Aboard No Boundaries
January 5, 2010
What do you do when you plan for a tropical winter and wind up in a deep freeze?
Our sailboat is a really good boat, and it is a comfortable, safe home for us. It has been a good home through some pretty harsh winters in Baltimore, but in Baltimore, we were tied up to a dock, running on shore power, which is not a lot different from being in a house. A boat like ours is not insulated the way a house is, but we kept warm.
We were not really sure what we would do about really cold weather when we arrived at Cumberland Island on New Years Day, but we have learned a few tricks. We keep thinking things will get better so we can visit the island, but so far, we don’t have the guts to get in the dinghy and run over there in this cold. I don’t know if we will ever get to see the island.
If we did not have a generator, our situation would be a bit more dire. We have electric space heaters designed for boats, but without electricity, they are worthless. There are propane heaters for boats, but they have their own problems, not the least being the need to store more propane than is required for cooking. Some boats even use wood-fired stoves, but we have never thought that sounded like a good idea. The electric heaters take up little space, they don’t require special ventilation, and we are going to run the generator anyway.
Our first line of attack on the cold was to dig out one of the little heaters and run it during our morning generator run. We closed the doors to the forward and aft cabins, heating only the main salon. I cooked breakfast, and all that heat was quite comfortable during the morning. Then we turned off the generator, and we turned off the heater. The temperature began to drop. We managed well until mid-afternoon. I made some hot tea, but it was still uncomfortable.
Then I remembered why we don’t use our oil lamps in the summer – they put out heat. We have three oil lamps, one in the forward, one in the main salon, and one in the aft. We lit them all, and it was amazing how they took the edge off the cold. Cooking dinner put more heat in the cabin during the early evening.
We always run the generator after dinner in order to have hot water and top off the batteries. This time it also allowed us to run our heater in the main salon, and we dug out another to heat our stateroom. We were comfortable until it was time to go to bed.
We don’t run any of our heat sources when we are asleep. The generator is under the bed, and we wouldn’t want to sleep over that noise, even though it seems pretty quiet when we are in other parts of the boat. We don’t want lamps burning when we are asleep. That doesn’t make sense. So we bundle up with two blankets and a quilt. That keeps us toasty until we get up in the morning.
The final element of our strategy is the oven. I try not to light it unless I actually need it, but I also try to plan my baking to coincide with otherwise cold times. Today I started baking cookies in late afternoon, just as the heat of the morning was dying down and the outside air was cooling as the sun goes down.
So far we are fine. They say that tonight will be the coldest so far, and then things will let up for a few days. We are trying to figure out if we have the courage to cruise out in this cold and go south far enough to get into the fifties. Can you believe that this is even a problem in Florida? Our problems seem big to us, but I am glad that I am not a farmer with orange groves. We will figure out something.
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,.
Christmas is over. The generator is back in its proper place aboard the boat. Larry is testing and retesting and verifying everything about it. When we leave St. Marys, it will be a long time before we are in a convenient place to get help if we need it.
It is time to make that big step – crossing the Gulf Stream and arriving in the Bahamas.
Are we ready? I doubt it. We have tried to get ready, but we have never done anything quite like this before. I used to go around thinking I was prepared to stay out for three months, but as we plan ahead to this adventure, I have learned how little I knew. We have been blessed with friends who have done it, and they have shared their experience with us. We are trying to make sense of it all.
Food. When I sat down with calendar pages for three months and imagined how we would eat three meals a day for that whole time, it proved more challenging than I realized. I tried several different ways to put it all together, but I am convinced that all I have is my best guess. We bought food twice, because I could not bring myself to buy that much the first time out. We bought supplies. We bought things, just in case. Now the boat is a maze of items counted and stacked, uncounted and still in bags, inventoried and put away. I keep telling myself there is room for everything, but I’m still convincing myself that I can cram in one more thing here, one more there.
Money. We have cash for the trip, but like any other trip, I am sure it will cost more than we plan. And we understand that, in the Bahamas, cash is king. Do we need to get more? hmmmmm.
