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.