Dena Hankins's Blog, page 14

17 Miles for a Bolt

This breaking bolts on an engine that’s 30 years old is getting nerve-wracking. How many more will break – and is it because this particular Yanmar is the ONE model that doesn’t have any anode protection? It took a long time for me to believe that there wasn’t a pencil zinc for the heat exchanger but no, there isn’t. And maybe this is why it’s better if there is.

When the Phillips head gets chewed up over the years, you can still use a wrench on it. Which is good, until the wrench lets me apply more force than the metal can deal with.

Broken Bleeder Bolt

So that one foggy-day…which was gorgeous, by the way…

looking west toward Moosebec Reach

…turned into a longer sojourn. The close-up above is the bleeder bolt for the fuel injection pump, so there’s no going anywhere without it. If we’d been in Sand Cove, we could have sailed off the hook and gone wherever we needed to be, but this anchorage was tight so we didn’t see that as an option.

We’d chosen that spot because it was remote and protected (my favorite combination) but we were about 5 nautical miles from the only shipyard on the mid-Downeast coast. I called around and found someone who made it happen – a replacement for the part delivered before the Labor day weekend. We were in for one epic dinghy ride.

We started off chipper, but more than an hour folded-up in a little boat gets old and creaky. It was interesting viewing, with the rocks and ledges and islands clearing out in the middle and then getting closer together again as we approached Pig Island Gut (so much brutal poetry in all that beauty).

We made landfall and walked seven miles for provisions and an $11 banjo bolt that wasn’t broken (with a sub-part bleeder bolt that was) before heading back to the little boat for another epic fucking dinghy ride…yay?! There were two stretches of totally open water with opposing wind and current that was a little on the humbling side and we had a bunch of groceries keeping our legs from moving which made for achy knees but we bit that bullet and did that run.

There’s no land for planting around there, so I (Dena) have to assume anyone living somewhere like this fishes for food.

Mink Island

As soon as we had that new bolt (no I [James] didn’t get that photo) installed, we left for Cross Island and the Navy’s VLF antenna array.

Okay so I (James again) am a great big antenna geek and I make it a point to see all the wild and crazy antenna freak-outs that I can and this one is one of the freakiest…a 28 “post” antenna array that takes up 3,200 acres of prime beach front property just to guide our (the U-S-of-A’s) Polaris missiles when they go to destroy people we (Dena and James) probably have no beef with. But it is a fascinating feat of monkey-engineering.

VLF – Very (frick’n) Low Frequency

A working boat homeported from Cutler, ME, burbled by us at a respectable speed. They’d been partying – about 8 people enjoying themselves, looking near enough in build and coloring to be family. I heard one of them say “Washington” and wasn’t all that surprised when they circled around to ask us questions and enjoy our story…as told at a light shout from one anchored boat to a drifting one. It was a whole lot of quintessentially down-eastern fun!

After a peaceful night at anchor, we headed across the entrance to the Bay of Fundy for Grand Manan Island. We passed Machias Seal Island but didn’t get close enough to see the protected puffins there. The sailing was as grand as the island, and the strong Fundy currents we headed across pushed us around a bit but didn’t delay us. The perfect introduction to unfamiliar waters.

We moved in fairly close to the beach (with beachgoers even though it seemed awfully chilly for being in those cold-ass waters) and anchored a safe distance from the large moorings, one of which had a work barge on it, and the fish pens, which were numerous.

We’re in New Brunswick! I (Dena) have never ever been here before and I’m not sure I ever will be again.

The lion is both for the British GeoIII and the German Brunswick coats of arms, which makes me that much more confused about how those battles ever made sense to the people fighting them. The heraldic ship is for, you know, shipbuilding and shipping.

After taking down our bright shiny Q flag once we were cleared in (a simple phone call and vaccination status app form), we flew our ridiculously large but very enthusiastic courtesy flag. Thanks for welcoming us to Canada!

Happy to be here!

Of course, the next thing we did? Walked.

Way on down Downeast

We stayed in Somes Harbor for a good long time. Time enough to get choked out by three generators before finally getting the anchorage almost to ourselves…Cat-a-morons from Charleston with families of four never go anywhere once they’ve discovered a nice little cove to foul. I don’t understand why nobody ever told the designers of the Lagoon that the Cylons were the bad guys! I didn’t take a single picture of my favorite view of Somes Harbor because that stupid Shat-a-moron dominated the view the entire time we were there.

…my favorite view, 2015

We did manage to get a few choice shots of that very cool place before we got fed up…

Dena got this one… …and I (James) got this one.

But on day four we bolted.

SWHarbor once again.

We weighed the gunky hook and took the fair current down the Sound back to Southwest Harbor for one last provisioning run and were underway by 0825 the next morning.

It was dead so we motor-sailed through dolphin infested waters before the last of the summertime Sunday power boaters took to the water. It was a loud but refreshing hop from the anchorage in Southwest to Sand Cove just outside of Corea, Maine. At that point we were further downeast than the two of us have ever been under sail. It felt good.

Sand Cove, Corea, Maine ’22

It was great having a nice big anchorage to ourselves and all, especially after that last Somes Harbor experience, but this place was surrounded by McMansions on all sides and thick with lobster pots. Best move on.

