June 14, 2008
You may think that GPS stands for Global Positioning System. For us and thousands like us it stands for Geezer Placement Service. It’s made it possible for us and other nomads to negotiate the waters of the ICW and offshore at least knowing where we are if not what we’re doing there. Without it we would be confined to condos and golf courses, puttering away the hours.
GPS, Charlie H., M. and I have taken Journey from Cape May to Teel Cove in six days, arriving here Thursday morning, June 19 at 9:30. It was a week of tremendous sailing, another engine failure and of churning: M. and I are eager to be on land, but at the same time not wanting to let go of this journey.
With Charlie H. on board, and accompanied by Troubadour, we made a two-night passage from Cape May to arrive on June 9th at Cuttyhunk Island in Buzzards Bay off of the coast of Massachusetts. We sailed all but nine hours, and weathered another severe thunderstorm by running with its 40 knot west winds for about a half an hour. We stood three-hour watches and slept well in our rocking cradles of berths. We were in the mood to keep going through a third night to reach Maine, but when we started the engine to charge the battery we discovered that the alternator was not working. The stop at Cuttyhunk town marina allowed us to investigate the problem, to plug into shore power to charge the house and starter batteries, and to make calls to Joe at Lyman Morse in Maine, sufficient to determine that either the voltage regulator or, more likely, the alternator had failed. The oil leak also proved to be unfixed. It was coming from the oil pressure sensor switch. Journey’s special needs engine once again needed the healing hands of Guy Crudel, the superb mechanic who had adjusted medications for our baby last October 1st, when fittingly, then and now, Charlie H. was our cheerful, always optimistic, go with the flow crew member.
We had never been to Cuttyhunk before, one of a string of islands that make up the southeastern boundary of Buzzard’s Bay on the southern coast of Massachusetts. Bartholemew Gosnold landed on Cuttyhunk in 1602, built a small fort, stayed 22 days, went back to England, returned as a backer and leader of Jamestown in 1605 and was one of the hundreds to die of disease in the first year.
We were struck by the contrast in the appearances of the town of Gosnold on Cuttyhunk and Hopetown on Elbow Cay, Bahamas. Gosnold was all cedar shakes and white trim, Cape Cod-style cottages and homes tiered on a steep hill overlooking a tight little harbor. Hopetown was pastel and open windows, the only elevation the sand dune spine of the Island. Cuttyhunk offered the highest elevations of land that we had seen in months.
Island people from the Abacos and Cuttyhunk are a lot the same. Initially taciturn, a little abrupt, and eager to charge you high prices for everything, and only open for business at their convenience. Gosnold must fund a good deal of the town budget from revenues from the City Marina and mooring field that allows up to three boats to raft on each mooring. Cuttyhunk is famous for its oysters and Charlie and I each ate eighteen of them. M. and I took a walk to reach spectacular views of Buzzards Bay and ran into a retired school teacher and his wife whose vocation is to visit all 351 towns of Massachusetts. Gosnold was 350th on their list and Nantucket would be their last.
On June 10th we departed Cuttyhunk at 6:30 to make the flood tide current at the Cape Cod Canal which runs east, ran with it through the canal and headed north on Cape Cod Bay towards Gloucester. We called Guy and he would be available the next morning. Browns boat yard said they were full, but we could tie up on the fuel dock. We traveled 13 hours, mainly motoring in light southwesterly winds. I was instructed to call Guy at seven o’clock Wednesday morning to tell him where we were and he was there at 7:30. In a few minutes he diagnosed the alternator had failed, and had removed the oil pressure switch. He sent the alternator with one of his men to Hub alternator repair, they called and said the diodes were fried and the stator badly worn, the results of a loose connection and/or too much demand. Guy had tested the draw on the alternator when starting the engine and the voltage regulator was demanding 90 amps. They traded our alternator for a rebuilt 110 amp model. Guy returned to install it and a new pressure switch and we underway by 12:10 headed for Teel Cove.
Something remains amiss. Our friends at the boat yard here in Maine, who installed just three years ago the alternator, expensive new batteries, voltage regulator and a modernized, high-quality, electrical system, have some explaining and work to do.
The passage from Gloucester to Teel Cove began in light westerly winds. We motored, motor sailed and tried to sail from time to time with little success until the wind shifted more to the northwest and built to 12 then 15 then 20 then to 22. From 3:00 Thursday morning until arriving on our float in front of the cabin at 9:35 we had an exhilarating closing sail under reefed main and jib. We traveled 119nm in a little over 21 hours. We hopped to, unloading needed stuff as the tide was falling, started the engine to take the boat to the mooring, and the raw water pump had failed. The engine was cool enough to motor without it to the mooring. Charlie grabbed it on first pass in 22 knot winds and we shut down.
Since August 17, 2007 Journey has traveled 4,986 miles. We made ten overnight passages and spent 110 days underway.
We are numb, disoriented, sleeping a lot and more than anything else grateful for this journey. We dreamed it. We risked it, stretched our capacities and endurance, and returned home more in love and in partnership than ever before. We’ve laughed, cried, felt alone, loved new friends, and deeply missed old ones and are eager to see children and grandchildren. Journey has been a school house of boat workings, literature, and spirituality.
This journey has served as the critical first lap of the transit from a life of becoming to a life of being in the moment, from a life of acquiring to a life of letting go, from a life of complexity to a life of simplicity. It got us to these places again and again and we hold them dear. With the grace of God will reach them again and again.
Finally, for those who have cared enough to follow us along, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
June 6, 2008
We are now in Cape May, NJ after an overnight passage from Norfolk. At Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake City, VA the autopilot was reinstalled and the shaft was repaired, and we have been saddened by an encounter in Norfolk harbor and awed by violent thunderstorms that swept across the Delmarva Peninsula, seemingly targeting Journey as we made our way Wednesday night off shore. Loyal crew member Charlie H. arrives this afternoon for the passages to Maine. The forecast calls for several days of favorable southwesterly winds. We will see, as forecasts just aren’t all that accurate we discovered yet once again.
We arrived at Atlantic Yacht Basin last Sunday, an old, huge facility on the ICW at mile mark eleven. Ed and Nancy had spent three weeks there getting a repair done on Troubadour last fall. Another boater, overhearing our conversation on VHF about needing repairs commended their service. The guy to see is James Taylor. At Ed’s advice, on Monday I loitered around where he has his crew meeting at about 6:45, met him and told him our problems. He came by Journey an hour later, looked at the shaft as we powered in forward and reverse while lashed to dock side, and said we do have a problem as it should not move fore and aft. He said they would try to get to us today, but couldn’t promise.
We arranged for a taxi to pick up the package with our repaired autopilot which had been sent to a marina in downtown Norfolk where we had planned to stay, and spent Monday reinstalling it and cleaning the boat inside and out. Journey is looking tired. We applied make-up and the wrinkles don’t show quite as much.
The mechanic at Atlantic Yacht Basin got to us first thing Tuesday. He discovered that the set screws that go through the collar at the back of transmission into the shaft that prevent it from moving forward or aft, were not set into dimples drilled in the shaft. He drilled dimples, and put in new bolts. It sounds simple. The challenge was getting out the old bolts without breaking them. Lury, (sic) this beefy former Navy chief with a spider web and Betty Boop tattoos on his arms, wove himself around the exhaust and hoses to reach the shaft coupling, and with patient application of Liquid Wrench and repeated grunts and groans got them out. He also adjusted the stainless steel plate on the shaft seal. No leaks and no shaft movement.
We also discovered the engine was leaking oil and he fixed that by hand tightening the oil filter. Remember the convenience we sought in having the Hinckley mechanic near Savannah to change the engine fluids and filters?
We left Atlantic Yacht Basin at four Tuesday to swing the autopilot gyro compass and to time easy passage through a set of locks and a series of bridges in the eleven mile stretch to Norfolk Harbor. THE AUTOPILOT WORKS! After turning the required two circles it showed a deviation of only three degrees, a far cry from the 42 degree deviation we got in the Bahamas. We cleared the locks from the ICW into tidal waters and had our anchor down in the Elizabeth River off of Portsmouth’s Hospital Point across from Norfolk at the “0” mile marker of the ICW.
After Journey settled on her hook the currents swung us a little close to another boat. Latter a couple arrived at that boat in their dinghy carrying their bicycles. We offered to move it if they thought we were too close. And with friendliness enhanced by strong Irish brogues, they assured us they were comfortable and we agreed to knock on our hulls if we get too close and say hello. They were the kind of people that you instantly would like to get to know. It blew hard, but we slept well in the comfort of the GPS anchor watch and arose to a lazy breakfast. As we were making final preparations to leave with the current at 9:30, we heard the woman hail Journey with strain in her voice. The boat’s name was Safari Howthe, out of Ireland. We recalled later hearing them on the cruisers net when we were in the Bahamas.
The woman was on the foredeck bringing in their anchor. She was apologizing, asking to please watch to make sure our rode wasn’t over theirs as they had to leave. It was blowing hard and she had to yell: “We just learned my brother in Ireland died.” She worked feverishly at flaking the chain and kept apologizing to us and we offered words of sorrow and offering to help when there was nothing anyone could do adequate to that moment of her life turned upside down.
We followed them north on the Elizabeth River into Hampton Rhodes under sail, going faster than they under power, and radioed a request to pass and again expressed our sorrow. She needed to tell someone that her brother was only sixty, and that he was going to meet them and his twin brother in New York next week to join them for awhile on their cruise. His death was totally unexpected. They were going to a marina in Hampton, VA and we’re flying to New York and will return to Ireland with her surviving brother. As we turned away from them to cross the mouth of the Chesapeake to round Cape Charles into the open Atlantic, we knew that we were on board a small boat a long way from home.
It was a beautiful sail to start and we had timed the currents well. The forecast called for winds 10 to 15 from the southwest, behind us, with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Isolated thunderstorms are not a major hazard. You watch for them. Make sure sails are down to avoid a knock-down in the squall line. They pass by rather quickly, unlike a nor’easter or hurricane.
We kept our satellite weather receiver on and monitored it, watching NOAA weather radar show a giant cluster of rain and thunderstorms build to our northwest starting about five o’clock over Virginia and Maryland as we headed northeast about eight miles offshore of the Delmarva Peninsula. The text of each forecast zone was now showing small craft warnings. A red outline box appeared on the screen directly in front of the path of the boat. A mouse click on the area outlined brought up a tornado watch for that zone until 1:00 am. The computer screen shows boxes for each storm cell with arrows pointing in the direction they are traveling. It looked like a battalion of lancers heading broadside towards Journey. Another feature of weather service is that you can click on each of those little boxes to get information about the cell. One of the lancers was carrying a 120 mph wind shear. We made a u-turn.
For two hours we reversed course and avoided the most lividly colored cells and most densely packed lancers. We got hit with one storm with torrential rains, but wind gusts only reached 27. Streak lightening was around us, but never terrifyingly too close. When we made our turn we had spotted a vessel that turned out to be a tug pulling a barge. We radioed to tell him what we were doing. He was going the same direction and offered to pass us on our stern. It was good to have his companionship.
We had moved about seven or eight miles south from the tornado watch in two hours, but now more storms were building to south of us, our direction of travel. In the middle of a downpour we again reversed ourselves as there appeared to be a gap developing with fewer storms to the north of us. More tornado watch zones appeared, but the strategy worked. We were hit by huge rains, close lightening, but never severe wind squalls. The wind stayed at about 20 knots out of the north on our nose, but the rain flattened the seas, so Journey could maintain about five knots of speed.
M. went below for some sleep. I hunkered down, sitting in the companionway, beneath the dodger, the rain beating against the plastic windshield. The autopilot steered our course. From that position I could easily go below without undoing the tether to the harness on my life jacket to check the weather radar and other instruments montioring wind, speed and course. The strobe lights of the lightening captured Journey’s deck and spray from her pitching bow in colorless, time-lapse photographs. The lightening was so constant that in the rare moments when there was none, I would blink my eyes to make sure that I hadn’t fallen asleep into pitch darkness.
For five hours we were surrounded by storms. I thought of fragility and tenuousness and the two souls on Safari Howthe, and I thought about the meaning of the metaphors of Jesus walking on the water and stilling the waves and the power of “peace be still” while lightening kept striking and the boat kept pitching. I was exhilarated by the profound peace of that moment as much as the peace that came later, when the only lightening to be seen were flickers well astern, the wind had quieted and moved off our bow to the west and we motored on towards Cape May.
We traveled 172 miles from Norfolk to Cape May in 31 hours, averaging 5.5 knots. The course was 155 nm. Our U-turns added 17 miles. We reunited with Ed and Nancy at Cape May. They had made the passage the night before, encountering ten foot seas at the mouth of Delaware Bay. Troubadour and Journey will make the passage together from Cape May to New England waters more humble and more confident.
We are now in Cape May, NJ after an overnight passage from Norfolk. At Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake City, VA the autopilot was reinstalled and the shaft was repaired, and we have been saddened by an encounter in Norfolk harbor and awed by violent thunderstorms that swept across the Delmarva Peninsula, seemingly targeting Journey as we made our way Wednesday night off shore. Loyal crew member Charlie H. arrives this afternoon for the passages to Maine. The forecast calls for several days of favorable southwesterly winds. We will see, as forecasts just aren’t all that accurate we discovered yet once again.
We arrived at Atlantic Yacht Basin last Sunday, an old, huge facility on the ICW at mile mark eleven. Ed and Nancy had spent three weeks there getting a repair done on Troubadour last fall. Another boater, overhearing our conversation on VHF about needing repairs commended their service. The guy to see is James Taylor. At Ed’s advice, on Monday I loitered around where he has his crew meeting at about 6:45, met him and told him our problems. He came by Journey an hour later, looked at the shaft as we powered in forward and reverse while lashed to dock side, and said we do have a problem as it should not move fore and aft. He said they would try to get to us today, but couldn’t promise.
We arranged for a taxi to pick up the package with our repaired autopilot which had been sent to a marina in downtown Norfolk where we had planned to stay, and spent Monday reinstalling it and cleaning the boat inside and out. Journey is looking tired. We applied make-up and the wrinkles don’t show quite as much.
The mechanic at Atlantic Yacht Basin got to us first thing Tuesday. He discovered that the set screws that go through the collar at the back of transmission into the shaft that prevent it from moving forward or aft, were not set into dimples drilled in the shaft. He drilled dimples, and put in new bolts. It sounds simple. The challenge was getting out the old bolts without breaking them. Lury, (sic) this beefy former Navy chief with a spider web and Betty Boop tattoos on his arms, wove himself around the exhaust and hoses to reach the shaft coupling, and with patient application of Liquid Wrench and repeated grunts and groans got them out. He also adjusted the stainless steel plate on the shaft seal. No leaks and no shaft movement.
We also discovered the engine was leaking oil and he fixed that by hand tightening the oil filter. Remember the convenience we sought in having the Hinckley mechanic near Savannah to change the engine fluids and filters?
We left Atlantic Yacht Basin at four Tuesday to swing the autopilot gyro compass and to time easy passage through a set of locks and a series of bridges in the eleven mile stretch to Norfolk Harbor. THE AUTOPILOT WORKS! After turning the required two circles it showed a deviation of only three degrees, a far cry from the 42 degree deviation we got in the Bahamas. We cleared the locks from the ICW into tidal waters and had our anchor down in the Elizabeth River off of Portsmouth’s Hospital Point across from Norfolk at the “0” mile marker of the ICW.
After Journey settled on her hook the currents swung us a little close to another boat. Latter a couple arrived at that boat in their dinghy carrying their bicycles. We offered to move it if they thought we were too close. And with friendliness enhanced by strong Irish brogues, they assured us they were comfortable and we agreed to knock on our hulls if we get too close and say hello. They were the kind of people that you instantly would like to get to know. It blew hard, but we slept well in the comfort of the GPS anchor watch and arose to a lazy breakfast. As we were making final preparations to leave with the current at 9:30, we heard the woman hail Journey with strain in her voice. The boat’s name was Safari Howthe, out of Ireland. We recalled later hearing them on the cruisers net when we were in the Bahamas.
The woman was on the foredeck bringing in their anchor. She was apologizing, asking to please watch to make sure our rode wasn’t over theirs as they had to leave. It was blowing hard and she had to yell: “We just learned my brother in Ireland died.” She worked feverishly at flaking the chain and kept apologizing to us and we offered words of sorrow and offering to help when there was nothing anyone could do adequate to that moment of her life turned upside down.
We followed them north on the Elizabeth River into Hampton Rhodes under sail, going faster than they under power, and radioed a request to pass and again expressed our sorrow. She needed to tell someone that her brother was only sixty, and that he was going to meet them and his twin brother in New York next week to join them for awhile on their cruise. His death was totally unexpected. They were going to a marina in Hampton, VA and we’re flying to New York and will return to Ireland with her surviving brother. As we turned away from them to cross the mouth of the Chesapeake to round Cape Charles into the open Atlantic, we knew that we were on board a small boat a long way from home.
It was a beautiful sail to start and we had timed the currents well. The forecast called for winds 10 to 15 from the southwest, behind us, with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Isolated thunderstorms are not a major hazard. You watch for them. Make sure sails are down to avoid a knock-down in the squall line. They pass by rather quickly, unlike a nor’easter or hurricane.
We kept our satellite weather receiver on and monitored it, watching NOAA weather radar show a giant cluster of rain and thunderstorms build to our northwest starting about five o’clock over Virginia and Maryland as we headed northeast about eight miles offshore of the Delmarva Peninsula. The text of each forecast zone was now showing small craft warnings. A red outline box appeared on the screen directly in front of the path of the boat. A mouse click on the area outlined brought up a tornado watch for that zone until 1:00 am. The computer screen shows boxes for each storm cell with arrows pointing in the direction they are traveling. It looked like a battalion of lancers heading broadside towards Journey. Another feature of weather service is that you can click on each of those little boxes to get information about the cell. One of the lancers was carrying a 120 mph wind shear. We made a u-turn.
For two hours we reversed course and avoided the most lividly colored cells and most densely packed lancers. We got hit with one storm with torrential rains, but wind gusts only reached 27. Streak lightening was around us, but never terrifyingly too close. When we made our turn we had spotted a vessel that turned out to be a tug pulling a barge. We radioed to tell him what we were doing. He was going the same direction and offered to pass us on our stern. It was good to have his companionship.
