We returned to the boat on Monday. There were still a few pieces to attach to the engine, and then there would be testing. We speculated that we might be able to leave the marina by Wednesday. Ha!
When it came time to attach the starter, the mechanic discovered that the starter sent with the engine would not fit on the engine. When Larry and the mechanic examined it closely, they discovered a major difference. It was not the right starter for this engine. That problem has been dealt with, but it isn’t the end. There seem to be daily revelations of “just one more thing.”
Yesterday morning we expected the mechanic to finish his work. We thought we could put the boat back in order in the afternoon, run errands today and depart tomorrow. Not to be. A few minutes before 5PM the mechanic left to look for yet another part. When he had not returned at 6PM we called and learned that he would not be back until today. The saga continues.
I told someone that it was like daytime TV, maybe “Days of Our Lives.” We have certainly lost a lot of days to this project. A lot of dollars, too. The slip rental alone will be staggering when the final bill is presented. Shipping costs have been shocking. The boatyard, like the government, charges fees for everything. The service company that provided the diesel mechanic, the crane and etcetera will undoubtedly charge for every little thing. We will be glad when it is over.
The good news is that the engine works. You push the button, it starts. This engine starts in the blink of an eye, something the old engine never did. It always had to huff and puff a bit before it got going. So that’s nice. It also runs much more quietly. I told Larry it almost makes me think of a lawn mower, and that is rather disconcerting. I think it should sound powerful. Maybe I don’t really know how it should sound.
The final bit of excitement is the delayed arrival of the replacement starter. The starter that was originally rebuilt for our old engine is back in service now, but we paid for a new starter, and we were expecting one. The latest update on its status is that it may be here by next Wednesday. Is this not fun!?!?!
The engine runs, and so shall we. We have paid our bill to the marina based on a departure on Sunday. We will hang around in Lake Worth until the starter gets here. We might get internet there by using our wifi antenna. We will work with what we have. Our phone works, so they can call us when the part arrives. Then, at last, we can finally go north.
If I were in the business of telling tall tales, I could hardly make up a story with as many hitches and glitches as this one. Still, we are almost on our way. Whew!
The good news first.
The new engine is in the boat. The crane arrived Friday morning and gently placed all 1100 pounds of new Perkins engine in the boat. The new engine is the same model as the old one, a truly new engine, part of the factory inventory of Perkins engine at the time it went out of business. One would expect that this engine is a mirror image of the old one, but as any boat owner knows, it doesn’t pay to have expectations.
The boat is in the water. We splashed in mid-afternoon on Friday and the towboat folks delivered us back to the dock nearby. There are still parts and pieces to be attached to the engine and a few issues to resolve before anyone tries to turn it on. Still, we remain hopeful that everything will be done sometime Tuesday.
Now, the bad news.
The last task to be done before the boat was put back in the water was the attachment of the zinc at the propeller. Larry keeps a supply of them aboard, and he took one out of his stock for this purpose. He has never had any problem with the fit in the past, but this time the zinc did not fit. The discrepancy in the dimensions is so small that it certainly looks as if it should work, but it doesn’t.
The diesel mechanic thought he knew where one could be bought that would fit, so Larry dutifully went there and bought one. However, when the mechanic tried to use it, this one did not fit either.
In other words, this is a very normal boat project. The tiniest thing, the thing you would assume could not possibly be a problem, is a problem.
In order to get the boat in the water, the mechanic had the zinc machined to a slightly smaller dimension. He was able to fit the zinc, and we were able to put the boat back in the water.
It seems almost as if all is well, but there is this nagging concern – if neither of the zincs purchased, supposedly to the same dimensions that have worked on this boat for 25 years, will work, what happens in the future? The big question is: What changed?
Tomorrow the diesel mechanic will be back, and he and Larry will work together. I hope that when the day is over, we know the answers to all our questions. I could use some more good news!
We have had some interesting experiences in the Bahamas. Winds and currents do strange things sometimes. We have seen some spectacular sights at Warderick Wells, Cambridge Cay and Big Majors Spot.
When we arrived in the mooring area at Cambridge Cay, the winds were about 10 or 12 knots, much more subdued than in the previous dozen days, so it was pretty easy to pick up our mooring. We noticed right away that both the mooring and its pennant were heavily marked with blue paint that matches our bottom paint. We knew exactly how that happened. It is all about winds and currents.