North Atlantic Ocean

We were out of Sand Cove again by 0830 and under full sail in the North Atlantic Ocean less than twenty minutes later. It was an almost perfect sailing experience. We were going east-northeast and the wind and waves were coming from the south-southwest, making for an all day broad reach on a gentle ocean roller.

…it looked like this!

By 1400 we were within sight of Grand Manon Island at the mouth of Canada’s Bay of Fundy so we hooked around Moose Peak Light and nestled up in the lee of Water Island just off the coast of Mistake Island in the middle of fucking nowhere.

This, I’m telling you, this is downeast!

Now we’re sitting out a fog day with a thunderstorm day promised for tomorrow. Eating and writing and projects will keep us busy.

Back in Somes Harbor

Way back in 2015 we broke the boat coming around the bottom of Mt. Desert Island at the Bass Harbor Bar. We came up on the bar hard and fast on a close haul under full sail and the world just proved a little too much for our good old boat. This particular bar is a violent place where two massive tidal currents clash over a rocky shallow spot at the epicenter of a wind tunnel and Nomad just couldn’t hold it together. The combined forces of all that nature pulled the genoa track right out of the near sixty year old teak toerail. We struck the genoa and motor sailed up the Somes Fjord to the stillness that is Somes Harbor.

Somes Harbor 2015

This time, it wasn’t all that.

Rockland first.

A man and a very large hat

The boats behind James looked even better in reflection, with me (Dena) co-opting a signature James Lane photographic style.

Salty reflection

We walked and did a couple loops through the local Hamilton’s (hi, Dave!) and walked some more. We ate out a little, but not as much as we were tempted to. There’s some pretty good food there.

Rockland, Maine 2022

We stayed in Rockland for a nice long time (like we said we were going to do) but we were itching to reach places previously unseen about three days in.

Sailing off the hook

Sailing off the anchor is such a deep pleasure. Anytime we have to run the engine irritates us (especially Beluga Greyfinger, mightily). I (still Dena) locate one of my most sublime pleasures in the experience of a nice quiet morning leading to a world in motion without explosive interruption. It is to me what an aspen grove is to some or a sudden long view after climbing a long hill. It is connection and rightness, presence and being.

It doesn’t always last through the day, but what a way to set off!

Fiddler’s Ledge

We motorsailed on glass through the Fox Island Thorofare to Seal Bay, just off the island of Vinalhaven, Maine. Being anchored there was a stunning forty-eight hour nature show.

Seal Bay, Vinalhaven, Maine

At sunset, the hundred and fifty or so seals mount the rocks in the bay, get all belly-achy and start belching and farting at each other in an brutal echoed cacophony. It’s absolutely hilarious for about twenty minutes and then it just stops as they slide off into the bay. I’m so glad I (James) don’t speak the language, otherwise I might be inclined to join in.

Day II Seal Bay

We knew that, if we left, we were in for a totally dead crossing the next day from Vinalhaven to Stonington on Deer Island, but the two days after that were promising rainy Nor’Easters with gusts exceeding 30 knots. We needed provisions and were hoping for project parts, plus we’d just been stationary for a while and wanted to keep moving.

We ducked into Moose Island west of Stonington and grabbed a mooring, mainly for the laundry and showers.

Under the Marina on Moose Island

…It was a crappy place and way too much money so I’m not even going to say their name.

Stonington, Maine

Something we’ve known since we bought Cetacea is that Mainers use mooring pennants that are just too damn big for our chocks. We can’t get the loop through the purpose-built fitting for that, so we often attach the pennant to our own snubber instead. It’s only a problem in tight mooring fields, and it keeps the forces down low where we like them.

The grocery store right down in Stonington is no longer the robust resource it was last time we were here, and the community theater is no longer showing movies. It just didn’t have that much to offer us. More places are open later in the week, but the bill goes up for every day they are paying rent without making money.

That’s some good public art, though.

We make the most of every place, though, and did enjoy the continued experience of liking the boats around us more often than happens anywhere in Maine.

We had good protection from the winds, but the rains caught us as expected. We got to do quite the epic walk on Deer Island to a grocer a few hilly miles away for some much needed supplies. It rained ever so lightly along the way, just enough to pop the greens and cool us all down just a little.

The world at a walking pace

Also, we discovered what this marina is really all about. One of the biggest criticisms of Maine, especially Down East, is something we have long scoffed at. It’s that the local industry isn’t oriented toward the ephemeral dolla-dolla-bills-y’all that most waterfront destinations have caved to. We never had a problem with that in Friendship or another dozen places. Partly, it’s because we’re not looking to part with hard-earned cash in return for something we can provide ourselves, like good sleep.

But this was one occasion where the hype said this place would be of service. We paid.

Only to discover that yes, this is Downeast Maine and fuck you for wanting more attention than this boat gets.

Rebuilding an enormous piece of wooden history? Awesome.

Wanting a shower without wetting your feet with other people’s showers? Kinda delicate, arn’cha?

And, actually, I (Dena) get it. I wish I hadn’t paid to re-learn this lesson, but sometimes, that’s what happens. Guides and reviews and such need to get really really real. What did you expect and why? What did you get and who should be credited or blamed? I mean, I’m going to blame advertising. The whole of reality gets skewed when people want to be seen a specific way, and advertising is the codifying of that urge into an industry. Hmm. Maybe that’s why I just couldn’t with Mad Men, though I’m absolutely into Christina Hendricks and would watch her do almost anything.

