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.

May Day

Even though we’re a bit behind schedule in our goal to get to the northern waters, we decide to take some time off from traveling and spend  a couple of days here in Cape May. The long, grueling voyage yesterday has tired both of us out, and the various maladies that the boat has come down with, along with their resulting stress, has taken its toll. We have left our USB cord for the camera at home, making it impossible to get the pictures we’ve taken onto the computer. Very attentive readers will remember, we did exactly the same thing last year and had to go back to Baltimore to get it. By the time we discovered our mistake this year it was to late, so now we need to go into town here and buy a new one. Besides that, Rick has ordered a piece of equipment from a marine store and is having it delivered here on Friday afternoon, so we may as well relax until then.

Near the end of the trip yesterday the water again ran hot, sputtered and then stopped. We had been running the engine quite a bit, so we assumed that we had somehow overheated the water heater again. When we pulled in to the Utsch’s  Marina last night for fuel and ice, Rick thought he would top off the water tanks as well. It took FOREVER to fill those tanks – both of them were completely empty! How embarrassing; we had run through ninety gallons in two days without even realizing it. No wonder the water ran hot – the cold water had all been spent, and when the hot water ran out too, the faucets sputtered and then ran dry. Rick had unknowingly switched the tanks yesterday and that’s why we suddenly had water again.

The Alberg had two water tanks, totaling twenty-five gallons, and were accessed through foot pumps. We were always very careful not to waste water, even using outside salt water for anything we could get away with. I think we were so thrilled to have hot and cold running water on this boat that we completely lost our heads and luxuriated in showers and dish water. It’s funny, but it really didn’t seem like we were using much water at all. This little episode has me thinking about water conservation in general. Rick tells me that our family uses about one hundred and twenty gallons a day at home. Now granted, that is for three of us and includes laundry, flush toilets and watering the lawn. But still…

We spend a leisurely morning on the boat and then head in to the marina to rent bikes and find a Radio Shack. We have a harrowing ride through traffic to a not so scenic part of Cape May with road construction and strip malls. The temperatures today are in the one hundred plus range and I feel a bit nauseous when we arrive at the store, but thankfully they have the camera cord we’re looking for so it feels worth it.  It’s really too hot to do much of anything today, so we head back to the boat for a swim and a nap.

Late in the day we watch as a sailing school race is going on. Rick tells me a story about his early sailing career in turnabouts, similar to these. He and his friend Peter Wright were representing the Yale sailing team at a race in New London, CT., on a bitter cold and very windy November day.  Rick had had very little sailing experience at this point, so how he weaseled his way onto the team I have no idea. He and Peter managed to capsize right before the starting gun went off, and they had to be rescued! Needless to say, they didn’t win. I really hope he has learned a bit more about sailing since then.

Friday arrives and with it a cooler temperature. We decide to spend the day at the beach, but first have lunch at The Lucky Bones, just across the street from the marina. The Tour de France is being broadcast on the TV in the bar where we are seated, and it inspires me for our bike ride to the beach. Somehow, I imagine that I look like one of those competitors on my bike, all sleek and sporty. Forget the fact that we’re riding clunky old velocipedes with pedal brakes, and that I’m wearing swimming clothes and flip-flops, carrying a backpack. Lance Armstrong, eat your heart out!

The beach is fantastic. We rent a couple of chairs and an umbrella and settle in for the afternoon. During one of our swims we spy a family of dolphins just off one of the breakwaters, but we seem to be the only ones who notice. I wonder if dolphins are so commonplace around here that they have become sort of like pigeons are viewed in the city. Or maybe people are generally too interested in their own little sphere to look up and notice what’s around them. I know that I certainly have that tendency…

When the day winds down the chair and umbrella people take back their equipment, so we bike back into town for dinner at an Asian restaurant Rick found the last time he was here. They don’t have a liquor license but you can bring your own, and we buy a chilled bottle of champagne from next door to enjoy with our sushi. Peking Duck is also on the menu, and I’ve never had it before so Rick insists on ordering it, along with an assortment of steamed dumplings. It’s kind of a mixture of food nationalities, but we don’t care. Delicious!

