Dena Hankins's Blog, page 23

A farewell to an old friend

In 2009, when we returned to the U.S. from our first adventures in India, we were dead set on getting back on the water in a sailing vessel that we could customize into a boat that could take us around the world. (Since we couldn’t afford to buy one already in that state.) We weren’t desperate but you could definitely say that we were highly motivated.

By that time, we had been high and dry for a little over a year after selling our last boat, S/V S.N. Sapien, in Hawaii. In India, we learned that we truly loved living on the water and traveling under sail. I mean, we already knew that, but we learned that being on the water and traveling by sailboat was what we did really well and it was a way of life that made us happier together than any other way of life.

So we traveled back to the U.S. that cold February and bought a boat that we would spend the next decade of our lives building and rebuilding into our own sovereign nation.

I can’t tell you how many 1000’s of nautical miles we traveled on S/V S.N. Nomad simply because the amount of miles are inconsequential compared to the sheer volume of wonder and amazement that we experienced on that incredible sailboat.

If you are new to this site, I recommend you browse through the past postings just to get a feel for who we are and what we’ve done aboard S/V S.N. Nomad over the past 9 years, 7 months and 4 days.

We moved aboard a sailboat called Nomad February 13th, 2009, and immediately began disassembling almost every single broken system aboard…which is to say, every single system. The “bones” of the vessel were great  and the gear she had (not functioning) aboard was enough of an inspiration to keep us focused on making her the boat we could travel in.

Today, she rides on a mooring in Robinhood Cove, awaiting her new owner, who is shaking loose from the old life back in Redding, California.

And we now live on our new boat, Cetacea.

We moved aboard one dinghy-load at a time.

And at first, seeing the two boats as neighbors made it hard to refocus. We’re so used to seeing Nomad as the prettiest boat in any group! But scan from the left corner to the right and see…

Our new, scrappy Baba 30. She’s a stout sailing vessel with the kind of lines that makes a person dream of long-distance cruising. At 2 feet shorter than Nomad, it’s a shock how much bigger she is below. And her lovely bowsprit…

Photo inspiration for the next decade.

The weather has been, well, autumnal. Fogs and brightness, rain and breezes.

We’ll do a full photo shoot of the interior for the next blog post.

RI to ME

From Newport to, well, I think it was still Newport. Third Beach is on the other side of the island, though, and practically abandoned compared to Newport Harbor.

And then it was the hop to Cuttyhunk, and then we sailed off the anchor and made for Onset.

That morning, we waved at Kris of the S/V Exit (Steve was still sleeping) and sailed through light rains and light winds into medium sun and medium winds and then into the entrance for the Cape Cod Canal.

In Onset, Kris and Steve took us ashore in their dinghy for pizza and we got caught in a major downpour. The pizza place was slamming and they holler names for orders. When “David” didn’t respond after a few tries, the audience…I mean, the customers got into it too until the whole place was chanting, “Da-vid! Da-vid! Da-vid!” Fun was had by all, except perhaps by David.

We did a patented epic walk or two…

Hi!

And looked great in the parking lot.

We got some projects done, and so did the S.V. Exit crew.

We stayed a beautiful near-week so that the currents would shift in our favor. Since the process an hour each day, we can wait for the turnaround to happen within an hour of when we’d like to leave. It’s pretty awesome, if you have the time to wait!

After a last quiet morning like the one above, we left Onset for Provincetown.

A beautiful wind plucked us out of the canal and swept us into P-town. It was light enough early on that we were beating or matching S.V. Exit’s speed (and she’s 46′ to our 32′), but eventually the winds stiffened enough to sweep her right by us.

We anchored between the breakwall and the mooring field.

Until, of course, the harbormaster came and kicked us out. Sigh. Not out of town, this time, just to the other side of the breakwater. Truth be told, this time he was right. There was a lot less wake and there was better depth (not too much, not too little).

This shit never gets old.

We walked to the lighthouse and saw the Schooner Hindu sailing out, plying the turkey trade.

We didn’t stay nearly as long there – just waited for the right weather window and jumped north. We weren’t the only ones to take that good spell.

We skipped so much, but made it to Maine in one overnight sail. While still inside the curled fist of Cape Cod, a whale blew and rolled, blew and dove. We saw another later, but barely. Sunfish and an enormous pod of dolphin rounded out our aquatic friend sightings. Thank you, Stellwagen Banks!