Before we came to the Bahamas we read about the navigation and anchoring challenges here. Winds and currents here have different characteristics than we were accustomed to in Chesapeake Bay. In the descriptions of many Bahamas anchorages, there are notes about extreme currents and the recommendation to deploy two anchors. That comment sounds relatively simple, but the solutions are not simple at all. The problems associated with the currents and winds lead many, many boaters to prefer moorings or marinas to the hazards associated with anchoring. Those hazards lead to issues with the anchor rode similar to the mooring problems that produced the markings we saw on our mooring ball and pennant at Cambridge Cay.
The differences between high and low tide in the Bahamas will normally be somewhere between 2 and 3 feet. To those of us who have cruised in New England, that difference sounds small. In Maine, tides of 12 feet are not uncommon, and the intrepid cruisers who venture as far east as West Quoddy Point will learn to deal with tides at or near 20 feet. Tales of the tides in Bay of Fundy will give anyone pause. We have cruised as far east as Schoodic Point in Maine, and we found that we could adjust easily to the greater tidal range. It was a simple matter to calculate the greater scope required, but we found no other significant challenge associated with the tides in Maine.
The lesser range of the Bahamas tides fools the novice cruiser at first. We saw the chart markings that said “strong current,” but we had no idea what that actually meant. We were prepared for the current to be strong, but we did not realize how it would affect us until we experienced it.
How did that mooring and pennant come to be so severely marked with bottom paint?
When we picked up our mooring at Warderick Wells, it must have been slack tide, although at the time we were not sensitive to tidal timings as we have become in the days since. Larry eased up to the mooring, I picked it up, we pulled the eye of the pennant over our forward cleat, and we were secure. As Larry always does, he rigged lines that basically create a harness through the eye of the pennant around the bow of the boat. Then we settled in.
I don’t remember noticing when the flood tide current began to pick up, although I could hear the water rippling past our hull. However, after I went up on deck, I observed that the bow of the boat had ridden up past the mooring ball. Later, I heard the ball banging against the hull from time to time. As the days passed and the fronts passed, I saw that ball move all over the place, or rather, I observed that we moved relative to the ball. The ball sometimes slid under the boat and popped up on the other side.
That’s not all. After the first front passed, I saw that the lines of the harness were twisted twice around the pennant. After a second front passed, the twists were completely undone. And then there was the dinghy. After the second front passed, I discovered that our dinghy painter had been tied in a tight knot by the wind. I didn’t think it was even possible for that to happen. It makes me think back to a time that I thought we had made some mistake in tying up our dinghy. We woke up after a front had passed in the night to discover that the dinghy was attached to the boat by only one tie. We always tie it up twice with quite a bit of line between the ties, but on that occasion the tie nearest the dinghy was undone by the wind. After seeing that the wind could create a knot last week, I am prepared to believe that it could untie one just as easily.
The way our boat moves with tides and currents is due to the keel. We have a full keel, and as we watched the other boats moored at Warderick Wells, we could easily discern which ones had full keels. They moved with the mooring the same way we did. When we discovered that we had run up on the pennant, we could look around and see at least a half dozen other boats doing the same thing. A full keel is much more influenced by the currents than the winds, and that behavior prevails despite really strong winds. If we had the aft cockpit curtains open, it was not uncommon for us to have winds blowing in the aft of the cockpit, because the current was forcing our keel to point opposite to the wind. The moorings expect the boat to be moved by the wind, and when we moved with the current opposite to the wind, we ran up on the pennant and received strong breezes through the aft opening to the cockpit.
So we know exactly how our mooring and pennant at Cambridge Cay came to be more blue than white. As the keel is pushed by current in the opposite direction of the wind, the keel rubs against the pennant and the ball, leaving behind a residue of blue bottom paint.
We have learned to be very attentive to the tides here. We faithfully write down the times for tides in Nassau every day. The tides in any given location may be before or after the Nassau tides, but a day of observation will give you the relationship. We assume that the tides are within an hour of Nassau for rough planning. We need that timing because the tidal currents are so strong. They are often as much as 4 knots, and in many places a speed of 6 knots will be common. Many anchorages are affected so dramatically that boats must deploy two anchors if anybody is to be able to sleep at night.