Weather. The Gulf Stream is a great river within the ocean. It goes north with such energy that we are told it is very, very important to plan to cruise when the wind and wave reports are right. The force of the current combined with a wind in the opposite direction is reputed to create conditions no sane person wants to fight. So we scrutinize the reports and the forecasts and pick the brain of experienced cruisers. But sometime, we have to get going.
Thinking. Thinking. I wonder how the original polar explorers ever did it. For that matter, how did Columbus do it? He had much less information than we have. No charts. No idea how far he had to go. Nobody to tell him what it would be like where he actually landed, so all his expectations were completely in error. Yet he departed, he arrived, he returned. Surely we can do the same with charts, radio and all kinds of friendly advice.
When we swooshed across the Francis Drake Channel in February, 1995, on our first sailing adventure, we knew we wanted more of it. It is now upon us, and it looks a little different from this side. We worked hard, we dreamed intently, and we persevered. Here we go. Hurray!
We had our Christmas card on our home page for the past week. Now it is time for an update to that page, so this is a repeat, in case you missed it.
Christmas 2009
I can’t believe that it is only a week till Christmas. I should have done this letter long ago. Our days really are full, but it is hard to believe that Christmas is sneaking up on me nonetheless.
What a year!
I hardly know where to start, because 2009 is a year of first and highlights.
In the spring, I taught a class at Christ Church, and it is probably one of the richest spiritual experiences of my life. The title of the class was “Faith Foundations, Faith Practices.” We used the catechism as a doorway to Bible study, focusing on the practices that help us grow and mature in faith. It is always the case, I think, that a teacher learns more than the class does. I can’t speak for what my class learned, but I confess that I learned a lot. It was a small class, but that size promoted sharing that would not likely have happened in a larger class. After I left, Marlene Phillips took the class forward with a focus on prayer. I was able to visit her class when we were in Baltimore again in October, and she was doing some great things. This experience was a great blessing to me, and I hope the other people felt the same way.
On May 1, we pulled No Boundaries out of the water for some routine maintenance in preparation to embark on the cruising life for real. At last! We remained in Chesapeake Bay during May and June, continuing our final preparations. Every time we accomplished something, it seemed that we discovered two new things that needed doing. We were at Harborview for a while, and then anchored in the Bay, spending time here and there while we finished getting ready.
On July 1, we weighed anchor in the anchorage beside Baltimore Marine Center and departed Baltimore for points north. On July 2, we transited the C&D Canal. That was a big moment. We were finally and fully on our way to the new cruising life!
When we started this life, we thought we were pretty well prepared, but we have learned that there is no such thing. We are always learning. There is so much to learn that nobody could ever possibly be bored. We learn about the sea, we learn about weather, we learn about the boat, and we learn about each other. Sometimes the learning is fun, like watching dolphins, and sometimes it is not so fun, like tacking up and down in the middle of the night while Larry works on the diesel engine.
We spent several weeks of the summer in Maine, cruising around the islands. The first week or so we dealt with thick fog, but in August, the fog relented and we had many sunny days. We enjoyed the cruiser get-together on Islesboro Island very much. We met a lot of interesting people and not once did any of them discuss medicine or doctors. It was great! While we were in Maine, we hid out from Hurricane Bill in Smith Cove and learned that the Off! repellent candle really works. We highly recommend it for managing insects in the outdoors.
We met a lot of wonderful people while cruising this summer. Complete strangers offered us rides to grocery stores and elsewhere. A man in the east branch of the Johns River pulled us off a rock and gave us the use of his private mooring while we waited out the passage of tropical storm Danny. This way of life restores a person’s faith in people.
When we got to Boston, Clinton joined us for a few days, and that was one of the highlights of the summer. We all walked the Freedom Trail and immersed in the history surrounding the birth of our nation. We also visited Mr. Dooley’s pub where we were the only tourists in sight. Clinton recommends their clam chowder highly!
We spent October in Baltimore and headed south in November along the Intracoastal Waterway. We are both glad we have the ICW experience, but we do not yearn for any more of it. When we go north again, we will go outside. We like the idea of letting the Gulf Stream do some of the work. The ICW is not the best place for a sailboat.