And then we were a part of the flow. We were not alone in sailing – many a good old boat was also flapping that canvas. It was stark, though, in a gloating kind of way, that all the newest, fanciest, most expensive boats were burning their dollars on dinosaurs while the rest of us coasted on the breeze. It was enough; it was not so much.

We approached the Bar That Broke Us way back in 2015 with the respect it gained from our experiences.

We passed the west buoy well outside the channel.

And sailed well past, into the wind tunnel between the Cranberry Islands and MDI, then beyond, watching the race boats pop their colorful spinnakers on the downwind run away from us.

We celebrated the success as we are wont. With food…”and revels, with victory there must be revels!”

And enjoyed our evening in the anchorage that isn’t marked on the chart but is well-defined in the harbor management plan (and yes, I {Dena} check these things).

…like she does and I (James) sleep like a baby, “…a hungry angry baby!”

And then we sailed up the Somes Fjord back to a much revered harbor of refuge. A place of quiet and clear darkened skies and Lysistrata’s Cove and…

Somes Harbor, Maine 2015

…Home?

Home, a ways away from home

We sailed to P-Town from Onset after setting a Cetacea Cape Cod Canal speed record of 11 knots. The sail from Sandwich to P-Town was beautiful and exciting and a Cape Cod blue that only that Cape Cod can do. We had another sailboat off our beam all day and another three spinnakers three nautical miles off the port bow. All larger boats (according to their AIS info), we were last to arrive but not by much. We were the only sailboat that chose the open area east of the breakwater rather than the more-distant-from-town area inside the southern point.

We keep going through this good-sail/bad-sail routine where we are thrilled one day and then tested the next. This Provincetown sojourn had beauty…

And science, wherein we ran the watermaker into a measured container to combat the sticky-float problem with the tank meter. Our Katadyn 80E is operating better than spec, which is great news. Robust machine, even through some of the worst conditions you can put a machine through…ignoring it for years before someone gives a shit.

Did I mention beauty?

So, we shopped and saw and enjoyed, and then we set sail again for a roughly day-and-a-half run to Matinicus Island off Penobscot Sound. This trip managed to be the most glorious, unexpectedly powerful and yet comfortable sail…until it became something else.

First, the awesome part.

I (Dena) set the asymmetrical spinnaker around 0830. When the wind shifted a little, I realized that I hadn’t led the halyard correctly and so I had to (got-to, got-to!) do a snuff-with-sock maneuver. Honestly, anyone who knows knows and anyone who doesn’t doesn’t, and if you are one of the handful of people who want more detail, please comment and I’ll give you the blow-by-blow but let me tell you, it was fucking cool.

Once the asym was on the port side, we didn’t blow the tack until 1630 and it was glorious sailing! We gybed the mainsail around that asymmetrical all day long, wing-on-wing when there was enough wind and on a deep broad reach when necessary.

The waters around us were nearly flat until we got well beyond Race Point and then picked up a slow roller with very little height. We couldn’t see it coming but we felt it when the energy passed through the hull. The bulk of the day was a beautifully calm but powerfully natural experience.

And there were whales. Brilliant, joy-inducing giant mammals that are as at home in the water of Cape Cod as we are in our very best dreams. At least ten of them and all different kinds and throughout our passage through the Stellwagen Banks National Marine Mammal Sanctuary.

Most of these animals were at least one hundred yards away from us (as is appropriate) but they’re huge so the show is still cool as shit. I (James) heard them breathing all around me on my first silently sailing watch in the sanctuary but it wasn’t until Dena’s next watch that we began to see them . I recognized a mother and child by the staggered blow but they dove at an angle to where I couldn’t recognize them by their dorsal fins. But on my second watch under wing-on-wing spinnaker, I saw the largest living being I’ve ever seen on this planet. This mammal gracefully moved across our bow for a very, very long time before diving and revealing the tiniest dorsal fin just before the massive wakeless tail disappeared below the surface. It was far enough away to glide weightlessly through their abyss long before we sailed over their home. I don’t think I saw that one again for the rest of the day.

Pictures? Naw, I mean, really? You expect us to disengage from the real ephemeral moment long enough to make that happen? I (Dena) think this is one of the ways I’ve been a good influence on James, the degreed photojournalist. Some things should just be lived.

And then the wind started to pipe up from abaft.

Expecting the wind to increase, we’d agreed to go into the dark with a reef whether or not it seemed necessary in the moment. Well before dark, we’d pulled the second reef.

The windwaves were making us both irritable. Short period, steep enough to bob us around if we weren’t directly downwind, but not dangerous. “Our” Cetacea reminded us who was weak and who was not. I (James) felt profoundly at the will of our ocean when everything on my body started to hurt.

And then it got, well, more natural, more real, more right fucking now. Cetacea drove on the balance that Lovebot nudged along like the Second Foundation, just enough, a little more…not quite enough.

A very long time ago (or almost yesterday, mileage may very) in 2001, my (Dena’s) dad, Dean Hankins (sometime commenter on this blog and much else besides) noted that our accounts of our adventures did a piss poor job of explaining why we like this shit. Now, he said it a lot nicer than that, but the point remains. The exciting parts of any passage are the hard parts. The story of any story is about what tested a person and taught them something. It’s hard to recount why we do what we do without sounding, at least occasionally, like we hate it.

Sometimes, even we are confused.