Here is the rule: Tides flood toward the banks and ebb away from the banks. I think that the problem must originate in the vast expanses of the banks coupled with the way the bottom drops dramatically elsewhere. The east side of Eleuthera Island, for example, faces the Atlantic with a rocky shore and huge coral outcroppings. The rocks extend a short distance toward the ocean, and then there is nothing. The depth goes from 100 feet to 1000 feet almost in the blink of an eye. On the western side of the island, in the bight between Current Island and Powell Point, is a huge bank. That bank extends several miles from the island toward Exuma Sound, but at Powell Point, the bottom drops out again. I speculate that the difference between the shallow banks and the deep channels is at the root of the strong tidal currents.
Whatever the reason, they are not to be trifled with. Prudent mariners respect their power. A current of just 4 knots coupled with winds over 20 knots, or colliding with winds over 20 knots, can create a hazard that can push a big boat onto rocks or reefs. Everyone is advised to have a spotter in shallow water to watch for hazards, but in tight quarters, the winds and currents can fool you.
North of the anchorage on the west side of Big Major Spot is a tiny cut that separates Big Major from Fowl Cay, a Sandals property. This little cut is probably lest than 50 feet across, and it must be 15 feet deep. On the south side, the water is quite deep in a protected pool. On the north side, the channel through the cut is bounded on the east by a very shallow bank that extends along the northern shore of Big Majors. It is a microcosm that dramatically displays the big challenge across the Bahamas.
A few days ago Larry and I decided to circumnavigate Big Majors Spot. We headed north toward this tiny cut. As we approached, it was flood tide. Water was rushing through this cut at a pace so furious that the incoming water could hardly be contained. On one side whirlpools swirled and dipped noticeably in the center of circulation. On another side a confluence of opposing currents created raging cascades. We picked up speed and hurried through, hoping not to be shoved backward. On the north side I looked eastward across the shallow banks. There I saw water rushing furiously across the bank downhill toward the deep water of the cut. There was almost a waterfall into the channel.
Today we tried to navigate that cut in the opposite direction. We should have been prepared, but even our prior experience during a flood tide was no preparation for today’s ebb. The last time the tidal ranges were in a more normal range – a difference between 2 and 3 feet between high and low tide. Today the low low tide was more than 4 feet lower than the high high tide. We approached from the north during the second hour of ebb. It was a roaring torrent, and despite gunning the outboard to its highest possible speed, we were pushed off course. The only way to avoid being shoved against the rocks was to turn around and let the water take us back where we came from.
We saw some other frightful, but terrifyingly fascinating sights on this trip. As we traversed the channel between Big Major and Little Major, we could see through the cuts both to the north and south of Little Major. It was enough to take your breath away. We have heard warnings not to attempt these cuts on an ebb with wind or wave from the east, but until you see it, you don’t know. In this case, a superhigh tide was ebbing at a ferocious pace into Exuma Sound against a long period northeast swell of about 8 feet. We looked through those cuts and saw huge waves break across the entrance. Some roared against the rocks surrounding the cuts creating huge breaking waves between the rocks. Under no circumstances would I have attempted to go in or out those cuts under these circumstances.
We happened to have another couple with us today as we contemplated how we would deal with the fact that we could not navigate our tiny cut, the one obstacle that separated us from our boats safe in the anchorage on the other side of the cut. Our new friend Irina looked at me and smiled, saying, “C’est l’aventure!” That’s what cruising is: an adventure. You plan with all your intellect, and you deal with what happens anyway. Sometimes you get what you don’t want, but you get through somehow. It is all about adventure!
We left our lovely anchorage in the Berry Islands on Saturday, January 30. We wanted to go somewhere to restock provisions, refill our propane and maybe find a piece of hardware that Larry needed. We could go either to Nassau or Spanish Wells, both destinations within an easy day’s passage. After researching charts and guide books, and a few conversations with cruisers who were knowledgeable about Nassau, we chose Spanish Wells.
Our departure from the White Cay anchorage was uneventful, unlike our arrival. We headed into the Northwest Providence Channel and watched as the depth gauge recorded 53 feet, 281 feet and soon gave up on recording the depth altogether. The chart said 2000 feet. That was good enough for us.