We have had some pretty exciting moments. When we moored in Apponagansett Bay, popularly referred to as Padanaram Bay, we got the last available mooring, and it was at the mouth of the harbor. That night, a storm system roared through Buzzards Bay, and we were rocked by 40-knot winds. Enduring that storm was like riding a galloping horse. Later, at Port Washington on Long Island, we had to try to catch our mooring in 40-knot wind. Our best boat hook was bent double in that exercise. We thank the people at Port Washington for helping us get that job done.
On another occastion, we left Block Island at midnight in order to catch the currents at Plum Gut going the right direction. We knew when we left that the winds would be 20-25 knots for a while, but we could not wait them out or we would have missed the right time to clear Plum Gut. As we left the lee of Block Island, we were exposed to the North Atlantic for a couple of hours. The wind roared on our beam and it rained sideways on the aft deck. No Boundaries was up to that challenge. We safely arrived at Port Jefferson the next afternoon.
Probably the highlight of our year was the day the dolphins visited. We had dolphins with us all day. From as much as a mile away we could see them leaping and hurrying to visit us. I could almost hear them shouting, “A boat! A boat! Yay!” They gathered at the bow and jostled each other to get as close as possible. At one point there were eight of them in a row. We cannot figure out how they keep up, let alone overtake the boat with no apparent effort.
Another delightful surprise was the day we spent with whales north of Cape Cod. We were on course toward Penobscot Bay in Maine, and we simply happened upon a pod of whales. After we passed that group, whales swam along beside the boat all afternoon. I don’t know what it costs to go on a whale-watching expedition, but our day of whales was priceless.
As I write this letter we are tied up in a marina in St. Marys, Georgia. After Christmas Day, we will use the first weather window to cross to the Bahamas. It will be the start of a new year and a new adventure.
We don’t know where God will lead us next. He has given us some magnificent experiences so far, and we trust that he will continue to keep us safe and inspired. We are grateful for his blessing, much more than we could ever have imagined, and we pray to follow his leading faithfully wherever he wants us to go.
May this season be blessed and may your new year be a wonderful, blessed adventure for you.
We love you and we miss you. We hope to hear from you in days to come.
Love,
Larry and Katherine Harms
Aboard No Boundaries
December 14, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
Our stay in St. Marys, GA, has been a mixed bag. We love the price, but here’s another truth: you get what you pay for. We can use the wifi service “Waterfront” whenever it is working, and that is anybody’s guess. We can use the showers/restrooms, reliably supplied with hot and cold running water, and not much else. There is no laundry in this marina, and there is only one disintegrating Laundromat in the whole town. Grocery stores are miles away.
There are quite good features, over and above the price. We love the landscape – a river with marshes on the shore. We love the songs of the boat-tailed grackles, but we hate the fact that they flock to sailboat rigging in huge numbers, where they eat juniper berries and leave the trash and etcetera on the boat. We enjoy the solitude of this location compared to a marina in the downtown of a large city. We could do without the insects.
The real delight of this location has been the opportunity to reconnect with friends.
Before we came here, we knew that our Harborview friends Mike and Suzanne Pillola, had moved here recently. They invited us to dinner one evening, and we all caught up on the news. That was only the beginning.
While we were visiting my uncle in Pensacola, we received mail from another Harborview couple, Ed and Karen Cogswell, who were cruising into St. Marys that weekend. They were still here when we returned, so we joined them, along with Mike and Sue, for dinner at Trolley’s on the waterfront Monday evening. It wasn’t Havana, but we had a good time, anyway.
Since we were driving to Pensacola anyway, it was easy to make a side trip to Panama Beach City where we visited with Malcolm and Brenda Ameter. We had a wonderful time, and we enjoyed Malcolm’s birthday party. We won’t tell you the number in this blog, but Brenda was really proud of it, and everyone in a ten-mile range of Panama City probably knows already!
Finally, on Tuesday evening, we (Mike, Suzanne, Larry and I) met Roger and Bonnie Ford and Dave and Annie Levigne for dinner at Chilis near the Jacksonville airport. The talking never stopped as we all tried to share news and get news.