I got bound up for a while in the fact that we were hitting well over 7 knots, downwind, with both of our two reefs pulled. We’d requested a 3-reef main and been talked out of it. This trip finished that conversation and I was seriously not cool with how it ended up.

Then I chilled. I coped. I listened to my boat, which was absolutely copacetic with doing mad speed down the steep edge of a windwave. This boat is down for the adventure and I am the fragile bit. I am going to have to let go of some aspects of comfort in order to travel the world and this boat is training me on what I need to accept.

Down?! Down! Motherfucking down I (James) fell on the cabin sole with a grunt that elicited a “Hey, you okay!?” from the helm…am I okay?…am I? I feeel everything in that moment (no really there’s more than one double ‘e’ in that batch!) Every-Fucking-Thing!

I was tossed from comfortable settee (ass) to cabin-sole (tea-kettle) on one fucked-up wave in less than two seconds.

Dude (yes, I just duded you) I just knew my life was about to be a two week bitch-fest about my back…then that fucking Seth Thomas clock went off with 8 fucking bells at 2:23 am and Dena (my love, my savior, my partner, my reality [right fucking now] Yeah) saved my life. Hey, HEY!?!! You okay (she yelled from the helm). We both laughed at our faulty antiquated time piece and…

James answered me (Dena), finally. “Yeah. Yeah,” from the cabin sole and he isn’t the guy to not freak like a car-hit-cat so yeah he (me[James]) was unharmed…

My (Dena’s) next down-watch, I put a single starboard back cushion on the cabin sole along with every single throw pillow that our friend Kris from Exit talked us into buying at the thrift store after we bought this boat. It wasn’t enough to ensure sleep, though my off watch started at 11pm (hours after my usual bedtime) and didn’t end until a hallucinogenic 2am.

Yeah, oh yeah, I’m good! (Me, James.) I was a dumb-shit, I WAS SLEEPING ON THE WINDWARD SIDE! I got knocked off the bunk! Of course I did. Dena said to dress a bunk on the leeward sole and I just couldn’t hear it. I didn’t have have my sea-legs, or rather I didn’t have the sense to understand her truth in the moment. But I got it, on that next watch.

Nine meteorites in a colossal sky that dominated my imagination like a Vinge novel. Every single color and angle that could be bombarded by the cosmos was alive before my puny limited spectral awareness. I saw an orange streak that bifurcated the night sky from north to south. I saw a blue ghost laugh about ten degrees above that and I felt like the “eyes and ears of my local universe” to my own infuriatingly-hilarious-insignificance.

“Can anything live here?!” Yeah, no really, I asked (maybe screamed) that ultimate existential question to a raging sea at night. And then, I shit you not, I heard an unknown avian being laugh…hysterically! Quite possibly at my gloom…maybe not. Fuck yeah! Four bells, thank the almighty Gato!

I (Dena) struggled into my harness and life jacket and eased my way into the cockpit and James reported shooting stars. Okay, good. Maybe I’d see some too. Except I didn’t. I was able to bring us onto a better track for making our ostensible destination, Matinicus Island, though I also did some deep thinking about whether it mattered where we next touched bottom. The hours between 2am and 5am just…happened. I mean, sometimes there’s no stronger feeling, no deepness. No overwhelming realness. Just things happening, one after another. Wave after wave. Stabilizing, destabilizing. A new deeper bruise, a more sore triceps where I braced myself too hard.

It was a little too light in the sky once James took over but I had enough light and time and brain to put both of the back cushions on the cabin sole, creating something approaching comfort in the rocking and rolling.

Matinicus Rock… It was supposed to be right there in the ocean right beyond that mist, beyond that next wave, just beyond that fucking fog. James sought it and then I gave up on sleeping and made coffee and then we traded watches and then we were there, among the dangerous rock ledges of Downeast Maine.

It was early in the day but late in our trip. We slept.

A day and a night and a morning later, we anchored in Rockland Harbor, comfortably at home, aboard our home, in a place familiar enough to provoke a very, very long respite.

A way back…way back.

We stayed on Block Island for an (I [James]don’t give a fuck) amount of time and ultimately set our sights for that down-eastern reach we were just fantasizing about.

We set the main after re-calibrating our heading sensor (just another of the not-dialed-in systems that turned us back), jibed once and broad-reached all the way to Cuttyhunk of the Elizabeth Islands chain in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the mostly disunited states of America.

Along the way, Earther Author Dena Hankins set up the Lovebot and taught S/V S.N. Cetacea how to drive herself all the way to an anchorage at an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the (no really!) quintessential sailing experience…it was what we have been working towards since we left the City of Sin at the end of May.

It was incredible!

…But it was broad reaching in 10-to-14kts with gusts to (maybe) 18. In other words, our modus operandi (add laughing emoji here if you must)!

It was that perfect downeast sail from island to island that brings so many cruising sailors to this part of the North American continent every freak’n summer! Of course the (not really an) anchorage inside Cuttyhunk Harbor was full of AIS signatures and the little grass-hole just outside of the channel was full of short-scopers so we anchored a little northwest of Pease Ledge in slightly deeper water. It (most definitely) was a perfect night at anchor and we woke with a smile.

The tide wasn’t due to turn around at the mouth of Buzzards Bay until 1500 so we came alive with the Earth at the Earth’s pace. Science tells us our planet hurtles in circles at 460 meters per hour which seems pretty fast from a leisurely breakfast offshore-ish.

