have learned that we can count on each other. we can count on the boat, and we can count on God. I found myself singing, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” in the midst of the storm, because I was fully and richly aware of His presence with us. As long as He goes with us, I will not be paralyzed with fear. I will always respect the sea, and I know we have a lot to learn about the sea, but we know one important thing about God. “I will not leave you or forsake you,” is God’s promise. We have already learned that lesson.
We are finally moving forward again. If you keep track of us, and I hope you don’t spend a lot of effort at it, you will remember that we left Harborview on May 1. We spent a week in the boatyard for bottom paint and new lifelines. We spend three weeks after that continuing to work through a lot of junk on the deck, fine-tuning some of Larry’s installations, and cleaning the boat. We spent some time at Rock Creek, made a trip back to Baltimore for groceries and departed again for the Bay.
We have bounced around a lot, and today we are in the marina only a few hundred feet from where we started. It sounds as if we are going nowhere, but in fact, we have made a lot of progress. If you had seen us on May 1 and then looked us over today, even the least nautical person would notice that this boat looks a lot more shipshape. That is the point of it all. Progress every day toward the goal. We are retired, after all, so we don’t have the sense of urgency that drives high-tech projects. We want to go cruising, but we are taking time along the way to enjoy the process.
Today we had the joy of attending worship at Christ Church again, since we are here. After seven Sundays away, it was wonderful to be there. That sanctuary inspires worship and sets us on the right course. It was also great to see our friends. Some thought we had finished our cruising and were returning for good. They could hardly take in the idea that seven weeks were devoted to getting ready and the real trip is still ahead.
We, too, get a little discouraged sometimes, but we will not stop working. It really is amazing the way each new task begins with a new problem. We are back in Harborview now simply because the people who sold us our life raft also sold us a bracket that didn’t fit the raft. Is that not weird? But we have learned that this is boat life. It is just the way it is.
In fact, we don’t have the worst of it, or we haven’t had the worst of it yet. I am reading Joshua Slocum’s book “Sailing Alone Around The World”, and I just read about a day on which he was hit by a huge wave. He noticed the wave building as it roared toward him. He dropped all sail and climbed into the rigging. He left the deck! I could not imagine why, but then the wave hit. He said that for several minutes he could not see the deck. Yet after the wave roared on, the boat shook itself and then continued to sail on. He climbed down out of the rigging to the deck.
So far, we have never had such an experience, and I hope we won’t. Joshua Slocum had no way of predicting weather at all, so he could not have known when storms were building until they were too close for him to run away. We plan to use all the weather information at our disposal to avoid known storms. Most people we know who take advantage of the information manage to avoid the kind of drama Joshua Slocum faced daily.
Tomorrow we will leave Harborview with a plan to continue cruising in the Bay while we store the rest of our gear. We look for that work to be finished within ten days. Please do not count the hours. We aren’t that good with schedules. However, if we are done in ten days, it means we should be headed out of the Bay by July 1. Stay tuned for further developments. The good ship No Boundaries will soon be on the move again.
Aboard No Boundaries
June 10, 09
Planning is one of my best things. I have been a planner for as long as I can remember. I make lists, put notes on calendars, estimate time to goal, and measure my progress. Even though I am retired and cruising, I can’t help myself. Before I start my day, I always go over my lists – little tasks that need doing, projects I want to work on, meal plans. I am constantly revising and editing my plans to accommodate our cruise plans. Some people think I just can’t let go of being a consultant, but the real explanation is that much of my success as a consultant was the result of this quirk of my personality.
Planning is a good life skill, I think. Because I plan, I accomplish some things that would be ignored or forgotten otherwise. Maybe those things don’t matter to other people, but they matter to me. It makes me very happy to cross something off today’s list. It makes me happy to see that I am more than half done with a project. It is exciting to think during the day about my meal plans and how I can make the meals more flavorful or colorful or whatever.
However, as good and valuable as planning is, sometimes flexibility is the better skill. Every once in a while, reality throws a party that simply blows away all the prior planning in the world. When reality slaps you in the face, whining, “but I had a plan” will not help.
Last night, reality slapped us in the face with a summer thunderstorm. We cruised from the Tidewater Marine Service Center in Port Covington about 11AM bound for Lankford Creek on the Eastern Shore. We had heard that there might be some thunderstorms late in the day, but none of the weather reports we heard referenced that area.