The wind stood behind the beam, but we managed to balance her out with a partly rolled up jib and then played yo-yo with the main. Reef, shake it out. Reef twice, shake one out.

The wind started dying fast around 5 a.m. and I (Dena) shook out all the reefs and rolled out the entire jib by the time James took over at 6 a.m. Then, less than an hour after that, the motor came on and we had to finish the trip that-a-way.

Finishing the trip, though, brought us to Sequin where, exhausted as we were, we immediately went swimming, then rowed ashore to walk up to the lighthouse where James was once the keeper.

Kris and Steve had arrived before us, and they joined us on the walk. Boat buddies!

(Yeah, haha.)

This land, this land! It’s so like the San Juan Islands in Washington that it stirs me.

The two guys acting as lighthouse keepers, watching the sunset. They got the best spot, but they were awesome. One took us up in the tower, though it was really his day off…

The weather was being dramatic, but more like an attention hound than a threat.

But we had an appointment to see a boat, so this glorious spot was only a single overnight.

And off we went to Robinhood Cove…

 

On the job

We sailed off the hook from Dutch Harbor pretty hungry to devour the Western Narragansett one anchor-full at a time.

It’s always so satisfying sailing off the anchor. It’s so quiet and gentle and it’s true that doing so gets me (James) absolutely starving for adventure!

We weighed anchor early in the fog and reached all the way to Wickford, Rhode Island, with the freshening breeze. We put the hook down in the first gap we could find in the city mooring field. We dressed the boat ship-shape like we always do and set about figuring out how to navigate our way to the Wickford Marine Consignment store.

(By far the only reason for a sailor to go to a bum-fuck town like Wickford.)

Not 15 minutes after finishing the engine, we heard the familiar cop-horn sound of the local aquatic chesty authority figure, der Harbormaster.

This fucking guy!

I (Dena) had been doing some research into the anchoring rules of Wickford. We skipped it when we came through the area before, and I couldn’t remember why (other than it being a super-short sailing day from Dutch Harbor).

Turns out, the mooring field we anchored in wasn’t supposed to be a mooring field. The Army Corp of Engineers (ACE) had notified the town in the 1990s…seriously…that they were in violation by filling what should be a turning basin into a mooring field. Of course, ACE has no ability to fine or tax or otherwise punish, so their only recourse is to refuse to dredge the area again until it’s clear. And shoaling isn’t a huge problem there. The town placidly claimed that they would not put new mooring balls in, but that they wouldn’t kick any out if properly permitted.

Well, that meant to me that there should be gaps in the mooring field, and there were! We’d done our surgical anchoring and were swinging gently a safe distance from all the other boats.

But the interesting part was that I read all of that in a story about something else altogether. A woman had been living aboard her boat for quite some time on a mooring there and, one spring, without warning, she was told that she wouldn’t be allowed to go back to her mooring. She still had her boat, but was effectively homeless with nowhere to put it. A local marina owner coached her on anchoring alongside the mooring field, where they couldn’t kick her out, but Der Harbormaster proceeded to ticket her on a daily basis for anchoring in a mooring field, to the tune of $500 per day!

Now plenty of people had opinions about her, ranging from “raging alcoholic” to “can’t drink on the meds she takes” to “just another person trying to get by in this brutal world”. All we knew was that her boat was still anchored there, not far from us at all.

So when dude putt-putts up next to us, we greet him with the cheerfulness of the righteous. That devolved, of course, to the other forms of righteousness one experiences when overwhelming force is brought to bear against one’s peaceful exercise of simple rights.

No, we didn’t yell. I mean, maybe a little, but only enough to be heard boat-to-boat.

The legal argument didn’t work. The bad-for-tourism argument didn’t work.

What else can we do?! I (James again) told them that we would definitely remove that part of the guide calling Wickford a “…quaint and friendly little town”. Naw, we’ll leave “quaint” in there since the very word makes me want to retch, but the “friendly” has got to go!

Suddenly, the issue was where to go. Anchoring is allowed (gag) outside the breakwaters, but the wind was exactly wrong for a good night’s rest out there. Greenwich Bay was a ways off, but we could make it by dark.

I (Dena) took the helm and decided to shake the dust of that town. The wind had come up hard, but we reefed for it and took a close reach around a huge Navy blot on the coastline, then ran downwind to the Greenwich Bay entrance. Though against the current, the wind powered us on through to the beach off Goddard State Park.