And then this seasoned couple with no desire to have a hard time for cred-proving purposes…jumped the gun (WTAFOver?!). We left an hour before we’d planned (which was an hour before the turnaround), and the piping southwesterly funneled up Buzzards Bay in the exactly expected fashion. The 25 knot wind met the half-knot ebbing current like a blender, frothing up a short-period chop, I mean four motherfucking seconds between two and 6 foot waves, that came from behind but made every wave an event. We would never have beat into that shit, but downwinding was a thing we could accomplish.

Since the tide turns in different places at different times and since the current’s slack moves up-Bay over time, we managed to jump the gun by two hours at Cuttyhunk and still reach the entrance of the Cape Cod Canal, three and a half hours later, just before the turnaround. The strong funneling sou’westerly pushed us fast even once we took our initial single reef into a double reef and then furled the yankee as well. Meaning, there’s nothing casual about hitting 8 knots under double reefed main alone and we did our one-hour watches in turn and never did manage to feel comfortable enough for some happy selfie-action.

James brought us into the canal but my watch started just after. With nowhere we could dodge, I was glad to be heading at a good downwind angle, with the boom on the right side to avoid a gybe as we came to port for the entrance channel. In classic Onset fashion, our speed increased as we reached the turn and then we were pulled hard across the channel. Also in classic Onset fashion, I didn’t let myself get rattled by pointing the boat at dry land in order to create the perfect vector right down the channel. The bow doesn’t always tell a sailor where she’s going.

As we’ve come to expect, the exciting trip and entrance pay off with lovely sunsets, sunrises, and ridiculously long walks that we get to be proud of while grousing about.

And then there’s the little BIG changes we make for our own comfort.

James has been wearing this little straw hat for sun protection for way too long. It flopped down in his eyes at the slightest breeze or flew off his head and created what I (Dena) have long known as a sore spot – the humiliation of chasing a hat, well, that’s all Miller’s Crossing. He’s fixed up now, though a boat our size has only so many places to store this much hat, and Beluga is deeply concerned about whatever chemical was used to finish it.

There’s this film from 2013 called The Way, Way Back. It was filmed in Onset and we kind of fell in love with it after the first time we sailed into this bay in 2012. We’ve looked great here on two different boats now.

Ah, Onset. We still see you as our way back, our own way, way back to a place of…

Peace between excitements.

Learning Curve

Sailing away from the City of Sin in the final week of May gave us our first clue as to the complex shape of our learning curve.

We were later than we liked getting off the dock for every reason we’ve already written about and they were all good reasons. It was cold and the boatyards of the North Shore rebuffed our attempts to give them money for mast and bottom work. So, the projects we focused on were improvement-oriented. We spent our last few cold weeks in Massachusetts installing a brand new 12 volt electrical charging system, upgrading to a better manual windlass, completely rebuilding the portsides lazarette hatch (the only real remediation project and one that was deeply needed), and rehabbing the dinghy bottom. We trusted that the boat we sailed into Lynn in November of 2021 was the same boat we sailed away from there.

We were wrong about that. Cetacea needed more than new gear. We have spent (almost) the entirety of the last two months repairing the unseen damage of a truly terrible winter while also dialing in utterly brand-new systems. With hindsight being, well, you know, we should have been inspecting the whole boat, especially the parts we’ve never had to give much thought to, with a fine tooth comb while we were rebuilding the dink and installing our new electrical system. Even so, there’s no stationary test for boat balance under sail and no foreseeing how much work would be necessary in order to account for everything we’d changed.

We expected a learning curve. We’d added weight to both ends and windage aft. We’d loaded Cetacea with massive amounts of food. We knew that there would be some effect and expected to tune both the rig (once we could find someone to unstep and restep the mast for us) and the allocation of weight in the various spaces. We expected to find problems in our shakedown cruise and fix them. We did not expect what happened.

What we learned very intensely over the past few months is that our shit was beat to fuck by a marina that was beat to fuck. The horrible state of the marina and the pounding we got in any wind between west and southeast were the main motivating factors for us getting away as fast as we did. That was the most brutal winter we’ve ever spent on the boat and we surely felt it. Since we did, it’s now obvious that we could have expected what we discovered. Believe me, Cetacea took the brunt of it.

There were more days under ten degrees than we ever want to see again for the rest of our lives. We tried to keep the boat at a liveable temperature, which has worked in the past for keeping the engine above freezing, but the temperature shocks were too intense. The constant jerk and snatch of the dock moving just before the boat on each snarling wave wore through docklines, of course, but also put every part of the boat through cyclical stresses that we’ve been recuperating from for months now. What wasn’t shaken loose was left brittle, including the timing gear cover gasket and bolts. Remember that shit?!

Too many systems we once thought completely functional have been proven otherwise and rebuilt or replaced. We both now believe the boat is sturdy and seaworthy, just in time for our weather to go to shit.

Today, anchored in the Great Salt Pond of Block Island, is our first taste of what I (James) believe to be our new weather norm. Strong winds to gales from the southwest clocking around to the south-southeast throughout the days and calming overnight. It’s pretty shitty for an easterly run across the Atlantic but an almost perfect recipe for a Downeast reach to Canada followed by a coastal cruise south with the first nor’easters after the hurricanes. We know this one. Hell we even love this one as long as it takes us at least 1000 nautical miles south of New England for the winter.