We had moved about seven or eight miles south from the tornado watch in two hours, but now more storms were building to south of us, our direction of travel. In the middle of a downpour we again reversed ourselves as there appeared to be a gap developing with fewer storms to the north of us. More tornado watch zones appeared, but the strategy worked. We were hit by huge rains, close lightening, but never severe wind squalls. The wind stayed at about 20 knots out of the north on our nose, but the rain flattened the seas, so Journey could maintain about five knots of speed.
M. went below for some sleep. I hunkered down, sitting in the companionway, beneath the dodger, the rain beating against the plastic windshield. The autopilot steered our course. From that position I could easily go below without undoing the tether to the harness on my life jacket to check the weather radar and other instruments montioring wind, speed and course. The strobe lights of the lightening captured Journey’s deck and spray from her pitching bow in colorless, time-lapse photographs. The lightening was so constant that in the rare moments when there was none, I would blink my eyes to make sure that I hadn’t fallen asleep into pitch darkness.
For five hours we were surrounded by storms. I thought of fragility and tenuousness and the two souls on Safari Howthe, and I thought about the meaning of the metaphors of Jesus walking on the water and stilling the waves and the power of “peace be still” while lightening kept striking and the boat kept pitching. I was exhilarated by the profound peace of that moment as much as the peace that came later, when the only lightening to be seen were flickers well astern, the wind had quieted and moved off our bow to the west and we motored on towards Cape May.
We traveled 172 miles from Norfolk to Cape May in 31 hours, averaging 5.5 knots. The course was 155 nm. Our U-turns added 17 miles. We reunited with Ed and Nancy at Cape May. They had made the passage the night before, encountering ten foot seas at the mouth of Delaware Bay. Troubadour and Journey will make the passage together from Cape May to New England waters more humble and more confident.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Autopilot from A to B
Autopilot out
M. steered Journey for over six hours on Friday, May 23rd on the Wadmalaw River, the Cut at Church Flats, Stono River, Elliott Cut into the Ashley River past old Charleston to Isle of Palms Marina. Below I tore the boat apart removing the autopilot course computer located behind the instrument panel at the navigation station, the fluxgate compass, located low in the head locker amid ship, and the twenty feet of attached cable between the two that is hard wired to the fluxgate compass and runs beneath the floor boards.
A series of phone calls, including to our friend John at Voyager Marine Electronics in Essex, MA, led us to the Raymarine company representative for Norfolk who led us to the key guy at Raymarine who repairs autopilots which all resulted in us shipping these goods out by express mail from Isle of Palms Friday afternoon to be returned, hopefully, a week later to the electronics shop in Norfolk.
Luke, a newly minted, high-school graduate heading to Clemson University, working at the Isle of Palms Marina volunteered to drive us to the post office and grocery store. He told us how Isle of Palms long-time residents are fed up with short-term rentals of ocean front property. They want longer-term residents, Luke said, because they want a deeper sense of “community”. There’s that word again so packed with longing. People know that you have to stay put in a place to build it. That’s why the sailors we’ve met, whose permanent address may be a post office box in Florida, hang on moorings or in slips in one place for weeks at a time, staying put to deepen connections.
Valuing
At the end of long days we yearn for the treasured communities of family and friends. Yet, we already speak of the loss we will feel when this journey has ended three or four weeks from now. It is too early to be clear about the things we most value and what we most fear about returning to lives of wrist watches and worldly goods. We certainly treasure its clarity and simplicity. Our work is to safely navigate this boat and make progress towards new destinations. Achievement is as clear as points on a chart. We like the newness of each day brought by our intimacy with nature. There’s joy in spending day after day outdoors, using muscles to achieve something more than outlasting a timer on a gym treadmill. There’s the friendship and security from offering and receiving over and over again genuine and surprising hospitality. There’s the pleasure of sharing our experience and deepening relationships with guests and experienced crew. There is the joy of making this venture as partners. There is rhythm to our routines in getting underway, making passages, anchoring, and trouble-shooting. We rediscover again and again the treasure of our companionship and deep love for one another.
We left Isle of Palms at 6:45 May 24, ground our way against current and a strong head wind 73 nautical miles to anchor at 6:55 in Cow House Creek a few hundred yards off of the spectacular Waccamaw River. It was peaceful after no rest the night before at the Isle of Palms Marina where a nearby restaurant that featured live music until two a.m. Earplugs and fatigue kept us asleep until about three when strains of radio station playing country-western music penetrated both. We tossed and turned and thought it was likely entertainment for the restaurant clean-up crew. I finally roused myself, pulled some clothes on and went out on the cockpit to find the restaurant was silent. The music was coming from the balcony that surround the marina store directly in front and above Journey.
This is a confession. I went to the balcony, stood on a chair and disconnected the positive lead on two outdoor speakers. Blessed silence, a little more rest and out of there at six in the morning.
Father and son
We were alone on the waterway with the sun rising, until a modest outboard passed us carrying a boy and his father going fishing. The be-spectacled father turned the boat away from us into a creek with the confidence of one who knows the good spots. His face wore pleasure. The boy, perhaps ten to twelve percolated, sitting and then standing in front of the center consul of the boat, his hair a muss, blowing in the wind, saw us and gave us a huge wave that said I’m here, I’m here with my Dad going fishing.
The picture they offered made less taxing the 78 nautical miles of going against current and strong wind to Cow House Creek anchorage at statute mile 383.
Against the current
We are masters at going against the current, all day and did it again on May 25th. Current tables that pop up on the electronic charts bare little resemblance to reality. Current ran one to two knots on our nose all day with a headwind, so we ground our way east-northeast along that curve in the coast towards Cape Fear, unable to make more than five knots over the ground, crossing into North Carolina and wanting to swat at the swarm of power boats loosed from their hives for the Memorial Day weekend. We made South Port, NC, at 7:30, having traveled for 13 hours to cover 79 nautical miles through the water and reach mile marker 309, progress of 86 statue miles.
We walked to find dinner a few blocks away where we were told there were a couple of restaurants on the old waterfront. A big crowd milled outside of one of them where a woman was taking names and told us it would be an-hour-and-a-half wait. We wondered if it was worth it when a woman overhearing us assured us it was. She was a native of Des Moines, Iowa, went to Iowa State and had recently retired to the area. It’s a small world yet again.
We put in our names and were told to go inside and help ourselves to beer and wine from coolers. It wasn’t too long before our name was bellowed out and we were shown to a table, told to leave something on it to show that it has been taken (we left a cell phone) then to get in line at a counter that fronts the kitchen and order your food, grab another beer and wine from the cooler and sit down. Soon a waitress again hollered our name and served shrimp and rare tuna that were exceptional. When you settle the bill, which is the slip of paper they had written your order, you tell them the number of drinks and it’s added to the tab.
South Port deserved more time to explore than we wanted to take. One of Journey’s drinking water lines sprung a leak which required a walk to the Napa auto/marine store (first one of those that I’ve seen) about a mile away from the marina to get 25 feet of hose. It’s a gracious town. Its front porches are an art form with wicker furniture, lamps, tables, wall decorations and people. The Waccamaw Bank window has a carefully painted, permanent sign that reads: “We Hang Local Artists.”
Passage making with Troubadour
On the 26th we did current right. A guide said leave South Port an hour before high and you will ride with the current up the Cape Fear River and have slack in a nasty little stretch called Snow Cut where the ICW departs the river. It worked. We reached Wrightsville Beach and reunited with Nancy and Ed on Troubadour for the first time in more than three weeks and now we travel north together. They’ve rented a slip starting June 15 in Hingham, MA to be close to children and grandchildren. We hope to be in Maine by then.
We had a weather window to go offshore on May 27th between Wrightsville Beach and Beaufort, NC (BOE-furt) and took it. We were on a broad reach with jibs poled out the entire way with winds building to twenty by the time we reached the Beaufort Inlet, 72 nautical miles in 12 hours and reached mile marker 204. It was tough steering in following seas, but Journey is a good downwind boat.
On the 27th winds turned northerly and we made a short trip of 30 nautical miles to Oriental, NC and revisited for the third time the restaurant where we celebrated Roland’s birthday now more than a year ago that seems an eon ago of experiences. And now I travel these same waters for the third time, after transits on Roland’s Cat boat and the passage south last fall.
These are inland seas and can be nasty. We left oriental on the 28th to tack up the Neuss River in building northeasterly winds short interval, three foot waves. We were pounded down to two knots velocity made good on our course and decided to motor until we made a sharp turn west and sailed and motored the rest of the day. This is a spectacular cruising ground. The Neuss, Pamlico river and sound, and Albemarle sounds and their many tributaries are vast, interconnected and offer beautiful anchorages. There is very little shore development. There are duck blinds and clam pot buoys and docks on isolated creeks with moored shrimp boats. One “Mac-beach-house” stood out ridiculously.
Stage set
When you ghost along a creek under sail, the banks go by like a moving diorama slowly enough to lock on a particular scene. One appeared after a long run of bank, trees and nothing else. The proscenium was lush green trees, the stage a tall grass clearing. On stage right sat a bright red bucket next to one of those metal framed folding chairs from the sixties where the seat and back are suspended canvas. On stage left an old multihued, square-fronted Chevy truck appeared to be lying in the tall grass. The star in stage center was a black woman walking from the chair to the truck, likely to fetch another prop, a fishing pole or lunch cooler. She wore a wide-brimmed, bowler-topped straw hat, pedal pusher slacks, a loose white blouse. She was slender. Her shoulders rounded. Her back curved. Her gait was stiffened by knees that didn’t bend easily. I was too many rows back to see her face, but I so wanted to visit with her. How’s fishing here? What do you hope to catch? Do you live far? I wanted to sit and listen to her long story of life in this low, lush, brackish-watered, still-isolated land of coastal North Carolina. I yearned to know more about this fishing day of hers, how it passes in loneliness or solitude, in need or sport, in sorrow or peace? How is the third and final act playing out for her?
I spoke with Lee Tang earlier in the day. He is head autopilot repair guy at Raymarine who fixed our course computer. It wasn’t reading the fluxgate compass. It will be at the marina in Norfolk when we arrive Sunday night. He didn’t dump all of the previous settings and I should be able to reinstall it without a dealer calibration. Let’s hope.
We anchored in Slade Creek off of the Pungo River. Ed and Nancy launched their dinghy to take their loved, ancient dog Scully to shore and came by for a glass of wine and we talked more about this world of boats, anchorages, repairs, fatigue, and joy and our intertwining stories.
Big Leak
Yesterday, May 31 we noticed the bilge pump was running a lot! That’s never good and it wasn’t. A dive into the starboard locker revealed that water was spraying out around the billows on the shaft seal. We had crossed Albemarle Sound into the North River with a strong following wind with the jib out and motor on. The team leapt into action. M. sailed us with the jib within the confines of the narrow, dredged waterway channel. I went back into the locker with tools. It appeared that the stainless plate between the coupling to the transmission and the rubber billows on the shaft seal had moved forward. Undid the set screws and tapped it aft, and, even though I couldn’t it move, sea water no longer leaked in.
We sailed the rest of the way with Troubadour shadowing us to our planned stop at Coinjock Marina at mile marker 49 where Ed and I looked further and noted that the shaft slides aft one to two inches when the engine is in reverse. We don’t know if this is good or bad, but one does not want the shaft to fall out of the boat. You sink. Last fall Troubadour needed a major repair at Atlantic Marine at mile market 11 and that is where we will be tonight, and have arranged for that other repair, the autopilot, to be taxied from the marina in downtown Norfolk to where we will be tonight. Stay tuned.
A to B or C, D, E.....
The four of us had dinner together last night and reflected again on the lessons of these journeys. Remember those thoughts from the Chesapeake last fall on learning how to live not driving from A to B, but rather being open to where wind and events take us? Since we got back on the waterway I’ve been the old A to B person locked into reaching Maine by June 15. As we talked, we realized that nothing is bad about a day or two or three or whatever it may take to sort Journey out and be sure she is safe for the passages home. We’re never fully in control in setting a trajectory, no matter how much we might think we are. In these last chapters of our lives we are without a doubt going to be in even less control than when we were younger and the unexpected challenges are going to be far more daunting that a problematic propeller shaft. This journey keeps teaching, but I’m not learning and thank God for the patient tutors on board and in Troubadour.
M. steered Journey for over six hours on Friday, May 23rd on the Wadmalaw River, the Cut at Church Flats, Stono River, Elliott Cut into the Ashley River past old Charleston to Isle of Palms Marina. Below I tore the boat apart removing the autopilot course computer located behind the instrument panel at the navigation station, the fluxgate compass, located low in the head locker amid ship, and the twenty feet of attached cable between the two that is hard wired to the fluxgate compass and runs beneath the floor boards.
A series of phone calls, including to our friend John at Voyager Marine Electronics in Essex, MA, led us to the Raymarine company representative for Norfolk who led us to the key guy at Raymarine who repairs autopilots which all resulted in us shipping these goods out by express mail from Isle of Palms Friday afternoon to be returned, hopefully, a week later to the electronics shop in Norfolk.
Luke, a newly minted, high-school graduate heading to Clemson University, working at the Isle of Palms Marina volunteered to drive us to the post office and grocery store. He told us how Isle of Palms long-time residents are fed up with short-term rentals of ocean front property. They want longer-term residents, Luke said, because they want a deeper sense of “community”. There’s that word again so packed with longing. People know that you have to stay put in a place to build it. That’s why the sailors we’ve met, whose permanent address may be a post office box in Florida, hang on moorings or in slips in one place for weeks at a time, staying put to deepen connections.
Valuing
At the end of long days we yearn for the treasured communities of family and friends. Yet, we already speak of the loss we will feel when this journey has ended three or four weeks from now. It is too early to be clear about the things we most value and what we most fear about returning to lives of wrist watches and worldly goods. We certainly treasure its clarity and simplicity. Our work is to safely navigate this boat and make progress towards new destinations. Achievement is as clear as points on a chart. We like the newness of each day brought by our intimacy with nature. There’s joy in spending day after day outdoors, using muscles to achieve something more than outlasting a timer on a gym treadmill. There’s the friendship and security from offering and receiving over and over again genuine and surprising hospitality. There’s the pleasure of sharing our experience and deepening relationships with guests and experienced crew. There is the joy of making this venture as partners. There is rhythm to our routines in getting underway, making passages, anchoring, and trouble-shooting. We rediscover again and again the treasure of our companionship and deep love for one another.
We left Isle of Palms at 6:45 May 24, ground our way against current and a strong head wind 73 nautical miles to anchor at 6:55 in Cow House Creek a few hundred yards off of the spectacular Waccamaw River. It was peaceful after no rest the night before at the Isle of Palms Marina where a nearby restaurant that featured live music until two a.m. Earplugs and fatigue kept us asleep until about three when strains of radio station playing country-western music penetrated both. We tossed and turned and thought it was likely entertainment for the restaurant clean-up crew. I finally roused myself, pulled some clothes on and went out on the cockpit to find the restaurant was silent. The music was coming from the balcony that surround the marina store directly in front and above Journey.
This is a confession. I went to the balcony, stood on a chair and disconnected the positive lead on two outdoor speakers. Blessed silence, a little more rest and out of there at six in the morning.
Father and son
We were alone on the waterway with the sun rising, until a modest outboard passed us carrying a boy and his father going fishing. The be-spectacled father turned the boat away from us into a creek with the confidence of one who knows the good spots. His face wore pleasure. The boy, perhaps ten to twelve percolated, sitting and then standing in front of the center consul of the boat, his hair a muss, blowing in the wind, saw us and gave us a huge wave that said I’m here, I’m here with my Dad going fishing.
The picture they offered made less taxing the 78 nautical miles of going against current and strong wind to Cow House Creek anchorage at statute mile 383.
Against the current
We are masters at going against the current, all day and did it again on May 25th. Current tables that pop up on the electronic charts bare little resemblance to reality. Current ran one to two knots on our nose all day with a headwind, so we ground our way east-northeast along that curve in the coast towards Cape Fear, unable to make more than five knots over the ground, crossing into North Carolina and wanting to swat at the swarm of power boats loosed from their hives for the Memorial Day weekend. We made South Port, NC, at 7:30, having traveled for 13 hours to cover 79 nautical miles through the water and reach mile marker 309, progress of 86 statue miles.
We walked to find dinner a few blocks away where we were told there were a couple of restaurants on the old waterfront. A big crowd milled outside of one of them where a woman was taking names and told us it would be an-hour-and-a-half wait. We wondered if it was worth it when a woman overhearing us assured us it was. She was a native of Des Moines, Iowa, went to Iowa State and had recently retired to the area. It’s a small world yet again.
We put in our names and were told to go inside and help ourselves to beer and wine from coolers. It wasn’t too long before our name was bellowed out and we were shown to a table, told to leave something on it to show that it has been taken (we left a cell phone) then to get in line at a counter that fronts the kitchen and order your food, grab another beer and wine from the cooler and sit down. Soon a waitress again hollered our name and served shrimp and rare tuna that were exceptional. When you settle the bill, which is the slip of paper they had written your order, you tell them the number of drinks and it’s added to the tab.
South Port deserved more time to explore than we wanted to take. One of Journey’s drinking water lines sprung a leak which required a walk to the Napa auto/marine store (first one of those that I’ve seen) about a mile away from the marina to get 25 feet of hose. It’s a gracious town. Its front porches are an art form with wicker furniture, lamps, tables, wall decorations and people. The Waccamaw Bank window has a carefully painted, permanent sign that reads: “We Hang Local Artists.”
Passage making with Troubadour
On the 26th we did current right. A guide said leave South Port an hour before high and you will ride with the current up the Cape Fear River and have slack in a nasty little stretch called Snow Cut where the ICW departs the river. It worked. We reached Wrightsville Beach and reunited with Nancy and Ed on Troubadour for the first time in more than three weeks and now we travel north together. They’ve rented a slip starting June 15 in Hingham, MA to be close to children and grandchildren. We hope to be in Maine by then.
We had a weather window to go offshore on May 27th between Wrightsville Beach and Beaufort, NC (BOE-furt) and took it. We were on a broad reach with jibs poled out the entire way with winds building to twenty by the time we reached the Beaufort Inlet, 72 nautical miles in 12 hours and reached mile marker 204. It was tough steering in following seas, but Journey is a good downwind boat.
On the 27th winds turned northerly and we made a short trip of 30 nautical miles to Oriental, NC and revisited for the third time the restaurant where we celebrated Roland’s birthday now more than a year ago that seems an eon ago of experiences. And now I travel these same waters for the third time, after transits on Roland’s Cat boat and the passage south last fall.