Where we spent several days swimming and enjoying ourselves. It’s a party place and so not exactly the most restful locale, but enjoyable in the main. On the downside, we learned about a new type of vessel: a small party barge driven by a jet ski docked in a special slot at the back. It’s so fucking disgusting that we just had to mention it, not for its utility but for its name. It’s called “The Shuttle Craft”… Bastards!

The wake and churn was so incredibly busy in front of Goddard Park that we spent most of our time in East Greenwich off the boat, and really, that was okay. We had provisioning to do and other stuff to load up so we didn’t do a whole lot of Plastic Destroyer dissing.

Once again we sailed off the hook from East Greenwich and brought all point of sail to bear to Prudence Island, all the way around the island, and into Potter Cove where we shagged a mooring for a few more days.

Normally we don’t really trust other people’s moorings but this one was overbuilt with brand new hardware on it and we figured we weren’t going to stay through any inclement weather and it’s free, so, why not.

We did some island adventuring…

…And some much needed hull cleaning.

…And had an almost perfect time of it for 3 perfect days.

At this point we were well into the Eastern Passage of the Narragansett Bay and pointing the boat at Newport to get our mainsail worked on by the local Quantum Sails loft.

Because of the intense slatting of the main in the light winds and rollers between Cape May, NJ, and Block Island, RI, our mainsail was in need of some repairs to some of the luff slugs. We restitched the two that worked completely loose, and that was fine for the short term, but we wanted to get it fixed and done by the pros. Also, really, we wanted to check out the Quantum loft in Newport!

…and yes, it was cool!

…And so was Newport, Rhode Island!

We anchored on a Friday between Ida Lewis Rock (which has a yacht club perched atop its crags) and Newport proper. We motored in, turned about, and stuck it right where we felt safe: on the edge of the anchorage area in a nice big gap.

The harbormaster wants folks to check in and get an anchorage assignment, but we gave him the salty side-eye and did what we wanted. This time, we got two harbormaster boats buzzing around us…and a set of friendly waves once they’d confirmed we didn’t suck at picking our own spot. That’s right, Wickford! Fuck off!

Not only were the Quantum Sails people very cool to us, they fixed our mainsail to perfection with a less-than-24-hour turnaround in high summer! Wow!!!

Because of our clear sight-lines, we had the best seat in the house for the next while. We got a lot of great photos of the schooners plying the turkey trade, the sweet little wooden sailboats blazing along, and a Norwegian traditional ship that made the local papers.

When’s the last time you were on our Flickr page? https://www.flickr.com/photos/sovereignnations/

Into the Narragansett

…The fog  went away but, like a promise kept, it ultimately becomes a part of the background of life.

That morning we rose salty (still, again) from our beds and made coffee. The pot was not yet empty when restlessness overtook us and we weighed anchor.

Like all bays and estuaries of the world the Narragansett breathes with the moon in cycles driven by billions of years. When the moon is full, it brings the tide in with it at night meaning the mighty ebb rages as the moon sets in the morning. It also means that there is one time of the month that it’s just no good to take off in the morning if headed into any given body of water. But the fog had lifted and there was a promise of a freshening breeze to drive us into the Narragansett Bay to one of our favorite places on the Eastern Seaboard, Dutch Harbor.

That promised breeze didn’t get to us until we got right up into the Dutch Harbor anchorage so we just motored up the bay from Point Judith.

We genuinely hate motoring, we really do, especially when we can’t even raise the main lest it slat-n-flap and try to tear itself to pieces. And, check this out, when the wind is slightly off the port quarter the diesel fumes flow into the cockpit and down into the cabin, meaning, there’s no good place to hang out away from the fumes.

Against the current, without any wind-assist, we ranged from 1.7 to 2.5 knots for the first hour or so, breathing death and riding the awkward three-legged-pony motion on the significant swell.

But, we were going to Dutch Harbor!

Swimming has been one of our major pleasures, and the main way we’re keeping clean. From the Great Salt Pond of Block Island (and salt is seriously represented in that water) to the shallow flats of Point Judith Pond (brackish and warmish) to the deep-water cold of the Harbor of Refuge, we’ve floated, swum, and played.

Dutch Island offers a different kind of fun. We do plenty of walking, but it’s mostly provisioning and almost always starting at a marina. This gravelly landing puts us on an island we’ve enjoyed hiking before.

It has that cool up-thrust geology that puts the earth’s bones on display.

