November 19, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
This is our second day on the ICW. If it is typical, I am pretty sure I don’t want a lot more of it. The ICW is interesting and scenic, but there are challenges. Any way we go south has its challenges; each boat must choose its own way. I can’t imagine that we will do the ICW often.
We left Norfolk yesterday (11/18) and went as far as the Great Bridge. We traveled from Mile Zero to Mile Twelve. On that route, we almost missed our first bridge opening, but we barely squeaked through behind a barge. Then we immediately passed under our first fixed bridge at 65 feet. Oh, I of little faith, I could not look up. I remember so well the bridge on the C&D that I thought could not possibly be high enough. I know very well that if I look up at the mast as we approach the bridge, I will have a heart attack. I looked at the book in my lap and waited for the thud.
Fortunately, there was no thud. We have now passed under a couple more fixed bridges and still no thudding. The one at Coinjock actually has a gauge that displays the water level. If you believe it is properly placed, then you can believe that if it says “65” there must be 65 feet of clearance. Well, I believe, sort of, but I still do not look up.
The big problem today was the schedule, or lack thereof. Some bridges open according to the schedule in the guide book. Last night we tied up between the Great Bridge Lock and the Great Bridge. We chose to do that, because we knew there was really no good place to stop between Great Bridge and Coinjock, which is forty miles away. The fact that we had to wait until 8:30 for the first bridge past Norfolk meant that getting to or past Coinjock yesterday was an unrealistic goal. So this morning, we got prepared before 7AM, and the Great Bridge opened right on schedule. We were on our way.
However, we thought the Centerville Bridge would open on its posted schedule at 7:30AM, and so did other boats behind us. However, due to high water somewhere, the bridge opening was restricted to allow for extra traffic on the road, and we had to wait until 8:30 for the opening. It was impossible to simply sit still, the canal is narrow at this bridge, and the channel is narrower still. Outside the channel there is a risk of encountering stumps and snags and just plain shallow water. Four of us tap-danced there for an hour before the bridge opened for us.
The North Landing Bridge is undergoing construction work, and the bridge opens when the construction team says so. We waited there 45 minutes, and when the bridge opened, only one half of it swung away, leaving a very narrow passage. We slipped past, breathed a sigh of relief and moved on.
It was about 3PM when we finally arrived at Coinjock. It is a very tiny town in what looks like a very remote location. We continued south on the waterway to Buck Island, where we had planned to anchor. Buck Island is actually just a growth of marsh grass on a silty muddy shoal that happens to be more or less above water. There wasn’t a tree in sight. This location is almost the last spot to anchor before the long passage across Albemarle Sound. We eased into the little spot with a depth of 8 feet, more or less. In fact, we had to reset our depth alarm to 7 feet in order to have any peace. It took three tries to set the anchor satisfactorily, but once it dug in, we felt good.
As we reviewed our experience with the bridges and the waterway itself, we agreed that we get very tired of the limitations of the channel and the bridge schedules. Yet Buck Island Harbor could not possibly be more lovely. It is far from any human habitation, although hunters could be heard occasionally. Sunset over the marshes was spectacular, and after dark the stars were brilliant. We did have to contend with some mosquitoes, but our Off! candle dispatched them nicely. The ICW definitely has its own brand of charm.
November 18, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
AAaaahhhh. Early morning. What do you think that means? For us it is very early, 4AM, and it is cool. Not frigid, but cool enough that we need jackets. We haul out our foul weather gear, because it is impervious to wind. That makes all the difference, of course. If the wind can’t get to you, then you can ignore the cold.
Larry takes the helm and I go forward with a big spotlight so I can make the day markers visible when there is no associated light. And if the marker is lighted, the day mark shows the number, which is critical to success. Just any red marker won’t do if you actually need marker number 22.
When we decided to make our run south, we knew that we needed to get far south in a hurry. It was already the middle of November. Any nice days this time of year are complete gifts, and we knew we needed to make the most of what looked like a few days of good weather. We want to anchor whenever possible, and knowing that it is easier to anchor in daylight, the best way to lengthen our productive time is to start early. It is much easier to leave a spot in the dark if you arrived in the daylight, and it is much easier to follow your inward track back out in the dark than to create a new track and anchor successfully in a strange place in the dark.