Just as we were circling the eastern branch of the creek, around 5PM, looking for a place to anchor, we heard a weather alarm that alarmed us. The Weather Service was reporting an imminent storm in the tidal Potomac with torrential downpours, potential for winds at 60 mph, and even hail. It was traveling up a track from the southeast. Such a track was like an arrow pointing right at us. We had to plan for the extreme likelihood that this storm would soon engulf us.
We already knew that the East Fork is a poor place to be in a big blow. On a memorable evening several years ago, we spent hours circling in the East Fork trying to find a place where the anchor would hold. In the middle of the night we gave up and picked our way through the narrow channel to the West Fork, where we also never found good holding. To hear that such winds might be in our near future in this location was extremely disconcerting.
We had the advantage this time of making our trip to the West Fork, on the other side of Cacaway Island, in daylight. Yet, as we rounded the tip of the island, hoping to find a little shelter there, we could see the clouds building up east and southeast of us. They became huge. There were the soft bulbous undersides that spawn tornadoes. Some of the formations we could see showed us tumultuous downdrafts and chaotic activity. We began to see lightning.
We made a circle around the available space for anchoring. Another sailboat was already anchored almost in the middle of the channel behind the island, leaving us plenty of room to anchor closer in. We set the anchor as the rain began to fall, and then the storm exploded. Our anchor was set as well as we could manage in the location, but it could not hold against the fury that had us in its power. The storm commenced about 6PM.
On the previous occasion when we were beset by a storm in the East Fork, the wind blew furiously from one direction for hours. It was easy to see when the anchor dragged as the bow turned away from the wind and the beam of the boat became like a sail that the wind used to push us where it would. It was, therefore, easy to figure out where we needed to find shelter in order to get some relief from the wind. Knowing what we needed did not, however, automatically produce what we needed. It was a memorable 36 hours.
This new storm, on the other hand, blew in all directions. It whirled around us, and it whirled us around. Ferocious gusts heeled us over as if we were sailing in a high wind, even though we did not have any sail deployed. It was an amazing sight to see the waves change direction so rapidly that we might have been in a huge mixing bowl. At one point, we realized that we were being dragged very close to the other boat in the cove, so Larry drove into the wind and avoided a collision. Some time after 7PM the wind fell below 10 knots and the rain subsided.
We had kept the engine running and the radio tuned to the weather station throughout. Originally, the storm was projected to end about 7:30, so we thought we might be able to reset the anchor and relax, but it was not to be. First, the weather announcers changed the projection of the storm to run through 9PM, and second, we soon discovered for ourselves that the lull was only temporary. We did reset the anchor, but that work was hardly done before the wind slammed into us again.
Again we were dragged this way and that. At one point we could see that we were being pushed very close to the island, where we would be in danger of grounding. At another point, we were pushed away from the island, whirled and tilted and shaken thoroughly. Whenever possible, Larry steered the boat where he thought we would be safest, but things changed so rapidly that it was almost impossible to guess where to point the boat or to put the pressure. We briefly grounded near the island, but the bottom is silt, the real reason it is so hard to get the anchor to hold, and another gust shook us loose. Finally the wind died down, the rain stopped, and we began to see small openings between clouds. The sun was setting in a fierce red glow, turning the storm clouds into innocent-looking little cherubs.
After 9PM, the rest of the evening was predicted to be relatively calm. Winds were not projected to exceed 15 knots. We observed that the wind fluctuated between 5 and 15 knots, but we were no longer dragging. We had survived the assault and were little the worse for wear, except for complete exhaustion.
Of course, like always, I had a meal planned for this evening. I had thought we could dine on deck and watch the sun set. Needless to say, reality swept away that plan completely. Somewhere around 8PM when things were beginning to calm a bit, I thought I might make something to eat. We finally settled for some chicken salad and cottage cheese in the cockpit still watching the radar to see if more storms were coming our way, still watching in every direction, trying to be sure that the boat was still at anchor, not dragging again. All the planning in the world was irrelevant right then. The only plan that mattered was to continue to pay attention and be ready to do what it took to save the boat and ourselves.
I like being a planner. It gives my life order and direction. I am not happy without a plan. Cruising, however, teaches me that planning is only good when predictable conditions continue. When the unpredictable, the unexpected, the unwanted, overpowers your plans, it is time to flex. It is time to use God’s precious gifts of intelligence, courage and faith to get through the storm.