Among other bones…

But our adventures were curtailed when James saw a bunch of tiny red ticks and the black ones with the white spot on the back covering his legs and socks. He started slapping at them and hollered at me to check myself.

We’ve been alert to tick trouble – we’re within a hundred miles of Old Lyme, the place Lyme disease was identified. It’s a thing around here, to the point where one of our co-deckhands on the Mystic Whaler was living with the long term consequences. Neither of us wants to get any closer to Lyme disease than that.

So skedaddle we did, and the rest of our hiking was done on roads and sidewalks.

We were a bit of a row away, but nothing that hurt too bad. Once ashore, we enjoyed Jamestown.

And the gardens along the road were amazing. Most of them looked feral, with snap peas sprawling across the sidewalk and flowering bushes springing high above their usual,decorative levels.

Dutch Island continued to be useful by spreading the sunset light…

And anchoring the clouds and sea.

A short Pea Soup Adventure

This is what we woke up to this morning and as we weighed anchor the fog only got thicker.

We have the tools we need to make a safe passage through pretty much any conditions such as fog or rain, whatever, and really fog is never that big of a deal but the chatter on the VHF from all the lost and freaking out non-professional skippers was unbearable!

So we did the thing we always do when we’re not feeling up to dealing with other people’s shit…

We put the hook down in the closest safe gunkhole we could find and went swimming!

Safe on the hook in Point Judith Harbor of Refuge…Beautiful!

Where’s the Wind?

We don’t want or need to beat up our boat by sailing in gales, but the last few adventures we’ve had involved copious use of the infernalcombustion engine that resides inside our home.

As this happens more often, we are struggling with what’s harder on our sails and ourselves…leaving them up and slatting so we can use every breath of wind? Or dropping and raising them each time the wind rises and falls?

No answers. Just questions.

Off of the shore

The Chesapeake Bay was so kind…Thanks!

We woke up on the boat at anchor in Chesapeake City, Maryland. We boiled water, we ground coffee by hand, we started our infernalcombustion engine, we hoisted our mainsail and we left our world behind.

Goodbye world…

We sailed to a strange anchorage across from a nuclear power plant where the Delaware River and Bay become hard to differentiate. We slept underway in the 3 knot current of that very same Rio.

We sailed, oh yeah we sailed, 5.9 knots down that rapid river with the wind and the current with us…until…it…wasn’t.

1.9 knots…sounds surprisingly like 2.5 knots when you’re motorsailing against a current that will… not…relent…until it does.

Cape May Canal in the dark is a bit scary, really!

Four days of us,

of us,

of us…

…of us, location specific…

…And then we went sailing in the North Atlantic Ocean, finally!

.

Which moved from surreal photos of the crisp glories…

The waxing crescent chased by Venus.

To human oddities at the edges of perception…

To crisp photos of surreal glories…

And through the salt-shaker of mostly-downwind but not quite down-swell…

To just offshore of the Hamptons…

And thence, again in the dark, into the narrow channel leading into Block Island’s Great Salt Pond.

The weather ebbed and flowed like the tide. Two boats dragged past us and were saved by the harbormaster’s crew. One didn’t, but only because it T-boned the cool ketch with the hard dodger and a home port of Annapolis (which already feels far enough away to be affectionate about).

And the players kept playing…

And we walked…

And walked…

And walked…

And back on the boat, the kids were still summer-camping and we started rowing…

And then walked…

To see the things we were so excited by…

No, the gorgeous Fresnel lens was a bonus.

We came for the brunch buffet and for the…

Yep. Megawatts worth of wind generators, 5 huge installations that run an island that used to run on a huge diesel generator plus…plus…

Much as it seems distant and unlikely most of the time, we do something cool, sometimes.

Retirement Day

A week ago today was Retirement Day.

Again. And hooray!

Unloading was the first order of business. James sold his bike via Craigslist, but mine didn’t get any serious bites. I took it to the local community center cum halfway house and left it there. A gift to someone.

From there it was a last visit to the gym for showers (made less luxurious by a broken steam room, and yes, first world problems), topping off the water tanks with the last few gallons, coiling the hose and shore power cord, and releasing ourselves from the web that had held us in slip E05 at Watergate Pointe Marina, Annapolis, MD.

To get to that point, we’d both put in a flurry of 40+ hour weeks at the paying jobs, completed the edits to the Southern Waterway Guide, finished Kiwi-Gripping the deck, replaced the old and worn gypsy for the windlass, rebuilt Flo, painted the forepeak…oh, and in the mix was a reading in NYC for Dena and James’ trip to Truth or Consequences, NM, for a one-woman show begun 35 years ago while the one-woman’s daughter was dating James – also a part of that aforementioned web.

