Aboard No Boundaries
July 15, 2009
This evening as we were relaxing after dinner, we noticed that a gull was hovering above the cabin roof of a nearby boat. Looking around the anchorage, we could not see any gulls on any other boats. This gull had picked this boat for a place to rest, and the boat’s captain objected. The gull hovered above the boat, flitting from one end to the other, as the captain ran the length of the boat waving his arms and shouting, trying to drive the gull away.
You know, of course, that if the gull had landed on the boat, it is likely he would have left his signature there before he departed. This outcome the captain strove mightily to prevent.
After a few minutes of intense confrontation, the gull swooped off and circled the boat high in the sky and flew away. The captain appeared relieved and went back inside. No sooner had he disappeared than the gull returned with a friend. Apparently, they did not have the good sense to keep their mouths shut. Gulls are truly arrogant birds, and these two must have announced themselves in their own unique screaming way. We couldn’t hear anything, however, because the wind was blowing so hard. We could see the beaks of the birds opening and closing. The captain reappeared with his dinner plate in one hand, shouting and waving at the birds with the other. We couldn’t hear what he was saying, either, which is probably a blessing for our sensitive ears.
the birds retreated momentarily. The captain remained on deck looking this way and that.
Soon the two gulls returned with another friend. Two landed in the water and the third impudently plopped himself on the dinghy motor. Again the captain charged at the bird and drove him away – about two feet away where he settled in the water, insolently close to the dinghy. The captain stood on deck snatching bites of his supper as the birds drifted around in the water watching to see if he would disappear again.
After a time, the birds appeared to give up. One by one, each flew off into the distance and swooped over a nearby hillside. When the last one disappeared, the captain retreated inside the boat.
The birds may have disappeared, but their antennas were still up. As soon as the captain disappeared inside they reappeared as if by magic. Again they flew over the boat and circled preparing to land. However, again, they could not be silent. They had to announce their glee, and when they did, the captain ran out again. He had his after-dinner coffee in one hand, and he waved and shook his fist at the gull with the other. One gull settled on the cabin roof for a few seconds, but the captain really got in his face and away he flew.
The last I knew, the captain had sat down on the aft deck with his coffee. It was pretty cool and the breeze was brisk. It probably wasn’t the most relaxing cup of coffee he will ever drink, but that is what it took to keep the gulls at bay. Man and beast met, and at last report man was on the winning side. We didn’t stay up all night to watch. We don’t know what happened after everyone went to sleep.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 11, 2009
Larry and I consider that in cruising the oceans of the world, we are following in the path of the people who made America strong and great. Even though I am going to talk about non-sailing topics for a bit, please stick with me. It all ties together eventually.
When I was growing up, I loved reading stories and seeing movies about pioneer families. Those people were amazing. The people who settled the American west valued independence to such a degree that they would undoubtedly scorn the entire contemporary population, with the possible exception of the citizens engaged in extreme sports.
The stories of the pioneers recounted how they planned and worked to get ready for the journey west. They relied on wise and experienced guides, people who had made the trek before, but each family, each wagon, was responsible for itself. The guide did not bring food and supplies to give to families that failed to plan well. The people who made the journey ran into all kinds of problems along the way, and sometimes people died. Many who started the journey did not arrive at the destination.
Those who completed the journey found themselves in what most of us would call desolation. Imagine standing in the middle of prairie grass up to your chest as you watch the rest of the wagon train move on while you look around to find the way to the land you have chosen to homestead. Imagine that you try to build a house and it falls down or burns up. Imagine that you chop off your thumb while splitting wood for the kitchen range. Imagine that you have no kitchen range, because it was one of the too heavy items you left behind before crossing the Great Desert. These were the people who turned wornout clothing into quilts to keep themselves warm in winter. Wives pulled plows so the crops could be planted. When anyone was sick or injured or if the house burned down or if the mule died, there was no place to go where everything would be fixed. The people who tamed the American west knew that they had to be almost completely self-sufficient. Neighbors helped neighbors, but none of them could work magic.
The rhetoric of those days was focused on “opportunity.” Just as the American colonies had called out to people oppressed by their government, the American west called out to people oppressed by economic and personal circumstances. They all believed that if they just had opportunity they could do anything. And they did. The colonists stood up against oppressive government and created a nation. The pioneers stood up against everything the nature and circumstance could throw against them, and doubled the size of the nation. They all believed in “opportunity” and the much-maligned Horatio Alger stories were all about people who seized opportunity, not grants. America came into being and grew great and strong on the backs of people who seized opportunity and turned it into accomplishment. America is not the land of the handout; it is the land of opportunity.