Three days in a row we were up at 4AM and out by 5AM. It was a real adjustment. We always used to say that no matter what we did, we could not get going before 11AM, but these days we are setting new records. As a result, we were able to run 78 miles on Sunday and arrive in the Patuxent in plenty of time to anchor before the sun set.
Our departure from Baltimore at 5AM was quite interesting. Even though we had passed in and out along that channel many times by daylight, it all looked quite different in the dark. We were really glad that we were in familiar territory. Our departure from the Patuxent at 5AM was a challenge, however. It was an occasion for gratitude for e-charting and saved tracks. I could illuminate the markers as we passed them by using a flashlight, but some of them still seemed to be in strange places.
The best experience of all was the Wicomico River. We cruised into this river shortly after lunch on Monday. We decided to stop there, because there really wasn’t an acceptable place to anchor between the Wicomico and Norfolk without going a long way off our real course. Being there reminded us of being in South Dakota, where our anchorages were truly remote.
We went upriver in the Wicomico to a bend where there was good protection from the north, the predicted wind direction. We had a little challenge anchoring, because the force of the river current was in conflict with the force of the wind. However, our second try dug in nicely. The wind died down to almost nothing by evening and remained calm all night.
Along the bank of the river we could see three or four houses, but that is all. When the sun went down, there were lights in one of the houses and a few lights on one of the boat docks. However, for the most part, the dark of night was truly dark. Beyond hills to the east we could see a glow that no doubt came from some small community, but it was nothing compared to the light in the sky anywhere in the area near Baltimore and Annapolis. Standing on deck in the Wicomico River, we could hear frogs and birds making their night calls, sounds we would never have heard farther north. We looked up and saw a brilliant night sky. I could actually pick out the Pleiades, a faint little constellation I love.
When we got up at 4AM in the Wicomico, there were absolutely no lights anywhere near. I shined my light on the markers and Larry steered to the saved track from the day before. We successfully stayed off the shoals between us and the mouth of the river. It was so dark and so clear that I saw 4 meteors between our anchorage and the main bay. We were joined by a parade of huge fishing boats as we exited the river, but they went their way and we went ours.
Now we are on the ICW, where our days are controlled by bridge openings. I guess we won’t need to get up at 4AM here. I can enjoy the extra sleep, but there actually is something very special about the sky in the deep darkness of real night. I am glad we made our early morning getaways on this passage.
November 17, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
The alarm went off at 4AM yesterday. Actually it goes off at that time every day now.
Some retirement this is! If you want lazy days and restful nights, do not retire and go cruising on a sailboat.
We eventually talked ourselves into getting out of bed. It was cold – we have no heat since leaving the marina. We must manage our electricity wisely. (If we had a propane heater, then we would need to manage the propane wisely, too. It’s always something.) It was dark – we were not in downtown Baltimore any more. In fact, we were in St. Johns Creek, just off the Patuxent River at Solomon Island. We made 78 miles on Sunday, in the hope that such a firm break would assure us of not winding up in Harborview again at day’s end.
The cockpit panes were covered with condensation. Larry wiped them down while I got coffee going. We planned our strategy, and shortly after 0530 we were turning into the channel of the Patuxent. I had remained on deck to shine a flashlight on the day markers as we passed them on our way out, but at this point I went below to log our position. When I went back up to the cockpit, I grabbed the absorber we were using to wipe the cockpit panes. As I stepped out to the aft deck, I saw a boat behind us with flashing blue lights.
You know how you get all nervous when a cop with red lights flashing comes up behind, and then you heave a sigh of relief when he passes you and continues down the road to bother someone else. Larry and I watched this boat approach and we felt pretty sure it couldn’t be about us. Who know we were even here? And who cared?
As it turned out, it was the Coast Guard, and they cared a lot. They cared so much that they boarded us and asked us to show them all sorts of things. I wondered later if we had waited to leave until Tuesday, or maybe Friday, would they have made their quota for the week already? I don’t really know how it all works.