These are inland seas and can be nasty. We left oriental on the 28th to tack up the Neuss River in building northeasterly winds short interval, three foot waves. We were pounded down to two knots velocity made good on our course and decided to motor until we made a sharp turn west and sailed and motored the rest of the day. This is a spectacular cruising ground. The Neuss, Pamlico river and sound, and Albemarle sounds and their many tributaries are vast, interconnected and offer beautiful anchorages. There is very little shore development. There are duck blinds and clam pot buoys and docks on isolated creeks with moored shrimp boats. One “Mac-beach-house” stood out ridiculously.
Stage set
When you ghost along a creek under sail, the banks go by like a moving diorama slowly enough to lock on a particular scene. One appeared after a long run of bank, trees and nothing else. The proscenium was lush green trees, the stage a tall grass clearing. On stage right sat a bright red bucket next to one of those metal framed folding chairs from the sixties where the seat and back are suspended canvas. On stage left an old multihued, square-fronted Chevy truck appeared to be lying in the tall grass. The star in stage center was a black woman walking from the chair to the truck, likely to fetch another prop, a fishing pole or lunch cooler. She wore a wide-brimmed, bowler-topped straw hat, pedal pusher slacks, a loose white blouse. She was slender. Her shoulders rounded. Her back curved. Her gait was stiffened by knees that didn’t bend easily. I was too many rows back to see her face, but I so wanted to visit with her. How’s fishing here? What do you hope to catch? Do you live far? I wanted to sit and listen to her long story of life in this low, lush, brackish-watered, still-isolated land of coastal North Carolina. I yearned to know more about this fishing day of hers, how it passes in loneliness or solitude, in need or sport, in sorrow or peace? How is the third and final act playing out for her?
I spoke with Lee Tang earlier in the day. He is head autopilot repair guy at Raymarine who fixed our course computer. It wasn’t reading the fluxgate compass. It will be at the marina in Norfolk when we arrive Sunday night. He didn’t dump all of the previous settings and I should be able to reinstall it without a dealer calibration. Let’s hope.
We anchored in Slade Creek off of the Pungo River. Ed and Nancy launched their dinghy to take their loved, ancient dog Scully to shore and came by for a glass of wine and we talked more about this world of boats, anchorages, repairs, fatigue, and joy and our intertwining stories.
Big Leak
Yesterday, May 31 we noticed the bilge pump was running a lot! That’s never good and it wasn’t. A dive into the starboard locker revealed that water was spraying out around the billows on the shaft seal. We had crossed Albemarle Sound into the North River with a strong following wind with the jib out and motor on. The team leapt into action. M. sailed us with the jib within the confines of the narrow, dredged waterway channel. I went back into the locker with tools. It appeared that the stainless plate between the coupling to the transmission and the rubber billows on the shaft seal had moved forward. Undid the set screws and tapped it aft, and, even though I couldn’t it move, sea water no longer leaked in.
We sailed the rest of the way with Troubadour shadowing us to our planned stop at Coinjock Marina at mile marker 49 where Ed and I looked further and noted that the shaft slides aft one to two inches when the engine is in reverse. We don’t know if this is good or bad, but one does not want the shaft to fall out of the boat. You sink. Last fall Troubadour needed a major repair at Atlantic Marine at mile market 11 and that is where we will be tonight, and have arranged for that other repair, the autopilot, to be taxied from the marina in downtown Norfolk to where we will be tonight. Stay tuned.
A to B or C, D, E.....
The four of us had dinner together last night and reflected again on the lessons of these journeys. Remember those thoughts from the Chesapeake last fall on learning how to live not driving from A to B, but rather being open to where wind and events take us? Since we got back on the waterway I’ve been the old A to B person locked into reaching Maine by June 15. As we talked, we realized that nothing is bad about a day or two or three or whatever it may take to sort Journey out and be sure she is safe for the passages home. We’re never fully in control in setting a trajectory, no matter how much we might think we are. In these last chapters of our lives we are without a doubt going to be in even less control than when we were younger and the unexpected challenges are going to be far more daunting that a problematic propeller shaft. This journey keeps teaching, but I’m not learning and thank God for the patient tutors on board and in Troubadour.
Friday, May 23, 2008
On the ICW - Still - Nearing Charleston
We made New Smyrna Beach about 7:45 May 15, having traveled for nine and one half hours, nearly one-half under sail up the narrow channel in the broad bodies of water of the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon. We were the last to be seated at a restaurant called the Deli which served extraordinary dinners. On Friday, we reached Palm Coast after a seven hour trip with about three hours of sailing in the persistent southwest wind, and tied up at one of those carved-out-of-the-land square marinas surrounded by condominiums. We were referred to a faux St. Mark’s Square a ten minute walk away that offered several dinner options.
It was buildings with balconied windows surrounding a triangular area, a three-sided big screen TV in the middle playing the Celtics playoff game, a DJ on the stage beneath, bars, restaurants, shops, and lots of people. We had another delicious meal at an Italian restaurant, and remain rather awestruck by the reasonable prices, fresh produce, and interesting flavors compared to the Bahamas. People were enjoying themselves.
On Saturday, May 17, we made a 22 mile hop to St. Augustine and did a trolley tour with a good guide and we realized how much we missed on our first visit in January, seemingly eons ago. That evening, Debbie, a life-long friend of Steffi’s and Charlie’s who lives in St. Augustine, joined us on Journey before we all left for dinner. A bird decided to leave a rather huge calling card, most of which landed on the bimini, but some reached the cockpit, hitting Debbie’s slacks, to which she commented: “That’s a real party pooper”.
Now it seems is the hard part. We cast off from St. Augustine yesterday morning with waves to Steffi, Charlie and Debbie who will drive them to Jacksonville Airport. They would be home in Boston by that evening, and we on Journey are weeks away. We cleared the St. Augustine temporary aerial bridge at 9:00 and went with the considerable tidal current out the St. Augustine inlet to sea, plotting courses for Charleston, 179 nm, Cape Fear, 289, NM and Beaufort, North Carolina, 369 nm, courses that would take from 32 to 67 hours to complete by sea, cutting days from our travel time.
Our auto pilot of late has been limping along. We can’t seem to align the compass, but can still set a northwesterly course and it will hold it. As we set the course of 32 degrees magnetic for Charleston, the autopilot stopped working with a message saying “no data”. We have gone through the alignment process several times which consists of driving at least two circles in calm waters while it shows a little orbiting motion on its screen. The result has been a huge 42 degree compass deviation. It should be less than ten. A call to Raymarine from the Bahamas, advised how to check resistance between several wires where the fluxgate compass connects to its black box computer to see if the compass is working. More than I wanted to do, and if we found it wasn’t working there would have been little chance to get a repair in the Bahamas.
It held well on the passage from the Bahamas to Port Canaveral, but now we couldn’t use it for just the two of us on a passage, and it really is an important third hand to allow a loan person on watch to adjust sails, go below to check the radar, adjust the radio and other tasks that take you away from the helm while the other crew member is fast asleep. So instead of a passage we made for Fernandina Beach, 40 miles away, the wind on a close reach and freshening and freshening and freshening.
The forecast had called for west to southwest winds 15 to 20. They were 20 and more. By the time we turned into the St. Mary’s River inlet they were blowing on our nose to near gale force, once hitting 37 knots. We had a two-and-one-half knot current with us, thank heavens, as we would stall to one or two knots, pushing into sharp steep seas that would blow spray over the boat, soaking it and us, but never broke over Journey. It lasted over 45 minutes until we could turn south towards Fernandina Harbor Marina. They told us we would be on the inside of the breakwater about six boats down. When we made the u- turn into the marina and the lee of the breakwater, the water was flat, the wind was on our beam at over twenty, blowing us off the dock and we had a two-knot current behind us. As we moved along the row of boats on our port, we came across dock hands and spontaneous volunteers, not at the end of the row of boats, but standing between two of them in a space that would be small for Newberry Street before Christmas, who shouted for us to land there. Full reverse, watching the prop walk, forward to ease us over, full reverse and comfort coming in little snippets, like the folks on the stern of their trawler in the space that would be just aft of us saying, “don’t worry we’ll fend you off, we used to be sailors”. Then fast forward to bring the bow into the wind and the dock at about 45 degree angle, then hard to starboard with the rudder to bring the stern over, full reverse, spring line, stern line, bow line thrown and we were fast along side, parked snug, not a scratch on anyone. Many thanks offered to great line handlers on shore, AC power plugged in and then the nicest thing. It was 7:30. The couple in that trawler walked along side with a bottle of red wine, glasses in their hands, invited us to grab two glasses and poured a delicious Chianti that he, Hal, had made. Hal and Janet didn’t visit long. They knew we were beat, grubby and tired, so politely didn’t linger past a half of glass consumed. I now realize how doubly thoughtful they were in suggesting we grab our own glasses. We were reminded again of why we do this: the surprising, generous gestures of hospitality offered again and again by people who share the bond of being daily, visibly, constantly challenged by the sea.
On Monday, May 19, we thought about laying over a day to catch our breath after 10 days straight underway, including the strenuous overnight passage from the Bahamas to Florida. But we awakened to remarkably diminished winds, and decided to press on, frustrated with our passage making being thwarted by the erratic auto pilot, anxious about our timing that would put us near a shoal area on Jekyll Creek, near Brunswick, GA, at low tide, and fussing at each other. Southwest winds built during the day and a swarm of green heads hung and buzzed beneath the bimini and migrated below, but didn’t bite. We put our screens in the passageway to limit the number who could lurk for us in the salon. It got hotter, but we were able to sail and motor sail depending on the coil we traveled of serpentine Georgia section of the ICW.
About noon we turned a bend into the dreaded shoal section of Jekyll Creek and approaching us was a barge pushed by a tug boat. We radioed and got good advice. We should pass on “two whistles”, starboard to starboard, and we should pass him as close as possible. He would not be making any sudden changes. We did as told and were side by side in the shallowest section, his propellers churning mud. He then radioed that we were past the worse part. A threat became a comfort.
We crossed Brunswick Harbor and continued to snake through the Georgia marshlands to an anchorage just off the waterway on New Teakettle Creek near mile marker 645 (from Norfolk) on the ICW. Our anchor was down at 6:35 and we had traveled 71 statute miles over the land, or 61.7 nautical miles, but our trip log showed that the boat had traveled 70 nautical miles. The reason for the difference is the extraordinary tidal currents of the Georgia coast, frequently reaching two knots and occasionally more. The current shifts in direction and force are affected by the state of the flood or ebb of the tide, and the boats proximity to inlets, large or small, to the ocean. We literally turn a corner and go from one-and-a half knots of current on our nose, to one-and-a-half knot pushing us, changing our speed over the ground by three knots, while the knot meter showing progress through the water reads the same. Cruising guides suggest not trying to play the currents, as they tend to average out.
This was a breathtakingly beautiful anchorage. We were alone, surrounded by miles of marsh. The wind went calm. The sun set red. The full moon rose orange and we slept well.
On May 20, strong winds again from the west and south west so we sailed and motor sailed 61nm to the Hinckley Boat Yard in Thunderbolt near Savanah with hopes of getting the autopilot fixed and all fluids and filters changed in the engine. We were tied up at 5:30 and soon after a fellow stopped by and introduced himself as Bob Crockett, son of the Crockett of Crockett’s Victory Garden. His wife is in Florida where they are selling their house and will be moving aboard a Hans Christian Bob has been refitting in Savanah. He asked if we would like to join him for dinner and offered to drive us to a nearby restaurant in Thunderbolt. We learned he is a dual citizen of the US and Canada, and was a boat builder for most of his career in Nova Scotia near Lunenburg. He moved from wooden boats to aluminum, and built two of Canada’s 12-meter entries into the America’s cup. The move to Florida was to continue building boats there, but that career waned and he became a “life coach”. They plan to cruise awhile, but then resettle in Nova Scotia. They may be another arrival in Teel Cove this summer.
Hinckley’s electrician knew less about the autopilot than we did. We orbited Journey for nearly two hours while he repositioned the location of the fluxgate compass, then unhooked ours and tried his own spare compass, all to know avail. I called Raymarine again in frustration, described the symptoms to a technician. The Autopilot has two compasses. One is the fluxgate, which we had tested and it was fine. The other is a gyrocompass built into the black box. The fluxgate was all that autopilots had for years. The gyrocompass adds more refined corrections and additional functions. He told me how to open the box and unplug the gyrocompass. We now need to orbit those circles again to see if we can get it working with fluxgate alone.
We left Hinckley about three yesterday and traveled 15.4nm to anchor on the Cooper River just across the border of South Carolina near mile marker 578. As we approached there was a small boat pulling kids on a tube. All around were dolphins and as the kids were getting off of the tube into the boat, two dolphins were by them, heads out of the water and, as M. wrote in an e-mail to a friend last night, looked as if they were carrying on a conversation. It was another, beautiful quiet anchorage and on the way out, noticed the only other boat was from Boston. We hollered as we went by to learn he was based at Constitution Marina, three blocks from our house. Our HOUSE!
So why is this the hard part? Even in the abundance of this experience we have moments of longing for home, that place that can never be what we imagine it to be. Bill S. comment last fall observing boats on the ICW look like the march of the escargot comes back to us. We are a snail it seems crawling along days behind an arbitrary schedule. Our longing tunnels vision to straight ahead, northeast, and then we don’t see what is at hand until we are given sight again by the dockhands, the spontaneous dispensers of wine in safe harbors, drivers to dinner, and beautiful anchorages. They bring us back to the gift of the moment, and living there is the only truly lasting home we will ever have.
We tried to align the auto pilot one more time yesterday. We’ve placed another call to Raymarine and maybe we can get the course correction computer replaced in Norfolk. The anchor was set last night about a mile off of the North Edisto River on Tom Point Creek. Again, all alone except for the abundance of acres, birds, dolphins whose each breath we could hear, and acres of marsh grass brilliant green at its base with golden tops. Tonight is a marina night near Charleston, SC, for laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, in other words, the stuff of life. Such a contrast.
It was buildings with balconied windows surrounding a triangular area, a three-sided big screen TV in the middle playing the Celtics playoff game, a DJ on the stage beneath, bars, restaurants, shops, and lots of people. We had another delicious meal at an Italian restaurant, and remain rather awestruck by the reasonable prices, fresh produce, and interesting flavors compared to the Bahamas. People were enjoying themselves.
On Saturday, May 17, we made a 22 mile hop to St. Augustine and did a trolley tour with a good guide and we realized how much we missed on our first visit in January, seemingly eons ago. That evening, Debbie, a life-long friend of Steffi’s and Charlie’s who lives in St. Augustine, joined us on Journey before we all left for dinner. A bird decided to leave a rather huge calling card, most of which landed on the bimini, but some reached the cockpit, hitting Debbie’s slacks, to which she commented: “That’s a real party pooper”.
Now it seems is the hard part. We cast off from St. Augustine yesterday morning with waves to Steffi, Charlie and Debbie who will drive them to Jacksonville Airport. They would be home in Boston by that evening, and we on Journey are weeks away. We cleared the St. Augustine temporary aerial bridge at 9:00 and went with the considerable tidal current out the St. Augustine inlet to sea, plotting courses for Charleston, 179 nm, Cape Fear, 289, NM and Beaufort, North Carolina, 369 nm, courses that would take from 32 to 67 hours to complete by sea, cutting days from our travel time.
Our auto pilot of late has been limping along. We can’t seem to align the compass, but can still set a northwesterly course and it will hold it. As we set the course of 32 degrees magnetic for Charleston, the autopilot stopped working with a message saying “no data”. We have gone through the alignment process several times which consists of driving at least two circles in calm waters while it shows a little orbiting motion on its screen. The result has been a huge 42 degree compass deviation. It should be less than ten. A call to Raymarine from the Bahamas, advised how to check resistance between several wires where the fluxgate compass connects to its black box computer to see if the compass is working. More than I wanted to do, and if we found it wasn’t working there would have been little chance to get a repair in the Bahamas.
It held well on the passage from the Bahamas to Port Canaveral, but now we couldn’t use it for just the two of us on a passage, and it really is an important third hand to allow a loan person on watch to adjust sails, go below to check the radar, adjust the radio and other tasks that take you away from the helm while the other crew member is fast asleep. So instead of a passage we made for Fernandina Beach, 40 miles away, the wind on a close reach and freshening and freshening and freshening.
The forecast had called for west to southwest winds 15 to 20. They were 20 and more. By the time we turned into the St. Mary’s River inlet they were blowing on our nose to near gale force, once hitting 37 knots. We had a two-and-one-half knot current with us, thank heavens, as we would stall to one or two knots, pushing into sharp steep seas that would blow spray over the boat, soaking it and us, but never broke over Journey. It lasted over 45 minutes until we could turn south towards Fernandina Harbor Marina. They told us we would be on the inside of the breakwater about six boats down. When we made the u- turn into the marina and the lee of the breakwater, the water was flat, the wind was on our beam at over twenty, blowing us off the dock and we had a two-knot current behind us. As we moved along the row of boats on our port, we came across dock hands and spontaneous volunteers, not at the end of the row of boats, but standing between two of them in a space that would be small for Newberry Street before Christmas, who shouted for us to land there. Full reverse, watching the prop walk, forward to ease us over, full reverse and comfort coming in little snippets, like the folks on the stern of their trawler in the space that would be just aft of us saying, “don’t worry we’ll fend you off, we used to be sailors”. Then fast forward to bring the bow into the wind and the dock at about 45 degree angle, then hard to starboard with the rudder to bring the stern over, full reverse, spring line, stern line, bow line thrown and we were fast along side, parked snug, not a scratch on anyone. Many thanks offered to great line handlers on shore, AC power plugged in and then the nicest thing. It was 7:30. The couple in that trawler walked along side with a bottle of red wine, glasses in their hands, invited us to grab two glasses and poured a delicious Chianti that he, Hal, had made. Hal and Janet didn’t visit long. They knew we were beat, grubby and tired, so politely didn’t linger past a half of glass consumed. I now realize how doubly thoughtful they were in suggesting we grab our own glasses. We were reminded again of why we do this: the surprising, generous gestures of hospitality offered again and again by people who share the bond of being daily, visibly, constantly challenged by the sea.