After a rather tipsy bike ride back to the marina in the dark, we take the dinghy out to the boat and head for bed. I think we’re both really glad for the extra time here to relax and recuperate. Batteries recharged, we will head out on the ocean tomorrow for Barnegat Light.

Down the Delaware

Well, despite the disastrous encounter between the boom vang and the cabin hatch last night, the boat is very comfortable to live on and we enjoy a relaxing morning anchored in the Sassafras
River. Rick does Loyola philosophy department work at the nav-station/desk while I pull out my sewing machine and test it out on the main cabin table. I found this little half-sized hand crank number on Ebay and bought it to use on the boat – no electricity! I plan to make a quilt top this summer and maybe some skirts.

Rick has rigged up a wonderful sunshade, rescued from the Alberg and revamped to fit this new boat. It makes a lovely back porch out of the cockpit, and on a hot day like this one it provides some shade while allowing for a nice breeze.

Later in the afternoon we take a short trip over to the Bohemia River where we will spend the night. Now that the heat of the day has passed, and fortified by the effects of our cocktail hour, Rick is ready to tackle the job of fixing the hatch. He had thought he would have to replace it, and in the end he will probably replace all of the hatches, but it looks like for now he can salvage this one. Apparently this hatch has been pulled out before, maybe even by our old friend Walter, but it wasn’t imbedded into the fiberglass the way it should have been, instead simply caulked in with silicone. This of course made it easy to be pulled out by the boom vang and is not a very “shippy” fix for an off-shore boat. It does make it water tight though, and that’s what we really need for this summer. Rick has all the supplies he needs onboard so after re-bending the frame to make it straight, he scrapes off the old silicone and resets the hatch.

We’re pretty much alone in this anchorage and we take advantage of our privacy by revving up the stereo and dancing naked on the deck (Glen Miller and then The Commitments). Sorry, no pictures.

In the morning we head out early to ride the current through the Delaware Canal, passing Chesapeake City on the way. Like last year, we see lots of bridges and wildlife here, along with men fishing off of the side of the canal. Once in the Delaware Bay though, I remember the long slog that we have ahead of us and I am not looking forward to it. The Delaware Bay is a long shallow body of water, without places to pull in with a keeled boat, so you pretty much have to cover the whole thing in one ten to twelve hour day. The shore on both sides seems to be free of houses or cottages and is pretty empty save for the nuclear power plant that dominates the scenery for a good twenty-five miles of the trip.

If you are unlucky enough to have little or no wind you are forced to run your engine the whole way and the noise and engine fumes grate on the nerves after a couple of hours. I had a difficult time finding shade during this part of the trip last year, so this time I’ve come prepared! My violist friend Karen Brown and I share a love of music along with extremely pale skin, and she turned me on to Solumbra clothing with 100% sun blocking fabric. I look like I should be working at that nuclear power plant in this get-up, but at least I won’t get burned.

Amazingly, dolphins don’t seem to be bothered by the power plant. A pod of them show up right by our boat and follow along for quite a ways.

Rick starts whistling “Oh Sol o Mio” to try and bring them closer and they actually seem to respond. Encouraged by their apparent enthusiasm for music he runs below and gets out his viola, but is completely crestfallen when they all disappear practically as soon as he starts to play. Have viola jokes made it to the dolphin world as well? (To be fair, Rick is a little rusty.)

At about seven in the evening we finally pass the Cape May ferry terminal. We have covered seventy miles in twelve hours and Rick feels triumphant as we enter the canal. The light is just turning to that golden color that signals the end of the day and we are looking forward to augmenting the local July Fourth fireworks display with a champagne celebration of our own.

Every Eden

It’s a Sunday, two days after the big storm that kept us anchored to home. I wake up late and stumble into the main cabin. There are tools and containers full of nuts and bolts strewn all over the inside of the boat, along with much of our gear that can’t be stowed until the tools have been put away. In my sleepiness, I somehow can’t quite place myself in this scene. Rick sees my bewilderment, borne of heat and fatigue, and says, “We need to leave today.”