And then we went sailing.

After being all bound up in these jobs and doing the right thing and getting all freaked out over that stupid shit, we sailed to Mill Creek, like we do, a familiar destination, the boat practically drives itself there. It doesn’t, of course, but it doesn’t take much thought or planning for us to do it. We’ve anchored there 5 times now and that’s what’s called local knowledge.

We went to Cantler’s on the busiest day of their week at the busiest time of day (as the Goog helpfully informed us afterward)…in their busy season. It’s not a stretch to imagine this being the busiest hour of their year.

After getting a beeper from a monotonal teen, we looked around and realized we were in hell. There were bitter individuals picking at plain salads, forks stabbing at the room’s underlying rhythm, while glaring at their family’s matching-polo’ed, serious faced, silent, Olympic-level crab-picking squads; others eating snow crab and bitching about it’s lack of freshness; and still others who hammered those poor desiccated bottom feeders relentlessly, pounding them to pumice to the beat in fits of Einstürzende Neubautenian blue crab psychopathy. It wasn’t a restaurant; it was a medieval battlefield late in the day, steaming with the effluvia of countless dead. The 8 live crabs down in the holding pools of death skittered in fear, but they were all destined for the pot.

We abandoned the battlefield and returned the next day. (Monday, 1:30pm, is a much better time to visit, in case you were wondering.) We don’t have to talk about the dude, left over from the previous day’s carnage, his gaze fixed and his hands bloody from hammer misses…

That evening’s Nomad Dance Party and the recovery therefrom took a night and a day. James thoroughly cleaned the boat, including the black streak he put on the bow pulling into Myrtle Beach back in January. I (Dena) ate saltines and drank ginger ale.

But the next day I was better, and I flipped the lifelines end for end to change the chafe spots while James set up the Monitor lines.

And all the time we were both screaming quietly, “This is real life!” Back to the good stuff, including a day of storms…

And glorious sunsets…

Four days, we sat there recuperating from four months of seductive, well-paying wage-slavery, re-familiarizing ourselves with being at anchor. Grooving on each other and getting back into this thing that we do.

And then we went sailing.

From Mill Creek out to Whitehall Bay, then into the Chesapeake and under the Bay Bridge, wing-on-wing.

We’re exploring for the Waterway Guide again this year, and this is one of our territories. We first sailed from Hampton Roads to Baltimore in 2010 and we’ve been here, back and forth, again and again, coming through as more and more experienced explorers. Now, we’re traveling this area (the west and north coasts of the Maryland Chesapeake) slowly, with an eye to helping new explorers discover this place that has drawn us back time and time again.

You can’t underestimate the selfish slant here. When we were new, we really needed the kinds of information that we’re going after this time around. The first time we came through here, we needed exactly what we’re gathering now. We’re going to hand it to the people who are not-us, but who partake in this life and this version of the world. And for those former selves, who really wanted to know where it was okay to anchor in Baltimore.

Journey’s end, another adventure

So we sailed up the Chesapeake Bay once again, in the early spring, and it was…

All the things to us. Once again…

With an ambitious early start, we leapt from Little Creek to Deltaville, Virginia, in one long day that put us three days ahead of any of our previous slogs up the Bay in the cold.

Little Creek is Bay-wards of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, so it’s not actually in the ocean. It is, however, the gulping throat of the bay, where the Atlantic crams itself in and rushes back out every 6 hours. The winds and tides are near-oceanic, plus a large portion of the East Coast’s shipping traffic enters and exits there.

Crossing Hampton Roads at its razors edge gave us as little time crossing the ship channel as possible, which was good, but it was still very, very intense! As we approached the channel from the south, there were 4 large ships in excess 600 feet directly across our bow. All the ships were traveling perpendicular to our course, so we were all doing exactly what we all needed to do to live through the day. Then, just as we were getting very close to the crossing point in the channel, a huge Navy Warship blazes out around Willoughby Spit doing 15 knots heading out to sea. At that point, the wind kicked up and I shortened sail so we could ride astern of the Warship as slowly as possible. As we approached the ship in the channel, the wind (of course!) started to gust, and I mean, hard! We already had 3 reefs in the main with the full 140% genny so I eased the sheet and pointed higher up to pull in some sail. Then the wind kicked around to the north and we hove to, just like that!