We cruise and see all sorts of great sights, but it is still true that friends and family are the best part. We loved visiting with Ray and Elise in Pensacola. They have many bird feeders and large flocks of birds which we enjoyed watching through their big patio doors. They have some serious health problems, but they have wonderful attitudes. They are enjoying life. They don’t sweat the small stuff!
I don’t know how long we will be here, but it’s been lovely to reconnect with so many old friends.
December 11, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
The sands of time slip through the slot and fall away. The waters flow inexorably to the sea. Sun rises. Sun sets. Here we are – still.
We arrived in St. Marys, GA, on November 30. We knew when we arrived that we would be here a while. We knew that we didn’t know how long it would take to do what needed to be done.
We were pretty fortunate to get here. When we departed from the Motts Channel anchorage near Wrightsville, NC, we were adjusting to the discovery that Jacksonville, Florida, was no place for us. We had discovered that marina after marina thought that 6 feet of depth was “plenty of water.” People we met in Norfolk had suggested we consider Brunswick, GA, where depths are much more generous.
The problem was our need to make a side trip. I needed to visit my uncle and aunt in Pensacola. For as long as they have known that Larry and I planned to cruise, they have been inviting us to visit them if we made it to Florida. We needed to be able to leave the boat in a safe place for that visit, and it was starting to look a little more complicated than we had imagined.
From the Motts Channel anchorage, we followed the ICW to the Cape Fear River. There we left the waterway and followed the river into the Atlantic. It was a gorgeous day. A breeze blew up, we raised the sail, and headed south, or to be more accurate, southwest. After an hour or so, we noticed two other sailboats behind us. Larry struck up a conversation with them and discovered that they were headed for Fernandina Beach off the St. Marys inlet at the border between Georgia and Florida. After we discovered that they knew the location and knew that it had the depth for full-keeled boats, we decided to pass by Brunswick and head for St. Marys, too.
Two mornings later we arrived at St. Marys Inlet. We called the Fernandina Harbor Marina and made a reservation. Then we overheard a couple of other boats talking about their plans. One of them was headed for Langs Marina in St. Marys on the Georgia side of the inlet. When we heard the voice on the radio say that Langs charges $1.00 per foot, we got pretty excited. The marina in Fernandina Beach wanted $1.75. We thought $1.00 sounded more like our price.
I quickly found Langs Marina in our guidebook and made a call. Sure enough, the price for a daily rental is $1.00 per foot. The weekly price of $.75 per foot per day was even better. I called Fernandina Beach to cancel and we headed for St. Marys.
After we got here, we began to calculate what we had to do. It would be a week at least for some errands, a couple of shipments and our trip to Pensacola. Then Larry needed to work on the generator. It might be at least two weeks before we could leave. We discovered that the monthly price at Langs was $7.00 per foot. Simple math made it clear that we would be ahead to pay for a month and leave when we got ready. We could take the time we needed without pressure.
Well, we are, indeed, taking our time, because the boat repair syndrome has struck us again. Larry started working on the generator, and there came a time when he needed to start it up so he could test the results. Guess what. It would not start. He had started it a couple of times during his work, but not this time. No starting was happening.
We aren’t the only people afflicted with such problems. Friends who had left St. Marys several days ago are on hold in Fernandina Beach due to similar issues. So it isn’t just us. It is boat life.
So we wait. Time passes. Winter approaches. Even in south Georgia, winter is cold. It was almost down to freezing this morning, and we dug out a couple of heaters. We thought we had escaped all this! I hope that relay gets here Monday. I hope the generator starts, and I hope that it charges the batteries like crazy. And I hope we pack up all our toys and head south soon.
Tick, tick, tick.
December 4, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
We have had all sorts of interesting experiences as we embark on the cruising life. In the University of Cruising, Watch Management is a required course.