As cruising sailors, we feel that we, too, are seizing opportunity. Like the pioneers, we must prepare for our ventures out to sea, and once we get there, we are pretty much on our own. The US Coast Guard might be able to rescue us if we were completely unable to help ourselves, but when we are forty miles from the nearest land, we need to be ready and willing to do what we must in every situation. In fact, we pride ourselves on doing everything we can do for ourselves before looking for assistance from anyone.
This is why, when our engine failed seven miles from shore, we did not call the Coast Guard or the tow boat for help. We have heard some amazing calls on the radio. One man called the Coast Guard when he ran out of fuel twelve miles from shore. Another in a 14-foot runabout ran aground. When the Coast Guard asked if he had tried tilting the engine and pushing off the shoal, he replied, “Just a minute. I’ll see if that works.” One called because his anchor rode was fouled in some rocks. Probably the most amazing was the one in which we heard the Coast Guard say, “Let me be sure I understand. You are in severe distress and you are tied to the dock?” to which the caller replied, “Affirmative.”
I don’t want to scorn anyone who asks for help, but it seems to me that people are much too quick to do that. When our engine failed, Larry immediately began to work on it in an attempt to fix it himself. He suspected a cause for the problem, tried the solution for that cause, but the engine still would not start. Then he found the owner manual and started working through the diagnostics. He worked on that engine for seven hours before declaring it beyond his knowledge.
As you might imagine, the ocean did not stand still while we figured things out. Winds, waves and currents continued doing what they always do. As I sat in the cockpit watching to be sure we didn’t run into anything or get in the path of any commercial traffic, I realized that a current was taking us easterly. The current wanted us in Europe, or maybe Africa. Seven hours of drifting would have made the problem worse. We put up the sails and I tacked up and down, parallel to the coast of New Jersey. I chose that plan, because a) it prevented us from being any farther from help if Larry were not able to fix the engine, and b) it kept us in the right spot to restart our journey if he were able to fix it.
When you recognize that our boat has sails, you might ask, why not just continue the trip under sail? The answer is that the same reasons that led us to turn on the engine in the first place would apply to continuing the trip without an engine. There certainly are sailors who do not have engines, and they would no doubt hoot at us. We, however, prefer the maneuverability we gain with an engine. We always use it going in and out of harbors, and we want that power for various situations where sails alone might not give us the control we want. We already knew that traveling under sail at that time would greatly lengthen both the track and the time of our trip. We wanted the flexibility of the engine in our set of options. We knew that if we made the trip successfully without the engine, we would still be faced with the necessity of getting it fixed at the other end. We chose to go into a holding pattern that made it easier for us either to go back for repairs or forward on our trip depending on the outcome of Larry’s work. We did not choose to call the Coast Guard for advice or assistance.
The engine stopped at 7:30PM on Saturday evening. Larry worked on the engine for seven hours. I cruised back and forth in our holding pattern. At 2:30AM we had a conference. Larry had concluded that he could not fix the engine, so we needed to decide what else to do. We wanted to take care of ourselves to the greatest degree possible. What could we do to reduce the amount of help we would need from others?
Our decision was to continue in a holding pattern until dawn and then make our way back to Cape May where we would call for a tow. (I should say here that we purchase and maintain insurance to cover this possibility. The Coast Guard is not maintained for the purpose of solving people’s mechanical problems.) Larry took a nap for 2 hours, while I continued sailing. Then I took a nap, and he took the helm. By the time I went down for my nap, dawn was breaking, and when I woke up we were only a couple of miles from Cape May. Through all this time, the winds were so light and variable that it was difficult to make any progress sailing and very difficult to hold any particular course, yet we managed to get ourselves very close to the help we needed by using our skills to apply the options available to us.
About 8:30 Sunday morning, we were at the entrance to the Cape May Canal, a spot lovingly referred to by locals as “the rockpile.” We called the tow boat, and they arrived in about 20 minutes. Later, however, when Larry and the tow boat captain were discussing the charges, the captain complained that we didn’t call him sooner. He would have made more money on our account if we had called him when we were still seven miles out! We thought we were being wise and responsible to do everything we could for ourselves, and he thought we could have been a little more dependent so he could make more money!