On Monday, May 19, we thought about laying over a day to catch our breath after 10 days straight underway, including the strenuous overnight passage from the Bahamas to Florida. But we awakened to remarkably diminished winds, and decided to press on, frustrated with our passage making being thwarted by the erratic auto pilot, anxious about our timing that would put us near a shoal area on Jekyll Creek, near Brunswick, GA, at low tide, and fussing at each other. Southwest winds built during the day and a swarm of green heads hung and buzzed beneath the bimini and migrated below, but didn’t bite. We put our screens in the passageway to limit the number who could lurk for us in the salon. It got hotter, but we were able to sail and motor sail depending on the coil we traveled of serpentine Georgia section of the ICW.
About noon we turned a bend into the dreaded shoal section of Jekyll Creek and approaching us was a barge pushed by a tug boat. We radioed and got good advice. We should pass on “two whistles”, starboard to starboard, and we should pass him as close as possible. He would not be making any sudden changes. We did as told and were side by side in the shallowest section, his propellers churning mud. He then radioed that we were past the worse part. A threat became a comfort.
We crossed Brunswick Harbor and continued to snake through the Georgia marshlands to an anchorage just off the waterway on New Teakettle Creek near mile marker 645 (from Norfolk) on the ICW. Our anchor was down at 6:35 and we had traveled 71 statute miles over the land, or 61.7 nautical miles, but our trip log showed that the boat had traveled 70 nautical miles. The reason for the difference is the extraordinary tidal currents of the Georgia coast, frequently reaching two knots and occasionally more. The current shifts in direction and force are affected by the state of the flood or ebb of the tide, and the boats proximity to inlets, large or small, to the ocean. We literally turn a corner and go from one-and-a half knots of current on our nose, to one-and-a-half knot pushing us, changing our speed over the ground by three knots, while the knot meter showing progress through the water reads the same. Cruising guides suggest not trying to play the currents, as they tend to average out.
This was a breathtakingly beautiful anchorage. We were alone, surrounded by miles of marsh. The wind went calm. The sun set red. The full moon rose orange and we slept well.
On May 20, strong winds again from the west and south west so we sailed and motor sailed 61nm to the Hinckley Boat Yard in Thunderbolt near Savanah with hopes of getting the autopilot fixed and all fluids and filters changed in the engine. We were tied up at 5:30 and soon after a fellow stopped by and introduced himself as Bob Crockett, son of the Crockett of Crockett’s Victory Garden. His wife is in Florida where they are selling their house and will be moving aboard a Hans Christian Bob has been refitting in Savanah. He asked if we would like to join him for dinner and offered to drive us to a nearby restaurant in Thunderbolt. We learned he is a dual citizen of the US and Canada, and was a boat builder for most of his career in Nova Scotia near Lunenburg. He moved from wooden boats to aluminum, and built two of Canada’s 12-meter entries into the America’s cup. The move to Florida was to continue building boats there, but that career waned and he became a “life coach”. They plan to cruise awhile, but then resettle in Nova Scotia. They may be another arrival in Teel Cove this summer.
Hinckley’s electrician knew less about the autopilot than we did. We orbited Journey for nearly two hours while he repositioned the location of the fluxgate compass, then unhooked ours and tried his own spare compass, all to know avail. I called Raymarine again in frustration, described the symptoms to a technician. The Autopilot has two compasses. One is the fluxgate, which we had tested and it was fine. The other is a gyrocompass built into the black box. The fluxgate was all that autopilots had for years. The gyrocompass adds more refined corrections and additional functions. He told me how to open the box and unplug the gyrocompass. We now need to orbit those circles again to see if we can get it working with fluxgate alone.
We left Hinckley about three yesterday and traveled 15.4nm to anchor on the Cooper River just across the border of South Carolina near mile marker 578. As we approached there was a small boat pulling kids on a tube. All around were dolphins and as the kids were getting off of the tube into the boat, two dolphins were by them, heads out of the water and, as M. wrote in an e-mail to a friend last night, looked as if they were carrying on a conversation. It was another, beautiful quiet anchorage and on the way out, noticed the only other boat was from Boston. We hollered as we went by to learn he was based at Constitution Marina, three blocks from our house. Our HOUSE!
So why is this the hard part? Even in the abundance of this experience we have moments of longing for home, that place that can never be what we imagine it to be. Bill S. comment last fall observing boats on the ICW look like the march of the escargot comes back to us. We are a snail it seems crawling along days behind an arbitrary schedule. Our longing tunnels vision to straight ahead, northeast, and then we don’t see what is at hand until we are given sight again by the dockhands, the spontaneous dispensers of wine in safe harbors, drivers to dinner, and beautiful anchorages. They bring us back to the gift of the moment, and living there is the only truly lasting home we will ever have.
We tried to align the auto pilot one more time yesterday. We’ve placed another call to Raymarine and maybe we can get the course correction computer replaced in Norfolk. The anchor was set last night about a mile off of the North Edisto River on Tom Point Creek. Again, all alone except for the abundance of acres, birds, dolphins whose each breath we could hear, and acres of marsh grass brilliant green at its base with golden tops. Tonight is a marina night near Charleston, SC, for laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, in other words, the stuff of life. Such a contrast.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
We're back....
May 15, 2008
We’re back! With faithful crew Steffi and Charlie P. we made the crossing from Great Sale Cay to Port Canaveral, Fl, 179 nautical miles, in 28 hours with the engine on for only two-and-one-half hours. Winds were more northerly than recommended to cross the north-flowing Gulf Stream, but we had little choice. The forecast was for seas to grow the rest of the week in a building, northeast swell being generated by a powerful low pressure north east of the Bahamas. Another cold front was forecast to come off of the east coast tomorrow, generating more north winds and swells. We could have been stuck at Great Sale Cay for days.
It was rough and uncomfortable for crew, but no one got sick. Steffi is iron woman, reading down below when not on watch without any seasick medicine. Charlie took nothing and was fine. M and I used drugs. We stood two hour watches, but doubled up some of the time.
Journey was enjoying what she was designed to do. Our Course was northwest. The wind gave us a close reach. Forecast wind of 15 to 20 knots turned into consistently over 20, with gusts as high as 27. Forecast seas of three to five feet built to seven to nine feet, but we were angling across them, not pounding into them. Charlie said it felt at times like we were skipping from sea to sea. Our good little ship with reefed main and jib cut along at over seven knots for hours, most of the night in the bright light of a half moon. She never felt stressed, never pounded and we never had to tack the entire trip.
We spent last night at Port Canaveral in a place called Cape Marina and boat yard. It’s a big, first class facility. Port Canaveral is where Disney and other cruise ships berth. We are required to check into Homeland Security and the recording on the phone line gave an address to check in about a mile away from the marina. We took a cab, went into the offices and three guys in black uniforms, packing rods, sat at desks. Steffi noted later that it looked like a sitcom set. They were genuinely surprised to see us. A skinny, red headed guy was using google and was interrupted by a personal call on his cell phone. A very portly fellow was picking up four pages at a time from a stack of paper and stapling them, and the third was the unlucky guy who had to help us. He was clearly the new guy. There was a short discussion among the three of which computer screen needed to be filled out and once again this crack, Homeland Security agency, asked us for the name of our vessel, its length, make, coast guard registration, our names, addresses, telephone numbers, and passport numbers, all of it information that we have provided by pre-registering with them before we ever left and which they are incapable of recovering on their computers. They never asked where we came from, what was on board – not even if we had been on any farms overseas – and once the information was typed in told us we were all set. Pathetic and think what we’re all paying for it!
Today we left Port Canaveral on a canal runs due west for 5.6 miles to the ICW that requires passing under two bridges and through a lock that is a hurricane surge barrier. It was like motoring through a zoo. We spotted Manatee, dolphins, egrets, and an alligator. Several manatees joined us in the lock.
Last week in the Bahamas
We left Hope Town Thursday, May 8th. Lighthouse Marina changed the crankcase and lower unit oil on the reliable four-cycle, two-and-one-half horsepower Yamaha dinghy outboard. It’s a service job done on our own in Maine, but it would have been too tricky to catch the draining oil with the motor hanging on its mount on Journey’s stainless steel rear guard rail, and then hard to dispose of it properly. A giant Bahamian did the work, his first day on the job since graduating from a outboard motor trade school in Orlando, FL. He fumbled getting the overflow screw back into the lower unit while covering his nervousness with a constant patter about his prowess. He did a good job.
The dinghy motor has been just the right size despite cautions from cruising guides that you need a bigger outboard to move the dinghy faster, getting us where we want to go and burning about three gallons of gas in three months. It weighs 35 pounds so can be fairly easily hefted from the dinghy to its mount on Journey’s without the need for complicated block and tackles.
We cleaned the bottom of the dinghy for the third time since it was inflated and went into the water February 11. Plenty of green crud, but it only took a half an hour rather than an hour when last done three weeks ago. That seems about the right interval.
The last new friends we made at Hope Town are Amanda and Andre: Brazilians, fresh college graduates, caring for Andre’s father’s big catamaran they helped him purchase in Ft Lauderdale this year after a two-month odyssey with his parents in a rented, 22 foot RV looking at boats up and down the east coast. Andre and Amanda were translators and negotiators who had to bridge a tough-talking, no-nonsense Brazilian businessman and smarmy boat brokers. Parents are back in Brazil and will return soon to their dream of cruising and have designated Andre their captain. All four, Andre, his parents, and Amanda, his significant other, are new to cruising sail boats. So Andre and Amanda are devoting themselves to learning the boat’s systems and equipment, and these English-as-second-language Brazilians are frustrated understanding technical manuals written in poor English, and responding to his father’s remote commands. They needed someone to talk to.
The boat is a monster catamaran, 46 feet long and 25 feet wide, built in South Africa in 1999 with the living space of a small condo. It’s called Ubatuba, the name of coastal city in Brazil where they live and a native Indian word that appropriately means “two canoes”. Andre grew up by and in the sea and is an accomplished free diver, regularly cleaning fish that he has speared using a sling. On the cockpit bulkhead of Ubatuba is mounted a striking sculpture of the Neptune created by Andre’s grandmother. The face at first glance appears to be a man horrified over something, but Andre noted that his grandmother said she wanted to create the face of one who lives beneath the sea, and she did, wonderfully,but it is an image that looks familiar. Instead of boat cards they gave us tee-shirts imprinted with their Neptune.
We said good bye to acquaintances and friends at the Hope Town Coffee House and stopped by Epilogue to see Don and Linda who could very well visit us in Maine this summer. We settled our bill at Hope Town marina for the Mooring which we had occupied for nearly two months on a hand shake. Rudy Malone, his last year as proprietor, gave us a nice discount.
On May 8th, we departed Hope Town to discover the speedometer not working, so we anchored outside of the harbor, dove under the boat, scrubbed it off and with dismay noticed substantial new marine growth on the bottom. Not sure if it is a loose wire or growth, but after fooling with the speedometer transponder above and below the hull, it worked.
We sailed on to Marsh Harbor to the second most regular stop, Mango’s Marina, in time to have lunch at the restaurant when we spotted the boat of Browntip Diving services, a guy we’d heard of who cleans bottoms. When he surfaced, a whistle and shouted conversation resulted in an arrangement for him to clean the bottom the next morning. He must have done a good job. Journey seems a lot faster.
Charlie and Steffi P. joined us on the ninth in Marsh Harbor. Their bags were quickly dumped below and within minutes Ray helped us shove off for the last time from Mango’s Marina in time to beat the falling tide and the prospect of Journey resting in the mud. We sailed to Fisher’s Bay at Great Guana Cay, caught a mooring, had dinner at Grabbers beach bar and bounced in the short seas being built by the growing westerly winds.
It was fortunate that the next morning we decided to introduce Steffi and Charlie to the cruiser’s net on VHF as we sat in the cockpit having breakfast. Troy, of Dive Guana broke into the net, to announce that a dinghy had broken free in Fisher’s Bay. He’s the same fellow who had a few minutes before come with his two darling little girls in the boat to collect our mooring fee. We looked over the stern and no Zodiac. We looked behind us and it was merrily bobbing along towards the sharp limestone of the lee shore. I waved to a fellow on the boat not far from ours who must have also been listening to the net, he leapt into his dinghy, came by and picked me up, raced to the shore and we caught our dinghy a few feet from the sharp rocks. Apparently, the all night up and down movement of the boat had gradually loosened the cleat hitch, and while we sipped tea and coffee, it had finally freed itself and slipped quietly away.
This is the second time Troy has saved our dinghy. The first was when his dive boat was in Hope Town at Lighthouse Marina where M. went to do laundry, lost control of the dinghy in the strong winds, it blew under the dock and Troy, that hunk, came to her rescue.
We broke into the Cruiser’s Net not more than 15 minutes after Troy announced the loose dnghy to thank him and the fellow cruiser who came to our rescue. Patty, net stalwart said in response, “don’t you just love this Net”. It’s her life work and it is terrific in its own quirky way.
The next day it was around the infamous Whale, this time in the lee, to Green Turtle Cay where activities included, a golf cart rental, a somewhat disappointing dinner at the New Plymouth Inn compared to our first stop months ago, a swim off the Atlantic Beach and then the departure to Great Sale.
On May 11, 2008 we anchored in the crushed shell and sand of Northern Harbor, a bite out of the southern end of uninhabited Great Sale Cay, three months and one day from our first stop there on February 10, the second day in the Bahamas. We had traveled that day over 60 miles from Green Turtle Cay into a building southwest wind to wait for a cold front to pass and conditions to return for safe passage from across the Gulf Stream to the US. In cruisers-speak these opportunities for safe passages are “windows” and few have been open. It blew 27 knots that night, Journey pitched, we slept fitfully, but the anchor held.
Monday the wind quieted to calm that night. A check of the weather on the WX Satellite Weather Tuesday morning convinced us to leave a day earlier.
As we now sail north bound on the ICW to reach New Smyrna Beach this evening, it’s a bit much to do any digesting of this latest transit from the special place of the Bahamas to the special place of the US and its problems and people and energy and infrastructure and such varied beauty. Suffice it to say, it’s good to have made another safe passage in this very special journey.
We’re back! With faithful crew Steffi and Charlie P. we made the crossing from Great Sale Cay to Port Canaveral, Fl, 179 nautical miles, in 28 hours with the engine on for only two-and-one-half hours. Winds were more northerly than recommended to cross the north-flowing Gulf Stream, but we had little choice. The forecast was for seas to grow the rest of the week in a building, northeast swell being generated by a powerful low pressure north east of the Bahamas. Another cold front was forecast to come off of the east coast tomorrow, generating more north winds and swells. We could have been stuck at Great Sale Cay for days.
It was rough and uncomfortable for crew, but no one got sick. Steffi is iron woman, reading down below when not on watch without any seasick medicine. Charlie took nothing and was fine. M and I used drugs. We stood two hour watches, but doubled up some of the time.
Journey was enjoying what she was designed to do. Our Course was northwest. The wind gave us a close reach. Forecast wind of 15 to 20 knots turned into consistently over 20, with gusts as high as 27. Forecast seas of three to five feet built to seven to nine feet, but we were angling across them, not pounding into them. Charlie said it felt at times like we were skipping from sea to sea. Our good little ship with reefed main and jib cut along at over seven knots for hours, most of the night in the bright light of a half moon. She never felt stressed, never pounded and we never had to tack the entire trip.
We spent last night at Port Canaveral in a place called Cape Marina and boat yard. It’s a big, first class facility. Port Canaveral is where Disney and other cruise ships berth. We are required to check into Homeland Security and the recording on the phone line gave an address to check in about a mile away from the marina. We took a cab, went into the offices and three guys in black uniforms, packing rods, sat at desks. Steffi noted later that it looked like a sitcom set. They were genuinely surprised to see us. A skinny, red headed guy was using google and was interrupted by a personal call on his cell phone. A very portly fellow was picking up four pages at a time from a stack of paper and stapling them, and the third was the unlucky guy who had to help us. He was clearly the new guy. There was a short discussion among the three of which computer screen needed to be filled out and once again this crack, Homeland Security agency, asked us for the name of our vessel, its length, make, coast guard registration, our names, addresses, telephone numbers, and passport numbers, all of it information that we have provided by pre-registering with them before we ever left and which they are incapable of recovering on their computers. They never asked where we came from, what was on board – not even if we had been on any farms overseas – and once the information was typed in told us we were all set. Pathetic and think what we’re all paying for it!
Today we left Port Canaveral on a canal runs due west for 5.6 miles to the ICW that requires passing under two bridges and through a lock that is a hurricane surge barrier. It was like motoring through a zoo. We spotted Manatee, dolphins, egrets, and an alligator. Several manatees joined us in the lock.
Last week in the Bahamas
We left Hope Town Thursday, May 8th. Lighthouse Marina changed the crankcase and lower unit oil on the reliable four-cycle, two-and-one-half horsepower Yamaha dinghy outboard. It’s a service job done on our own in Maine, but it would have been too tricky to catch the draining oil with the motor hanging on its mount on Journey’s stainless steel rear guard rail, and then hard to dispose of it properly. A giant Bahamian did the work, his first day on the job since graduating from a outboard motor trade school in Orlando, FL. He fumbled getting the overflow screw back into the lower unit while covering his nervousness with a constant patter about his prowess. He did a good job.
The dinghy motor has been just the right size despite cautions from cruising guides that you need a bigger outboard to move the dinghy faster, getting us where we want to go and burning about three gallons of gas in three months. It weighs 35 pounds so can be fairly easily hefted from the dinghy to its mount on Journey’s without the need for complicated block and tackles.
We cleaned the bottom of the dinghy for the third time since it was inflated and went into the water February 11. Plenty of green crud, but it only took a half an hour rather than an hour when last done three weeks ago. That seems about the right interval.
The last new friends we made at Hope Town are Amanda and Andre: Brazilians, fresh college graduates, caring for Andre’s father’s big catamaran they helped him purchase in Ft Lauderdale this year after a two-month odyssey with his parents in a rented, 22 foot RV looking at boats up and down the east coast. Andre and Amanda were translators and negotiators who had to bridge a tough-talking, no-nonsense Brazilian businessman and smarmy boat brokers. Parents are back in Brazil and will return soon to their dream of cruising and have designated Andre their captain. All four, Andre, his parents, and Amanda, his significant other, are new to cruising sail boats. So Andre and Amanda are devoting themselves to learning the boat’s systems and equipment, and these English-as-second-language Brazilians are frustrated understanding technical manuals written in poor English, and responding to his father’s remote commands. They needed someone to talk to.