The good part was that the two young men who boarded us were polite, professional and thorough. They simply asked us to show them that we were in compliance with Coast Guard regulations – like carrying our registration, possessing the proper life jackets, and so forth. When they were done, they entered all the information into a Palm Pilot and printed us a receipt with the image of Larry’s signature on it.
We appreciate everything the Coast Guard does. We certainly could not complain about being boarded, although I sort of hope that if it happens again, it will be in daylight. Still, it is a good thing they are doing, and it was really nice to meet some of them personally in a situation where we were not in danger. We all count on the Coast Guard every time we go out on the water. Even though it unnerved me to be boarded, it was not a bad experience at all. I take this opportunity to say to one and all that if the people we met are representative of the Coast Guard, our country is well served.
Nonetheless, after they stepped over the lifelines and back onto their own boat, I breathed a sign of relief. It was just like spelling in the third grade. I always knew those words, and I could spell them forward and backward, but I worried every single week that I would miss a word. I was soooooo glad when the test was over. That is how I felt when our boarding was over. We looked behind us as they left and saw them approach another boat just entering the river. It was somebody else’s turn in the barrel. Whew!
If you ever decide to cruise in a sailboat, be prepared to flex until you are tied in a knot. The fun never stops!
As many of you know, we thought we would head south last Monday after a quick check of the keel. We thought wrong. The rock we hit in Maine last summer left a signature in the form of a gouge into the fiberglass matting. There were some dings and scratches that could have been tolerated, but that deep gouge required attention.
It took a whole week to do the work. The temperature was so cool that Larry had difficulty working with the fiberglass and epoxy required for repairs, and the same problem cropped up when he was applying paint to the repaired spots. We were finally on target to leave on Monday (Monday, November 9, 2009).
We got up early and made sure we had our pre-departure tasks done before 10:30, our scheduled splash time. We cleaned out all our trash, because we can’t discard trash while under way in Chesapeake Bay. We hosed down the deck and cleaned the cockpit. We washed the cockpit curtains. We were ready when the lift arrived. The lift operator had to make a few adjustments to our radio antenna and pole on the aft deck, because the lift for splash was smaller than the lift for haul, but very soon the boat was back in the water. I breathed a sigh of relief and allowed myself to start feeling excited about our winter plans.
Larry and I climbed back into the boat. The lift operator and his helper guided our boat out of the slings, and then they told us we could start the engine. One of the things I have always enjoyed is the sound of the engine starting, because when that sound hits my ear, we will be going somewhere. Larry turned the key and pressed ’start.’ We heard a couple of feeble wheezes. He looked startled, but after fiddling with the gearshift to be sure the engine was in neutral, he pressed the button again. No doubt about it. That engine had a serious flu. Larry went below and reconfigured the battery bank in order to combine the full power of three batteries instead of just one. Sad to say, all we heard was a feeble, limping thump instead of the roar of diesel power.
The boatyard men pushed and pulled us over to a nearby slip where we tied up. Larry had been threatening to buy a new starter battery for a while. I guess that week on land gave the battery a good excuse to retire. That explanation is as good as any. Fortunately the boatyard includes a full-service marine supply store, and they actually had a battery we could use. This one is even more powerful. That should mean that it is not only better than a dead battery; it should also be better than the old battery when it was new. Larry brought it back to the boat, we sat there for half an hour to bring it up to full charge using shore power, and then the engine started. Yay! All looked well. Ha!
One of the casualties of our never-ending departure mode is that I keep having to top off the supplies and food I need for a three-week jaunt without stopping to shop. It took us a whole week to get away from Harborview after we thought, “Tomorrow,”, so I had shopped to replace a week’s worth of groceries right before we went to Tidewater. We were supposed to be there for only a couple of hours. After it turned into a week, I again needed to shop to make up for that week of food we had used. We left Tidewater and cruised over to the fuel dock where we were shocked to discover that the price of fuel had risen to $2.95 per gallon. We gritted our teeth and filled the tank with 80 gallons. You do the math. Then we headed for an anchorage across the street from Safeway.