At the tip of Eleuthera a number of islands enclose a shallow, protected sound. The approach to Spanish Wells through that sound is shallow enough that our boat, drawing 6’4” might ground at low water. Furthermore, in the Bahamas, someone should always be reading the water when crossing the shallow banks, a task requiring bright overhead sunlight.We arrived at the sound late in the afternoon, not enough sun for reading the bottom. There is an easy channel through the sound to the entrance of a lovely harbor at Royal Island, and we chose that anchorage where we could wait for the right combination of tide and light for the entrance to Spanish Wells.
When the day came, we found ourselves in a virtual parade of three boats from Royal Island to Spanish Wells. The mooring field has only 7 moorings, and after we arrived, only one was left. During our visit, many boats came and went, and sometimes all 7 were taken.
Spanish Wells is nothing like Nassau. Nassau is a busy metropolitan community with a reputation for violence and crime. Spanish Wells has a population probably less than 2000 where the theft of a golf cart by two joy-riding teenagers is big news. Golf carts are more numerous than cars on the streets, although many people have one of each. Stores are small, and with they all close Noon – 1:30PM for lunch. Except for Pinder’s, they close all afternoon on Wednesday. We found that all stores of any type were small, poorly lit, and usually had bare spaces on the shelves. The person in attendance at the store might or might not know the products but was inevitably friendly and helpful in every way.
We met some lovely people in Spanish Wells. We enjoyed getting to know Tom and Jordan aboard the catamaran St. Christopher. We met Tom and Jean, retired cruisers who live in Spanish Wells, but still take their identity from their boat, M/V Amadon Light. S/V Samba from Baltimore moored nearby for a couple of days. We visited the Methodist Church on Sunday and were welcomed warmly. Diana and Wayne aboard S/V CAVU arrived in the mooring field on Monday, the 8th, and it took about 5 minutes to become their lifelong friends.
During our first day at Spanish Wells, we decided to go looking for Larry’s hardware piece. We tied up the dinghy beside Pinder’s Grocery and went inside just to look around. They told us that we might find Larry’s hardware at Ronald’s store a few blocks away, so we got back in the dinghy and motored along the shore looking for a place to tie up near Ronald’s. We found nothing until we were almost back to the mooring field. Then we saw some steps leading up from the water to the street. It was low tide, so we had to wade after grounding the dinghy. We have a long painter, which was convenient for tying up the dinghy in this situation.
While Larry was finishing the tie-up, an elderly man standing beside the street came over and introduced himself. He was curious about who we were and where we came from and our boat and our mission ashore. When he found out that we were headed for Ronald’s store, he said, “Oh, he won’t be open today. It’s Wednesday.” Well, for starters, we had both forgotten that it was Wednesday, but if we had remembered, we would not have expected stores to close. In the US, it used to be that doctors all closed on Wednesday afternoon, but that practice seems to be a thing of the past in our multi-tasking world where even kindergartners have planners. In Spanish Wells, I don’t think anyone owns a planner.
Our new friend, Mason, certainly didn’t have one. When he realized that our plans were doomed to failure that day, he invited us into his home. His house is right across the street from the steps where we were tying up. In the US, you would never expect someone to invite a complete stranger into his home, especially if that stranger just arrived in town by boat. We were a bit nervous about the invitation, but we needn’t have been. Mason was genuine and very hospitable.
Inside, we met his wife Donna, who was just as delightful as Mason. We visited with them for a while before Donna said, “You are cruisers. You should meet Tom and Jean who live behind us. They used to cruise, too, and they love meeting new cruisers.” She led us out the back door and across the yard to meet Tom and Jean, but not before she presented me with two tomatoes and two peppers. “You might like to have something fresh,” she said.
We walked over to Tom and Jean’s house where we were greeted warmly. Tom and Jean retired from permanent cruising to a home on land several years ago. They keep their trawler M/V Amadon Light on a mooring near Charles Island, very close to the location where our boat was moored. As soon as greetings had been exchanged, Jean invited us to join other boaters due to arrive soon for cocktails on the porch. The custom is that whoever joins them brings something and everybody shares. Unfortunately, we had not prepared, but Jean made us welcome anyway. Tom and Jordan from St Christopher arrived first, then Pat and Miriam from Skye2. Jean had invited Donna and Mason when they introduced us, and they came along later. Finally, Pat from the catamaran Miss Kitty stopped by with a tale of woe regarding their repairs. He was invited to join the party, so he hurried away, returning shortly with his wife Lyn. That little front porch buzzed with chatter and laughter and good fellowship.