The boat is a monster catamaran, 46 feet long and 25 feet wide, built in South Africa in 1999 with the living space of a small condo. It’s called Ubatuba, the name of coastal city in Brazil where they live and a native Indian word that appropriately means “two canoes”. Andre grew up by and in the sea and is an accomplished free diver, regularly cleaning fish that he has speared using a sling. On the cockpit bulkhead of Ubatuba is mounted a striking sculpture of the Neptune created by Andre’s grandmother. The face at first glance appears to be a man horrified over something, but Andre noted that his grandmother said she wanted to create the face of one who lives beneath the sea, and she did, wonderfully,but it is an image that looks familiar. Instead of boat cards they gave us tee-shirts imprinted with their Neptune.
We said good bye to acquaintances and friends at the Hope Town Coffee House and stopped by Epilogue to see Don and Linda who could very well visit us in Maine this summer. We settled our bill at Hope Town marina for the Mooring which we had occupied for nearly two months on a hand shake. Rudy Malone, his last year as proprietor, gave us a nice discount.
On May 8th, we departed Hope Town to discover the speedometer not working, so we anchored outside of the harbor, dove under the boat, scrubbed it off and with dismay noticed substantial new marine growth on the bottom. Not sure if it is a loose wire or growth, but after fooling with the speedometer transponder above and below the hull, it worked.
We sailed on to Marsh Harbor to the second most regular stop, Mango’s Marina, in time to have lunch at the restaurant when we spotted the boat of Browntip Diving services, a guy we’d heard of who cleans bottoms. When he surfaced, a whistle and shouted conversation resulted in an arrangement for him to clean the bottom the next morning. He must have done a good job. Journey seems a lot faster.
Charlie and Steffi P. joined us on the ninth in Marsh Harbor. Their bags were quickly dumped below and within minutes Ray helped us shove off for the last time from Mango’s Marina in time to beat the falling tide and the prospect of Journey resting in the mud. We sailed to Fisher’s Bay at Great Guana Cay, caught a mooring, had dinner at Grabbers beach bar and bounced in the short seas being built by the growing westerly winds.
It was fortunate that the next morning we decided to introduce Steffi and Charlie to the cruiser’s net on VHF as we sat in the cockpit having breakfast. Troy, of Dive Guana broke into the net, to announce that a dinghy had broken free in Fisher’s Bay. He’s the same fellow who had a few minutes before come with his two darling little girls in the boat to collect our mooring fee. We looked over the stern and no Zodiac. We looked behind us and it was merrily bobbing along towards the sharp limestone of the lee shore. I waved to a fellow on the boat not far from ours who must have also been listening to the net, he leapt into his dinghy, came by and picked me up, raced to the shore and we caught our dinghy a few feet from the sharp rocks. Apparently, the all night up and down movement of the boat had gradually loosened the cleat hitch, and while we sipped tea and coffee, it had finally freed itself and slipped quietly away.
This is the second time Troy has saved our dinghy. The first was when his dive boat was in Hope Town at Lighthouse Marina where M. went to do laundry, lost control of the dinghy in the strong winds, it blew under the dock and Troy, that hunk, came to her rescue.
We broke into the Cruiser’s Net not more than 15 minutes after Troy announced the loose dnghy to thank him and the fellow cruiser who came to our rescue. Patty, net stalwart said in response, “don’t you just love this Net”. It’s her life work and it is terrific in its own quirky way.
The next day it was around the infamous Whale, this time in the lee, to Green Turtle Cay where activities included, a golf cart rental, a somewhat disappointing dinner at the New Plymouth Inn compared to our first stop months ago, a swim off the Atlantic Beach and then the departure to Great Sale.
On May 11, 2008 we anchored in the crushed shell and sand of Northern Harbor, a bite out of the southern end of uninhabited Great Sale Cay, three months and one day from our first stop there on February 10, the second day in the Bahamas. We had traveled that day over 60 miles from Green Turtle Cay into a building southwest wind to wait for a cold front to pass and conditions to return for safe passage from across the Gulf Stream to the US. In cruisers-speak these opportunities for safe passages are “windows” and few have been open. It blew 27 knots that night, Journey pitched, we slept fitfully, but the anchor held.
Monday the wind quieted to calm that night. A check of the weather on the WX Satellite Weather Tuesday morning convinced us to leave a day earlier.
As we now sail north bound on the ICW to reach New Smyrna Beach this evening, it’s a bit much to do any digesting of this latest transit from the special place of the Bahamas to the special place of the US and its problems and people and energy and infrastructure and such varied beauty. Suffice it to say, it’s good to have made another safe passage in this very special journey.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Maintaining and Sustaining
We had a good sail from Hope Town to Green Turtle on April 27th, including that notorious passage around Whale Cay, exposed to the swells of the Atlantic piling steeply as the sea floor shoals from thousands of feet to nil. It proved lumpy, but was no problem and tested a bit our sea legs, idle from sailing the Sea of Abaco. We were going to stay a few days, but a cold front was predicted and we wanted to be sure we could get south of the Whale again to Marsh Harbor to meet Steffi and Charlie next week, so on Monday we motored into stronger than expected southerlies to Hope Town and noticed the engine was running over 200 degrees. We stopped it, it cooled a bit and we reached our mooring in Hope Town Harbor.
The next day, an inspection of the raw water (sea water) pump impeller revealed that several of its rubber blades had broken off. One was lodged in the outflow of the pump. An impeller is a mandatory spare part, we had one and installed it, removing the fragments of impeller blades that we could find. Pump blades had disintegrated once before, and the boat yard in Maine had insisted that they flush out the heat exchanger to remove any other blade fragments that might block the flow of seawater.
The heat exchanger is a four or five inch diameter tube that runs side to side at the back of the engine. It is constructed so that engine coolant – a mix of fresh water and antifreeze – can run through it and be cooled by sea water circulating in smaller tubes that run end to end through the larger tube. Sea water and fresh-water coolant never mix, they just get close. I talked to Darrin the mechanic at Man-O-War who reinforced that each of those tubes needed to cleared. Instead of a hose, unavailable when on a mooring, I could run a wire through the small tubes to push out any impeller blade fragments that might be stuck, impeding the flow of cooling sea water. There are about 30 tubes, each about a quarter of an inch. More intimacy with our special needs diesel.
Removed the round plates and gaskets at each end of the exchanger and used a mirror to see in the ends which on one side are about three inches from the bulkhead and on the other about six. Then by sort of lying over it I could thread the wire through each tube and feel its tip come through the other end. Failed to make it through only one tube, found no other fragments and declared victory as more water gushes out the exhaust pipe and the engine runs its usual hot, but not super-hot temperature.
Then the propane cook stove stopped working and discovered that the 20 pound tank was empty. Journey has for a reserve, 10 pound propane tank that we switched over to, but the stove would only light with a match, not by pushing the button that springs a small static electricity generator that creates a tiny spark by the burner sufficient to light it. Took it apart and a wire the size of a door bell wire had come loose from the spark generator. Reattached, it works fine.
New friend Jay on board Airborne, a Mason 44 moored here in Hope Town, a tall, slender mustached retired lawyer who most recently spent a year in Kosovo helping to solve problems in its justice system, said over coffee that the great thing about sailing is the challenges of problem solving. “Things don’t work and you have to fix them, it’s all consuming, all occupying, I love it.” Ed, our friend on Troubadour, spends hours with manuals and a wonderful series of how-to books that comprehensively cover maintenance and repair of the boat systems that make you go, tell you where you are, allow you to meet bodily needs and, most fundamentally, ensure survival. If your roof leaks at home, you don’t sink!
It’s about as pioneering as you can get these days. Like Conestoga wagons, our home and way of getting places is one and the same, and our wagon train is the cruiser’s net that makes a community of boats through its daily, VHF volunteer broadcast of weather, messages and information. Each morning on the segment called open mike, there are usually several requests by people asking for help related to such things as refrigeration, single side band radios, batteries, software, or if someone knows where they can get a spare part or tool, and nearly each time there’s a response by someone offering to help.
We’re learning a new way of relating to our goods. They’re scarce and fragile. You have to grease the axels or the wheels will fall off. It’s a shift from a user and consumer to being a sustainer and maintainer. It’s a shift driven by necessity, but made possible by time to think, go slow, to work methodically and to get the help of others. You have a week, not a Saturday afternoon, to sort a problem out, and you have a community of people in the same straights as you to help you do it.
While we’re maintaining and sustaining, we’re increasingly maintained and sustained by the people we meet in Hope Town, built around this eclectic group gathered as the Hope Town Writer’s Circle, people on boats and those who pass in and out of the Hope Town Coffee Shop. M. noted that when we’re in the settlement - the houses, groceries, restaurants and shops that surround the harbor - it takes time to walk around because you stop so often to chat with someone you have met before. People always say hello when you pass by on the streets or in dinghies.
Boat relationships begin by approaching in the dinghy and asking what kind of boat it is. Nearly always people want to chat. We stand in dinghies, holding onto the approach boats gunwale, discover home ports, mutual friends, and destinations, but usually decline an invitation to come aboard, but if there’s chemistry, which most often there is, you ask or get asked to come by later for a drink of some kind.
Jay’s wife Luisa on Airborne is an accomplished artist. Linda on Epilogue makes beautiful jewelry. We got to know both independently, introduced them at the coffee shop and M. spent an afternoon with the two on Airborne the other day and returned with a beautiful small oil painting of the Hope Town lighthouse, an icon for us of this journey, and a necklace. In later conversations with all of them, it was clear they enjoyed time only with ladies for a change.
That’s enough for now. We’re headed out for coffee and might see again Allen, Dave, Dave, Jr., Mary, Nancy, Nan, Larry, Audrey, Herb, Sally, Marguerite, Linda, Don, Frank, and of course Heather and Andrew who own and run the coffee shop.
Post script: Getting the propane bottle refilled proved to be surprisingly easy. We had noted that weekly, another old US army LST, a small one, arrives laden with large and small containers of propane. Often small bottles, with the names of cottages and boats are sitting on the dock waiting for it. Turns out the day of our need, an inquiry at the grocery store on the harbor front revealed that the barge would be arriving on Wednesday, pick-up bottles and return by Thursday new. Journey's bottle joined a cluster of others, disappeared, and returned full for the price you'd pay in Boston.
The next day, an inspection of the raw water (sea water) pump impeller revealed that several of its rubber blades had broken off. One was lodged in the outflow of the pump. An impeller is a mandatory spare part, we had one and installed it, removing the fragments of impeller blades that we could find. Pump blades had disintegrated once before, and the boat yard in Maine had insisted that they flush out the heat exchanger to remove any other blade fragments that might block the flow of seawater.
The heat exchanger is a four or five inch diameter tube that runs side to side at the back of the engine. It is constructed so that engine coolant – a mix of fresh water and antifreeze – can run through it and be cooled by sea water circulating in smaller tubes that run end to end through the larger tube. Sea water and fresh-water coolant never mix, they just get close. I talked to Darrin the mechanic at Man-O-War who reinforced that each of those tubes needed to cleared. Instead of a hose, unavailable when on a mooring, I could run a wire through the small tubes to push out any impeller blade fragments that might be stuck, impeding the flow of cooling sea water. There are about 30 tubes, each about a quarter of an inch. More intimacy with our special needs diesel.
Removed the round plates and gaskets at each end of the exchanger and used a mirror to see in the ends which on one side are about three inches from the bulkhead and on the other about six. Then by sort of lying over it I could thread the wire through each tube and feel its tip come through the other end. Failed to make it through only one tube, found no other fragments and declared victory as more water gushes out the exhaust pipe and the engine runs its usual hot, but not super-hot temperature.
Then the propane cook stove stopped working and discovered that the 20 pound tank was empty. Journey has for a reserve, 10 pound propane tank that we switched over to, but the stove would only light with a match, not by pushing the button that springs a small static electricity generator that creates a tiny spark by the burner sufficient to light it. Took it apart and a wire the size of a door bell wire had come loose from the spark generator. Reattached, it works fine.
New friend Jay on board Airborne, a Mason 44 moored here in Hope Town, a tall, slender mustached retired lawyer who most recently spent a year in Kosovo helping to solve problems in its justice system, said over coffee that the great thing about sailing is the challenges of problem solving. “Things don’t work and you have to fix them, it’s all consuming, all occupying, I love it.” Ed, our friend on Troubadour, spends hours with manuals and a wonderful series of how-to books that comprehensively cover maintenance and repair of the boat systems that make you go, tell you where you are, allow you to meet bodily needs and, most fundamentally, ensure survival. If your roof leaks at home, you don’t sink!
It’s about as pioneering as you can get these days. Like Conestoga wagons, our home and way of getting places is one and the same, and our wagon train is the cruiser’s net that makes a community of boats through its daily, VHF volunteer broadcast of weather, messages and information. Each morning on the segment called open mike, there are usually several requests by people asking for help related to such things as refrigeration, single side band radios, batteries, software, or if someone knows where they can get a spare part or tool, and nearly each time there’s a response by someone offering to help.
We’re learning a new way of relating to our goods. They’re scarce and fragile. You have to grease the axels or the wheels will fall off. It’s a shift from a user and consumer to being a sustainer and maintainer. It’s a shift driven by necessity, but made possible by time to think, go slow, to work methodically and to get the help of others. You have a week, not a Saturday afternoon, to sort a problem out, and you have a community of people in the same straights as you to help you do it.
While we’re maintaining and sustaining, we’re increasingly maintained and sustained by the people we meet in Hope Town, built around this eclectic group gathered as the Hope Town Writer’s Circle, people on boats and those who pass in and out of the Hope Town Coffee Shop. M. noted that when we’re in the settlement - the houses, groceries, restaurants and shops that surround the harbor - it takes time to walk around because you stop so often to chat with someone you have met before. People always say hello when you pass by on the streets or in dinghies.
Boat relationships begin by approaching in the dinghy and asking what kind of boat it is. Nearly always people want to chat. We stand in dinghies, holding onto the approach boats gunwale, discover home ports, mutual friends, and destinations, but usually decline an invitation to come aboard, but if there’s chemistry, which most often there is, you ask or get asked to come by later for a drink of some kind.
Jay’s wife Luisa on Airborne is an accomplished artist. Linda on Epilogue makes beautiful jewelry. We got to know both independently, introduced them at the coffee shop and M. spent an afternoon with the two on Airborne the other day and returned with a beautiful small oil painting of the Hope Town lighthouse, an icon for us of this journey, and a necklace. In later conversations with all of them, it was clear they enjoyed time only with ladies for a change.
That’s enough for now. We’re headed out for coffee and might see again Allen, Dave, Dave, Jr., Mary, Nancy, Nan, Larry, Audrey, Herb, Sally, Marguerite, Linda, Don, Frank, and of course Heather and Andrew who own and run the coffee shop.
Post script: Getting the propane bottle refilled proved to be surprisingly easy. We had noted that weekly, another old US army LST, a small one, arrives laden with large and small containers of propane. Often small bottles, with the names of cottages and boats are sitting on the dock waiting for it. Turns out the day of our need, an inquiry at the grocery store on the harbor front revealed that the barge would be arriving on Wednesday, pick-up bottles and return by Thursday new. Journey's bottle joined a cluster of others, disappeared, and returned full for the price you'd pay in Boston.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Little Harbor was the furthest point south that we will reach. Since August 19, 2007 we have logged 3,154 nautical miles and we are discovering that this journey is far more than a round trip from Maine to the Bahamas via Nova Scotia. This trip seems to be turning out to be the transit from becoming to being, the matriculation from making it to leaving it.
It is vividly making clear where we are in the life span. Recall those experiences in Vero Beach where we met the young couple, their two little kids, a Newfoundland and cat on a new, old boat they had just acquired, their confidence and foolishness and energy of youth on the move, juxtaposed with grocery shopping among the shuffling elderly in various states of disrepair cautiously maneuvering the aisles of the supermarket. We feel vigorous and healthy, but stay put more, sail less, sleep longer, creak a little getting out of bed. No doubt about what third or quarter of life we are in. Our future is clearly the supermarket of growing limitations.
It is disclosing the depth of metaphor. The instructors are Milton, Melville, Homer, Thoreau, the authors of the Bible and their critics, with time to sit at their knees and not be graded. The classroom is this daily intimacy with nature. The exercise is time to witness without blinders. The fruit is humility of truth. Recall the monarch butterflies that crossed our paths from Nova Scotia to the Delaware that revealed the wonders of tenacity, innocence, endurance, destination, beauty, cycles and seasons all captured in seeing, truly seeing their skipping through the air.
Living aboard Journey is revealing the value of living simply. These few square feet of living space, two feet of closets, only valued essential tools on board, our required stewardship of water, fuel and food reveal the liberation of Thoreau’s and Jesus’ economies. We now talk a lot about “destuffication” and simplification.
This journey has also changed our perspective of where we want to arrive. We will head for the safe harbor of Teel Cove, but we are beginning to see a more lasting goal for this time of transit. We hope that it will help us learn to live to the end of life in peace and grace enabled by the humility from seeing all of life, the sunsets and the shuffles. I hope we make it and will be able to stay there when we arrive.
Dinghy Drift
Jeff is one of the irrepressible anchors of the Abaco Cruisers Net from his boat Agur’s Wish in Hope Town and he organized last Monday a dinghy drift. You raft your dinghy with others at a point up wind in the harbor and drift where the wind will take you.. You bring along something to drink and something to nibble on to pass around from boat to boat. The hat would also be passed to collect money to send Abaco kids to an upcoming Special Olympics in Nassau.
Twenty four dinghies holding 67 people showed-up and gave over $600. Amazingly this huge raft of inflatables would drift through the moored boats not touching any. As we reached shore, three or four on the outside would crank up their outboards and push the whole mass of boats and people back up wind. We sang sea shanties, and met funky, funny people. It’s a hoot.
Special Needs Engine and Captain
Last Wednesday we sailed from Hope Town to Man-O-War to meet with Darrin, a highly recommended mechanic from Edwin’s Boat Yard. I remain hyper sensitive to our special needs engine and it seems that the rhythmic thump as the prop turns was getting noisier. I was wondering if the engine was getting out of alignment. One troublesome symptom was the engine would shake slightly if you let the shaft free wheel when sailing, the shaft’s turning powered by the spinning propeller acting like a waterwheel. Then a few weeks ago we had a scare. I went below while under power and noticed oil on the cabin sole. It’s the kind of thing that jolts you into quick action, sort of like the first sounds of your child at night coming down with the stomach flu. M. shuts down the engine and sets sail while I field strip the companion way ladder, the panel holding the fire extinguisher, and engine cowling galley drawer unit in that order and in seconds, to reveal our needy friend.