Because we always expected to simply cruise, not to go shopping, we had deflated the dinghy and strapped it down on deck. We don’t drag it behind us when we know we won’t use it for a while. Therefore we had to unwrap it and inflate it and throw it back into the water before we could shop for groceries. That took a while, so we didn’t leave for the grocery store until 4:30 PM. I had a very complete list, and Larry is a good shopper, so I sent him to gather up some things while I did the picky ones. We hurried back to the boat, had a nice dinner and discussed our plans for the next day. Since we had had such a scare with the battery, we decided to run the engine a while to bring it up to full charge before we went to bed, and that is what we did. We both felt a little gunshy after that unpleasant surprise at the boatyard.
Next morning, I got up a bit before Larry, and I got everything ready to make coffee. Coffee-making requires AC for the grinder and coffeemaker, and that means the inverter. Given our battery scare, I decided not to risk turning on the inverter and using up too much power before we had to start the engine for our trip. When Larry got up, he said, “How are you?” and I said, “Coffeeless.” “Well, I guess I better turn on the engine so we can turn on the inverter,” he said. He turned the key and pushed the button, and all we heard was a click.
This can’t be! This is a brand new battery! We carefully charged it up last night! What is going on!
Larry tried any number of little tricks, but none of them worked. There we were, stopped in our tracks again. After some time for thought, Larry came up with a plan. We were anchored near a marina, less than a quarter of a mile. We would use the dinghy to push the boat to the marina, where we hoped they would let us tie up for a few hours and use their shore power to charge this battery. For the right price, of course!
You would have enjoyed the show. We tied the dinghy to one side of the boat, with any number false starts as we tried to work together despite radically different perceptions of the right way to get this task done. Then Larry climbed into the dinghy and started the outboard. I went into the cockpit and turned the wheel so we could test whether the dinghy could provide enough power to move the boat. It actually worked!
So — the next move was to tie the dock lines and fenders on the other side of the boat and call the marina. I busied myself with lines and fenders, and Larry went back into the boat. I thought he was calling the marina. Then I saw him come back up and sit down beside the starter for the diesel engine. He turned the key, he pushed the button, and miracle of miracles, the engine started.
We both heaved a sigh of relief that we would not need to use the dinghy to move the boat, but neither of us regarded this outcome as a reliable indicator that it was time to head out of town. We called Harborview and arranged to go back so Larry can figure out what really happened and fix the problem.
So here we are. Still in Baltimore. Still not headed south. And I expect that we will be here two or three days. We could be here for a week. It is hard to imagine when we will actually be moving southward. I may even need to shop for groceries again!
Well, at least I have internet, but that is another story. Before we left Harborview for the boatyard, Larry purchased an antenna and software that are supposed to connect to the networking hardware in our laptops and enhance reception of wireless signals. He asked me if I would like to try it, so I did. It didn’t work. We loaded the driver, plugged in the antenna, and nothing. You would have thought I was in a desert. So, we uninstalled the software. I went back to the laptop’s own wireless features, found wireless networks and clicked one to connect. It failed, and I have not been able to connect since. Right now I am using my Dell mini. I hope that using this little guy I can connect to Microsoft support and figure out how to recactivate my network adapters. AAAAAAaaaagggghhhhh!
All I really want is peace and connectivity and the wind in my face as I cruise south. I’m doing just fine, but boy am I flexed!
I have been reminded repeatedly that I have neglected this blog. I apologize to one and all. When we cruised into the islands in Maine, I fell behind, and one thing did not lead to another.
Tonight we are attempting to tie up the final loose ends before we depart on a much longer cruise. We will head south tomorrow, and I don’t really know when we will turn around and head north again. We have dental appointments in Baltimore the first week of June, so maybe that is our hook.
Anyway, I hope you will forgive this long silence and continue to check in on us from time to time. I also hope that every once in a while, you will click the link to email us and just let us know what’s up where you are. We miss our friends, and we love hearing from you even if it is just a hello.
As before, I will only be able to post if we have an internet connection, but I will commit to bring you up to date as often as possible. I have learned that I can’t always keep up with the pictures, but I will try very hard to keep up with the blog.
