Barnegat Beach

After a rainy Fourth of July in Atlantic City, we head up toward Barnegat Light where friends are waiting. Rick’s college buddy Jack and his wife Harriet are vacationing in Barnegat and have invited us for dinner at their summer rental house. Rick has seen Jack a number of times in the past few years, two years ago on an epic bike trip they took in Utah, in celebration (consolation) of them both turning 60. This spring they met for their 40th Yale reunion (yes, another geezer gathering), but it’s been a while since the four of us have gotten together. I am greatly looking forward to spending some time with them.

We’ve anchored the boat in Barnegat harbor several times, but have never visited the town. The shoreline here is built up with barriers, and the guide books are not helpful in pointing us toward a place to dinghy in. Luckily for us, a local couple notice that we are from Baltimore as they are dinghying past, and stop to say hello. They show us where a public dinghy dock is hidden behind some green rushes and marshland, and also tell us about the great cocktail hour at the only bar in town, right near the landing. Just think of what we’ve been missing!

Jack’s sister Connie is visiting as well, so there are five of us to enjoy drinks on their deck overlooking the bay, and then Harriet's herb-roasted chicken dinner. They sure make vacationing at a beach house seem inviting – they get the great waterfront views, but they also have hot showers and their house doesn’t move. We have such a good time with them that when they invite us to stay another day we jump at the chance.

Rick, Jack and Connie contemplating all the world's problems

The ocean beach is just a short stroll across the street from Jack and Harriet’s, and we all spend a gorgeous sunny afternoon there. I tend to hide under sunscreen and umbrellas, but I do love the beach, and the water is warm. Back at the house, Jack makes killer mojitos, and later we are treated to a grilled swordfish dinner and another glorious sunset. They’d better be careful - with treatment like this they’ll never get rid of us!

Ricky to the Rescue!

So, nothing but fun times on the S.S. Valkyrie. We leave at 5:00am to go through the Chesapeake Canal, making a terrific passage down the Delaware Bay. In case you’re wondering, Rick gets up, makes coffee, hauls anchor and motors us through while I snooze away in the V-berth. He is so considerate!

It is rare to have enough wind in the right direction to do anything other than motor down the Delaware, and it’s usually hot and sticky besides. This time however, we have lots of wind from behind, and have both sails up. When I (finally) arrive on deck, I seem to have acclimated to the motion and thankfully have not a trace of seasickness. We spend an extremely pleasant eight hours enjoying the shade of the bimini and the smooth sailing of the boat. The ugly nuclear plant is still there, ruling over the scene for miles in every direction, but the day is so beautiful we can almost ignore it.

Having reached the Cape May Canal, we make preparations to roll away the headsail, a process not unlike rolling up a window shade. But somehow, to our horror, the furling line appears to have gotten caught inside the roller mechanism. The wind has been strong all day, and with the frequent flapping of the sail, the line jammed in between some of the metal parts. We can’t get the sail put away. Rick tries to act cool about it, but if you can’t put your sail away on a windy day, it’s kind of like having no brakes on your truck going down a steep hill. I suppose you could just keep sailing around in circles for days or weeks waiting for the wind to go silent, but I wouldn’t want to have to do that.

Jib Roller and Furling Line

Leaving me at the helm, Rick goes forward with his bag of tools. I’m supposed to be keeping the boat pointed directly into the wind, but between the heavy chop of the water and the roaring wind, I temporarily lose control. The boat swings around, and I have to really rev up the engine to get it back. As luck would have it, my momentary ineptness at the helm snaps the sail in the wind and jerks the furling line free. Yeah, I planned it that way. Disaster averted, we put away the sails and motor through the canal.

Having had very little sleep and at the end of a long day, Rick is giddy to have made it to Cape May. We motor over towards the Coast Guard station where we search around for a good anchoring spot among a number of other boats. Rick sets the anchor down, but I notice on the chart plotter that our current spot is too shallow to accommodate the keel at low tide. With our new neighbors all watching, we up anchor again, but forget to look out behind us. The dinghy line gets caught in the propeller and gets cut, prompting the fellow in a nearby boat to yell, “Hey, you lost your dinghy!” We try to retrieve it, but the dinghy quickly drifts towards shore where our sailboat would surely run aground.

A well intended onlooker tells us not to worry, he’ll get it with his dinghy, so we re-anchor Valkyrie in some deeper water. By then, we realize that our new friend can’t get his outboard to start.  The escaped dink has gotten marooned on the shore and we’re on our own.