The rubber plug that stops up one of the oil fill openings on the engine had vibrated out, allowing oil to spurt all over the engine compartment, including through the cracks where the cowling fits and onto the cabin sole. The bulk of the mess had dripped into the bilge. I used tongs to fish the plug out of the oil spill, replaced it, added oil, and secured the plug with a wire tie which I should have done long ago, all in choppy, two to three foot seas. We restarted and we motored on into Marsh Harbor to clean up. Funny, that had never happened before, I worried. Could it be hyper engine vibration, or as M. thinks could it be much more benign, but equally irksome, hyper husband?
In the weeks that passed I would listen and worry until a doctor visit became essential. Darrin was reassuring that our engine is fine and I’m nuts. We went on a sea trial. He listened under power, under sail, at idle, at full RPM, felt and turned the shaft and then explained. The rhythmic noise was the result of a two bladed prop which is never as balanced as a three bladed prop. The movement of the engine when the prop freewheels is due to the two bladed prop, built-in, soft engine mounts, short shaft, and the flexibility of the recently installed shaft seal. He made sense and I’m relieved, but I do wonder about a new, rumbling sound that happens when…..
While waiting for carry-out at the only carry-out on Man-O-War, we ran into Nancy and Lauri. Nancy is delivered by Lauri in their Albury outboard each Thursday morning to the Hope Town Writer’s Circle where we had met. M. and I later walked to the north end of the Cay and heard someone hailing us. Stopped, went back and Nancy, Lauri and two young fellows were on their garage top deck, that serves as a widows walk, watching the approach of a Mystic Seaport square rigger and a newly built schooner. Nancy and Lauri have retired full-time to Man-O-War. Through the writers circle gatherings, lunches following and our conversations we’ve learned that Nancy was volunteer head of Rotary International’s international polio efforts and a stunt pilot, Lauri an internist, or as he put it an adult pediatrician, and hospital administrator in Cleveland. Their house is perched on a limestone ridge, 27 feet above sea level just past the narrows on Man-O-War which gives them views of the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic. Hurricane Floyd hit them from both sides with water running under the house, but it survived without major damage. Their deck, like the deck on our shore shack in Maine, is seemingly suspended over the sea.
We left Man-O-War early Thursday on a brisk, jib-only beam reach back to Hope Town in time to make a session of the Writer’s Circle which has been noted before: lovely people expressing them selves deeply, getting encouragement and useful criticism. Several spend summers in Maine and we’ll work on constituting a group there. Lunch follows at the Harbors Edge restaurant. I alert M. via walkie-talkie and she dinghies into the restaurant and ties up five feet from the table to join us for lunch. We linger well into the afternoon.
Prep Time
Two weeks from today Steffi and Charlie arrive and its time for more maintenance. A mail order this morning of a standby toilet repair kit and a few other items are headed their way to in turn come our way. Took apart and cleaned the head to keep it limping along until parts can be replaced (why are sewer and garbage-related activities always my jobs?) while M. did laundry at Lighthouse Marina (why is that always her job?). Our list of to dos includes a coat of varnish, clean up the topsides and transom from six months of accumulation and scuffs, polish metal, lubricate the winches and windless, and make lists for supplies when we get to Marsh Harbor. Not many chores and we will likely have time for a bit more cruising on the Sea of Abaco before heading north.
It is vividly making clear where we are in the life span. Recall those experiences in Vero Beach where we met the young couple, their two little kids, a Newfoundland and cat on a new, old boat they had just acquired, their confidence and foolishness and energy of youth on the move, juxtaposed with grocery shopping among the shuffling elderly in various states of disrepair cautiously maneuvering the aisles of the supermarket. We feel vigorous and healthy, but stay put more, sail less, sleep longer, creak a little getting out of bed. No doubt about what third or quarter of life we are in. Our future is clearly the supermarket of growing limitations.
It is disclosing the depth of metaphor. The instructors are Milton, Melville, Homer, Thoreau, the authors of the Bible and their critics, with time to sit at their knees and not be graded. The classroom is this daily intimacy with nature. The exercise is time to witness without blinders. The fruit is humility of truth. Recall the monarch butterflies that crossed our paths from Nova Scotia to the Delaware that revealed the wonders of tenacity, innocence, endurance, destination, beauty, cycles and seasons all captured in seeing, truly seeing their skipping through the air.
Living aboard Journey is revealing the value of living simply. These few square feet of living space, two feet of closets, only valued essential tools on board, our required stewardship of water, fuel and food reveal the liberation of Thoreau’s and Jesus’ economies. We now talk a lot about “destuffication” and simplification.
This journey has also changed our perspective of where we want to arrive. We will head for the safe harbor of Teel Cove, but we are beginning to see a more lasting goal for this time of transit. We hope that it will help us learn to live to the end of life in peace and grace enabled by the humility from seeing all of life, the sunsets and the shuffles. I hope we make it and will be able to stay there when we arrive.
Dinghy Drift
Jeff is one of the irrepressible anchors of the Abaco Cruisers Net from his boat Agur’s Wish in Hope Town and he organized last Monday a dinghy drift. You raft your dinghy with others at a point up wind in the harbor and drift where the wind will take you.. You bring along something to drink and something to nibble on to pass around from boat to boat. The hat would also be passed to collect money to send Abaco kids to an upcoming Special Olympics in Nassau.
Twenty four dinghies holding 67 people showed-up and gave over $600. Amazingly this huge raft of inflatables would drift through the moored boats not touching any. As we reached shore, three or four on the outside would crank up their outboards and push the whole mass of boats and people back up wind. We sang sea shanties, and met funky, funny people. It’s a hoot.
Special Needs Engine and Captain
Last Wednesday we sailed from Hope Town to Man-O-War to meet with Darrin, a highly recommended mechanic from Edwin’s Boat Yard. I remain hyper sensitive to our special needs engine and it seems that the rhythmic thump as the prop turns was getting noisier. I was wondering if the engine was getting out of alignment. One troublesome symptom was the engine would shake slightly if you let the shaft free wheel when sailing, the shaft’s turning powered by the spinning propeller acting like a waterwheel. Then a few weeks ago we had a scare. I went below while under power and noticed oil on the cabin sole. It’s the kind of thing that jolts you into quick action, sort of like the first sounds of your child at night coming down with the stomach flu. M. shuts down the engine and sets sail while I field strip the companion way ladder, the panel holding the fire extinguisher, and engine cowling galley drawer unit in that order and in seconds, to reveal our needy friend.
The rubber plug that stops up one of the oil fill openings on the engine had vibrated out, allowing oil to spurt all over the engine compartment, including through the cracks where the cowling fits and onto the cabin sole. The bulk of the mess had dripped into the bilge. I used tongs to fish the plug out of the oil spill, replaced it, added oil, and secured the plug with a wire tie which I should have done long ago, all in choppy, two to three foot seas. We restarted and we motored on into Marsh Harbor to clean up. Funny, that had never happened before, I worried. Could it be hyper engine vibration, or as M. thinks could it be much more benign, but equally irksome, hyper husband?
In the weeks that passed I would listen and worry until a doctor visit became essential. Darrin was reassuring that our engine is fine and I’m nuts. We went on a sea trial. He listened under power, under sail, at idle, at full RPM, felt and turned the shaft and then explained. The rhythmic noise was the result of a two bladed prop which is never as balanced as a three bladed prop. The movement of the engine when the prop freewheels is due to the two bladed prop, built-in, soft engine mounts, short shaft, and the flexibility of the recently installed shaft seal. He made sense and I’m relieved, but I do wonder about a new, rumbling sound that happens when…..
While waiting for carry-out at the only carry-out on Man-O-War, we ran into Nancy and Lauri. Nancy is delivered by Lauri in their Albury outboard each Thursday morning to the Hope Town Writer’s Circle where we had met. M. and I later walked to the north end of the Cay and heard someone hailing us. Stopped, went back and Nancy, Lauri and two young fellows were on their garage top deck, that serves as a widows walk, watching the approach of a Mystic Seaport square rigger and a newly built schooner. Nancy and Lauri have retired full-time to Man-O-War. Through the writers circle gatherings, lunches following and our conversations we’ve learned that Nancy was volunteer head of Rotary International’s international polio efforts and a stunt pilot, Lauri an internist, or as he put it an adult pediatrician, and hospital administrator in Cleveland. Their house is perched on a limestone ridge, 27 feet above sea level just past the narrows on Man-O-War which gives them views of the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic. Hurricane Floyd hit them from both sides with water running under the house, but it survived without major damage. Their deck, like the deck on our shore shack in Maine, is seemingly suspended over the sea.
We left Man-O-War early Thursday on a brisk, jib-only beam reach back to Hope Town in time to make a session of the Writer’s Circle which has been noted before: lovely people expressing them selves deeply, getting encouragement and useful criticism. Several spend summers in Maine and we’ll work on constituting a group there. Lunch follows at the Harbors Edge restaurant. I alert M. via walkie-talkie and she dinghies into the restaurant and ties up five feet from the table to join us for lunch. We linger well into the afternoon.
Prep Time
Two weeks from today Steffi and Charlie arrive and its time for more maintenance. A mail order this morning of a standby toilet repair kit and a few other items are headed their way to in turn come our way. Took apart and cleaned the head to keep it limping along until parts can be replaced (why are sewer and garbage-related activities always my jobs?) while M. did laundry at Lighthouse Marina (why is that always her job?). Our list of to dos includes a coat of varnish, clean up the topsides and transom from six months of accumulation and scuffs, polish metal, lubricate the winches and windless, and make lists for supplies when we get to Marsh Harbor. Not many chores and we will likely have time for a bit more cruising on the Sea of Abaco before heading north.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Ambivalence
We cast off our mooring at Hope Town last Thursday on an early morning high tide with ambivalence even though we will return at least once more. Our roots in Hope Town are shallow, but deep enough to give us nourishment and require a tug to free us to meet that other need for broader horizons. We’re wallowing in several consecutive days of settled weather for the first time since we’ve arrived here with winds five to ten knots out of the southeast, puffy clouds, deep blue skies and an increasingly emerald green sea.
We sailed with Nancy and Ed on Troubadour in light, variable winds, running west, jibing south, then heading up to go south east to make the required u-turn course around a shoal called Lubbers Bank which lies west from Lubbers Quarters off of the entrance to Hope Town, the only small island encountered so far without “cay” in its name. It seems that relatively deeper water has a green sea grass, the shallowest water only sand and Lubbers Bank is illuminated pale blue-white from the sun reflecting off its white sand bottom. It is to our port. At the end of the u-turn, Witch Point – rocky, jagged, coral limestone – is on our starboard. Sea grass is nine to ten feet beneath our keel. We fell off the wind after passing Witch Point to head more southerly to reach an anchorage at the junction of Tiloo Cay and Tiloo Bank. The total trip was 9.8 nautical miles.
Tiloo Cay is a long, skinny cay that runs north to south on the eastern edge of the Sea of Abaco with only a handful of houses scattered along its length. Ed and Nancy picked us up in their dinghy for a trip to the beach to walk their old, good hearted and stalwart crew dog, Scully. The beach picked clean of litter is backed by long-needled pine forest and in this grove are a variety of make-shift structures: an awning hung on a PVC pipe frame, numerous white and green plastic deck chairs, charcoal and gas grills and a Formica counter-top table that used a tree for one leg, two-by-fours for the others. We learned later that this was a beach claimed by local Bahamians on weekends, one of the few on the remaining public land in the Bahamas. On weekends it is packed. On Friday, only two hefty Americans, from the handful of anchored boats, slumped in chairs beneath the awning.
Back in the dinghy we agreed to take a look at a large landing craft moored a bit further south on Tiloo Cay off of what appeared to be a seaside motel. W asked a man wading in the shallows if it was alright to come ashore. He welcomed us and took us on a tour with a narrative running with big gaps that could only be fully connected by an inappropriate level of inquiry.
He and another fellow were developing the 28 acres to include cottages and a golf course. The other had been at it 20 years. Our narrator was invited by the other fellow, who was also his landlord where he had moored a houseboat in Jacksonville, to come for a weekend to Tiloo Cay five years ago. Our narrator stayed. He spoke of a family who shopped in Boston but wasn’t from Boston, and of picking up his daughter at Marsh Harbor Airport. He was in the Marines for six years, the Navy for eighteen.
The LST had been bought for $200,000 two years ago in San Diego as military surplus and he had sailed it to Tiloo Cay via the Panama Canal. The plan is to use it for marine services and they are awaiting a contract to haul cement block from the Dominican Republic. Others want to hire it, but won’t pay upfront which our narrator requires. The LST was likely used to support Navy Seals as it has a decompression chamber on board and a crane to lift on and off their mini subs. They had removed iron bricks of ballast now neatly stacked atop a cement wall on shore. One of its mooring lines goes ashore, around a tree to its anchor buried in the soil. The LST was sitting on its bottom at low tide. It doesn’t appear to have moved in a long time.
They had recently bought three Boston Whaler outboard boats for $30,000 through a GAO auction. The bulkheads in front of the shore building were made of carbon fiber, the floating docks, the only ones we have seen in the Bahamas, were made in France. A smaller landing craft was tied to one of them. A small power catamaran to another that he swore he was going to sink someday because of its low cabin overhead.
He told us what was evident from the vertical scar on his bare chest that he had had bi-pass surgery which was followed by a heart attack five days later which was followed by surgery to remove shrapnel from his leg, all within the last few years. His left bicep sported a square-rigged sail boat tattoo.
The only other person we saw was a black Bahamian driving a back-hoe then later breaking rocks out of the soil with a sledge hammer who was noted as being “one helluva gardener.” A sizeable area was planted in zoysia grass, portions of which were turning gray and dying and a specialist would be coming next week to tell them what to do. There were pilings sticking above the ground in the distance that will frame a shop to work on boats and other equipment.
He invited us to see the shore-side building that looks from the outside like a three unit motel with that many doors opening onto a covered deck. He was as unconcerned with our sandy beach shoes as he was with his as he led us through, offered the ladies a drink, which they declined. Soft rock music was playing. There were several seating rooms, indoor and outdoor kitchens with stainless appliances, only three bedrooms that we noticed, several filled wine racks, well-stocked liquor cabinets, cigar boxes, a handsome wood and tile floor, wicker furniture and numerous paintings and prints of women with little or nothing on. No one was about. One of us saw some clothes in a basket on the floor. The units were all interconnected and we asked if they could be closed off to which he responded: “they can do whatever they hell they want to.”
We thanked him, shook hands, said good bye as his cell phone rang and he walked out on the dock likely to get better reception, he waved and we walked away, not eavesdropping, but wondering. The four of us ate chili together that night on Troubadour.
Back to Snake Cay
Yesterday we sailed due west from Tiloo back to Snake Cay to anchor for a few hours. Ed and Nancy had not yet taken the dinghy tour in the shallow waters between Great Abaco Island and Deep Sea Cay. Saw a ray but not much else. In the afternoon we motored and sailed further south to an anchorage off Lynyard Cay, the last north-south lying cay at the southern end of the Sea of Abaco. M and I rowed the Zodiac to a small beach, turned her over for the second time in the Bahamas to scrub off accumulating life forms. It took about a half an hour to remove a month’s worth. That night the four of us ate pasta-primavera on Journey. Ed and Nancy paddled their dinghy the 100 yards or so from Troubadour to Journey as is was not worth the trouble for them to mount the outboard for such a short trip. They looked like Tom and Huck on a raft.
M. and I cleaned up and retired to the cockpit which still startles us that we do that. Our brains are too deeply imprinted with Maine conditions on anchor at night: mosquitoes, heavy dew, and chill. Nothing buzzed, the wind was still, the air warm, the temperature as right as a bed in the morning. The sea was quiet except for the remnants of Atlantic swell that squeezes between the cays to offer that eternal, gentle, sighing, lulling lift to the boat that we have come to cherish. Some twenty boats were orderly anchored close in the cay’s western shore, their anchor lights like a row of street lights descending down an avenue, their hulls distinct in the blue light of the nearly full moon. Clouds moving across the moon created images in M.’s mind of creatures that would give a fun scare to grandchildren. We slept well.
April 20, 2008
Little Harbor
This morning we rode the high tide into Little Harbor for a second visit, the first for Troubadour. The guide books note a reef off the entrance that in spite of swell proved good snorkeling this afternoon.
There were plenty of moorings in Little Harbor. We motored the dinghy this afternoon to a small reef at the Harbor’s entrance and snorkeled over a beautiful small reef. We ate dinner with Ed and Nancy at Pete’s Pub. The food was better this time. A fisherman landed at Pete’s dock with a 400 pound wahoo, a black streamlined fish, that he cut into steaks on the stern of his boat in front of a small audience. We’ve bought wahoo twice from the Hope Town fish market and cooked it on board. It is a white, firm swordfish like but more tender. We were told to marinate in “sour” which we learned met lemon or lime juice. It’s delicious.
Boats are on the move, north and south, and we continue to flip between that urge to set out and not wanting to let go of this special time and place, ambivalence that comes from choosing between two very good things.
We sailed with Nancy and Ed on Troubadour in light, variable winds, running west, jibing south, then heading up to go south east to make the required u-turn course around a shoal called Lubbers Bank which lies west from Lubbers Quarters off of the entrance to Hope Town, the only small island encountered so far without “cay” in its name. It seems that relatively deeper water has a green sea grass, the shallowest water only sand and Lubbers Bank is illuminated pale blue-white from the sun reflecting off its white sand bottom. It is to our port. At the end of the u-turn, Witch Point – rocky, jagged, coral limestone – is on our starboard. Sea grass is nine to ten feet beneath our keel. We fell off the wind after passing Witch Point to head more southerly to reach an anchorage at the junction of Tiloo Cay and Tiloo Bank. The total trip was 9.8 nautical miles.
Tiloo Cay is a long, skinny cay that runs north to south on the eastern edge of the Sea of Abaco with only a handful of houses scattered along its length. Ed and Nancy picked us up in their dinghy for a trip to the beach to walk their old, good hearted and stalwart crew dog, Scully. The beach picked clean of litter is backed by long-needled pine forest and in this grove are a variety of make-shift structures: an awning hung on a PVC pipe frame, numerous white and green plastic deck chairs, charcoal and gas grills and a Formica counter-top table that used a tree for one leg, two-by-fours for the others. We learned later that this was a beach claimed by local Bahamians on weekends, one of the few on the remaining public land in the Bahamas. On weekends it is packed. On Friday, only two hefty Americans, from the handful of anchored boats, slumped in chairs beneath the awning.