And of course that was the moment the warship hailed us on the VHF!

Incredible, TFG*!

Oh yeah, Dena was down below all this time cooking fried-egg-samiches, so when we started to heave to I had to ask her to help with the genny. She stowed her work area, turned off the flame, and bolted above decks to deal with the flapping sail in her classic super-hero fashion (see above photo), stowed the sail and then went back down below. Thirty seconds later, she handed me a piping hot fried-egg-samich as we sailed abaft a 600 foot U.S. Navy Warship ! Yes!!!

The wind rose and fell in its southeast Chesapeake lungs all day long but when we pointed up to the Rappahannock, it was like one long cold angry sigh all the way into Deltaville.

Then it was my birthday, a perfect time to binge-watch through another mighty Nor’Easter.

…And just like it was springtime in Maryland or some-shit. The wind clocked around and puffed us up the Bay to Solomons for St. Pat’s.

We spent the night on the fuel dock with the heaters basting and headed out as early as possible for the open bay.

And once again, not for the weak! We had 20 knots of fresh 40 degree wind from the northeast which put us on a hard beat along the Calvert Cliffs coming out of Solomons. The sun was crisp in the sky with not a hint of warmth as we heeled 15 degrees from our portside. Dena took the first watch out of the protected creek and I took over partway down the Patuxent River, but just as we came out into the open Chesapeake Bay it got real. The ebb current had blasted us down the river, and the NE wind had filled our sails to bursting…while we were heading east. As soon as the cliffs stopped protecting us and we turned further north, our speed dropped like it was hot and we started hobbyhorsing against the wind waves and swell. Engine on, sails straining, Dena pulled one reef, then a second, then disappeared belowdecks. I hunkered down to the job at hand and, just as I was settling in for a long hard cold painful beat, Dena came abovedecks and yelled above the din, “Fuck This DAY!”

As usual, we have no pictures of the worst bits.

But…we turned back for Solomons and it turned into a glorious sailing day. We tacked a few times around another boat that was sailing in the protected part of the river, then the cold got to us regardless and we headed up-creek to our usual anchorage.

Tinker (the dinghy) hadn’t been off the deck since Oriental, NC, but she splashed without complaint and we rowed in for Thai food. (Recommended if you’re in Solomons and not looking for the Chesapeake seafood experience.)

The next morning, we left at 6am and trundled down the creek in the dark. Between radar and local knowledge, I (Dena) was only mildly tense about not being able to see for shit. Besides, any kayakers or paddleboarders were waiting for a much, much warmer morning.

The sky lightened fast and by the time we were well into the Patuxent, we got a gorgeous morning show.

That day was an 11-hour slog. Leftover swell from the previous day’s wind slowed us some, but we left as early as we did because we wanted to catch the last of the flood on the bay. Good speeds under power turned into reasonable speeds under power turned into it’s-fine-we’ll-get-there speeds under power. For most of that time, we had sail up, out, etc, but eventually we lost the wind so thoroughly that even the main had to just flap there gently.

Unless you’ve never been to this website before, you’ve probably seen something like this already. We like Tinker, even when it’s just following us. Look – that’s how we get to land! So cute.

We didn’t have the option to wait out any of this weather because of two factors. One, I (still Dena) needed to be in DC for a presentation on Tuesday, and it was best for all concerned if we were in Annapolis that morning so we could do some last-minute prep. Two, the snow that was coming.

We’d been keeping up on the 10-day forecasts for weeks, looking for the opportunity to jump back down to Norfolk and bring Nomad north. We saw a sliver of a window and took it, but there were two bad-wind days in the middle and snow at the end. Another new meteorology term that didn’t scare us because we made it. It was safe and warm and fast and also hard and cold and exciting and also, finally, safely behind us. Back on E dock, plugged in with heaters blazing, we sat out a snow day like school children, excited for the unexpected day off and shocked by the post-equinoctal snow.

Beautiful.

Another week of north winds and cold turning into south winds with rain have us dancing with glee that we took that window. Who knows how long we would have been stuck in a ridiculous apartment with rented furniture had we not simply grabbed our opportunity.

*This Fucking Guy

The Ditch

…It’s a son of a bitch y’all!

We crossed the mighty Pamlico Sound in two giant leaps… Bam, Bam! We got that shit out of the way.