This is a long narrative, but my point is that it would have been easy for us simply to call for a tow when the engine failed. We could have thrown up our hands in despair. We could have cried because things were not working out. We could have had a story like the long parade of whining and crying at the Democrat convention during the summer of 2008. As I watched that debacle, I wondered what happened to all the Americans who have said over the years, “Give me opportunity and freedom, and I will do something great.” There was no pride in our country and no self-confidence. The entire show was designed to make every participant and every watcher feel hopeless and defeated without federal help.
When Larry and I faced our problem, we did not want federal help. We did not feel hopeless or despondent. We felt sure that God had given us wit and wisdom to work with. Every person from time to time needs the help of other people. We have needed help. We certainly needed help getting through the canal and into the marina at the end of our sailing option. My point is that we did everything we could do for ourselves, and most of the people I know personally would always do that. The people I know don’t go around whining and crying because the government has not put food on their table or paid all their medical bills. My friends and acquaintances mostly look for the opportunity to accomplish things, not for a handout to use up and then collect again.
As cruisers, we pretty much need to be willing to be self-sufficient. Forty miles or more from the nearest land, we need to be willing and able to do everything possible for ourselves. We started by selecting a boat designed for that environment, and we continued by growing in skill and by keeping a positive attitude about our ability to do what it takes. Life in general is very different if approached that way than if it is approached as an unconquerable challenge that cannot even be survived without government assistance. I wish that when we get economic statistics from the government, we would get the statistics on the positive side. 5% unemployment is 95% employment. I wish that when we hear that 40 million people do not have health insurance, the same report would point out that of those 40 million, many choose to pay cash for their care because that is their preference; they would rather bet on their health than on their illness. Our nation’s population is around 350 million now, and I would like to hear things such as 349 million people do not have cancer, or 345 million do not have diabetes. I am really tired of being depressed and oppressed over some tiny fraction of the population that has one problem or another. To hear the daily rhetoric of illness, injury, foreclosure, and so forth is enough to make all the rest of us, the vast majority of the population, throw up our hands in despair. That is how the government gets us to agree to submit to onerous levels of taxation. This is not the American way.
It isn’t the Christian way, either. God did not create the world in such a way that the distribution of economic wealth is equal. For one thing, God does not put the store in gold or silver that human beings attach to it. For another, however, God himself gives us gifts that can create our wealth, not the gift of wealth itself. He teaches us to accept a personal obligation to help the poor, the hungry, the sick, and even prisoners. He does not teach us to put our money in the hands of politicians to perform our charity for us. God knows that politicians show much more charity to themselves than they ever show to the poor and hungry.
When the American colonies declared their independence from England, they stated their belief that God had given every person the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They rightly and wisely observed that there was no right or guarantee to wealth or the equal distribution of money and property, there was no right or guarantee to medical care or to jobs or houses or any other of the many elements of life. Still, when you think about it, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the gift of opportunity that each individual can turn into accomplishment. The cruising life is a great metaphor for that same truth. We set sail as a way of life, because we are free to do so after pursuing this happiness with the commitment to do the work and pay the cost of it ourselves. It can be the same for everyone who has the vision to dream and the will to work for the goal.
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 10, 2009
The movie “Captain Ron” came to mind often as we made our passage from Cape May, New Jersey, to Block Island, Rhode Island. His stock line when engaged to train people to sail and survive at sea was, “If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there.” “Out there” was at sea, far from land, at the worst possible moment. The things that would happen to his protégés during the movie were surprising and always “out there.”
During 50 hours at sea, a few things happened to us “out there.”
We started from Cape May, because something had already happened “out there.” We had sailed from Cohansey Cove a few days earlier. Sailing down that Bay at 8 knots was a thrilling experience. We cruised out the mouth of Delaware Bay and hit our first waypoint, still under sail. At that time, however, we had to make a decision. If we continued to sail, we had to deal with the speed and direction of the wind, both unfavorable for making progress toward our destination. Unlike Captain Cook, who had no choice but to accept the wind and make the best of it, we could turn to our diesel auxiliary engine. If we sailed, we would increase our travel time by 4 or 5 hours and add more than 20 miles to our route. We decided to motor until the wind direction and speed were more useful. We were seven miles from the New Jersey shore in the North Atlantic Ocean when our diesel engine made a weird noise and quit. We were adrift.