Back in the dinghy we agreed to take a look at a large landing craft moored a bit further south on Tiloo Cay off of what appeared to be a seaside motel. W asked a man wading in the shallows if it was alright to come ashore. He welcomed us and took us on a tour with a narrative running with big gaps that could only be fully connected by an inappropriate level of inquiry.
He and another fellow were developing the 28 acres to include cottages and a golf course. The other had been at it 20 years. Our narrator was invited by the other fellow, who was also his landlord where he had moored a houseboat in Jacksonville, to come for a weekend to Tiloo Cay five years ago. Our narrator stayed. He spoke of a family who shopped in Boston but wasn’t from Boston, and of picking up his daughter at Marsh Harbor Airport. He was in the Marines for six years, the Navy for eighteen.
The LST had been bought for $200,000 two years ago in San Diego as military surplus and he had sailed it to Tiloo Cay via the Panama Canal. The plan is to use it for marine services and they are awaiting a contract to haul cement block from the Dominican Republic. Others want to hire it, but won’t pay upfront which our narrator requires. The LST was likely used to support Navy Seals as it has a decompression chamber on board and a crane to lift on and off their mini subs. They had removed iron bricks of ballast now neatly stacked atop a cement wall on shore. One of its mooring lines goes ashore, around a tree to its anchor buried in the soil. The LST was sitting on its bottom at low tide. It doesn’t appear to have moved in a long time.
They had recently bought three Boston Whaler outboard boats for $30,000 through a GAO auction. The bulkheads in front of the shore building were made of carbon fiber, the floating docks, the only ones we have seen in the Bahamas, were made in France. A smaller landing craft was tied to one of them. A small power catamaran to another that he swore he was going to sink someday because of its low cabin overhead.
He told us what was evident from the vertical scar on his bare chest that he had had bi-pass surgery which was followed by a heart attack five days later which was followed by surgery to remove shrapnel from his leg, all within the last few years. His left bicep sported a square-rigged sail boat tattoo.
The only other person we saw was a black Bahamian driving a back-hoe then later breaking rocks out of the soil with a sledge hammer who was noted as being “one helluva gardener.” A sizeable area was planted in zoysia grass, portions of which were turning gray and dying and a specialist would be coming next week to tell them what to do. There were pilings sticking above the ground in the distance that will frame a shop to work on boats and other equipment.
He invited us to see the shore-side building that looks from the outside like a three unit motel with that many doors opening onto a covered deck. He was as unconcerned with our sandy beach shoes as he was with his as he led us through, offered the ladies a drink, which they declined. Soft rock music was playing. There were several seating rooms, indoor and outdoor kitchens with stainless appliances, only three bedrooms that we noticed, several filled wine racks, well-stocked liquor cabinets, cigar boxes, a handsome wood and tile floor, wicker furniture and numerous paintings and prints of women with little or nothing on. No one was about. One of us saw some clothes in a basket on the floor. The units were all interconnected and we asked if they could be closed off to which he responded: “they can do whatever they hell they want to.”
We thanked him, shook hands, said good bye as his cell phone rang and he walked out on the dock likely to get better reception, he waved and we walked away, not eavesdropping, but wondering. The four of us ate chili together that night on Troubadour.
Back to Snake Cay
Yesterday we sailed due west from Tiloo back to Snake Cay to anchor for a few hours. Ed and Nancy had not yet taken the dinghy tour in the shallow waters between Great Abaco Island and Deep Sea Cay. Saw a ray but not much else. In the afternoon we motored and sailed further south to an anchorage off Lynyard Cay, the last north-south lying cay at the southern end of the Sea of Abaco. M and I rowed the Zodiac to a small beach, turned her over for the second time in the Bahamas to scrub off accumulating life forms. It took about a half an hour to remove a month’s worth. That night the four of us ate pasta-primavera on Journey. Ed and Nancy paddled their dinghy the 100 yards or so from Troubadour to Journey as is was not worth the trouble for them to mount the outboard for such a short trip. They looked like Tom and Huck on a raft.
M. and I cleaned up and retired to the cockpit which still startles us that we do that. Our brains are too deeply imprinted with Maine conditions on anchor at night: mosquitoes, heavy dew, and chill. Nothing buzzed, the wind was still, the air warm, the temperature as right as a bed in the morning. The sea was quiet except for the remnants of Atlantic swell that squeezes between the cays to offer that eternal, gentle, sighing, lulling lift to the boat that we have come to cherish. Some twenty boats were orderly anchored close in the cay’s western shore, their anchor lights like a row of street lights descending down an avenue, their hulls distinct in the blue light of the nearly full moon. Clouds moving across the moon created images in M.’s mind of creatures that would give a fun scare to grandchildren. We slept well.
April 20, 2008
Little Harbor
This morning we rode the high tide into Little Harbor for a second visit, the first for Troubadour. The guide books note a reef off the entrance that in spite of swell proved good snorkeling this afternoon.
There were plenty of moorings in Little Harbor. We motored the dinghy this afternoon to a small reef at the Harbor’s entrance and snorkeled over a beautiful small reef. We ate dinner with Ed and Nancy at Pete’s Pub. The food was better this time. A fisherman landed at Pete’s dock with a 400 pound wahoo, a black streamlined fish, that he cut into steaks on the stern of his boat in front of a small audience. We’ve bought wahoo twice from the Hope Town fish market and cooked it on board. It is a white, firm swordfish like but more tender. We were told to marinate in “sour” which we learned met lemon or lime juice. It’s delicious.
Boats are on the move, north and south, and we continue to flip between that urge to set out and not wanting to let go of this special time and place, ambivalence that comes from choosing between two very good things.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Odds and ends
Our visit with Margaret and John last week was all too brief. We had time to celebrate our 30th anniversary of friendship, review children and grandchildren, talk about church and theology, lament the damage to America by the current administration, make three day-sails, walk the beach, snorkel a bit, and eat some good meals. We sailed with them from Marsh Harbor to Hope Town, Hope Town to Great Guana Cay and back, and then from Hope Town to Marsh Harbor from where they departed on an early plane so John in his role as selectman or the town of Shelburn, MA could present that night his planning committee’s work on zoning. Journey spent one night at Mangoes Marina where Ray, the dock master, once again tutored us in getting in and out of these tricky piling slips. This time when backing out we managed to squeeze the inflatable dinghy between Journey and a piling, turning it into a fender. No harm but more humiliation. Ray is so cool he doesn’t even smirk.
Cold Fronts
Patty, the 20-year primo volunteer, weather reader and spirit behind the Abaco Cruisers Net heard daily on VHF channel 68, predicts that the cold front that will pass over us this week will be our last. Patty said it’s the time of year when fronts weaken and trade winds begin to settle in out of the east to southeast. Winds will build to 25 to 30 out of the northeast today, some squalls are likely, and most surprisingly the coolest weather so far is forecast with a high of 71 on Wednesday and a low of 61. It’s the same front that brought a blizzard to M.’s mother in South Dakota last week. It also prompted Garrison Kielor on Prairie Home Companion to include in his monologue this weekend a gleeful bit about snowbirds driving home from Phoenix, getting caught in a blizzard just as they arrived back in Minnesota and having to feed carryout from a “Christian Chinese restaurant” to a bear out of hibernation disoriented by the April storm.
Weather is more important around here than weather. It is the prime rationalization for all of these nomads to drive themselves and gear at a snails pace from the white latitudes. It is warm, blue, puffy, easy, barefoot, shorts, sleep under sheets weather. You can get drunk on it. It will numb thoughts of work, homes, churches, family and friends left behind, until there’s an e-mail, a conversation, a news item that snaps you to sobering guilt for your binge of not minding the people and places and issues you deeply care about. Trips on the wagon are short. All it takes is a walk down a sand path bordered by bougainvillea to fall off into this time and place and moment and that’s a good thing at least for awhile.
Bottom Cleaning
The knot meter was showing half of the speed that the GPS was showing of speed over ground. It is a little paddle wheel at the end of cylinder that goes through a hole in the boat that you can pull out and clean. That didn’t solve the problem and we suspected marine growth around it on the hull could be the cause of it’s off reading.
We anchored in the Sea of Abaco off of Guana Cay for lunch with Margaret and John, dove off the boat, scrubbed round the knot meter and that fixed it, but noted that Journey’s bottom was turning into a reef. No barnacles, but plenty of plant life and what appeared to be little sea anemones that have soft brown tentacles growing in little round islands over most of the hull.
I had debated getting certified in scuba diving to do this job, but too much time and money for something I might do once. Also debated whether to hire someone until a conversation with Don, a physician on a Nonsuch near us, said why spend the money. “Snorkel on the boat, do it over a couple of days. It will be a great test of your cardiovascular health.” Don’s a psychiatrist.
On Friday and Saturday last week we anchored Journey outside of Hope Town Harbor and scrubbed the bottom. Some veteran cruisers had alerted us to heavy duty 3M scratch pads that are white, red and black marking three grades of coarseness. When you have to use black, they told us, you need to pull and reapply anti-fouling paint. We started with white and finished with red. It’s not fun. Buoyancy forces you to kick constantly, your head and back keep bumping against the hull, it’s disorienting to be on your back under water, scrubbing the part of the hull that dips in and under the boat. You get a lot of salt water in your mouth, and you have to retain enough air to clear the snorkel when you surface and you’re constantly fighting current. But Philipe and Jacque got a lot of exercise and satisfaction in getting the job done and saved a few bucks to boot. Our hearts are fine.
Other Duties
Other boat duties are part of each day. We live here so there are household chores of cleaning, cooking, and dishwashing, but all done compactly. The galley is about 20 square feet. The stove is two-burner, the refrigerator is about the size of an ice chest and as about as convenient to dig through to find the jar of olives as to find a quarter inch nut in a box of screws, nails and bolts. The head (bathroom) is three feet by three feet, including the toilet, sink and shower. The good thing is that every time you shower, the entire bathroom gets washed down and thus must get wiped down. We assiduously alternate who takes the last shower, because that’s whose turn it is to mop up.
It is hard to judge which is more fun, bottom cleaning or bilge cleaning. Bacteria love warmth and without attention you can quickly create a bog in the inch or so of bilge water that inevitably lies in the darkness and depths of the boat’s interior. When she rocks a belch of swamp gas rises. With the cabin sole boards up perhaps a gorilla could reach the bottom of the bilge. We, correct that, I lay flat on the floor, grip tongs that grip a sponge, spray in Simple Green, pour in a couple of gallons of fresh water, a quarter cup of bleach, wash it all around and pump it out. Clean as a spring breeze for about five days.
Garbage from the galley trash can is transferred to a larger plastic bag which is stored in the port cockpit locker to ferment, which it does rapidly in the heat. In Hope Town you can dinghy your garbage to a collection point on Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 8:30 and 9:30. You don’t forget to do it. Correction, I don’t forget to do it. On land or sea it seems to be my job and other guys’ jobs. Several times fellows have stopped by with their dinghies filled with trash bags and offering to take ours ashore for us. They kind of take my fun away.
We regularly check oil, fresh water intake to the engine, and battery status and have learned that it’s more efficient to run the battery capacity down 20 to 30 percent before recharging with the engine alternator. Metal and fiberglass are polished from time to time. The cockpit is the patio and shore dirt collection station and needs to be swept and sloshed out regularly.
We dust, vacuum and wipe down the salon every few days. It is our living room, dinning room, den and guest room in an area about eight by ten feet. Its floor area is only three by eight feet. Our daughter M. passed onto us several years ago a car vacuum that works like a charm and we can clean the salon well in about 15 minutes.
Laundry gets done at marinas where they charge $4 a load for washing, $4 to dry. Bahamian prices. We don’t have too much because you don’t need to wear too much, only a couple of loads a week unless we have guests.
I read another book about cruising from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas via the ICW who quotes a fellow living simply like we’ve self imposed on ourselves who says: “’ I’m rich…..I’ve got time and I’ve got choices. That’s what rich is.’” (Sailing Away from Winter, Silver Donald Cameron, p. 46.) Living lean we feel rich. Duties are light and quickly done and the rest of our days are spent taking life in deep breaths.
The other morning, an elderly man named Allen asked if he could join us on the overstuffed sofa and chairs at the coffee shop. He’s been coming to Hope Town since the 1960’s when there were “no phones, no electricity and none of the houses were painted.” His neighbors in Toledo were executives with Owens Illinois that was then harvesting pine on Great Abaco Island and asked him and his wife to join them on the company plane for a visit. He eventually bought property and has been coming ever since.
Allen’s house is not far from two new big houses perched on the dune for views of both the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic and he told us that in one of them none of the windows opened. This is the international headquarters of fresh air. Allen says they build these places, rarely visit and in a few years sell them to make money and move on. They are nearly all Americans building these whopper-style houses, sealed off from the history, culture, and environment of the place.
Later that day we took our two-and-one-half mile road and beach walk and came upon a fly fisherman casting in the surf who was eager to show us his catch. He said the natives don’t know what it is and they don’t know what the other fish are that he catches. He showed us the barbells under its mouth, the curve of its jaw and speculated what it might be, a species from warmer climes moving in.
More about that cold front. Troubadour is moored next to us and we played Bananagrams with Ed and Nancy the night before us. When we dinghied the fifty yards back to Journey about 10 o’clock (April 15) it was blowing a gale and it blew hard all night. Ed told me when he stopped by to pick up my garbage (responsibility taken away yet once again) that he saw 38 knots in the middle of the night. Another fellow reported over 40. It’s going to diminish. We’ll leave Hope Town for a few days and sail south together and continue with our duties, listening, looking, talking, laughing, thinking, planning for the crossing back to the US and hopefully implanting some of the lessons of this journey into our souls.
Cold Fronts
Patty, the 20-year primo volunteer, weather reader and spirit behind the Abaco Cruisers Net heard daily on VHF channel 68, predicts that the cold front that will pass over us this week will be our last. Patty said it’s the time of year when fronts weaken and trade winds begin to settle in out of the east to southeast. Winds will build to 25 to 30 out of the northeast today, some squalls are likely, and most surprisingly the coolest weather so far is forecast with a high of 71 on Wednesday and a low of 61. It’s the same front that brought a blizzard to M.’s mother in South Dakota last week. It also prompted Garrison Kielor on Prairie Home Companion to include in his monologue this weekend a gleeful bit about snowbirds driving home from Phoenix, getting caught in a blizzard just as they arrived back in Minnesota and having to feed carryout from a “Christian Chinese restaurant” to a bear out of hibernation disoriented by the April storm.
Weather is more important around here than weather. It is the prime rationalization for all of these nomads to drive themselves and gear at a snails pace from the white latitudes. It is warm, blue, puffy, easy, barefoot, shorts, sleep under sheets weather. You can get drunk on it. It will numb thoughts of work, homes, churches, family and friends left behind, until there’s an e-mail, a conversation, a news item that snaps you to sobering guilt for your binge of not minding the people and places and issues you deeply care about. Trips on the wagon are short. All it takes is a walk down a sand path bordered by bougainvillea to fall off into this time and place and moment and that’s a good thing at least for awhile.
Bottom Cleaning
The knot meter was showing half of the speed that the GPS was showing of speed over ground. It is a little paddle wheel at the end of cylinder that goes through a hole in the boat that you can pull out and clean. That didn’t solve the problem and we suspected marine growth around it on the hull could be the cause of it’s off reading.
We anchored in the Sea of Abaco off of Guana Cay for lunch with Margaret and John, dove off the boat, scrubbed round the knot meter and that fixed it, but noted that Journey’s bottom was turning into a reef. No barnacles, but plenty of plant life and what appeared to be little sea anemones that have soft brown tentacles growing in little round islands over most of the hull.
I had debated getting certified in scuba diving to do this job, but too much time and money for something I might do once. Also debated whether to hire someone until a conversation with Don, a physician on a Nonsuch near us, said why spend the money. “Snorkel on the boat, do it over a couple of days. It will be a great test of your cardiovascular health.” Don’s a psychiatrist.
On Friday and Saturday last week we anchored Journey outside of Hope Town Harbor and scrubbed the bottom. Some veteran cruisers had alerted us to heavy duty 3M scratch pads that are white, red and black marking three grades of coarseness. When you have to use black, they told us, you need to pull and reapply anti-fouling paint. We started with white and finished with red. It’s not fun. Buoyancy forces you to kick constantly, your head and back keep bumping against the hull, it’s disorienting to be on your back under water, scrubbing the part of the hull that dips in and under the boat. You get a lot of salt water in your mouth, and you have to retain enough air to clear the snorkel when you surface and you’re constantly fighting current. But Philipe and Jacque got a lot of exercise and satisfaction in getting the job done and saved a few bucks to boot. Our hearts are fine.
Other Duties
Other boat duties are part of each day. We live here so there are household chores of cleaning, cooking, and dishwashing, but all done compactly. The galley is about 20 square feet. The stove is two-burner, the refrigerator is about the size of an ice chest and as about as convenient to dig through to find the jar of olives as to find a quarter inch nut in a box of screws, nails and bolts. The head (bathroom) is three feet by three feet, including the toilet, sink and shower. The good thing is that every time you shower, the entire bathroom gets washed down and thus must get wiped down. We assiduously alternate who takes the last shower, because that’s whose turn it is to mop up.
It is hard to judge which is more fun, bottom cleaning or bilge cleaning. Bacteria love warmth and without attention you can quickly create a bog in the inch or so of bilge water that inevitably lies in the darkness and depths of the boat’s interior. When she rocks a belch of swamp gas rises. With the cabin sole boards up perhaps a gorilla could reach the bottom of the bilge. We, correct that, I lay flat on the floor, grip tongs that grip a sponge, spray in Simple Green, pour in a couple of gallons of fresh water, a quarter cup of bleach, wash it all around and pump it out. Clean as a spring breeze for about five days.
Garbage from the galley trash can is transferred to a larger plastic bag which is stored in the port cockpit locker to ferment, which it does rapidly in the heat. In Hope Town you can dinghy your garbage to a collection point on Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 8:30 and 9:30. You don’t forget to do it. Correction, I don’t forget to do it. On land or sea it seems to be my job and other guys’ jobs. Several times fellows have stopped by with their dinghies filled with trash bags and offering to take ours ashore for us. They kind of take my fun away.
