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.
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