What the Hatch Happened?

How wonderful to be finally be cut loose from land. Bills are paid, house has been relinquished to the house sitter, income producing jobs are on hiatus until September. One hour away from Baltimore we are in another world, free of responsibility.

We spend our first night of freedom in Rock Creek, a sweet little anchorage that is filled with boats and lined with cottages. Last year we had a water crisis here and it looked as though we were going to have to retreat back home for repairs; it seems like a completely different place to me now. We are just far enough away from the Baltimore harbor for the water quality in the bay to clean up, and we take our first swim of the trip. Then Rick sets to work scraping the barnacles and crud off the bottom of the dinghy – a quarter of an inch thick after only three weeks in the Baltimore harbor water!

The next morning we head out for our first real travel day, up the Chesapeake. We see all the familiar sights – Betterton, Crystal Beach, Still Pond - they seem like old friends by now. We start out motoring but later in the day the wind seems to be coming up, so we unfurl the headsail. Just as Rick raises the mainsail we hit a little wind pocket and the boom does an unplanned jibe – Rick had forgotten to close the main hatch and it gets caught on the boom vang, ripping the hatch right out of it’s frame! The same exact thing happened last year in almost precisely the same place!

Last year's hatch calamity

By now, I’ve become rather experienced when it comes to these mishaps. I’ve been able to see, over and over again, how Rick reacts to an unthinkable disaster, and he usually passes through a pretty predictable set of emotional states.

He starts out with exclamations like, “Oh #$%&*!” and,  “HOW could I be so STUPID!” or, “WHAT was I THINKING?!!!!”

Then he calms down and thinks about the problem. Usually at this stage he’s decided that all is lost, and he says quite seriously things like, “That’s it, the summer’s over.”  “We need to call in the EPA.” Or my favorite, “We’re fucked.” I’ve learned not to get too involved at this stage because he pretty quickly starts to see his way out of the problem. Within a relatively short time he has talked himself into believing that he not only can solve this puzzle, but the solution is even better than the original set-up, whatever that was. Yes, it’s a darned good thing that horrible thing happened – aren’t we lucky?

This time, the hatch is pretty mangled - far worse than last year. Rick won’t let me take any pictures because he’s still in that first phase of anger at himself, and he doesn’t want me telling anyone about it either. By the late afternoon, he has already bent the frame back into a recognizable square. Predictably, he has decided that the hatch wasn’t seated in there properly before, and this gives him the opportunity to really do the job right!

It is going to be a more difficult repair than last year because the frame was twisted out of shape in a few different ways. We need a vise to wrench it back straight, and Rick thinks he can use one at the West Marine store in Cape May. We’ll just have to rig up a hatch cover until we can get there in a couple of days.

In the meantime, no reason to abandon the cocktail hour. Down the hatch!