Before we ever owned a bluewater sailboat, we read a lot of books about cruising. Several of them elaborated on the watch system they used. Everyone seems to tweak it in some unique way. Because we admire the Pardeys so much, we were pretty sure that we would want to follow their lead with four-hour watches. The idea of four hours of sleep in a row sounded so good that we sort of ignored the fact the while one person is sleeping, the other is awake and all alone in the cockpit for four hours. That is quite a different matter.
Most other cruisers appear to have landed on some version of three-hour watches. A few stick with two. We read and talked and let that whole idea wander around in the back of our minds for years. Until we actually began to cruise, it was all hypothetical. When we left Cape May one day in July last summer, the notion of watchkeeping came front and center.
We had cruised all day with a following wind of sufficient force to build up 8-foot waves. For Larry it was not the first time. In 2003, he and his son Phil took the boat north along this same path, and they had run overnight just as we were about to do. For me, it was all new. We were motoring as the sun set, because light and variable winds earlier were not conducive to successful sailing (and because we actually wanted to make progress toward our destination). Even though the increasing breeze at sunset might have been good for sailing, we were in agreement that it would be easier to manage our first overnight run without sails. As we talked, it soon became clear that no matter how much we admired the Pardeys, neither of us was ready to spend four hours in the dark cockpit all alone. We decided to work on two-hour watches and see what happened.
The first time I set out to sleep for two hours on the pilot berth, I had a hard time falling asleep. I didn’t feel particularly nervous, but I was not accustomed to that setting. One of the issues was the little light over the nav station. I remembered that a friend had long ago sent me a sleeping mask for airplane travel, so I pulled it out and used it that night. I still use it. It makes a great deal of difference to have my eyes in complete darkness. I was surprised at how rested I felt when it was my turn to be awake and alert.
The next morning dawned beautiful, and it was beautiful all day as we ran south of Long Island all day. The sunset was glorious, and just about 2100 I went below to sleep as Larry took the first watch. I was just laying my head on the pillow when I heard the roar of a wind gust and the boat tilted dramatically to starboard. I lay there a minute or two and continued to hear the wind roaring. When another gust tried to lay us over, I decided that sleeping time was over. I put on my lifejacket and hurried up the companionway. We both worked very hard for the next hour as we adjusted sail and sought a course that would give us smoother sailing in winds that I later learned were crowding 40 knots. At the time, I simply refused to look at the windspeed indicator. I did not want to know.
This time, when I went below, I was nervous. I hated leaving Larry alone to deal with the wind that was so much more ferocious than it had been during the day, and I dreaded being the one to deal with it when he went to sleep, but the reality was that it would be stupid for both of us to wear ourselves out at the same time. Sharing the load meant that somebody had to be sleeping, getting the rest and refreshment that would support good decision-making when awake. I slept.
Since then, we have done several overnights. I must confess that running overnight is not what drew us to cruising, but running overnight makes cruising better. The fact that we can do this allows us to get to distant places more quickly. It also reduces the amount of time we spend running in and out seeking anchorage. We move more directly to our destination. While some will observe that we miss some sights, others will recognize that we see the sights we want to see more quickly. Furthermore, running overnight allows us to go far out to sea where there is much less likelihood we will run aground or hit something. Out beyond twenty nautical miles it is much less crowded.
I won’t say that we have landed on our permanent plan yet. We very much aspire to a three-hour watch system that gives each of us a daytime nap as well. We are not yet orderly enough to plan that well, but we are getting there. We know it is critical before we attempt any long passages. Fifty hours is only a starting point.
for now, we might be earning a solid C in Watch-keeping 101 in the University of Cruising. We need to acquire a bit more discipline and skill before we can hope for a better grade.
November 29, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
This day was extremely busy. Some of you may think that cruising is an endless vacation, but I will say again what I have said before: it is much more like an expedition. We never stop discovering new things, and we never stop learning.
We had run overnight from Motts Channel near Wrightsville, NC, and were out beyond twenty nautical miles when the sun rose this morning. We are getting better at our management of overnights. We still operate on two-hour watches, but we sometimes creep up on three hours, which is our ultimate goal. No matter what the plan, we both need a nap during the day sometime, but on this day, there was no time for that. It may be the wise and prudent thing to do, but we were busy learning other things.