After we left, we felt we had been among good friends, even though we hardly knew any of the people. In our subsequent comings and goings around the island we kept running into one or another of the people who had enjoyed that cocktail hour. I decided that we needed to repay our social obligations, so I made some date bread. We took the bread with us on Sunday when we visited the Methodist Church and distributed it afterward.
When we stopped at Donna and Mason’s house, they invited us in. We had intended to simply drop off the bread and go back to the boat, but they would have none of it. We went in and visited for a few minutes before we realized that they were about to sit down to lunch. We tried to excuse ourselves, and Donna said, “Well come back soon. By the way, would you like to watch the Super Bowl with us tonight?” Would we? We would, indeed. We returned shortly after 6:30PM with some snacks to share, and the party was on. We had missed the kickoff, but we saw most of the game. It was one of the best Super Bowl games I have ever seen.
I chose to cheer for the Saints. It was a difficult choice. My brother lives in Indiana, so I wondered if I should support the Colts. However, I love Cajun food, and food won. The Saints won, too. We all whooped it up, especially through the second half. During commercial breaks, Mason entertained with some great stories. When the evening was over, we both agreed that we could not have had more fun anywhere.
On another day, I walked to the Food Fair to pick up a few more things. On my first trip, I didn’t know the store, and I failed to find some of the things I wanted. Since we remained in Spanish Wells longer than we had originally planned, I thought I would try to find some of the things I missed on the first trip.
Spanish Wells is on a very small island. The island is no more than a half mile wide, so I walked across to the beach on the Atlantic side and walked the beach to get to the store. It was low tide, the sun was shining, the breeze was pleasant and the water was gorgeous. The beach was completely deserted except for a backhoe and its operator working on a seawall along the way to the store. I had a delightful walk.
At Food Fair, I was fortunate to find most of the things I had missed on my first trip. I had to plan my purchases carefully, because I needed to be sure I could carry them back to the dock where Larry would come for me in the dinghy. After I paid for my purchases and walked outside, I stopped to adjust things in one of the bags for better balance. A lady with bags in her hands approached me.
“Where are you going?” she asked. I pointed across the street. “I’m going to 18th street and then down to the water,” I said.
“Oh, good. Can you give me a lift?” she asked. Regrettably, I had to decline, since I was afoot also. We fell into conversation, and I learned that she is visiting friends on the island. Her home is Quebec, and the Bahamas are much nicer in the winter than her small home town in Canada. Eventually our paths diverged and we went our separate ways. It seems to be typical of this little town that everyone talks to everyone regardless of whether they actually know each other.
So here we are still. The weather for the next few days will not be optimal for cruising. We are tucked in at a location that is safe regardless of wind direction and speed, up to hurricane force. No hurricanes are imminent here, although the storm that has pounded the US is predicted become an extratropical storm at hurricane strength. We are thankful that it is far enough away that we will feel only distant small effects from it. One of the delights of cruising is the freedom to stay or go for whatever reason seems good. We plan to remain through Saturday and leave early Sunday morning with the tide. In the meantime, we will continue to enjoy our friends and neighbors in Spanish Wells.
Aboard No Boundaries
January 4, 2010
Before we ever set out to visit the Bahamas, friends with experience gave us a somber warning. “Be sure you get across before Christmas. The Christmas winds can keep you waiting for days and days.” I wondered what that meant, because I could not find that term anywhere – Christmas winds. I know now what that is all about.
One of our guide books tells the story in more scientific, therefore more cryptic, language. It talks about the fronts that line up to the west of Florida (I deduced that they must form first in the Great Plains) and roll across that state into the Atlantic and across the Bahamas. These fronts come in from the west, but they usually have a northerly component, a dead stop for any plan to cross the Gulf Stream. The description accorded nicely with the comments of other friends about the parade of fronts across the Bahamas in the winter. I filed all this information in my mental folder for the Bahamas and there it sat, waiting for a time when it would be needed.
Well, here we are, still in Florida on January 4. And now we are learning firsthand what the “Christmas winds” are all about.