We figure, since we’ve done so much to get the boat so shipshape, the only thing we really know for sure is that we’re going sailing and we’re going to do it the only way we know how…as prudent sailors, with the wind and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.

Pointing us!

Sailing, that’s what we’re doing! Without touching the wheel!

She was driving herself, but she was sluggish. We both knew this boat could perform better but it just wasn’t happening.

Then, there was this moment when we were opened up at the lazarette AND the engine compartment and each of us had a different and somewhat horrifying view of the packing gland. We decided there was too much water coming in via the stern tube (where the prop shaft goes from inside to outside the boat). Way too much. This was reminiscent of our near-death along the inhospitable Oregon coast.

No, no no no. That’s not going to happen again. We are learning creatures and, guess what, we learned this one.

The stern tube slash prop shaft ecosystem has a stuffing box or packing gland, choose your language, that puts flax or its modern equivalent (teflon-inpregnated graphite fiber) into the gap. The packing material is supposed to ride against the prop shaft well lubed so that there are only one or two drips of cooling water per minute that the prop shaft is turning. Ours was dripping even when still and rather more like flowing when underway.

James put a wrench to it and it got worse.

September 11, 2001, was the date when our packing gland blew out on an offshore trip south of Newport, Oregon. Our bilge pump burned out. Our manual bilge pump tore both diaphrams. We barely kept ahead of the flood by hand-pumping with a tool designed for emptying your dinghy after a rain. There was no calling for help because our radio was abuzz with the chatter of the Coast Guard and the entire commercial fleet from every nearby port as they tried to track and save the boat of 7 people left to break up on the rocks after the captain and only knowledgeable boater had a late-evening heart attack. No one on the boat knew where they were or how to operate the boat and we knew that we could pump ourselves exhausted in order to make it to Port Orford without diverting any of the rescue efforts our way.

Ahem. Well, the bottom line is that we knew we didn’t want to be in the middle of the ocean with a big ol’ hole letting water into the boat.

We sailed back to familiar territory. What is the definition of familiar? There are the various versions of family – birth, chosen, affiliated…

…I (James) called Burr’s. Definitely an affiliated family. It’s not that we’re the same type of boater as every Burr’s customer and family member. We are, though, somehow in this thing together.

…Of course!

We’ve been to Burr’s before, more than once. Mostly when we are wary of our vulnerability and hoping to be treated with respect. Adam not only took my call on a hot busy summer afternoon, he was kind of thrilled to hear from us. But dude was busy as hell with a power-boater (kind of a rude guy actually but nevermind) who had plowed some of the local rock formations and needed an emergency haul.

Just like that we’re hauled out next to a rock-boater on a warm Thursday in July. Nomad spent the entire summer of 2013 here, but Cetacea is leaving this place with abandon.

Meanwhile, we had a job to do and we didn’t even know quite what it was. There was no good angle for seeing whether all the water was coming through the stuffing box or whether there was something wrong on the other side. One thing was for sure once we got out of the water and it was a huge relief: the cutlass bearing was intact and holding. Whew!!! An entire day’s work and over $100 avoided.

Once we got the muffler out of the way, we could see that someone had used sub-standard hose clamps on the piece of hose that ties the stuffing box to the stern tube. Also, that shaft looked like shit!

If only that had been the only problem.

With a monkey wrench on the locking nut and the plumbing wrench on the stuffing nut, we snapped that piece of metal right in two. Gulp. It took a rental car and a trip to both a chandlery and a hardware store to end up with the tools that would break those two pieces of bronze apart.

Oh, and multiple applications of PB Blaster over several days.

Of course, that was not the fix. That was only to break it apart. Then, it was working the locking nut down the body of the stuffing box, quarter turn by quarter turn, basically re-tapping the threads as we slowly shoved and wire brushed a couple decades of tarnish out of the way.

The work site looked like this:

The wheel at the top of the picture is the sheave that turns the steering cable from the pedestal to the quadrant. It’s almost exactly the distance from the bulkhead under the fridge unit to that wheel as I (Dena) have the ability to curve my spine from ass to top of head. And yes, I have a couple of sore spots on my scalp.

On the right side, the tools that ended up getting the job done. Buck Algonquin still makes a lot of cast iron and bronze pieces we boaters need, but they don’t have a margin that allows them to finish their shit off all that smoothly. James ended up having to grind that fixed wrench about, what, 10 times? (Yes!) before it would fit the stuffing box nut. And the adjustable wrench had to be re-adjusted every 2-3 pulls. And this was all during dinner rush at the totally packed restaurant looming off our bow. No really, I (James) was grinding tools in front of 150 totally entertained diners. They had the hum-n-strum dude singing “Brown Eyed Girl” in the dining room and the crew of S/V S.N. Cetacea grinding shit in the bar.

In the end, we have a deeply known and well fixed boat system. As always, nothing can be trusted unless we’ve pulled it apart ourselves, rehabilitated it, and put it back to together (in front of an audience). That’s when we know it’s a job well done.

With the muffler back in place, we barely have any access to those two nuts we will surely need to tighten again at some point, but hey. At least we know what we’re up against!

Meanwhile, New London is familiar in the ways that we need sometimes. An epic walk to some Southern Indian Food after a cooling New England rain was just the trick.

We walked all over this town when we didn’t have a rental car and enjoyed reacquainting ourselves with the neighborhoods. However…there was another job to be done!