Well, kind of…

From River Dunes we sailed on a powerful reach for 10 hours with sharp growling seas all day to the (not so much) protection of the Long Shoal River. As we made our approach to the anchorage the land was so low that it didn’t even show up on the radar until we got right up on it. There’d be no protection from that direction. But the wind and seas laid down just after dark giving us a peaceful night on the hook. The boat was still nice and dry from four days of River Dunes decadence and the wind was from the South so it was comfortable down below.

The next day we sailed to Manteo.

On the way to Croatan Sound the wind and waves were somewhat at odds with each other in the open Pamlico. Although we had a nice fresh southerly breeze giving us a strong starboard reach for most of the day, the waves, wow, were in the 3 to 6 foot range and slapping us right on the starboard beam. It was a sloshy ride.

…but that warm (finally!) south wind felt so nice!

As we passed Oregon Inlet, the only confusing part of the leg, it was a down hill run in a straight line south all the way to the Manteo channel, and let me (James) tell you,  after two hard sailing, 10 hour, days in a row we were actually kind of glad that a big Nor’easter was going to keep us hunkered down for a spell. I mean really, there are worse looking places to ride out a storm.

The storm hit…

…and for the next 3 days we never even left the boat!

Oh sure, we talked about it, you know, launching the little boat, going ashore, but there were no shits to give! We were so content with just hanging out with each other, on our dry boat, reading and watching movies that we just never made it happen.

Remember, the wind generator gets nice and quiet in really heavy winds so not only did we have plenty of power to do an all day binge-fest of stupid TV stuff, it didn’t even stress us out that the sun never appeard.

It was wonderful actually!

…For 3 whole days.

Then the wind came around again and we went sailing.

We had the mainsail up with a single reef tucked in before we entered the Manteo Channel and as we rounded Roanoke Island into the open Albemarle Sound, the jib came out, the engine went off, and we sailed all the way into the North River’s narrow entrance bar before starting her back up, striking the jib, and motorsailing up that deceptively narrow ICW channel.

We put in for the night at Coinjock, NC, and  plugged her into the dock so we could run the electric heater to dry her out. After 3 days at anchor with those cold northeasterly breezes, she was, once again, a little wet below decks.

But this wasn’t the same deal as before, not at all! By this point we’ve developed a routine around keeping ourselves warm and dry (er) than on the trip down, and it helps that it’s not 24 degrees outside. Everything just seems doable again, making the whole experience just a little bit lighter.

We made Great Bridge, VA, by 1600, had an amazing seafood chimichanga sitting in front of us by 1800 and were out cold by 2000 hours. This is living the fucking dream!

We’re feeling it at this point. All of our systems are working perfectly, the sailing is awesome, and we can see the end of another epic adventure!

…and the bitterness of returning to wage-slavery is hanging on me like a two centuries old lie.

Then the sun came out again, and that’s always a cool thing! We sailed all the way around Roanoke Island then all the way up into the North River on this totally perfect beat, to reach to broad reach and finally a perfect 5 knot motorsail to Great Bridge and the only thing that was missing, the sun!

Then came Hampton Roads.

Hampton Roads is the scary central Naval Shipyard for the entire East Coast of the US. And one of the coolest things you can do as an old school monkeywrencher is to, very slowly, roll through that industrial nightmare/environmental-disaster, under sail!

…and that’s what we did y’all!

(Be advised, the best way to get fucked with by the Powers-That-Be in Hampton Roads is to take pictures of all the really cool top-secret tech that’s all around you while sailing through, so, rest assured, you won’t see any pictures of Hampton Roads in this blog, not this time.)

The wind was teasing us all day by being…

…Absolutely perfect!

Coming around the Norfolk peninsula, we maintained a broad reach with a single gybe right at the Bridge/Tunnel to set us up for the entrance to Little Creek. The boat was in her element, the Chesapeake Bay, and she was acting like she’d come home to a long lost lover! The rig was powerful and high on the water while digging a trench to 6.5 knots with 2 reefs in the main and a full genny. This 1961 Philip Rhodes Chesapeake 32 was finally back in her home waters, and after 1100 miles of trudging the North Atlantic ICW, she seemed happy about it!

We made landfall by 1600 at the Vinings Landing Marina in Norfolk, VA, and said goodbye to the boat for a while, headed to Annapolis. We have to take care of some beeswax before stowing the memories of our winter sailing adventure for good. We gotta get some work done, some money made and quite possibly, a new boat under us before too long.