MOUTHING OFF: Heading South Day Three

Solomons  38°19.680N | 76°27.477W

"The mouth of the Potomac can be rife with cross-currents, tidal rips and fish traps... Several world cruisers have said that this was the roughest place they've encountered in bad weather." --Waterway Guide Chesapeake Bay

As we moved into the Chesapeake headed south, we set our waypoint heading and watched the shoreline. Something just didn't look right. But what? I ran below to check our heading, and we were on it.

I then pulled out the chart to check the first waypoint, which I had mistakenly entered as E instead of W. That's E for EEK!

But now, heading straight toward the mouth of the Potomac, we were leading a life of quiet trepidation.

According to the guidebook, the most favorable time to pass the mouth is at low tide, and we timed it almost to the minute. We entered the mouth exactly at slack tide.

I'm happy to report, that the mouth did not chew us up nor spit us out. It did not foam or bare its teeth. We made a mute, 90-minute passage in near perfect conditions.

A long, five hours later, on our approach to Deltaville we heard a loud clanging crash near the stairs that sounded like dishes falling. I looked around but found nothing out of order.

"We'll find it later," Chip said presciently. The only thing more clairvoyant would have been if he said "momentarily" instead of "later."

I relieved him at the helm, and within minutes the engine alarm blared. The temperature gauge was pinging above the high temperature mark of 240°. Lights were flashing. (I'm not really sure this is true, but when I play it back in my head, there are definitely red lights flashing.) Chip dove for the throttle, shoved it into low and bolted downstairs.

"TURN IT OFF!" he yelled. I turned it off.

Sitting at the helm alone in the sudden quiet, I assessed our situation. The depth meter read 45 feet. Good. The wind meter read 0 knots. Bad. We were adrift.

I looked to starboard and could see land about 300 yards away. Good (help nearby) and bad (shallow water).

I kept watch for, um, something, while Chip clanged around below.

"YAY!" he called out. "It's a broken belt."

Yay? He had been reviewing all the potential -- and potentially expensive -- disasters that could have caused the engine to overheat. A belt was not such a big deal, IF the previous owner stashed a spare belt.

New problem: where might that stash be.

So as Chip dug through hatches below, I took matters and furling lines into my own hands. I unfurled the staysail and the jib, both of which began to flop around in fluky 1-knot winds. By the time Chip had found not one but two replacement belts, I had both sails partially full and the boat moving very slowly in exactly the wrong direction. Just as I was preparing to tack, Chip called up, "Try the engine now!"

"Wait a minute, I'm tacking!"

"WHAT?!?!"

After an extremely unsuccessful tack, which ended up at about 250° instead of 180°, I turned the key and the engine came back to life, sans alarm.

From start to finish, Chip had the engine running in less than 20 minutes.

Me? I had sailed us about 60 yards off course, dashing all hopes of winning the day's Most Valuable Crewmember award.

We put the engine in gear and pointed toward Deltaville. I rolled in the stupid sails.

After a 10-hour day on the water, we tied up, exhausted, hungry and triumphant from tackling both the mouth of the Potomac and an unexpected engine repair. We threw on semi-clean clothes and headed out for dinner.

Halfway down the dock I stopped in my tracks.

"What's happened to us?!?" I lamented. "This is only our third day of cruising."

Chip hadn't shaved or showered. I hadn't showered, washed my hair OR put on makeup.

And we were dressed alike.

Deltaville  37°33.480N | 76°18.799W

THROUGH THE CROWD: Heading South Day Two

Annapolis 38°58.630N | 76°29.168W

We're not fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, devil-may-care, insert-trite-phrase, sailors. In fact, we work hard at being good Boy Scouts, making sound decisions, weighing the facts, consuming all the data, planning our route, waiting for weather windows.

For this trip south, we've made an effort to employ all the navigation devices onboard, we mapped out our route on paper charts, found the waypoint coordinates on the laptop and then punched them in on the GPS.

Last night when Chip entered today's waypoints, he named each one with a letter of the alphabet, in order, so I could easily work through them by following the alphabet. However, he started with Z and went backwards. Since I'm the one who runs below to check our heading and set waypoints, I expressed, shall we say, surprise at his choice of letters. He claims he couldn't find A, but I'm pretty sure he was testing my sobriety.

Right about at waypoint Y, we stumbled smack damn into a J boat regatta. Dozens of racing boats clustered together, headed in no particular direction (apparently the regatta had not started), and no two in the same direction, spinnakers flying.

Since we were heading straight into the wind, they were all tacking back and forth across our path. Add to that the fact that we were under power, and they were under sail, which meant we had zero right-of-way. We sped up, slowed down, idled, did a 360. It was just plain comical. 

By midday, the regatta a pleasant memory, we were kicked back in the cockpit, feeling confident in ourselves and our vessel. Using dead reckoning, we verified that our GPS waypoints and autopilot headings were correct. With each hour, we gained a little more trust in the purring engine. We even felt wise and seasoned when we raised the staysail to smooth out the ride -- and were delighted to see that we had installed it on the furler correctly. Ah, yes, we were awesome.

That's when we got the radio call, "Sailing vessel headed south, this is the northbound sailing vessel passing you to starboard. There's a partially submerged barrel in your path about one quarter of a mile ahead."

No words passed between us, no eye contact. At the helm, Chip threw back the throttle. I leaped out of the cockpit and hit the side deck in a full-speed, Fred-Flintstone-midair pedaling, running crouch.

For the next 20 minutes, I stood on the bow scanning the water, scanning, scanning, scanning, fearing the deadly barrel was right in our path, and I might not spot it.

'Nothing,' I shouted back to Chip, "I wish we'd see the #&$ thing, so we'd know we passed it!"

But, there was to be no such reassurance. We bobbed along 45 minutes before powering up, our confidence at a very low ebb. We expend so much energy conquering the things we can control, and now here was something new we hadn't even thought to worry about. At least the Titanic knew to watch for icebergs. And how do we give right of way to an object we can't even see??? If there was one barrel out there, did that mean there were more? What else was lurking out there just beneath the surface?

We did not know the answers, and so we motored on.

In the early evening, we approached our last waypoint and a perfect parenthetical closure to our day, ending up in the midst of fishing tournament boats coming in for the night. Dozens of them. Zipping all around us. At one point, two sped by, one on each side of us, at full speed, careening us into an impressive 30-degree heel -- one way and then the other.

We tied up side-to at a quiet dock in Solomons, the end of a long, carefully planned day spent dealing with things for which there is no plan.

Solomons  38°19.680N | 76°27.477W