Rick knows this means a dip in the cold Cape May water. After a remarkably small amount of grumbling, he digs out the oars. I’m actually really impressed by this move; I would have just swum over there, gotten in the dinghy, and then realized that we keep both the dinghy motor and the oars on Valkyrie when under sail. Doh! Luckily he’s smarter than me. He ties the oars to a life vest that can act as a float, loops a piece of connecting line over his shoulder, and dives in.

Finally reaching the dinghy, he is able to pull himself onboard, set the oars in their blocks, and row back to our sailboat. Being Rick, he can’t resist stopping to chat with one of our onlookers on the way.

After a well-deserved day off in Cape May, we decide to push on up the coast. A particularly sweet sail under the spinnaker delivers us the thirty-five miles to Atlantic City and we anchor in the harbor there. 

Just settling in for some celebratory drinks and a bowl of popcorn, we notice a young couple on a paddleboat a fair distance away, struggling with the ferocious current in the middle of the channel. They’re obviously in trouble. We consider helping them, but another, older couple are motoring back to their boat in their dinghy and they overtake the paddleboat. We relax and sip our drinks, discussing the Norwegian flag that is flying from their boat.

Pretty soon it is clear that the Norwegian couple themselves are in trouble. Both they and the paddleboat seem to be helplessly drifting down the fairway. Rick springs into action – this is just his cup of tea! He throws a couple of extra lines, the gas tank and the oars into the dinghy. I help him load the outboard on the back, and off he goes.

When he reaches them, the Norwegian couple is clearly out of their depth and are relieved to hand over the rescue operation to Rick. While they head over to their boat, a handsome black fellow named Van with his two-year old son tucked neatly in his lap whisk over on their jet ski. “I’ve got this!” Van says commandingly, and Rick readily agrees. His wimpy dinghy can’t compete with a jet-ski. Rick helps them tie the paddleboat to the jet-ski, and Van turns the key to restart his engine. Nothing happens. “The battery is dead!” he exclaims. Meanwhile, they are all continuing to drift steadily toward the bridge. Now there is no alternative but for Rick to try and tow everyone. It’s starting to rain and the cute little two year old is shivering, so Rick passes his pullover to the tyke and he and Rick are now fast friends.

Rick ties the two rafted up boats to his dinghy and nails the throttle of his tiny motor.  After hanging in place for a bit, the unlikely caravan miraculously begins to inch (sloooooowly) up the channel against the current.

Just to make the situation even more unlikely, Rick and his entourage encounter yet another dead jet-ski, this one out of gas. Superman that he is, even Rick can’t possibly tow all three boats! It would be like him to try, but instead he offers this latest fellow his gas can. The man is very grateful; he empties Rick’s can into his gas tank and races off to shore to refill that can while Rick and the gang wait for his return. Once the full can is replaced, they continue at their snail’s pace to the dock.

 

The families of Rick’s cargo have been anxiously waiting and worrying on shore. Rick is the hero of the day, and is offered food, beer, the couple’s first born child (just kidding), and many, many thanks. What a guy!

Chili and Chance

Rick and I are enjoying the upper regions of the Chesapeake. Eventually, we will go through the Chesapeake Canal and make that (often) dreary slog down the Delaware Bay. But the best weather for that appears to be still a few days away, and in the meantime, we are visiting some choice spots en route. Rick has long talked of a favorite anchorage in Queenstown Creek off the Chester River, a place I’ve never been to, so that is our destination for tonight.

Galley cooking can be cramped, uncomfortable and even possibly dangerous in a moving boat, so we typically don’t cook the evening meal until we have stopped for the night. Quickly cooked meals like steak or pasta with sauce are staples on Valkyrie. In the past, I have found myself hungering for comfort food that cooks for a long time, such as stews, braised pot roasts, or homemade soups and the like. This kind of cooking is just not practical on a sailboat with limited propane. We also would have to babysit the cooking pot since you can not leave a lit stove unattended. I’ve tried using a pressure cooker, but the results were less than wonderful.

Thermos Nissan Thermal Cooker

Through numerous internet searches these past two years, I have come up with a solution – thermos cooking! Yes, you can cook food by trapping its own heat in a simple thermos. For a big chuck roast though, you need something bigger, so I bought a thermal cooker, made of course, by Thermos. It is essentially a pot with a lid that you can use on your stove to heat your food, bring it to a boil for five minutes, then put the whole thing inside a vacuum insulated shell and let it sit for four to eight hours. When you open it up, you have a fully cooked meal waiting for you, piping hot. Kinda like a Crock Pot, but without the electricity. Perfect for the boat!

I make up a pot full of chili in the thermal cooker, and we head over to the Chester. Rick is so right; the anchorage here at Queenstown is lovely. We are surrounded by a near perfect horseshoe of natural shoreline, unspoiled by even a single cottage.  We’re also the only boat in here, making it feel like our own private Eden.