Tired of our slip, we anchored just outside the marina last night. A crab has climbed up the anchor chain this morning and is holding on tight. I hope this is not a bad omen for another false start!

We spend the better part of the day wrapping up odd jobs around the boat, doing a final load of laundry and making last minute visits to the store. The gear is now stowed, the tools are put away and the boat feels ready for an extended voyage. It’s almost seven in the evening when we finally leave the slip, but we’re happy at the prospect of getting underway, even if our first stop is only a few miles down the Patapsco.

Good-bye Baltimore!

There isn’t much wind, but just enough to test out the new sail, and all is well (thank God). Rick is thrilled with how the boat handles, which is another good sign. Even though he hadn’t actually “sailed” the boat before buying it, he had done quite a bit of research online and the Southern Cross 35 is supposed to be a fast boat and good in light wind. Thankfully, this boat is living up to her reputation.

As we approach the Key Bridge we are both aware of our previous failed attempt to leave Baltimore. Sailing under that bridge feels like a real accomplishment, and kind of a marker of sorts; whatever calamities might befall us from here on out, we are not turning back.

We head over to Rock Creek to spend the night, passing White Rocks (could the name be any more imaginative?) on the way. The water is of better quality now that we are out of the Baltimore Harbor and we take advantage of this by taking a quick swim. Rick has installed a cockpit shower to use for quick rinse-offs and when we try it out the water runs extremely hot. This is not supposed to happen. Pretty soon the water sputters and runs dry completely. Is the tank empty? Rick is befuddled at this latest problem.  “ I just filled the tanks - there should be plenty of water in there!"

The water pump is new, so probably that’s fine. It could be that the ancient hot water heater is malfunctioning somehow. Rick just can’t figure it out. We now have a choice – we can forge on ahead and make do with our four gallon jugs of bottled water, possibly replumbing the system to bypass the hot water heater, or that dreaded possibility – we go back to Baltimore. We decide to make some dinner and then sleep on it. Maybe things will be clearer in the morning.

I have a fitful sleep, but one advantage of not sleeping well is you get to catch the sunrise – and it’s a spectacular one this morning. When Rick gets up, he sets about solving this latest water problem, and what do you know, it’s working! We still don’t know what the problem was – overheating from the engine? That doesn’t make sense…  - but we are inclined to keep going along with our journey now that we have water. Hopefully, we will figure out what happened as we go along. We fill up a couple of empty gallon jugs with tank water, just in case.

We have a marvelous day of sailing! The wind is just right and Valkyrie really flies. It is gratifying to see Rick so happy. He has worked so hard to get this boat ready, and with so many problems, I had begun to worry that he would be sorry he had ventured away from his tried-and-true Alberg and bought this bucket of misery. But the sailingis what it’s about after all, and he’s overjoyed that he has chosen such a fantastic boat.

As we pull in to the Sassafras River for the night, Rick wants to tack and get just a few additional moments of sailing before turning on the engine. He comments to me that he has never tacked with a cutter rig like this one before. A “tack” is what happens when you go from one point of sail to another, placing the wind on the the starboard (right) side instead of the port (left) side for instance. When you tack, the sails have to transfer over to the other side of your boat. I am suddenly worried about ripping that newly repaired sail, but Rick laughs off my trepidation and says it’ll all be fine. He lets out the sail lines, we turn to port and pull in the sheets (lines) on the other side. The sail is fine, but to our horror the lines attached to the boom (the boom vang) catch on the open cabin hatch cover. The pressure of the line builds and before we can jump to release it - oh noooo! - the hatch is torn half out of the deck!

Doh!

Rick is remarkably cool about this latest development; I think he has now crossed some sort of calamity threshold and he’s starting to see our situation as more humorous than anything else.

"Every Eden needs a snake."

A Touch of Class

Rick has had his boat in the Anchorage Marina for about three weeks now, and even though our departure date keeps getting moved further and further forward, he and I have been living on the boat for almost a week now. I have been helping Rick by running errands – there is a West Marine store within walking distance and I’ve become a regular – and trying to keep some degree of domesticity by cleaning up dishes and doing laundry. During my time here at the marina, I am struck by how similar it is to an RV campground.