We observed fairly quickly that there was a current in the ocean that wanted to take us to Gibraltar. Or maybe to Casablanca. Rather than drift, we chose to deploy the sails again. There was little wind, so we couldn’t make much speed sailing, but at least we could avoid going to Europe while Larry tried to fix the engine. In theory, we could have proceeded on our journey under sail and waited to repair the engine at the other end. However, the wind was very light and changed direction at the drop of a hat. We couldn’t make much progress, and unless Larry could fix the engine, we had no backup for the sails in any sort of emergency.
Larry worked on the engine for seven hours. I sailed up and down parallel to the Jersey shore, trying not to go to Gibraltar. A pod of dolphins kept me company for several hours. I actually saw at least a dozen fireworks shows, one of which was truly magnificent. Unfortunately, Larry was not able to find the explanation for the engine problem, and he was unable to make it start again. At 2:30AM on Sunday morning we made the decision to go back to Cape May, call a tow boat and get to some location where we could connect with a diesel mechanic.
Larry took a nap, and I continued tacking up and down the coast until 4:30AM. Then Larry took the watch and I took a nap. We thought we were being very self-sufficient and doing the wise and responsible thing to sail ourselves back within reach of help. Without an engine we could not navigate that canal or enter a marina, but we could get to the canal entrance. We did everything for ourselves that we could do. About 8:30 Sunday morning, we called the tow boat and they arrived in 20 minutes. Later, however, when Larry and the tow boat captain were discussing the charges, the captain complained that we didn’t call him sooner. He would have made more money on our account if we had called him when we were still seven miles out! We thought we were being wise and responsible to do everything we could for ourselves, and he thought we could have been a little more dependent so he could make more money!
If you have never seen a professional tow boat captain work, you have missed an experience. Those guys work magic. It was not magic to give us a line to cleat onto our boat and drag us into the canal. However, when the tow boat tied up to the side of our boat and took us into the marina, I am sure that a magic wand and pixie dust must have been in use. The tow captain told Larry to steer our boat without thinking of his boat as anything but our power. However, the tow captain provided guidance that allowed the two boats to navigate in the very narrow fairways of the marina, and at the end, after Larry turned the boats toward our designated slip, the captain gave the signal to let go the lines that attached us together, and our boat slid neatly into its place at slip 14 in Utch’s Marina, Cape May, New Jersey. (I didn’t forget the “H” in the name. There is no initial “H.” The real name is Utch’s.)
We arrived on a Sunday, and we couldn’t get a diesel mechanic until Monday. However, we were in a full service marina with showers, laundry and internet. No cruiser lets such an opportunity go to waste. Even though I had had only two hours sleep the night before, I gathered up my laundry and my shower bag and hustled over to get things done. My energy lasted long enough to manage those tasks, but then I was done.
The next day, we discovered that our problem was beyond the scope of the local diesel mechanic, so we had to wait until one could arrive from Atlantic City. His schedule kept us in the marina past the checkout time, so we decided to stay one more night. The diesel engine mechanic got the thing going again. However, he did not explain the problem, and he did not explain the solution, which bothered Larry quite a lot.
On the morning of July 7 we exited the Cape May Canal under engine power. We needed the engine to get out of the marina and out of the canal. We were still under engine power, about a mile from the canal entrance when the engine made the same funny noise as before and quit.
I could hear Captain Ron saying gruffly, “If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there.” We had arrived “out there” and our problem had recurred. What would we do now?
In blogs yet to come, I will recount how we faced the challenges and what we did to solve them. Feel free to disagree with our choices. We were disconnected from the rest of the world in a unique way for this time in history. We had a goal that was being seriously challenged by circumstances. Check back often for more blogs to find out what came next and next and next. After 50 hours, we arrived in Block Island, and both we and the boat were intact.
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.
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.
June 14, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
We don’t get a lot of news, and we actually like it that way. In case you haven’t noticed, people who report the news invariably tell you how bad things are. They tell you that whether you know it or not, your personal fiscal stability is terribly at risk. They tell you horror stories about people who have lost their jobs or been bankrupted by healthcare expense. They tell you that eating butter will kill you and maybe that doesn’t even matter, because before butter does you in, global warming will destroy all the food, so there!
We do get a little news when we choose to tune in. News in small doses impacts the mind differently than news that never stops. Maybe that is why we think the way we do.
