The Block Island Triangle

My first ever off-shore experience!  Cape May to Block Island - two hundred miles.  Actually, what I’m hoping for is my first offshore experience without puking my guts out.  My only previous overnight passage happened in Maine four or five years ago in Rick’s Alberg 30. I was so seasick that I was reduced to laying on the cockpit seat, wrapped in a damp sleeping bag, periodically dry-heaving into a disgusting bucket (yes, Wilson).  I remember with absolute certainty that it lasted three full days (Rick assures me that it was in fact twenty-two hours). Three days, one day, why would anybody voluntarily sign up for more of that?

Well, our plan for this summer got a bit whacked along with the mast last month. This is my third summer sailing with Rick, and we have yet to get any farther north than Southport, Maine. My dream is to get at least to Penobscot Bay and hopefully to Mt. Desert Island (pronounced Mount deSERT by the locals). Without that bridge accident, Rick would have gotten the boat up there by the beginning of July, but now that we’re sailing together we will have to do some of that dreaded off-shore sailing if we are to have any chance of reaching our goal.

The southern coast of New England could be thought of as a kind of triangle, with the Jersey coast on one side and Long Island on another.  In both of the last two summers it took us nine days to cover those two sides of the triangle.  Our plan this year is to sail along the hypotenuse - just go non-stop from Cape May to Block Island – which should take just under two days.

I have gotten a lot more “salty” in the last two summers, and the new boat Valkyrie has helped a lot as well. Rick thinks we have a good weather window to make it fairly easily from Cape May to Block Island on a thirty-six to forty hour sail. The wind will not be that strong and we may have to motor some of the time, but these are just the right conditions for a crewmember prone to seasickness. I slap on a scopolamine patch and ready my anti-nausea pills.

We set out early in the morning, and the fog is pretty heavy. We can barely make out the sides of the channel, and even though we’ve just left I’m already freaking out. Valkyrie is outfitted very well for fog; we have a chart plotter/GPS, which shows us exactly where we are and how deep the water is, and we have radar to tell us if any other boats or buoys are nearby. It still feels horrible not to be able to see anything, and I take the coward’s way out – I trust Rick to the equipment and go back to bed.

When I get up the fog has lifted and it turns out to be a beautiful day. The air is light and Rick is happy to have an opportunity to try out his new spinnaker. Made this year, ours is a red and white sail that is designed for light air. After a bit of tweaking the sail trim, Rick is happy with the performance.

The thing that has always creeped me out about the idea of off-shore sailing is that you are so far away from land you don’t see anybody. No boats, no birds, not even trash. Well, that turns out to be somewhat false after all. We did see one boat on the first day. And we see a LOT of trash in the form of balloons. You know, when you let go of those helium balloons, celebrating a birthday or a wedding or just for fun, and they seem like they just go forever up into the sky? They don’t. They end up in the ocean.

We also see birds – sweet little things called shearwaters that live only offshore. They show up in groups of four to six and fly low across the water, angling their wings so that one wing tip almost touches the waves.

Meals offshore, at least for this trip with fairly calm seas, are easy to prepare as we go. The stove in the galley is gimbaled – it swings free so the top pretty much always remains level – and cooking up some pasta with a sauce that we made yesterday is a breeze. Sometimes I think we eat better on the boat than we do at home; or maybe everything just TASTES better here.

The first night offshore is a lovely sail with the spinnaker and no engine. The fading sunset is really quite beautiful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57PHJWOBhM&feature=youtu.be

I wish I could say that I was a master sailor and that Rick and I split up the watches so that each of us could get some sleep through the night. Rick is the one who took ALL the watches – I went to bed. The truth is, I end up sleeping most of the two days it takes to get to Block Island. Is it the meds, or am I just sleep deprived? I don’t know, but hey, it sure beats seasickness any day of the week! Rick does manage to get in a few naps of a half an hour or less, and he says he’s doing great, so don’t worry.

The second day of the trip brings us more shearwaters, and even a couple of whales! They are hard to miss even at a distance when they spray water from their blowholes, but they are very difficult to get a decent picture of, so I’m thrilled to get something that doesn’t just look like a black blob.

After the sun sets on our second day at sea, I can’t stay awake (surprise, surprise) and turn in for the night. We will be pulling into Block Island just after midnight and I hope Rick will wake me up so that I can help him navigate through all the other boats and set the anchor...

May Days...

Cape May house (from our visit two years ago)

Cape May. Quaint little beach town with lovely Victorian houses. Yeah, that’s what I think of too, but our visit to Cape May this year included nary a wrap-around porch, nor sand in our shoes. What we got instead was one long day of torrential downpour, and another devoted to an exhaustingly extensive hatch-cover fix.  On the plus side, we made a couple of great new friends.

So what does one do on a boat when a storm is raging outside? Well, the first order of business is to try and keep dry – not an easy task when the main cabin hatch is lashed on with a few lines and a trash bag. In desperation, Rick lays his rain jacket over the top but predictably, we still get a steady drip, drip, drip inside the cabin.