Perish the thought! Sailing is generally considered to be a pastime of the upper classes. Stereotypical yacht owners sip gin and tonics while wearing blue blazers and saying things like, “Right, old boy.” Camping, on the other hand, at least in an RV or trailer is looked down upon as a cut-rate travel option for the lower classes and retirees. The class distinction at stake here has already played itself out in our history as a couple. I used to own a small pop-up camper that I pulled behind my car. Dewey and I took a very memorable trip with that camper to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, as well as Maine and Cape Cod when he was small. When Rick and I were first an item and planned a family camping trip to Nova Scotia, he was horrified at my insistence that the trailer would make for a more enjoyable experience and we needed to bring it. Real campers use a tent, you see. Was his contempt for the trailer merely a matter of the lower class connotations attached to it? Or was it that his self image as a newly single man just didn’t jibe with the idea of driving a station wagon with a kid in the back and a camper in tow? I’ll probably never know, but we ended up having a wonderful time in our cozy, dry camper and Rick became quite the convert.

So where did this distinction between high-brow SV’s (Sailing Vessels) versus low-brow RV’s (Recreational Vehicles) come from? One might immediately assume that it is a money issue since keeping a boat inevitably costs a lot of money that the lower classes can’t afford. But I think that assumption would be wrong. First of all, a do-it-yourselfer like Rick can get a lot of boat for the money. Secondly, those big bus-sized Winnebago’s are very pricey and the upkeep and storage can be pretty costly as well. Not to mention the fact that there are many economy-minded live-aboards on boats, negating the need for a mortgage or rent on a house or apartment. A home on a sailboat is a famous housing option for medical students – cheaper than a mortgage, movable at the end of the three or more year program, up-scale and cool. Doing the same thing at a trailer park would probably cost about the same but would be definitely lower class and very un-cool.

So maybe it’s because trailer parks are notoriously ugly, and marinas, being on the water are beautiful. Hmmm. Wrong again. Many trailer parks and RV campgrounds are in gorgeous places in the mountains or on lakes and rivers, even at beaches. In my experience, state and national park campgrounds are the most beautiful places around. Living in a good-sized marina, on the other hand, far from affording lovely views of tranquil waters, is more like floating in a densely packed field of giant Chlorox bottles.

In fact, in many ways marinas and RV parks are remarkably similar. Both have extras like laundry facilities, public toilets and showers. Commercial RV parks almost always have swimming pools. But guess what? So does the Anchorage Marina! The tiny swimming pool is down at the end of the docks – it is filled with chlorinated water, but it floats in the harbor water.

There is also a big similarity between RV’s and SV’s when it comes to water and waste. Most boats above a certain size and larger RV’s have a head – although I’m not sure they call it a head on an RV. The showers are typically incorporated into the same space; simply close the door and you’ve got a shower closet. They both have fresh water tanks and holding tanks for waste that will eventually need to be pumped out. In this regard, neither SV’s nor RV’s seem very classy to me.  Just crudely functional, with an odor.

Perhaps the upper class association with sailing comes from this country’s English roots and the tradition of sailing in England. In his book “Class,” Paul Fussell points out, I think very accurately, that Americans tend to lend upper-crust distinction to anything English – paintings of fox hunt scenes, family crests, English bone china, tea and cakes,…and sailing. In the old days, a young man from very lower class roots could work his way up the ranks in the English navy and become an officer, with its attendant upper class recognition. Famous English sailors like Sir Francis Chichester became knighted for their accomplishments on the water.

Whatever the origins of sailing’s high-class pretentions, our stay here in the marina has not been a hugely high-class experience. It’s hot, the engines on the other boats are noisy, you more or less constantly smell gas or diesel fumes, the filthy water is littered with plastic trash and other unidentified floating objects whose true nature is too worrisome to contemplate, and our view…, well, we’ve already discussed that. We’re basically camping out in something worse than an RV park. After laying out our laundry to dry, our boat has a definite refugee quality to it. It’s official – we’re boat people.