Thanks to all of our Baltimore friends for your friendship and kindness during our stay at Harborview. We feel richly blessed to have so many wonderful friends.
August 10, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
You should have known it would be like this. We are the people who planned supper on Saturday night to coincide with Sunrise Earth on Discovery Channel. We used to enjoy that show very much, because it was like being anchored in a cove watching the wildlife. Tonight, we are anchored in a cove, and predictably, we are watching the wildlife.
This time it is a dolphin, or more correctly, it is two dolphins. I don’t know if “it” can be “two” but I am having a hard time with this sentence.
The fact is that in Southeast Harbor, a cove on Deer Island, Maine, there are two dolphins. They appear to be a mother and a baby, judging from the sizes of the two we have observed for more than an hour. Sometimes only the mother surfaces, and sometimes only the baby, but usually they surface together, the baby only slightly behind the mother and significantly smaller.
We first observed them in the water as we were finishing supper. We usually eat on deck or in the cockpit, because we love getting the last view of our surroundings at sunset. During our visit to Maine this time, the evening temperatures have been very cool, and we hardly ever eat out on deck. We saw this pair of dolphins surface a time or two as we were eating in the cockpit, and we continued to watch them long after our food was gone. We even went out on deck, where it was too cool to be comfortable, in order to see them better.
You may ask why we didn’t try to get pictures. It is very hard to get any meaningful pictures of dolphins just doing their thing. They come up for air and go back down. It is very graceful, and we are endlessly fascinated by trying to guess where they will appear next, but the pictures we could get would be very repetitive. It isn’t as much fun to see fifty pictures of dolphins surfacing as it is to be right there and hear them breathe and wonder where they will be next.
This is why we love cruising. Ever since our first sailing adventure on Francis Case Lake, we have loved to watch the wildlife. On Francis Case, we watched beavers and herons and even wild turkeys. We watched deer dance at the edge of the water, and when all else failed, we even watched cows. In Maine we have seen dolphins and seals and all manner of birds. It really is exciting to be so close to creation in all its variation and splendor.
So, now we have abandoned Sunrise Earth and we are watching our own sunrises and sunsets and the wildlife that comes out at those times. We thank God for the glory of his creation and we simply delight in the opportunity to see all his creatures doing what he created them to do.
There is truly nothing more magnificent than God’s creation of the earth. There is no limit to the beauty to be enjoyed and appreciated in his handiwork. We are very grateful to be here and to be in God’s hands along with all his other creatures.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 31, 2009
The cruising life is full of surprises. Some of them have not been pleasant, some have been quite comical, and a few are simply wonderful blessings.
This week, we had a surprise that turned out to be a real blessing.
We left Camden, Maine, Thursday morning, bound for Searsport. Our objective was to visit the Hamilton Marine store, a primo destination for any and all marine supplies. According to the cruising guide, it was located 1.3 miles from the Searsport town landing. We have been surprised more than once by discovering that anchoring is forbidden today in places where our six-year-old cruising guide says it is allowed. We thought our best course of action was to contact the harbormaster by radio as soon as we got near Searsport and sort out the details.
As we approached the Searsport harbor, I tried to call the harbormaster on VHF channel 16. This is the channel almost everyone monitors in the nautical world. Most harbormasters monitor it, even though they may prefer to be called on some other channel. However, nobody answered. The cruising guide information for Searsport was confusing, because it said the harbormaster would talk on 16, 9 or 10, but we tried all those channels without success. Thinking that we might have been too far away, we waited until we were actually entering the harbor and tried again.
This time, we heard back from the Belfast harbormaster. He though that “Wayne” might be busy or we might just need to try again. That comment confused us, too, although we later came to understand the situation.
At this point, Larry decided that we should go to Stockton Harbor instead. Stockton Harbor is separated from Searsport by a large island and a breakwater that prevents traffic from going between the island and the mainland to get from one harbor to the other. To get to Stockton, we had to turn around and go back out of Searsport harbor and into Stockton.