We observe, in our small doses, that something very strange is happening in our country. Our president is ignoring the Constitution as if it didn’t exist, and the news reporters and most citizens seem inclined to let that happen. It amazes us. The Constitution is our bulwark against oppressive autocracy. It is the wall around us and our freedoms that keeps the federal government at bay. It is the force that clears the playing field so that as individuals, each of us can become the best we know how to be, and each of us can thrive without being robbed by the government of everything we work for. The news we hear seems to be saying that the Constitutional protections and support are no longer in action.
It is terrifying. This is the sort of thing that happens in countries like Venezuela, not the USA. How did we get here?
The Constitution includes some guarantees of freedom that seem to me to be terribly at risk right now. I heard that a bill was proposed in Congress that would allow the president to declare an emergency and shut down the internet in the USA. How can anyone even consider such a thing, let alone do it? I heard that the president thought it was inappropriate for him to pray publicly on the National Day of Prayer, an attitude that makes me ask if he thinks all of us who pray publicly are doing something wrong. I also heard that any faith-based program that takes government money will take in a set of regulations that would choke a horse, and the point of all those regulations is to assure that none of the money received advances the religious objectives of the program. It makes me ask who would get to decide where that very fine line had been crossed, and it makes me believe that every program whose goals are to serve God would be wise to steer clear of federal money.
In fact, this very issue brings up something that bothers me a lot. It appears to me that our president is trying very hard to make citizens believe that nothing good will ever happen to them unless the government does it. The automobile industry cannot survive unless the government runs it. The finance industry cannot survive without government money, and therefore cannot survive without government ownership. The healthcare industry will completely implode unless the government controls it. The entire globe is set to self-destruct unless the US government forces people to stop using petroleum and start living on air. Maybe if we heard these things day in and day out, we would be used to hearing them and would not worry. However, we hear them intermittently, and when we hear such things it feels as if we have been slapped from here to next Tuesday. We ask ourselves if we have wandered off course somehow and wound up in some other country. What country is this where everything and everybody is dependent on the federal government? Oh, it could be the USA after all, because Barack Obama was elected president, and he said long ago that the Constitution was deficient, because it didn’t say anything about what the government would do FOR the citizens. Well, the only reason to expect the government to do anything FOR citizens is a belief that the citizens cannot do it for themselves.
This mantra sounds a lot like ancient Rome. In the Roman empire of the first century, people were led to believe that Roman rule was necessary for their prosperity. At first, Roman armies conquered territory and brought their version of law and order. The ensuing era, labeled the pax romana included stories of kingdoms which voluntarily associated with Rome in order to get Roman law and order and the protection of the Roman army. These countries believed that their prosperity depended on what Rome could do for them. In years to come they learned to regret the relationship. The New Testament records how the common people experienced this “beneficence.” In fact, despite the seeming good of the pax many people might well have thought it was a pox because of the corruption and tyranny.
I have always been proud to be a citizen of the USA, and I have always believed that our Constitution provided the kind of protection people really need – not a guarantee that all will be rosy or that everyone will have the same amount of money, or even that everyone can go to a doctor at no cost. The Constitution protects the freedom of citizens to scrap it out for themselves. Citizens can work hard and learn and grow and become what they want, not what someone else thinks they should be. Our educational system has never in the past been mandated or paid for by the federal government, so people in different places got different input in the education experience. It has produced diversity and creativity unmatched anywhere. Small businesses have sprouted and died like mushrooms in the spring, but some have thrived and grown to provide income and opportunity for people not so innovative. Let’s ask ourselves honestly, why do people in almost every country in the world want to come here to live?
It isn’t for free healthcare. Some of them come here from countries where they have what passes for that. It isn’t for tiny cars; other countries have many more of those than we do. They come here for the opportunity that exists here to a degree unparalleled anywhere else in the world. Opportunity. Not guaranteed equality. Not checks for $250. OPPORTUNITY!
I’m getting off my soapbox now. Maybe the next time I hear the news I will discover that this was all a bad dream and I imagined the whole thing. I hope for the news to change and revert to the story of a free nation of independent citizens who do not rely on government for their prosperity and happiness. We thought we would go cruising and see sights and then come back home to the USA. It is scary to be asking, is this our home? Are we really still at home? If we left, how do we get back to the home we grew up in?