Aside from the dryness issue, the main challenge is trying to distract yourself from the fact that you are confined to a very small space. I pull out my hand-cranked sewing machine and work on piecing together a quilt. Rick does the scholarly thing and reads.

The next day is sunny and hot, but instead of heading for the beach, we spend the day trying to fix that blasted hatch cover. The thing about cruising is that when things inevitably go wrong, you have to try and fix them with whatever you’ve managed to bring on board. I’m reminded all day of the crew of Apollo Thirteen who had to literally fit a square peg into a round hole using only what they had inside their little spacecraft. Rick rigs up a number of do-it-yourself solutions using block and tackle, lines, winches and who knows what all, in an effort to bend that hatch frame back to an accurate square.

Things are definitely improved by our efforts, but we are going to have to enlist outside help. We rent bikes and ride with the frame over to the West Marine store, where they let us use their vise. Unfortunately, the vise itself is missing some nuts and bolts and requires more do-it-yourself action. 

Once repaired, Rick is able to use the vise to twist the frame a bit, but actually has more luck with a simple hammer. Back on the boat, we go for more Rube Goldberg applications until finally, that frame is good to go.

Rick puts the hatch cover back in facing aft this time. We’re both pretty sure that the original design had it this way, and even though we might sacrifice a little air circulation inside the cabin, this puts the hatch out of the way of the boom vang. No way do we want to risk ripping it out a third time!

On one of our dinghy trips to shore, we meet Chris and Gretchen whose boat is anchored next to ours, and we compare notes about the previous day’s storm. Looking to be in their late thirties to early forties, they turn out to be live-aboards who two years ago quit their jobs, sold their house, and sojourned to the Caribbean with their two cats. Yes, CATS! They are making their way north to enjoy a summer in Maine, and they have many questions for us, as do we for them. They invite us over for drinks, and then we all climb into their sizable dinghy and go to shore for dinner at a bar called The Lucky Bones.

We have a great time comparing notes with these two; our hope is to sail to the Caribbean ourselves a few years from now when Rick has his sabbatical year at Loyola. While neither of us would consider permanently leaving our respective jobs, it seems like a move that would take a great deal of courage, and I for one can’t help admiring them for it. We talk about what such a change in lifestyle can do to a relationship, and we also exchange funny stories of disasters that have befallen our boats.

Leaving very early the next morning, we are sorry to see our new friends' boat disappear in the mist. Let's hope we meet up again soon, somewhere off the coast of Maine.

Chris and Gretchen's boat "Alchemy"

Released for Time Served

We’re all set to return to the scene of the crime. Well, ONE of the crimes anyway…

We get up at the crack of dawn to catch the current through the Chesapeake/Delaware Canal. I’ve been through this canal twice before, and I’m looking forward to seeing again a number of wild birds that live here – heron, cormorants and bald eagles. Rick is mostly thinking about successfully passing under that now infamous bridge he hit a few weeks ago.

The trip through the canal is rather uneventful this time. I have given up on trying to photograph all of the wildlife, since they typically don’t cooperate as models. I don’t need more bad pictures of birds in flight, so I decide to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Rick's favorite bridge

The canal has many bridges, and I can’t quite picture the one that gave Rick so much trouble recently, so I’m glad when he points it out to me. Now that I can see the bridge in person, it seems impossible that Rick wouldn’t have seen that the lowered bridge would be too low for our mast. He admits that in the light of day it seems impossible to him as well. Here’s my theory: there was no moon on the night in question, so it was pitch dark save for a couple of red lights on the bridge. If it was so dark Rick couldn’t see the waterline, then the bridge would seem higher than it was in comparison to his boat. Think I would make it as Perry Mason's assistant?

Whatever was going on in his head that night, he has clearly been a bit traumatized by the event. Going under that bridge now, even in its “up” position feels pretty nervy – although we understand intellectually that we have many feet to spare, our mast looks like it’s going to hit. We both feel quite triumphant when we make it through unscathed!

The rest of the trip to Cape May is a complete repeat of previous years’ voyages. The Delaware Bay is ugly and hot, with fog and mist that burns off before mid-day. The nuclear power plant dominates the scene for hours, and it is a relief to finally leave it at our backs.

We pass a funky little lighthouse named Ship John Shoal that has a distinctively gothic look to it. Perhaps it would seem rather ordinary, but for the birds who have obviously taken over. I don’t think the white paint job on the roof is actually paint, if you catch my drift…

Three or four hours of this eleven hour trip are spent under sail, but with hardly any breeze we end up motoring most of the way. With the engine running, it is much more pleasant to set the autohelm and sit up front where you can escape from that incessantly growling beast. Of course, there’s no shade up there, so I bring my faithful umbrella with us. I must look cool and comfortable under my self-made shade, because Rick ends up using my spare umbrella himself. I knew I could make a convert out of him!

We arrive at Cape May in the dark and find a good spot to anchor. Tomorrow we will need to tackle the problem of the bent hatch cover, but tonight we just need to concentrate on dinner. Steak, corn and tomatoes – who says boat cuisine has to be boring? 

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!