We quickly fell in love with Stockton harbor. Although there are houses on the shore, as well as a little landing and a small mooring field, it is a large, well-protected harbor surround mostly by trees. Again, however, we were concerned that there might be rules for anchoring here that were not in place at the printing of our guide book. We tried to reach the Stockton harbormaster on channel 16, and again, we received no answer. We were about to anchor anyway when we saw a boat moving in the mooring field. A boat in motion needs someone on board as a general rule, so we thought we might get some information from the captain of that boat.
We reached his boat just as he reached his mooring. We called out to him, telling him that we were trying to find out if there were any restrictions on anchoring and also if he could tell us how to get to Hamilton Marine from there. He called back that we could anchor anywhere. Then he said, “Hamilton Marine isn’t far. It’s actually in Searsport, but I could just drive you there.”
I was so dumfounded that I said, “You’re kidding!”
He shouted back, “No. I’m not kidding. Just meet me over at the dock and I will drive you there. I have an errand I need to run, but I will pick you up at the dock in a few minutes.”
We could not believe our ears. This man who did not even know our names was going to rearrange his day to drive us to Hamilton Marine.
We hurriedly anchored. According to the guide book, the bottom was sticky mud, and the anchor bit in quickly. We were getting the motor mounted on the dinghy when the harbormaster pulled up in his boat.
“Welcome to Stockton Harbor,” he called out. “We hope you will enjoy your stay here.”
We asked if there were any special rules for anchoring, to which he replied there were none. “Bruce told me you would be coming in to the landing,” he said. Then he told us which landing to use and welcomed us again. I was still nervous about our failure to reach him by radio, so I said, “I’m sorry, but we tried to reach you on 16 before we anchored.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I had the radio off.” He was a very informal harbormaster.
At the dock, Bruce Suppes introduced himself and his son. We got in the car and he drove us to the store. As we were riding along, I said, “Do you think we can get a cab to bring us back?” Bruce replied, “Oh, I’ll bring you back. Don’t worry about that.”
He dropped us off, and went to take care of some personal business. Shortly he returned.
As we rode with Bruce to and from the harbor, he told us about the Searsport harbormaster. Searsport is a very small town. The owner of Hamilton Marine is actually the harbormaster, and he is also a pilot for commercial ships in Penobscot Bay. On this particular day, Bruce happened to know that the part-time harbormaster was piloting a big ship down Penobscot Bay. So it wasn’t odd that we received no response. Probably nobody would have cared if we anchored wherever we liked in Searsport, but if we had gone there we would not have met Bruce Suppes.
When we got back to the harbor, we thanked Bruce again, as we had done over and over along the way. “You are very welcome,” he said. “Just pass it on.”
This experience was so delightful, that when we went to the SSCA Gam at Isleboro, our antennas went up when we heard that one of the attendees was from Stockton. After the event had broken up, we dinghied over to the boat from Stockton. We told him that our experience with his town was so good that we were pretty sure anybody from Stockton was a great person. Blake, aboard Alert, assured us that he was, indeed, a great person!
The truth is that there are a lot of wonderful people in the world, but not too many of them would or could step out of their own day to be so kind to anyone as Bruce was to us. He acted as if it were nothing special, but it was truly a blessing and a surprise to us. We want to make sure that we do pass it on the next time somebody needs help from us. It would be a shame to let a blessing like this one grow dusty with disuse.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 31, 2009
When my daughter or my son in St. Louis discovers in the midst of meal preparation a need for a green bell pepper, either of them can step outside, get in a car and drive less than a mile to the grocery store. They could discover the need for the pepper, solve the problem, and be back on task making dinner in thirty minutes.
Not so for us. We live and cruise on a sailboat, we have no permanent address other than our mailing service, and our car is an inflatable, soft-bottomed dinghy. When I discover in the midst of meal prep that I need a green bell pepper, I must either have one on hand or do without, because I am not likely to be near a grocery store. Even if a grocery store is less than a mile away, as when we were moored in the harbor in Camden, Maine, the process required to get to and from that grocery store would stop anyone from casually running out for one little thing like that.
When we were in Newport, a little boy waiting with his parents for a harbor cruise to start watched us getting in our dinghy. We were loading our shopping bags and trying to arrange everything so there was still room for us, and he watched intently.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“We’re going home,” I replied.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“We live on a boat. This is our car,” I replied.