We have been dragging a line for fish any time we are outside the territorial waters. We hadn’t had much luck, and Larry was pretty discouraged. Today, however, just as I was about to serve breakfast, Larry shouted, “We have a fish!” I set the oatmeal back on the burner so it would stay warm, then I ran up to see the sight.
What a beautiful fish. If fish weren’t such great food, it would really be hard to kill one. This fish was gorgeous, as you will see in the photos on the website. As fish in the sea go, he was a mere baby, but compared to the perch and sunfish I remember catching and eating in my childhood, he was a giant.
We already knew that we didn’t really want to club him to death. That seems pretty barbaric, and other cruisers have suggested a better way; they pour rum on the gills and the fish simply goes to sleep happy. In our confusion, we wound up using bourbon, and Larry’s method may arouse suspicions that the choice was somewhat self-serving. He took a swig of the bourbon, then sprayed it into the gills. It really looks primitive, but it worked. (And the fisherman gets even happier.) I think that the next time I am in Walmart for supplies, I will pick up a small spray bottle. Then we can buy some really cheap rum and fill the spray bottle with it. That plan should achieve the goal without risking that the captain would go to sleep right along with the fish in his sleep-deprived state after an overnight run.
Sending the fish to that great reef in the sky was the first step, but then we had to prepare the fish for eating. This fish was just under a yard long, larger than any containers or cutting boards we had available. We had a good filet knife, but neither of us is skilled with it. I hope we catch more fish in the future, and if we do, we should get better at this.
In the end, we had four nice filets, and a lot of bones plus the head. Having heard numerous chefs deplore the idea of throwing away bones and head that could be used to make a flavorful broth for soup, I decided to test that idea. My conclusion: it is a lot more work than the amount of food to be gained by it, and the boat smells severely of fish processing. In the future, we will take the filets and exercise our stewardship of the remaining meat on the carcass by feeding other fish.
So far this fish has provided three meals. We grilled one filet for lunch on the day we caught the fish, and that was the most delightful tuna I ever put in my mouth. We ate the soup I made with fish broth for dinner, but neither of us thought it was too delightful. I made a third dinner by slicing the filet into medallions which I seasoned with lemon pepper and seared on my iron griddle. That dinner was good, but nothing to compare with the very fresh grilled tuna. We still have two filets in the freezer for a couple more meals.
Our morning was very much occupied with carving up and managing the fish. We stayed pretty focused until that job was done. We went below to wash up and then Larry went back up on deck. I went forward to brush my teeth. I was just finishing up when Larry knocked on the hatch cover above my head. I looked up, and he waved for me to come up on deck. I ran to the cockpit and stepped out. Larry put a finger to his lips for me to be silent and pointed to the water beside the boat.
There was a dolphin, swimming along beside us. I tip-toed forward to get a better look. The dolphin dived down and began a series of movements that appeared to me as if he were rubbing his back on the keel of the boat. He came up from time to time to get a breath and then went right back down.
Soon this lone dolphin was joined by three friends. One of the dolphins had a nick in his fin that looked as if he might sometime have crowded a prop, but he didn’t seem to be impeded in his enjoyment of the fun. In fact, Larry thinks that he somehow pushed his tale against the keel and let the boat do all the work of propelling him forward.
I don’t know exactly how any of them did it, but they all seemed to stay with the boat effortlessly. In fact, there were times that I had the impression they fell away from the boat and let it get ahead just so they could chase it and catch up again. We watched these four for more than an hour before they began to drop off.
This was only the beginning. All day dolphins came running over. From far away we saw them leaping and hurrying and racing toward the boat. You could almost hear them shout, “A boat! A boat!” Each time a single dolphin caught up with us, it was only a short time before he was joined by others. At one point there were eight of them crowded around the bow of the boat. We could not tear ourselves away. Larry took more than one hundred photos. It was an amazing experience.
This is the sort of thing that makes cruising so delightful. This is an adventure that is exponentially more exciting than seeing dolphins in an aquarium. These wonderful sea creatures honored us by visiting us and joyfully sharing their fun with us. We could not ask for more of any day in our lives.
