Down ' the Ocean, Hon!

It’s Saturday morning and we’re headed out to sea. Surprisingly, the problems with sea-sickness that I have been plagued with for years seem to have abated, at least thus far into our trip. The explanation for this can only be guessed at, but I think that it is a combination of having gotten somewhat used to the motion of a boat on last year’s voyage, along with some of the virtues of this particular boat. Valkyrie definitely rides more solidly than the Alberg, and she doesn’t heel over nearly as far. In sailors’ lingo, she’s not so “tender”. The visibility from the cockpit is also much better on the new boat; you can get a panoramic view of the horizon just looking forward through the dodger. Keeping your eye on the horizon is one of the first things you should try when starting to feel queasy on a boat.

I have actually been sailing clean – no patch, no meds, not even alcohol most days - all the way to Cape May. Quite an accomplishment for someone who used to feel sick just looking at a puddle. But now a new dilemma has arisen. We are about to enter ocean waters, and unlike the more calm Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, the ocean has a different motion, a general swell that last year I found to be quite sickening even with all kinds of medication. The simple thing would of course be to throw on a patch as a prophylactic – I could always take it off if I don’t think I need it – but I’m a bit wary of those scopolamine patches. I had a very scary episode on the boat last year which the doctor diagnosed over the phone as dehydration. It is of course possible that the doctor was right, but I had two other episodes in the week following when I KNOW I was drinking enough water. I had been using the patch constantly for about four weeks at that point.  I did some research online after I came home, and although it is rare, some people have dizziness and balance problems after using the patch. I would like to avoid relying on them if I can get away with it. I decide to put my faith in Valkyrie, and keep some dissolve-on-your-tongue anti-nausea pills at the ready just in case.

Once finally out on the ocean, the water is not choppy at all and the motion of the waves feels remarkably familiar to me. Not a hint of queasiness - maybe I’ve finally developed some sea-legs and my sea-sickness will be a thing of the past!

We head up the coast and pass Atlantic City in the haze of the day. Rick tries to get some shade by opening up the little helmsman awnings that we inherited with the boat. They look like penguins or ninja warriors when they are folded up, but when they are open they have wings that can be adjusted according to the angle of the sun. They’re pretty pathetic, but obviously better than nothing – we’ve been calling them the “bats”.

We see a number of dolphins and even come upon a brown pelican. Rick has never seen one this far north.

As we pull in to Barnegat Light the water is boiling and rolling. I remember this from last year – this is real ride-‘im-cowboy stuff. The boat feels like it is bouncing around, and with one particularly bad bounce the dishes from the galley cupboard come crashing out onto the floor and the wooden companionway panels fall into the cabin, smashing the dishes to smithereens. Who says Corelleware is unbreakable? There are shattered slivers of dishes EVERYWHERE. Rick goes below to clean up the mess before anyone can get cut, leaving me to steer the boat through this roller-coaster ride.

When we reach the anchorage we have just enough time to hurriedly set our anchor before a thunderstorm hits. You can hear people yelling to each other on the other boats near us, as several of them are already dragging anchor and are struggling to reset in the heavy wind. We get quite a light show with cloud-to-cloud lightning as well as the more familiar cloud-to-land variety, but there is surprisingly little rain accompanying this violent electrical storm. We get a beautiful sunset when all is over - the whole sky turns pink. It's like God has arrived.

We decide to spend Sunday lazing around in Barnegat and have a very enjoyable day off. I get out my sewing machine and put together a wrap skirt which I model for dinner.

We get up early on Monday to catch the current out and the ride is just as topsy-turvy as on the way in, but this time we’ve buttoned everything up properly and no more casualties occur. Once out on the ocean the water does not calm down as we had expected – the wind is strong but not in the direction that we need so we will have to use the engine, possibly the whole way to Sandy Hook. The boat is nosing straight into the giant waves and after the bow raises up into the sky it comes crashing down with a splash, over and over and over again. The storm scene in Scheherazade is pretty accurate after all. We could turn back and try again tomorrow, but amazingly, my stomach and I are doing fine and we decide to forge ahead. After about an hour with no let up, I start thinking about a conversation I had with Rick the other night about falling off the boat. He says that even a strong swimmer, well in sight of land, would probably not make the four or so miles even in only a slight chop, and that if you fell off the boat and you had been sailing alone you would be nothing but shark bait. Would I be able to save Rick if I was still on the boat? What if I fell in myself?

That’s when I start to feel sick. Really sick. I try the anti-nausea pills – two of them – but the anticipated relief is just not happening. The smell of the diesel engine along with the now sickening smell of sunscreen is more than I can handle any more. Rick has a bucket handy and turns us around – back to Barnegat.

So much for my new-found seaworthiness. We spend the rest of the day resting and recuperating; taking pictures of the lighthouse and entertaining ourselves by people watching. A couple with a very eager dog motors by in their dinghy.

 A fellow in a red kayak has been fishing here for two days. We call him “Herkimer” and try to guess his age, made ambiguous by his old man’s hat and his young man’s posture.

I decide it’s time for some Becky comfort food and make popcorn for the cocktail hour.

Unexpectedly, another maddening moment in our series of glitches. Rick tries to start the engine to give the refrigeration unit a boost but it won’t start. Batteries are dead. Did we use up all of the battery power charging up our computers, Iphones, and various electronic equipment all day? The electrical equivalent of the water problem? Or is the engine failing to charge the batteries - do we have a dead alternator?  Anticipating this kind of problem, Rick had bought a Hot Shot automobile charger so we can jump the engine, but you only get one shot with those things and if it doesn’t work then where will we be? As anxious as we are to hear the engine fire up, we decide to wait until morning when we know we will have to run the engine for a long time. We spend the evening using flashlights and being reminded of what it was like on the old boat.

Thankfully, the engine starts in the morning and we leave Barnegat, hopefully for good this time. Once through the incredible chop of the channel, the sea is rmarkably calm today and I should have no problem with sea-sickness. 

We have to motor for a number of hours and it gets pretty hot with no wind. Rick takes a couple of bucket showers to cool off. Remember Wilson? Last year we lost Rick’s beloved bucket overboard and he mourned the loss for the rest of the summer. He managed to find an exact replica before we left this year and he of course goes by the name of Wilson, like his predecessor. Rick calls these bucket showers, “taking a Wilson”. Wilson lives at the bow, permanently at the ready for shower duty.

The wind comes up in the afternoon and we can finally raise the sails and turn the engine off. Valkyrie is really flying at just under six knots. As we pull in to Sandy Hook, I sit up front with my new yellow parasol made with Solumbra fabric. I’m having a great time up there while Rick tacks back and forth, but on one of those tacks I open up my parasol right into the wind and it is immediately demolished!

"Waaah... I dropped my frankfurter!"

Sandy Hook is a beautiful little anchorage. After we get the boat squared away, we spy a walkway/bike trail on the shore and take the dinghy in to do some exploring. There's a For Sale sign on one of the more modest cottages there and we fantasize about buying it. You would never know that we are only a thirty minute ferry ride to downtown Manhattan.

Today was a wonderful day sans sea-sickness and I am feeling much more confident that the episode of yesterday was a matter of just pushing the envelope a little too far. Plus, I might try to avoid thinking about dooms-day scenarios when we're out in some serious waves. 

 Tomorrow, Manhattan.