Sailing to Timonium

That is no country for old men…

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

                        “Sailing to Byzantium” – W.B.Yeats
               

Well, it turns out that Martha’s Vineyard is a pretty nice place when you are properly medicated. Who knew? This is the last day of the Regatta, and we watch the parade of boats from our perch in the cockpit of Tortue. This afternoon, we are planning to do a relatively short sail to Onset Bay, just at the opening of the Cape Cod Canal, and meet up with Rick’s friend Tim who is anchored there. Rick says there isn’t enough time for us to visit Nantucket, and since I know very little about the place other than what I’ve heard in limericks, that’s fine with me.

Rick spends some time studying the tidal charts, and then we stage yet another brief concert of violin/viola duos. We have been pretty regular with our musical sessions and we both can see a definite improvement, especially since we’ve started playing during the morning hours. Rick has noticed that he plays better before he’s had his evening scotch  – surprise, surprise – and I’m pretty much a morning person anyway so moving our duet playing to the a.m. suits both of us very well. We confine our playing to inside the boat. Even though the companionway is open to let in some air, the sound is somewhat contained and we can fool ourselves into thinking that none of the other boats can hear us.

After a swim and a shower, we motor out past the returning fleet of the Regatta and head towards Woods Hole, a narrow cut through the long finger of the Elizabeth Islands. The wind is crazy strong today; in Rick’s vernacular, “It’s blowin’ like snot!” We forgo the mainsail entirely and set only a partially furled jib. Even close-hauled (sailors’ lingo for pointing very close into the wind) we are still doing a good seven knots (though Rick reminds me that two of those knots are probably from the current). Tortue heels way over and the tension on the rig is palpable throughout the boat. I’m not at all sick (I’m patched up today) but I find these sailing conditions to be very frightening. I had begun to think of the water as my home with its familiar rise and fall, but this is a very angry sea.  It is engrossed in its own power, massively indifferent to our presence. The waves are enormous and we are being tossed around like flotsam and jetsam. I feel completely insignificant.

Rick actually loves this kind of sailing. He stands in the cockpit, constantly balancing himself as the boat rocks and sways, sporting a toothy grin on that bearded face. I, on the other hand, have wedged myself into a corner and I am not moving!

Once through Woods Hole we're flying up Buzzard’s Bay, basically sailing into the armpit of Cape Cod. The wind is still just as strong here, but we can sail at a slightly different angle and take slightly less of a beating from the waves.  Rick points out a particular house he likes on the shore and I want to get a picture of it, but that would mean going down below to get the camera and I meant what I said – I’m not moving. I envy Rick for his nimble-footed freedom on the boat. I know it’s a psychological problem I have with moving about a fun-house boat at all the wrong angles, but I just can’t force myself to do it. Rick leaves the tiller in the care of his self-steering wind vane and pops down below to get the camera.

Here's the scene inside the cabin; notice the angle on the gimbled lantern and the hanging towel on the port (left) side:

Does this remind anyone of that Fred Astaire movie where he dances on the ceiling?

After an hour or so, I decide that this trip would go a whole lot faster if I could sleep through some of it, so I brave my way below to the forward cabin to take a nap. With each roll and knock of the boat, I find myself more and more paranoid that Rick will fall off and I won’t even know that I’ve lost him. Rick is trying to take some video of the boat under way, and I keep calling up to him to make sure he’s still there.


"Please don't fall off the boat!"

At long last, we motor in to Onset and find Tim on his big beautiful Tartan 37. Tim is a long time friend of Rick’s and a fellow member of the philosophy department at Loyola University in Baltimore. During the school year, Rick and Tim have regular boys’ nights out playing pool at the Dead End Saloon where they are well known to the regular clientele as “the Professors”.  Note the bad-boy beard – apparently de rigueur for a philosopher-turned-sailor.

We raft up our boats and then Rick and I go for a quick swim to cool off. We have a regular swimming routine where we swim laps around the boat, just to make sure we get some kind of exercise. I’m not sure that twice around is really that much of a benefit, but it feels good anyway.

After showers and a change of clothes, we board Tim’s boat for some drinks and conversation. We have quite a lively talk about Nietzsche and Wagner – what else would two philosophers and a musician talk about? -  and then climb into Rick’s dinghy for the trip into Wareham for dinner. The dinghy has lost some of its air over the last few weeks, and with all three of us weighting it down the trip is a mighty soggy one, and we make it ashore boasting wet behinds along with our appetites.

We take a short walk over to Mark Anthony’s – a funky little place with a great deal of local color. This is a diner extraordinaire with a huge menu of burgers, club sandwiches, and Italian specialties, but the real reason to go there is for the pizza and the steamed clams. The place is haphazardly decorated with Red Socks memorabilia, pizza boxes and pictures of Elvis, and the sound of Rat Pack crooners coming from the juke box competes with the yells from within the kitchen. We order two buckets of steamed clams and start right in while we wait for our pizza. The kitchen staff announce pizza orders with the phrase, “You’re all set!” and the repetition of the phrase provides a background for all conversation. We end up waiting a long time for our pizza because in the ever-present confusion our box was mistakenly picked up by someone else. A fresh pizza is made for us, and we finally get the satisfaction of hearing, “Tim, you’re all set!”

After dodging the family of skunks that lives in the little park overlooking Onset Harbor, we dinghy back to our boats in the dark.  It’s been great to see Tim – it’s too bad we need to leave so soon, but our deadline is looming large and we need to catch the morning tide through the canal for Provincetown.