November 22, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
I have been telling you how early we get up each day. Even on the ICW, with the exception of our first day, we are getting up at 5:30AM in order to cover a lot of territory before dark. Anchoring in the dark is no fun. We want to be ready to stop around 4PM in order to be set and comfortable before the sun goes down.
Sometimes this strategy actually works.
When we were cruising this summer, we managed to adhere to this strategy with one exception: Provincetown. An assortment of issues conspired to delay our departure from Boston until noon, resulting in an arrival time in Provincetown, at the end of Cape Cod, around 8PM. We could see our destination as the sun began to set around 6PM that night, but it is a long trip around the little curl at the end of Cape Cod before you actually get into Provincetown Harbor. It was fully dark before we rounded the end of that curl. We crept into the harbor, almost running into the breakwater in the dark. We thought it would be an actual wall, but it appeared to be just a pile of rocks that stuck up a foot or two above the water. Provincetown is a very small town. There is very little light at 8PM down on the waterfront and no signs of life. The moon wasn’t much help as we anchored in deep darkness using flashlights, e-chart and grit. We didn’t do it because we love to prove ourselves; we did it because it was necessary.
We had to do the same thing in the Sassafrass River on our way back to Baltimore. We had run up Delaware Bay with the intention of transiting the C&D Canal before we stopped, because finding shelter along that monster bay is no simple task. We also were quite ready to get back home, and this was a good way to get there sooner. The result, of course, was that we entered the Sassafrass just after 2AM. Again, there was little moonlight, and again we felt our way to a successful anchorage.
We had planned to avoid such issues when in the ICW. In the first place, the ICW anchorages are almost all quite confined. There isn’t a lot of room for error, due to the constant challenge of shoals and stumps and snags. It would be easy to get in a mess if you try to anchor when you can’t see. Yet on Saturday (11/21) we found ourselves doing it again.
We had left Buck Island Harbor about 6:45AM. We got up early as always and were ready to leave as it got light. The run down the North River was uneventful. Crossing Albemarle Sound reminded me of cruising on the Chesapeake. We passed through the Alligator River Bridge and headed for the Alligator-Pungo River Canal.
It was about 1:30PM when we saw a couple of sailboats ahead of us pull out of the channel into a tiny little spot near shore where they appeared to be anchoring. We were near the entrance to the Alligator-Pungo Canal, and I asked Larry why they would be anchoring there. It isn’t a designated anchorage, and it was not long past noon. “Maybe they don’t think they can get to the end of the canal before dark,” he said.
That was a sobering thought that I had not considered. The canal is 25 miles long. It was 1:30PM. At best we were making about 6 knots. Sunset would be 4:55PM. Whoa! Maybe we would not get to the end of this canal before dark either, and there is NO place to stop in the canal.
The longer we were in this canal, the less I liked it. The scenery is quite picturesque, even a little spooky. I love swamp landscapes, and this one was lovely. However, twenty-five miles of it was almost more than I needed. The ambience was not improved when our 8-foot depth alarm went off in the middle of the channel, supposedly in 15 feet of water. There was a thump and a scraping sound, and then nothing. The depth went back to 15 feet and we went on. It was probably a log that washed into the channel during recent heavy rains.
At the end of the canal is a fixed bridge charted at 65 feet of clearance. I didn’t look, and we didn’t thud, and we soon exited that canal. Off to the right in the upper reaches of the Pungo River is a designated anchorage where we had considered stopping. However, we had also looked for a slightly better spot a couple of miles downriver, and that is a good thing. There were already eight boats in the designated anchorage. We could certainly have found a place there, but we don’t like crowded anchorages. Every time we see a crowd of boats anchored together, it calls up images of the anchorage at Newport, RI. We don’t like that kind of close communion.
We continued downriver to a spot where we could anchor in 8 feet of water in a more sheltered location. We were just about to finish our work when another sailboat came cruising in to be our neighbor. It isn’t that we don’t like friends and neighbors, but with all that water to choose from, why did this boat want to be right next to us? Oh well. We used our flashlight and our e-chart and our grit and we got the anchor set just the way we wanted it.