But this really is how we roll. We build our systems, we build our world to be for us. Don’t we all?

We did what we needed to do to stop the water from coming into the boat…

Got her painted for the trip, and got back in the water.

…the important thing, right?

All Shook Down

Newport sucks!

It’s not that Newport’s a particularly bad American city or anything, it’s just that there are so many opportunities for people like Dena and I (James) in Newport that it tends to suck… me… in.

That sucks ‘cuz we’re not doing that right now.

We have an ocean to cross and an ever narrower weather window to get ‘er done. We’d expected to be gone by now but storms have been interrupting our plans.

Anyway…

The newly rebuilt sailing rig performed flawlessly on the broad reach from Wickford to the gap between Connanicut and Prudence Island, right down to having a safe and pleasurable amount of weather helm, but those are truly ideal circumstances in every sense. Once we turned upwind, the lee helm we’ve had too much of returned and we had a hard time getting through a tack. We realized that we really had changed the dynamic of the sailing vessel with ballast and that was a bit disconcerting. The fact is we added a structure on the back of the boat, plus we’ve never had this boat as loaded down as we do now that we are ready for an ocean crossing. So we got to move all our shit around in Newport. We’ll fix the remaining helm balance issue with the fine-tuning of the rig.

I did an early morning diagnostic on the solar array in Bristol (a complete loss of a visit, since we weren’t able to provision after all even though we’d paid for a mooring) and the news was all bad. For some reason we weren’t making any power on the starboard (sun-facing) solar panel. The bluetooth diagnostic gave us all kinds on conflicting information, so we had to pull everything apart step-by-step.

It seemed like the solar controller had gone bad and neither of the tech support people were able to pinpoint anything we were missing. They offered to replace it and I (Dena) decided on the spot to give them the Newport Maritime Center’s address. The only things we achieved in Bristol were that series of diagnostics and taking off more hair.

We motorsailed down the next day in a light breeze with a fair current and made good time.

Newport, ah Newport.

Pluses: It has space for anchoring. It has a walkable-distance grocery store, laundromat, and hardware store. It has multiple free and open dinghy docks with trash receptacles. There are some amazing cruising boats coming through there at any given time. Minuses: Everything else, including crowds and mega yachts and too many boats anchored too closely together with too little rode for 20+ foot depths.

We got the replacement solar controller and took coin-op showers at $1.75 for 7 minutes (which is a long time with as little hair as I have now). We got the solar panel working again, though it’s far from needed with as little draw as we have at anchor.

Oh! And we have kept our anchor light switch on since we got the mast back up and that bright-ass LED just keeps turning on when the sun goes down and back off when it comes up. That’s been a true pleasure. Still, it doesn’t use much power. If there’s any wind at all, we wake up with batteries just as full as we went to sleep with.

The netting we took off right after buying the boat finally went back on, along with 150 pounds of food and about 50 gallons of water. We’re as heavy as we’re ever going to be, right now.

The weather promised to be terribly nasty on about day 5 if we left when we’d thought we could, so we downwinded to Prudence Island and anchored outside of Potter Cove. We’re continuing to do little projects and keeping a close eye on the weather.

…but we’re fucking done here!

We did what we wanted to do to ready the boat for an ocean crossing and now we just want to get this incredible vessel, this crew, this cat in the ocean where we all belong.

What?!

We showed up at 0630 on day three and dove into the project like a couple of giddy school kids. In our recap of the mast project the night before we both decided we were going to take our time on day three. Really dig in and get everything done to perfection. Take lots of pictures relax and enjoy ourselves.

I (Dena) told my dad that we had about a half-day’s work left and a full day to do it in. Luxurious.

…this was not to be!

The grumpy old dude in the green golf cart pulled up a little after we got our work site in order and asked if we were ready to put the mast back in the boat. We told him we were not quite done with the project but we’d be fully ready by the next morning.

He said “no”.

We said “no what?”

“No, your mast has to go back in right now, where’s your boat? You said it would only take a day or two, it’s been three days!” No, it hadn’t and no, we didn’t.

I (James) reminded him that we said it was a project of discovery and if we discovered any big issues it could take up to a week. I tried to continue by telling him about our roller furling discoveries and repairs but he cut me off, said I’d never said a week and we were in the way of his fuel delivery.

I looked at the guy standing next to him and he appeared to be completely embarrassed.

Just before I asked him if he was calling me a liar to my face and brought the whole stupid situation to a new level of regret, Dena jumped in and asked how long we had. What was the latest? He blustered and finally came out with 3pm.

My reply was a simple well, I guess we better get her ready then. In our flurry of angrily pulling electrical cable and wiring the steaming light, tricolor/anchor masthead light, and repairing the VHF cable, I forgot to do the things we both set out to do that day. I forgot to take lots of pictures, relax and have fun and perhaps that is the reason I discovered this…

…the very definition of a tragedy at sea!

The image above is of our former upper main clevis pin for the staysail roller furling. If that would have parted under a load at sea, we could have been dismasted. That one discovery was the whole reason we pulled the mast in the first place. It made it all worthwhile.

We installed the halyard restrainer to fix the angle between the top swivel on the furler and the mast (one of the two reasons the yankee furler foil had been torn apart at the top).