When we need to get the “car” ready for a shore excursion, it isn’t as simple as jumping in the car parked in the driveway.
Because our dinghy is soft-bottomed, it can be completely deflated and folded up. We can tow it behind us if we wish, but we can also deflate it, fold it up, wrap it in a cover and strap it down on deck. When we are traveling long distances at sea, this is a good solution. It is certainly possible for anything on deck to become dislodged and blow away, but when this dinghy is wrapped up and strapped down, it is very secure. As we were transiting the Cape Cod Canal on our way to Maine, we heard a sailboat captain reporting a lost dinghy to the Coast Guard. He was towing the dinghy in a gale with thirty-five knot winds when it flipped over and became separated from the sailboat. He made the report in hopes that someone would find it on shore and report the discovery to the Coast Guard. It sounded a lot like wishful thinking, because the most common theft from sailboats is the dinghy. Still, my first thought was that a dinghy firmly compressed and strapped down to the deck was less at risk of such an accident than one dragged behind the boat.
However, the down side of our plan is that if the dinghy is strapped down securely for our passage, there is a big job ahead of us after we anchor. When we do decide to go to the grocery store, or sightseeing, or whatever, we must remove the straps, unfold the cover, spread out the dinghy, inflate it, attach the oars and the seat, and then lift it up over the side in order to drop it in the water. Inflating it would be a breeze if the battery-powered inflator ever actually had a charge when we need it; usually, Larry winds up doing it manually (which should be “footfully,” since he pumps it with his foot). Then we need to pull our “car” to the stern of the boat where our boarding ladder is located.
Ah, but we are not done yet. It is highly unlikely that we want to row the dinghy to the local town dock. It might be very close, as is the case when we anchor in Baltimore near the Safeway store, but more than likely, we will be far enough from our destination that rowing is not the most desirable solution. In this case we need the outboard motor.
When not in use, the motor is mounted on the stern rail of the boat. As you might guess, Larry doesn’t grab the motor and carry it down the ladder to mount it on the dinghy. Instead, we have a block and tackle on our stern arch that allows me to easily lower the motor to the dinghy where Larry can screw it on securely. It isn’t hard to do, but it takes more time.
Next, I hand the gasoline can and hoses down to Larry. He attaches them, pumps up the gas pressure, and starts the motor. That is, if he remembered to take the key with him. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t. The key is stored in the main salon, so if he forgot it, I run down and retrieve it.
At this point, the dinghy is ready to take us to the grocery store. However, we must still get ourselves ready to go. We won’t be able to park the dinghy in the grocery store parking lot, so we must be prepared to get our groceries from the store to the dinghy dock. When we go shopping, each of us wears a backpack with several large tote bags inside. These bags hold more than the grocery store plastic bags, and they are more durable, also. We use the backpacks to carry heavy items like milk, meat, and cabbage. We put crackers, cans and bread in the tote bags. You would be surprised how much we can carry back with us at one trip. It would usually be an option to get a cab for the return trip, but these bags have worked well for us to date. And the cab solution doesn’t help with getting the items into the dinghy or up the boarding ladder at the boat. Our tote bags can be stuffed and stacked in the dinghy so that things don’t fly out or get wet from the spray as we go back to the boat. They don’t prevent things from getting wet if it has rained and there is water in the dinghy.
That situation presents another problem we must solve. Most of the time, when someone gets into a car to drive to the store, there won’t be water all over the floor. Often, when we get ready to ride somewhere in the dinghy there is water inside. Whether or not there is water when we start, we must be prepared for spray to fly in, and of course, it could rain. We have two small plastic storage bags just the right size for a pair of shoes, and a large bag that is big enough for our computer backpacks, or jackets or anything else we want to keep dry. Getting our “car” ready to go takes some time.
