TRIANGULATING: Heading South Day Four

Deltaville  37°33.480N | 76°18.799W

Today's Chesapeake was not as user-friendly as yesterday's. Instead, we were barreling through 3-foot swells, practically launching off the top of them with a body-jarring landing on the other side. Sitting in the cockpit, this is not such a big deal. Going to the bathroom: BIG DEAL.

With the boat bucking around, I have to either pull up my pants with one hand (level of difficulty: EXTREME) or find a way to use two hands without toppling in a bruised heap (level of difficulty: IMPOSSIBLE). That's where triangle pose comes in.

I lean my butt against the wall with my legs at a 45° angle, making a triangle with the floor, pull my pants up to the top of my thighs. Then I push my butt away from the wall so that my weight is leaning on my shoulders, making a larger triangle, and pull my pants up the rest of the way. Even I find this amusing.

Our path today required a lot of triangulating above decks as well. On previous days, our destinations have been relatively easy to navigate, but since the time we left Rock Hall, I had been dreading two things: passing the mouth of the Potomac and navigating through Norfolk, both with their own complications. With the Potomac behind us, I was feeling pretty antsy about the dense Norfolk chart and the potential for heavy traffic from container ships and aircraft carriers.

But like the previous obstacles, it seemed less intimidating when we got there. With so many landmarks, triangulating was more obvious. In fact, when we passed through, I was surprised how relatively simple it was -- except for the 25-knot wind barreling across the channel, blowing us right toward the aquatic Death Stars:

And just as it was in passing the mouth of the Potomac, timing was in our favor. On a Sunday, there were no mega-ships moving about, just a lot of recreational boats zipping around, one pulling someone on an inner tube, weaving in and out of large power boats, the same type of people who would pull someone down the interstate on a skateboard.

We passed under lift bridges:

People sunning in inauspicious places:

Through a lock:

And after a 12-hour day, thanked Good Company for delivering us safely to Great Bridge.

Tied up behind:

Great Bridge  36°43.368N | 76°14.751W

**A special thanks to Debbie Miller for giving permission to this random blogger to use her beautiful Triangle Pose painting. See her work here.

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

FLYING THE COOP: Heading South Day One

Rock Hall 39°08.481N | 76°15.710W

We did it! We broke the bonds of Rock Hall.

The conditions weren't ideal, but boy, were we ready to go, all three of us. When we took the port breastline off, it was almost completely chafed through.

On our way out, Rock Hall had one last gambit for us. The marina is in an L shape that is tighter than Beyonce's jeans. To get out, we had to back out into an area just longer than the boat, turn to port and make an immediate 90-degree right turn -- in gusting wind. We started by having a minor squabble about how to untie and shove off, surely brought on by fatigue, stress and nervousness, but once we threw the lines, Chip did an admirable job. We didn't hit anything, always goal number one.

After we cleared the marina, and headed toward that bridge I'd been watching longingly for TWO WEEKS, Good Company performed flawlessly, clearly showing off for us.

We left Rock Hall under a gray, hazy sky, blowing and cold. We had taken to calling it Alcatraz after another "rock" that's notoriously hard to escape.

And four hours later? We pulled into Club Med. We slid into downtown Annapolis under bright clear skies, temperature in the low 70s, the water still as a sleeping baby. We tied up to the bulkhead in front of Starbucks, walked to Pusser's for lunch and two extra large Painkillers.

Heaven, if not a little disorienting.

That evening as we were lolling in the cockpit pinching ourselves:

thinking all first-day-of-the-rest-of-our-lives, I looked over and saw a young couple posing for photos. They were angling to look like they were onboard our boat, so I offered to let them come aboard.

As it turns out, they were taking their engagement photo. A sweet and perfect ending to our first day cruising. New beginnings for everyone, brought to you by Good Company.

(The photographer Gil Seo, has an exhibition in New York at SBD Gallery starting May 29.)


Annapolis 38°58.630N | 76°29.168W

THE BIG WAIT

Does it seem like we do a lot of waiting?

That's where we are again. Waiting. Chip's back. We're ready to go (sort of), but the weather calls for high winds the next few days, so we'll lay up in Rock Hall until it passes.

We could have made it across to Annapolis today, but the boatyard had to make a final trip up our mast to fix the light they forgot to fix last time. By the time they came back down, it was too late to start.

In the meantime, we've put ourselves on a system-a-day plan until we get it figured out.

While Chip was gone, I tackled the water heater and AC/heat unit.

Today is the navigation system. Chip brought an adapter to make the GPS talk to the laptop, so we're poring over Nobeltec software and the Garmin GPS -- and their manuals -- attempting to find ourselves and our route easier on the way south.

Our days are filled with packing glands and Y valves, bilge pumps and water filters. One at a time.

I only got through half the toe rails before the weather moved in. I've left the starboard side taped in hopes of getting another coat on before we untie.

The wind blows. And so we look longingly out across the water. And we wait.

STORMY THOUGHTS

About 11:30 last night, I thought, "Well, Mr. Automaton, where's your big-time storm?"

A few minutes later, as I was brushing my teeth I heard something that sounded like a tractor rumbling down the dock. I turned off the water and cocked my head sideways, like a beagle, listening. 

At the same moment I identified the roar as wind, the boat made a sharp heel to starboard, the lines groaning at the shift.

"Really? Zero to 30 in the time it takes to brush my teeth?" I asked.

In answer the starboard rail squished the bumper into a piling with a loud SCREEEEK.

I realized in that moment, that most of my attention had gone toward keeping the boat away from the dock on the port side, to the complete neglect of anything that might push us to starboard, like a 30-knot wind at midnight.

That's when the gusts turned into a steady blow, and my guts turned to jelly.

The rain started pelting on the fiberglass roof. Lightning flashed. The boat started rocking in earnest, bang, bang, banging against the dock lines and screeching on the bumper. It sounded like I was lying beneath the tracks in a busy subway station.

This boat weighs more than 10 tons, and in that moment the whole of it was resting on my shoulders.

It was not the storm that scared me. No, this was much bigger.

This boat has been on the water -- and around the world -- for 10 years. Now in my first week as caretaker, is it doomed to break apart on my watch? Am I actually capable of taking care of a 40-foot boat -- by myself??? Have I finally taken on more than I can manage?

And worse, if I can't manage tied up to a dock, how will I react in the big, wide ocean? Will I even survive? 

I was having an existential crisis with a thunderstorm as the soundtrack.

I called Chip. 

"It's blowing. I don't want to go out there. What if a line breaks? What if I loosen the line and the wind gusts and the boat gets away from me?" I babbled.

He calmly talked me down, or in this case, up.

"It always sounds worse than it is. Just put in some more bumpers if you can't pull it off the piling."

So, I took a deep breath, put on my big girl foulies and went up there. As advertised, it wasn't all THAT bad. It was cold and raining, but it was the foulies that got wet, not me. During the previous week, I had learned how to unwrap the dock line from the cleat part of the way, wait for a little break in the wind, then haul it in before the next gust. And that's what I did, hauling in the port breastline, between gusts inching by little bits away from that starboard piling.

But, just in case, I jammed in one more bumper before going below.

And by morning, I had conquered a few more items on the checklist:

30-knot squall at the dock: CHECK
Existential overreaction at midnight: CHECK

There are never photos of the good stuff.