We were exhausted. We had arisen before it was day, and we cruised until it wasn’t day again. We ate a simple supper and went right to bed. Boy, am I glad we are retired and don’t have to work for a living any more, getting up at the crack of dawn and working until we keel over into bed at night. I bet everyone would like to be retired and on permanent vacation like we are!
November 21, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
What would cruising be if there were no surprises?
We woke up on the morning of November 20 at Buck Island Harbor. It was very early, as are all our days on this jaunt. We wanted to get across Albemarle Sound and past the Alligator River. Our first act every morning now is to turn on the engine so we can run the inverter for grinding and brewing coffee. (The generator is another story for another day. Be sure you have redundancy in all critical systems, and be sure that the cruising gremlins will strain your ability to provide enough layers of same.) Larry turned on the fuel pump, and then tried to turn on the engine, and that was the great moment of truth. The truth was that the engine was not going to start.
Before I tell you about the engine, I’ll tell you about my own redundant backups. When I was employed, I was a database administrator. If you think that system administrators are anal about backups, dba’s are moreso. In fact, as a dba, no matter what the system administrator told me about his/her backups, I always managed to find some way to make a backup of my own that I could rely on when the system backups failed to meet my needs. And that happened way too often.
Now that I am retired, I am as avid about protecting my morning coffee as I ever was about assuring database backups. We have had too many issues with electrical systems and diesel engines and so forth for me to think that I can safely rely on an electric coffee grinder and an electric coffeemaker. When I bought food for our journey, I bought one pound of ground coffee and stashed it for this moment.
It all goes back to motorcycle days. When we were first married we used to travel on a motorcycle and camp out. We made coffee by boiling water and throwing in some ground coffee. After the coffee had five minutes or so to brew, we dipped it out carefully and it was quite good coffee. So on this delightful morning when our engine refused to start, we did not have to do without coffee. I hauled out my stash and made what Larry calls “cowboy coffee.” We drank our coffee while Larry mulled over the situation. I assure you that the fact that we were able to have coffee anyway made the whole day work better.
Larry spent about five hours with wrenches, screwdrivers and few choice words working on the engine. The day before we had casually said to each other that if something happened that made it necessary, we could always dinghy back to Coinjock; it was only six miles. However, as Larry was fighting with the demons of diesel, the winds were ramping up in excess of 20 knots. It was no day for a six-mile dinghy ride. If no real solution could be crafted, then something had to be jury-rigged. The engine must be compelled, willy-nilly, to run.
Two bad things had happened. First, Larry discovered that the fuel line was blocked. When he attempted to run fuel through the filter, hardly any came through. Task #1 was to clear that fuel line. And wouldn’t you know that the one item that could possibly do that task was buried in the most inaccessible space in the boat? It was in a box of assorted remnants of electrical cable, all stuffed at the bottom of the locker under the locker behind the forward settee. When we stored that box way down there, we said that there would be no need for wiring any time soon. Ha! The cruising gremlins giggled all morning as we pulled out boxes and bags and paraphernalia that had been piled and stuffed on top of the box we needed. Our boat is none too tidy on its best day, and this was not by any means its best day, unless you mean the best WORST day. It was a frightful mess, but Larry found a piece of cable that was just the right size to push through the fuel line and unclog it.
That done, he encountered task #2: fix or replace the fuel pump. Even with the fuel line clear, the fuel pump was not moving fuel. This was a much more serious problem. We could not go to Coinjock for parts and pieces, and who knew if anybody there would have what we needed anyway? However, Larry soon realized that we had exactly what we needed, exactly where we did not need it to be. The generator is a diesel engine, and its fuel filter was not needed, because the generator was not being used (another story, as I told you earlier). He scavenged the fuel pump from the generator and installed it on the auxiliary engine, and voila`. We had power in the power zone.
The cruising gremlins are always working had to keep us from having any fun, but we ignore their agenda. We have our own: just keep trucking, or rather, just keep cruising.