After we get ready, and after we do our shopping or computer work or whatever is the purpose of our journey we must return the same way we came. Arriving back at the boat, our first challenge is actually to grab the ladder. We are getting better at it, but it isn’t a guarantee yet that we will do it on the first try. Having grabbed the ladder, we must position the dinghy so that I can get up on the ladder and hitch the dinghy’s painter to the top rung, the one that doesn’t move. (Don’t ask me why the rope on the dinghy is a painter when the rope on the jib is a sheet. I live a nautical life, but I am still adjusting to the lingo.) Then while I stand on the ladder, Larry hands me one bag at a time and I hoist it up on deck. When everything is unloaded, we let the motor run the gasoline out before we stop for the day.
If we expect to use the dinghy again while we are moored or anchored, that is the end of the work on our “car” for a while. However, if this is the last trip, then we must reverse all our getting ready – hoist the motor back onto the stern rail, drag the dinghy around to the side, lift it up on deck, remove the oars and the seat, deflate it, fold it up, wrap it and strap it down.
It gives new meaning to the question, “Honey, is the car ready?”
Aboard No Boundaries
July 28, 2009
Some people travel to exotic places and pay people to guide them to the exotic sights. I think they all have wonderful experiences, and I have received all sorts of pictures and cards from people who took vacations that way.
However, cruising is putting us in reach of some fabulous sights for which we pay nothing extra. If anyone added up the cost of buying the boat and equipping it for blue-water cruising, it would quickly become apparent that this is not a free ride, but now that all the bill-paying is done, the sights seem to be free.
For example, when we sat in Cohansey Cove and watched cloud formations that looked like magic lanterns and erupting volcanoes, we felt as if we had been given the key to a fabulous treasure. All we did was show up, and the show happened without any effort on our part.
We have seen a lot of wonderful things along the way, but probably the most amazing thing so far is the whales.
As we passed Race Point off the tip of Cape Cod, we saw in the distance ahead a little inflatable boat sitting in the water. We noticed what seemed like unusual motion in the water, and suddenly it became clear to us that whales were breaching and diving there. We could tell that there were six or eight of the huge animals, and they were having a wonderful time. They were so near to our course that we didn’t need to change anything in order to watch them.
What amazed us, however, was to find that boats suddenly began zipping toward that spot from everywhere around us. Even a huge boat that we had thought was a ferry when it passed us earlier came rushing over to be close to the whales. Its decks were crowded with people yearning to see such a sight up close.
By the time we actually reached the site, only one or two whales were still there. They must have been tired, because they simply rolled over and slid under the water, never to be seen again. We were disappointed, of course, and it must have been disappointing to all those other boats, especially the one with as many as a hundred people aboard. However, as we looked around in all directions, we saw the spout of another whale, and once again a whale came up to the surface and then slid under again.
As we cruised northward, we saw this sight again and again. Once we watched as a whale glided along just under the surface, then spouted and came up to the top. We observed that most of the whales came up about three times before diving deep and showing us their huge tails. We must have seen a couple of dozen of them over the course of three or four hours. I don’t know what it would have cost to pay some guide to take us where whales were to be seen, but I don’t think any of them could have predicted that our course would be right where they were playing that day.
It was absolutely wonderful. And this sight is only of the many fabulous sights we have seen.
Today, as we left Seal Bay, a beautiful place we have inadequately tried to capture in photos, we saw a large group of seals sunning themselves on a huge rock. Until today, we had nothing but fog and more fog, so there was no sun to enjoy. Today, the seals and the people alike reveled in the gorgeous sunshine.
As we cruise, I see the work of God everywhere, and in the sight of seals and whales enjoying their world, I see God’s hand. There is so much about this world that nobody understands. How do so many creatures live so successfully without any humans to tell them what to do? How do they survive without manuals and government? One wonders, but for us, it is enough just to enjoy being part of the same world.
We can all be glad that people didn’t create the world. If people had done it, there would be so much sameness and uniformity that we would all be tired of it already. God’s world is full of surprises. Humans don’t do very well at predicting weather. Humans never know where a whale will appear. I am deeply thankful that God made a complex world that never fails to remind us that we don’t know everything yet. I love the surprises with which God has seen fit to bless us in our new life. Maybe it would actually be possible to predict weather and whales, but as far as I am concerned, I’ll take surprises over predictability any day.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 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. 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 pulled out the piece that covers 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.