Since we were now in a hurry, we gave up on the idea of running the radar cable inside the wiring channel with the electrical and VHF cables. I (Dena) rode to the hardware store for the Annie Hill answer to loose cabling twacking around inside a mast. They didn’t have pool noodles, but they did have pipe insulation.

About two hours later, the green golf cart pulled up next to me and the ‘ol curmudgeon just said, “Okay I got the fuel delivery changed to Friday so we can put your mast in tomorrow. Take your time.” We said we’d be there first thing in the morning.

We completed the mast re-assembly less than an hour later. Time for some fried fish.

A 5am alarm got us up and going, and we drank our first cups of coffee after James hauled the anchor. Into the slip, a good tightening of the bobstay and bowsprit bolt, and we were ready for the workers to show up and let us get out of town before they’d finished their early morning meeting.

As per our experiences to that point, nothing went to plan. We were ignored for a couple hours, then I (Dena) tracked down the curmudgeon who said he’d find the rigger. We puttered around with little projects and cleaning…

Another couple of hours later and I was steaming. The small craft advisory for the afternoon made us want to be somewhere comfortable sooner rather than later. I found the rigger myself and, in strange but verging on expected fashion, the embarrassment of the guys around the curmudgeon is what got them all moving to make this happen.

I shooed them away as soon as the mast had enough wires connected to hold it up. The rigger did us the solid of letting us use his mooring (since the wind had already kicked up by the time we were fully rigged), and we moved the boat the short distance. An epic walk for groceries, and we started the tuning process.

The mooring field does have some attractive sailing vessels, and it’s not a bad place to put the boat to rights.

We waited out Friday’s gale, then bent the sails on Saturday.

Our go/no-go list now consists of only two things: Monitor and watermaker. We’re eyeing a weather window that starts on Tuesday, though it has a bit of high wind on Friday that we’ll watch. If the forecast stays good or gets better, we will be off the continent in just a few days. If we have to wait for a different window, well…that’s planning an ocean passage for you.

Mast unstepped

On Monday, nice and early, we pulled into the empty slip almost directly in front of the crane. A salty long-haired guy caught the bow line and somehow managed to help us into the slip without being irritating. (Usually we refuse all assistance.)

He seemed surprised to see us, an impression made stronger when a workboat towed a mastless cat boat into the same (rather large) slip we were in. They angled us as deep in as they could and pulled that cat boat very close behind in order to put their mast in before they pulled ours out.

Now, I don’t want to go on and on about this, but I’m pretty sure that the guy from the office (who incidentally also operated the crane) forgot us…or didn’t believe we would actually arrive…or who knows what. After all our prep, it was a mighty relief to have that same guy who met us at the slip start talking about how he would go about pulling our mast.

And away it went. Then we took Cetacea and Beluga Greyfinger back out on the hook.

And thus it began. A project almost four years in the making.

We spent the first day taking everything apart that we could and walking endless inspection circles around the mast. We pulled the masthead fitting and all the rigging and laid them aside as gently as possible while touching and inspecting every single fitting as much as we could. The yankee foil looked like a broken marionette so we slowly and ever so meticulously took the entire furler system apart, piece by tiny confusing piece, laying it out on on the gravel pit that was our work bench.

Our roller furling systems (above) are some seriously smart-monkey shit, and I do mean put together like a puzzle not actually intended to be worked on by end-users. So of course we dove into that shit like it was a pool.

We got it to a sticking point – literally – and then had to stop. We needed to force the collar of the Sta-Lok fitting back up the wire of the stay, but it was not going to come lose without the heat gun and the hammer. Celebratory Mexican food was in order!

James’s bike made a horrible sound only a few pedals into the trip and, sure enough, his bottom bracket bearing had gone to pieces. The grinding, clicking, popping bike ride was short and worth it – we left the restaurant full and ready to focus our minds on the next day’s work.

I James had some of the craziest dreams that night (image below multiplied by one-million). The boat moves so strangely without a mast and we were so strung out on the project ultimately it was a restless night.

There are so many pieces that interlock in very specific ways that we ended up reading the manual and watching the (not that enlightening) youtube vids over and over again before we pulled the whole thing apart on day 2. There’s always something missing in these videos, some detail out of view or accidentally-on-purpose cut from the final. Something the maker considers obvious, perhaps. Comparing the manual to the installation videos, we thought we had it pretty well figured out.

The first challenge was overcome rapidly with the heat gun and hammer. Then we teased apart the wires and pulled the wedge out, then put the whole Sta-Lok fitting back together so we couldn’t lose any pieces.

We pulled the wire out, just like we’d been instructed, but the innards didn’t come out with the wire like we’d been assured they would. Because the instructions had skipped a step – leaving the wedge snugged in the end of the wire.

After some judicious cussing and walking long winding figure-eights alongside our (now tragically) wonkily connected foils, we hatched a plan to push those innards out. It meant riding our bikes to the hardware store (which, along with the marine consignment shop, were the main reasons we thought Wickford a good place for this sort of project). James’s broken-ass bike made it a slow ride, but the store had what we needed – two 6′ lengths of all-thread, a connector, and a couple of nuts to provide the push.

That turned out to be the Whizbang Gizmo that let us push the innards down so that we could disconnect each foil section from the one below it, working down one at a time until the whole thing lay in pieces before us.

We worked on that furling system pretty much all day and, with more careful use of the hammer on the bent (yay for not broken after all!) connecting pins, finally got the entire thing properly back together a nice long time before sundown.