We regularly check oil, fresh water intake to the engine, and battery status and have learned that it’s more efficient to run the battery capacity down 20 to 30 percent before recharging with the engine alternator. Metal and fiberglass are polished from time to time. The cockpit is the patio and shore dirt collection station and needs to be swept and sloshed out regularly.
We dust, vacuum and wipe down the salon every few days. It is our living room, dinning room, den and guest room in an area about eight by ten feet. Its floor area is only three by eight feet. Our daughter M. passed onto us several years ago a car vacuum that works like a charm and we can clean the salon well in about 15 minutes.
Laundry gets done at marinas where they charge $4 a load for washing, $4 to dry. Bahamian prices. We don’t have too much because you don’t need to wear too much, only a couple of loads a week unless we have guests.
I read another book about cruising from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas via the ICW who quotes a fellow living simply like we’ve self imposed on ourselves who says: “’ I’m rich…..I’ve got time and I’ve got choices. That’s what rich is.’” (Sailing Away from Winter, Silver Donald Cameron, p. 46.) Living lean we feel rich. Duties are light and quickly done and the rest of our days are spent taking life in deep breaths.
The other morning, an elderly man named Allen asked if he could join us on the overstuffed sofa and chairs at the coffee shop. He’s been coming to Hope Town since the 1960’s when there were “no phones, no electricity and none of the houses were painted.” His neighbors in Toledo were executives with Owens Illinois that was then harvesting pine on Great Abaco Island and asked him and his wife to join them on the company plane for a visit. He eventually bought property and has been coming ever since.
Allen’s house is not far from two new big houses perched on the dune for views of both the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic and he told us that in one of them none of the windows opened. This is the international headquarters of fresh air. Allen says they build these places, rarely visit and in a few years sell them to make money and move on. They are nearly all Americans building these whopper-style houses, sealed off from the history, culture, and environment of the place.
Later that day we took our two-and-one-half mile road and beach walk and came upon a fly fisherman casting in the surf who was eager to show us his catch. He said the natives don’t know what it is and they don’t know what the other fish are that he catches. He showed us the barbells under its mouth, the curve of its jaw and speculated what it might be, a species from warmer climes moving in.
More about that cold front. Troubadour is moored next to us and we played Bananagrams with Ed and Nancy the night before us. When we dinghied the fifty yards back to Journey about 10 o’clock (April 15) it was blowing a gale and it blew hard all night. Ed told me when he stopped by to pick up my garbage (responsibility taken away yet once again) that he saw 38 knots in the middle of the night. Another fellow reported over 40. It’s going to diminish. We’ll leave Hope Town for a few days and sail south together and continue with our duties, listening, looking, talking, laughing, thinking, planning for the crossing back to the US and hopefully implanting some of the lessons of this journey into our souls.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Easter and beyond
March 28, 2008
Hope Town is unfolding into a home town. Journey lies on the mooring we’ve rented for a month, far enough from the two bar/restaurants that party until midnight, but never any later than that. We’ve sampled three of five restaurants, are regulars at Hope Town Coffee that roasts its own beans that yield flavors that put Starbucks to shame. We have discovered walks for many moods, including a two mile or so beach walk that offers firm sand close to the surf line with just enough give to make walking delightful
St. James Methodist Church – rectangular, white stucco, low roofed, small steeple topped by a cross – perches on the sand dune that rises from Back Street. We enjoy its electric, but good quality carillon that offers familiar hymns over the harbor at noon and six each day. The other church building in the settlement is a Church of God that seems in good repair but inactive, and Catholics celebrate mass in a tiny park near the post office dock, standing or using the few benches arranged as pews. An itinerant priest celebrated mass mid-afternoon the first Sunday we were here.
Susan and Dennis, our friends from Minneapolis, who spent a week with us on Journey, M. and I opted for the six a.m. Easter sunrise service at St. James with some trepidation. A couple of Sundays ago, a glimpse through the side windows before the start of the nine-thirty family service revealed a teenage boy preparing an electric drum set. We decided to celebrate God’s generosity outside of the community that day.
It poured rain and blew hard Easter eve as we set alarms for the first time since rising early for crossing the Gulf Stream. It was warm, cloudy, dark, wet and still when we putted ashore, climbed the ladder on the dock and walked the short block-and-a-half from the government pier to the church and entered as the organ began playing “Christ Our Lord Has Risen Today.”
A slender, elderly man wearing the only tie in the sanctuary presided with an opening prayer, followed by Hymns and a beautiful reading by an Englishman of the King James’s version of John’s telling of Mary Magdalene visiting the tomb. Before the offering the congregation was asked to introduce ourselves and perhaps two thirds of the 25 or so attending were visitors. We were invited for refreshments served on the patio that lies directly behind the altar on the East side of the building overlooking the Atlantic.
The sermon was the good news of the resurrection and its promise of eternal life – a traditional, literal, and deeply felt message – from the preacher, Vernon, whom we later learned was a layman and whose wife was seriously ill and had taken a turn for the worse on Saturday.
We sang the closing hymn, but the organist seemed to keep missing several phrases. It became clear why Vernon kept going over to the organ before each hymn and leaning over it. We thought he was talking to the organist. Not so, he was turning on and off the digital recording that played the traditional hymns so beautifully, except missed a byte or two during the last.
He had said earlier, that St. James services always offer surprises, but when its quirks become frustrating, he is calmed by a fellow parishioner who says: “but we function.” They certainly do in warmth and hospitality. We gathered after the service on their patio, on the top of the dune, on the east side of the church and watched dawn break and broke our fast with cakes, brownies, muffins, coffee and deviled eggs, the likes of which I haven’t had since a church picnic in New Jersey thirty years ago.
M. and I returned to St. James the next Sunday to attend its 11:00 o’clock service and there witnessed the struggle we all face to understand and reach across our diversity. The layman, Vernon, who presided at Easter Sunrise greeted us and the rest of the congregation of all white, mostly elderly, winter and full time residents of the Cay well-dressed in summer casual, who nodded, smiled and said good morning when eyes met. A choir of eight voices that for all appearances you would think would be a bit croaky, was surprisingly good. The organist, a dedicated volunteer commuted each Sunday from nearby Man-O-War Cay, played her last service as she, like several others, would soon be returning to Canada or the United States.
I looked around for a clergyman and wondered if Vernon would again preside, when from the nave, a large black man in a black suit and shirt and white clerical collar processed. We had heard that St. James had recently installed a new pastor.
A disconnect was evident from the outset. His English was strongly accented by his native language, Haitian Creole. His accent combined with hearing loss among most of us made much of what he said hard to follow. He announced the first hymn, the choir director gently noted the choir would sing first. He announced the Psalm, but it was unclear what the order of response should be. Two verses of struggle and he suggested that one side should read one verse, the other side the other, but it never quite worked, and his Psalter seemed to be a different version than the Psalter in the Methodist Hymnal. There was some confusion about who would be reading what lesson. He seemed to be knocked off his game. His warm open face invited response and the congregation gave very little.
He warmed in his sermon, was easier to understand and allowed us all the doubt of Thomas and the hope of “I believe, help my unbelief.” A good Easter message, the closing hymn, benediction, and then the comment from a parishioner to us on the way out that some of the “older” people were having difficulty understanding him.
Vernon, the lay leader at St. James, runs Vernon’s Grocery and we got to chatting with him a week later. The new pastor serves three congregations, two of them on Great Abaco and predominately black. He is on trial until the fall and parishioners are struggling most of all with the language. He is a warm and good man, but, Vernon said, his greatest challenge will be with the black churches. “Black Bahamians don’t think Haitians are very smart.”
What hope is there for us to reach across cultures, conventions and biases that close us to one another? Is not that what Easter is? St. James’s story will need to unfold.
Susan and Dennis left last Sunday. It was a great week. We anchored one night off of Lynyard Cay, south of here a few miles. There was too much surge at the reef nearby to snorkel. Another day we did a day sail from Hope Town to Great Guana Cay, anchored for lunch and returned, bracketing high tide by two and a half hours on either side. The entrance to Hope Town Harbor has five feet at normal low, and we think we now have a five hour window to get in and out.
Our week was also filled with story telling and marathon games of Bananagrams and Shanghai Rummy and enjoying Dennis’s wit, for example, an exchange as he was rummaging through his duffle bag on the pilot berth:
Susan: “What are you looking for?
Dennis: “If I told you every time I was looking for something, I’d be talking non stop!”
Ed and Nancy on Troubadour came into Hopetown and joined us for dinner at the Abaco Inn to celebrate our 44th anniversary on March 29th. The Inn sends a van to Hope Town to drive guests to its perch on a dune on the southern end of the Elbow Cay Island where big surf comes into the beach. It is a spectacular view and sound to accompany dinner with these good new friends.
April 6, 2008
Last Wednesday, Ed and Nancy crewed with us on Journey as she entered her first race. The Hope Town Sailing Club holds cruisers races, invites all, handicaps the boats for their sluggishness and all the stuff they carry and has a party after the race. We headed out, monitored the assigned VHF channel, the wind increased and stayed steady at about 20 Knots, the cut off point for racing. It was cancelled, so we sailed a couple of hours north, dropped the hook, had lunch and returned, tacking a good deal, and realized how incredibly much work racing would be for folks of our ilk. Ed is a good sailor and continued Charlie P’s lessons begun last summer in Nova Scotia on sail trim.
Linda and Don, fellow boaters, are spending their seventh winter in Hope Town and Don invited me to a weekly writer’s workshop held at the sailing club that I sat in on last Thursday. Perhaps 20 people were there, mostly women, and none of us kids. I was the only newcomer, and the convener, Mary, had people introduce themselves: professional writers, retired lawyer, cruisers, an artist, people who make Hope Town their winter quarters, people who have time to work at writing.
We sat in a circle, shuttered windows opened around us to let the soft tropical air into the room, and those who wished offered their work to invite criticism, all of it gentle and positive. The works weren’t completed assignments, they were the personal, often heart felt efforts to capture something memorable, important, whether travelogue, poem, memoir, essay. It was like a fellowship on steroids. Good souls reading a memoir of sailing adventure long ago with a now deceased spouse, a passionate critique of a child’s home schooling curriculum, and an extraordinary essay of a recollection of a friendship of two elderly women from diverse cultures and upbringings that began on bedpans when they were roommates in a rehab hospital. I hope to go back.
Today, we are once again laced into a berth at Mangoes Marina in Marsh Harbor getting our batteries charged, water tanks filled, clothes washed, larder loaded and awaiting the arrival this afternoon of John and Margaret who will spend four days with us. We’ll sail back to Hope Town this afternoon to be on the cooler mooring and in the beauty of that harbor for sunset and the lighting of the light.
Hope Town is unfolding into a home town. Journey lies on the mooring we’ve rented for a month, far enough from the two bar/restaurants that party until midnight, but never any later than that. We’ve sampled three of five restaurants, are regulars at Hope Town Coffee that roasts its own beans that yield flavors that put Starbucks to shame. We have discovered walks for many moods, including a two mile or so beach walk that offers firm sand close to the surf line with just enough give to make walking delightful
St. James Methodist Church – rectangular, white stucco, low roofed, small steeple topped by a cross – perches on the sand dune that rises from Back Street. We enjoy its electric, but good quality carillon that offers familiar hymns over the harbor at noon and six each day. The other church building in the settlement is a Church of God that seems in good repair but inactive, and Catholics celebrate mass in a tiny park near the post office dock, standing or using the few benches arranged as pews. An itinerant priest celebrated mass mid-afternoon the first Sunday we were here.
Susan and Dennis, our friends from Minneapolis, who spent a week with us on Journey, M. and I opted for the six a.m. Easter sunrise service at St. James with some trepidation. A couple of Sundays ago, a glimpse through the side windows before the start of the nine-thirty family service revealed a teenage boy preparing an electric drum set. We decided to celebrate God’s generosity outside of the community that day.
It poured rain and blew hard Easter eve as we set alarms for the first time since rising early for crossing the Gulf Stream. It was warm, cloudy, dark, wet and still when we putted ashore, climbed the ladder on the dock and walked the short block-and-a-half from the government pier to the church and entered as the organ began playing “Christ Our Lord Has Risen Today.”
A slender, elderly man wearing the only tie in the sanctuary presided with an opening prayer, followed by Hymns and a beautiful reading by an Englishman of the King James’s version of John’s telling of Mary Magdalene visiting the tomb. Before the offering the congregation was asked to introduce ourselves and perhaps two thirds of the 25 or so attending were visitors. We were invited for refreshments served on the patio that lies directly behind the altar on the East side of the building overlooking the Atlantic.
The sermon was the good news of the resurrection and its promise of eternal life – a traditional, literal, and deeply felt message – from the preacher, Vernon, whom we later learned was a layman and whose wife was seriously ill and had taken a turn for the worse on Saturday.
We sang the closing hymn, but the organist seemed to keep missing several phrases. It became clear why Vernon kept going over to the organ before each hymn and leaning over it. We thought he was talking to the organist. Not so, he was turning on and off the digital recording that played the traditional hymns so beautifully, except missed a byte or two during the last.
He had said earlier, that St. James services always offer surprises, but when its quirks become frustrating, he is calmed by a fellow parishioner who says: “but we function.” They certainly do in warmth and hospitality. We gathered after the service on their patio, on the top of the dune, on the east side of the church and watched dawn break and broke our fast with cakes, brownies, muffins, coffee and deviled eggs, the likes of which I haven’t had since a church picnic in New Jersey thirty years ago.
M. and I returned to St. James the next Sunday to attend its 11:00 o’clock service and there witnessed the struggle we all face to understand and reach across our diversity. The layman, Vernon, who presided at Easter Sunrise greeted us and the rest of the congregation of all white, mostly elderly, winter and full time residents of the Cay well-dressed in summer casual, who nodded, smiled and said good morning when eyes met. A choir of eight voices that for all appearances you would think would be a bit croaky, was surprisingly good. The organist, a dedicated volunteer commuted each Sunday from nearby Man-O-War Cay, played her last service as she, like several others, would soon be returning to Canada or the United States.
I looked around for a clergyman and wondered if Vernon would again preside, when from the nave, a large black man in a black suit and shirt and white clerical collar processed. We had heard that St. James had recently installed a new pastor.
A disconnect was evident from the outset. His English was strongly accented by his native language, Haitian Creole. His accent combined with hearing loss among most of us made much of what he said hard to follow. He announced the first hymn, the choir director gently noted the choir would sing first. He announced the Psalm, but it was unclear what the order of response should be. Two verses of struggle and he suggested that one side should read one verse, the other side the other, but it never quite worked, and his Psalter seemed to be a different version than the Psalter in the Methodist Hymnal. There was some confusion about who would be reading what lesson. He seemed to be knocked off his game. His warm open face invited response and the congregation gave very little.
He warmed in his sermon, was easier to understand and allowed us all the doubt of Thomas and the hope of “I believe, help my unbelief.” A good Easter message, the closing hymn, benediction, and then the comment from a parishioner to us on the way out that some of the “older” people were having difficulty understanding him.
Vernon, the lay leader at St. James, runs Vernon’s Grocery and we got to chatting with him a week later. The new pastor serves three congregations, two of them on Great Abaco and predominately black. He is on trial until the fall and parishioners are struggling most of all with the language. He is a warm and good man, but, Vernon said, his greatest challenge will be with the black churches. “Black Bahamians don’t think Haitians are very smart.”
What hope is there for us to reach across cultures, conventions and biases that close us to one another? Is not that what Easter is? St. James’s story will need to unfold.
Susan and Dennis left last Sunday. It was a great week. We anchored one night off of Lynyard Cay, south of here a few miles. There was too much surge at the reef nearby to snorkel. Another day we did a day sail from Hope Town to Great Guana Cay, anchored for lunch and returned, bracketing high tide by two and a half hours on either side. The entrance to Hope Town Harbor has five feet at normal low, and we think we now have a five hour window to get in and out.
Our week was also filled with story telling and marathon games of Bananagrams and Shanghai Rummy and enjoying Dennis’s wit, for example, an exchange as he was rummaging through his duffle bag on the pilot berth:
Susan: “What are you looking for?
Dennis: “If I told you every time I was looking for something, I’d be talking non stop!”
Ed and Nancy on Troubadour came into Hopetown and joined us for dinner at the Abaco Inn to celebrate our 44th anniversary on March 29th. The Inn sends a van to Hope Town to drive guests to its perch on a dune on the southern end of the Elbow Cay Island where big surf comes into the beach. It is a spectacular view and sound to accompany dinner with these good new friends.
April 6, 2008
Last Wednesday, Ed and Nancy crewed with us on Journey as she entered her first race. The Hope Town Sailing Club holds cruisers races, invites all, handicaps the boats for their sluggishness and all the stuff they carry and has a party after the race. We headed out, monitored the assigned VHF channel, the wind increased and stayed steady at about 20 Knots, the cut off point for racing. It was cancelled, so we sailed a couple of hours north, dropped the hook, had lunch and returned, tacking a good deal, and realized how incredibly much work racing would be for folks of our ilk. Ed is a good sailor and continued Charlie P’s lessons begun last summer in Nova Scotia on sail trim.
Linda and Don, fellow boaters, are spending their seventh winter in Hope Town and Don invited me to a weekly writer’s workshop held at the sailing club that I sat in on last Thursday. Perhaps 20 people were there, mostly women, and none of us kids. I was the only newcomer, and the convener, Mary, had people introduce themselves: professional writers, retired lawyer, cruisers, an artist, people who make Hope Town their winter quarters, people who have time to work at writing.
We sat in a circle, shuttered windows opened around us to let the soft tropical air into the room, and those who wished offered their work to invite criticism, all of it gentle and positive. The works weren’t completed assignments, they were the personal, often heart felt efforts to capture something memorable, important, whether travelogue, poem, memoir, essay. It was like a fellowship on steroids. Good souls reading a memoir of sailing adventure long ago with a now deceased spouse, a passionate critique of a child’s home schooling curriculum, and an extraordinary essay of a recollection of a friendship of two elderly women from diverse cultures and upbringings that began on bedpans when they were roommates in a rehab hospital. I hope to go back.
Today, we are once again laced into a berth at Mangoes Marina in Marsh Harbor getting our batteries charged, water tanks filled, clothes washed, larder loaded and awaiting the arrival this afternoon of John and Margaret who will spend four days with us. We’ll sail back to Hope Town this afternoon to be on the cooler mooring and in the beauty of that harbor for sunset and the lighting of the light.
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