We never intended to be here in January. When we cruised into St. Marys, GA, on November 30, we thought we needed a few days to do some work on the generator. We might even need to deliver it to the Panda shop in Ft. Lauderdale. We thought a week or ten days ought to do it. However, the math on the rates for Langs Marina showed that if we paid for a month, then, after ten days, the rest of the month was essentially free. We said to ourselves, “What if it takes eleven days, or even twelve?” We never thought for a minute that it would take a whole month.
In fact, when Larry called the Panda folks to tell them that he had done all the tests they recommended at first report of our problem, he expected them to tell him right then that he should put the generator in the shop. Instead, they gave him more tests to run. He did what they advised, and he talked back and forth. It seemed as if all this conversation went on forever. Finally, on Friday, December 18, we delivered the generator to the shop. All the dithering over what to do about this generator had taken almost three weeks, and we seemed to be no nearer a solution than when we started.
We were concerned about all the time it took, but we were more concerned about the likely cost. Even though the generator was still in warranty, we worried that somehow, the work we needed might be ruled out of warranty. You just never know. So here we were, one week before Christmas, and no generator.
The day we delivered it, Larry wanted to arrange to pick it up as soon as possible. He delivered it to Panda at 8AM on Friday morning, and he expected to pick it upon the following Monday afternoon. The service manager quickly disabused him of that expectation. He told Larry to call on Monday afternoon, and then he could give him a better idea when to pick it up.
Larry persisted in his faith that we could pick up the generator at least by Tuesday morning, but we deferred making hotel reservations for the trip until after that call. It was a very good idea. We learned on Monday afternoon that the service team still had no idea when they could give the generator back to us. They seemed not quite sure what it would take to get it working, and they were quite professional in their determination not to guess or string us along with promises or hints of promises that they could not keep. Needless to say, Larry and I speculated endlessly, constantly concerned that we would get a huge bill along with the repaired generator.
Despite all our worries, Panda made the generator good and completed the work under warranty. We are deeply thankful that they saw it that way. We would have loved to get the generator back a lot sooner, but when we pulled into the marina at 5PM on Christmas Eve with the generator in the back of our rented jeep, we felt good about its condition. Unfortunately, the long delay occasioned by the repair did not get us across the Gulf Stream before Christmas.
We enjoyed Christmas Eve with friends. Mike and Suzanne Pillola hosted the evening at their home in St. Marys. We sang and feasted and played games with Roger and Bonnie Ford and our hosts before attending Christmas Eve worship at Christ Episcopal Church. We relaxed on Christmas Day, enjoying a nice dinner and lovely Christmas music all day. (I think we have every Christmas album Mannheim has ever released, plus lots of other great stuff.)
Then it was time to get the generator back into the boat and working again. Larry put it through its paces to confirm that the repairs had, indeed, put it back in working order. All this work was not complete until New Years Eve. We were not ready to leave the marina until New Years Day. We were in for a big shock.
We had no idea the freeze of the century was about to drop in on us, not to mention the Christmas winds.
We had regretted for several days that we had never been able to visit Cumberland Island due to the constant confusion surrounding the generator repairs. We left the marina on New Years Day in a light rain. We said to ourselves that we would not like to walk around the island in the rain. We would visit it the next day. From that day to this it has not been a fit day to go strolling about in the outdoors.
We started following the weather the week intensely the week before New Years Day, and I was unhappy to see that the winds were almost constantly from the northwest. As I watched day after day, this state of affairs continued. When we left the marina, I remember saying hopefully that maybe the winds would change on Wednesday, the day after the last day in the forecast cycle. From that day to this, I keep hoping the same thing – that in five or six days the winds will change. The fronts keep rolling through, and the wind keeps coming at us from the northwest.
I don’t know when this state of affairs will improve. Not only are all the winds from the wrong direction, but we are also in the grip of arctic cold, something we certainly did not expect at the border of Florida. As we check cities down the coast, we can see that the situation is not dramatically better in any location we could reach in two or three days, even if we were willing to go out into the ocean at these temperatures. Wind from the northwest is not itself a problem when we go south along the coast, but a northwest wind at 20 knots and a temperature of even 40 degrees feels quite cold. The forecasts do not indicate that the deep freeze will relent soon.
So here we are still, trapped by the Christmas Winds. We will get to the Bahamas sometime. We take it a day at a time. Nothing enforces flexible decision-making like cruising in a sailboat,.
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!