Lounging in our (now shady!) cockpit after a swim, we notice another boat coming in to anchor about three hundred yards away from us. “That reminds me of John Merrill’s boat,” Rick comments. John is a recently retired violinist from my section at the BSO, who has long been a passionate sailing enthusiast. He belonged to Get-Away Sailing where he could sign out boats, until last year when he sought Rick’s advice in the purchase of a boat of his own. Rick gets out his binoculars. “By golly, I think that IS John Merrill!” “No it’s not,” I say, rolling my eyes, “don’t be ridiculous.”

But immediately I am hit with a pang of guilt. Earlier in the spring we had promised John and his wife Julia a raft-up with our boats. This invitation had been completely forgotten in our boat mania.  Until now. “Let’s call them up and see if they can meet us somewhere in the Chesapeake before we go through the canal.” Unfortunately, I can’t find John or Julia’s phone number, but I have John’s email address and shoot him off an invite. Pretty soon, I hear back from him.

“Rebecca,” he starts off. “Too bad. There’s no chance we can meet up. I am currently anchored for the night out at Queenstown off the Chester River, all by myself.”

!!!!!

There are only two boats in this anchorage at Queenstown, and one of them is us – that other boat MUST be John’s!

"Is this your boat?"

I take a grainy picture of the boat in question with my iphone, and send it to him. “Does this boat look familiar? Come over for dinner!” We wait awhile, but John does not answer. He’s no doubt not reading his email right now. Not willing to wait any longer, Rick and I dive in the water and swim over to him. “Surprise!”

After a good laugh, John invites us aboard. He’s not expecting company, and in fact we have interrupted the cooking of his own dinner. Rick and I are wet and dripping from the swim, so we only stay a few minutes. But before we go, we invite John over for breakfast in the morning, and this time, he accepts.

Our chili dinner is wonderful, just as envisioned. There’s a problem though – I’ve made enough to feed an army! Even if John had joined us we would still be eating chili for a week to get rid of it. The thermal cooker only works if the container is almost full. It’s the heat in the liquid that does the cooking, and any air in the container reduces the heat retention. I may need to rethink this latest innovation…

In the morning, Rick motors our dinghy over to pick up John, and delivers him to our boat for breakfast in the cockpit. We have a wonderful time catching up on news about boats, family and politics. The menu? Eggs with – what else – chili!

The Great Escape

It’s so hard to actually leave. Getting away from the dock seems like escaping the earth's gravity.

We loaded up the boat with provisions, left the house with the house-sitters (two of Rick's students), but then spent two more days living and working on the boat while sitting in the slip. Our thought was that we could clean up the inside of the boat in about an hour, put away all of our gear and groceries, and then take off. Mais non! Pretty quickly we discovered that our water tanks were leaking, the inverter (that allows “normal” household electronics to run on 12-volt boat batteries) had stopped working, and in our rush to get out of the house we had forgotten some key items, like dish towels and a sleeping bag (mine). Too embarrassed to make the drive all the way home, I made two separate trips to the local Walmart for a cheap sleeping bag, batteries, flashlights, a bucket, various other things, and still forgot the dishtowels. Oh well.

Rick called the inverter manufacturer who put him on hold forever, and then he figured it out by himself. The water tank problem was more pesky though, and made worse by the knowledge that it was self-inflicted. Rick had installed two ports into them for easier cleaning. The ports leak. Which means the water pressure pump gets very confused. Big job to find ports the same size that can withstand the pressure. Oh well.

We decide that if we wait for perfection, we’ll never leave, so rather than spend yet another day in the slip we take off under a beautiful sunny sky with a nice breeze. Rick comments that we have the bay all to ourselves – there are just no other boats out here. Hmmm… I wonder if they know something that we don’t. Rick checks the weather on his radio, and sure enough, there is a big storm coming through. Oh boy.

I don’t know if it is Rick insisting that we put on life vests and warning me with all kinds of instructions, or if it is simply my unfamiliarity with the motion on the boat after two years, but my tummy is now churning ominously. Pretty quickly I descend into sea-sickness hell, and am forced to take a Zofran and retreat into the forward cabin with my eyes closed. First day out. Oh no.

The tempest turns out to be more of the teapot variety, or at least the worst part of the storm passes us to the South, and Rick has no trouble steering us through it. I wake up with the sound of Rick putting the anchor down in Swan Creek. The boat is no longer bouncing up and down, and my mal de mer has completely dissipated along with the storm. We reward ourselves with steaks on the grill, and enjoy the charm of the unspoiled shoreline, decorated by the remnants of the storm - a beautiful rainbow. Oh yeah.