September 30- October 2, 2012

As I write this, I am sitting up on deck.  It is 2121 on October 1^st.  We are on passage from Noyac (Sag Harbor), Long Island, NY to Annapolis, Maryland.  Patronus is sailing just south of Atlantic City after 38 hours underway.  We are headed towards Cape May and will travel up the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal.  The canal will take us into the Chesapeake Bay.  It is pitch black out.  There is a full moon, but it is currently hiding behind the clouds.  As I sit and remember the sweeping, sunlit, sparkling views from the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island, it is interesting to note that I am just as in awe of my current view, which is so different.  What I see in front of me are the red and yellow lights of the tall buildings in Atlantic City, set against a canvas of blackness.  I think about all the space around me, and that there are only five people (us) in all the ocean around me, as far as I can see.  Then I think about those lights on the shore of AC and how many people are in each of those buildings.  It’s mindboggling.  There are only about half a dozen more red lights visible along the coast, and the faint white of light pollution over Cape May in the far distance.  On the other side of the boat, I see one lone pinprick of a white light: the remnants of a ship that passed us astern about an hour ago.  I expect it to disappear over the horizon in about 20 minutes.  I like how everything seems to move in slow motion at night.  In front of us, to port, I just now made out the flashing red buoy that means we are getting closer to our destination.  It is the first buoy we have navigated since Montauk, yesterday morning.  It flashes once every 4 seconds, but when you stare into the darkness, directly into the wind, your eyes play tricks on you.  Four seconds feels like an eternity and you convince yourself that that buoy must not be there after all.  But then there it is again and you go check the chart for the 20th time to see if you have gotten any closer since three minutes ago.

We left at 0800 on September 30^th.  We had a smooth ride through the Peconic Bay to Montauk, but the current and tides around Montauk Point were nasty and caused one, two, three of us to go down for the count with seasickness.  Once out in the Atlantic Ocean, the seas were calmer, but I had a bit of a fit when I realized, for the fiftieth time since July, that the wind was coming from the exact place we wanted to go.  As I mentioned before, you can’t sail directly into the wind.  And our boat, being a cruiser, can’t even sail anywhere close to the wind.  We need about 45 degrees (in either direction) to sail close-hauled.  That means that we can sail very happily if the wind is coming from any one of the OTHER 270 degrees.  Ok math majors.  You know that this means, (ignoring prevailing winds, gravity, the presence of Dramamine, and friction), that we have a 3 out of 4 chance of getting a wind direction that is possible to sail in.  Why, oh why do we always seem to be going in the exact direction from which the wind is coming?  It is mathematically unacceptable.  I plan on lodging a protest.

By 1745 (almost ten hours after starting), we finally turned the engine off and were sailing in 12 knots of breeze from the Northwest.  We were just south of Shinnecock Inlet, which is where our boat “Charisma” was docked when I lived on it as a child!  Alas, by 1900 the wind had died and the iron genny (engine) went back on.  Be careful what you wish for, folks, because by 0100 (ie. dark, cold, and kinda scary), the wind had filled in and we were crashing along in big seas from the NW with swells coming in from the SE (picture the water movement in a Jacuzzi and multiply by the size of the ATLANTIC OCEAN.)  Chris was on watch and I was trying to rest in the Port Aft Cabin with Porter (anyone out there figure out yet that we named our third child after the left side of the boat?).  Bryson and Reese were in the Starboard Aft Cabin (good thing we didn’t have a fourth.  “Hey Starboard!  Time for dinner, Starboard!”).  Our cabin is useless because it is in the bow and it rises up on the waves and then comes crashing down with a violent smack.  Your body

literally lifts off the mattress if you can actually lie there for three minutes without losing your lunch.  We were on starboard tack, which means the sails were on the port side (isn’t that confusing?).  The boat was heeled to port, which means that Porter and I were both rolling towards the hull.  I was “sleeping” with my every muscle clenching the mattress to avoid crushing him.  Doesn’t that sound relaxing?  But Porter was so cute.  He would wake up every once in awhile and ask me a question, as if it was the middle of the day.  One question was why the boat heels over.  Another was about what I do when I’m up on watch in the middle of the night.  He sounded completely awake and alert.  I would answer him and he would say, “Ok, I’m going back to sleep now,” and in ten seconds he would be completely out.

At 0200, just as I was drifting into semi-consciousness for the first time, I heard “ERICA!!!!” from the cockpit. (Even you non-sailors have got to know that this is NOT. GOOD.)  I jumped up and grabbed my lifejacket as I climbed up the stairs.  I saw Chris running forward towards the bow and looked to make sure he was clipped into his tether.  “THE JIB HALYARD BROKE!!!” he screamed.  He took the sail down and I ran around releasing the jib sheet, turning on the deck lights, and grabbing sail ties so that we could secure the giant, crushed up jib on the deck till morning.  Don’t ask how, but I managed to get a video AND this picture after (kind of after) we had everything secured.  I really need help.

The excitement left us both stunned and nauseous.  We sat in the cockpit for a bit, not quite sure of what to do.  Chris had been up on deck for hours.  It was definitely time for me to stand a watch, but I was terribly seasick and almost threw up.  The seas were huge and I was not sure I’d be able to handle the boat in my state.  So I stayed with Chris until he felt better and then I went back down to huddle in bed again with Porter.  I came back up at 0630 and made Chris go to bed, even though he would have to miss the sunrise (he still hasn’t forgiven me).

Here I am, back on watch for another night.  The seas are much calmer.  So much so that I can bring my laptop up on deck.  The blackness around me is divided into two parts.  There is the cloudy, slightly dark gray blackness of the sky.  Smooth, soft, and blurry.  Then there is the deeper, more sinister blackness of the ocean below.  Choppy with waves, a white cap flashing now and again.  It is bottomless, velvety, enigmatic, and unpredictable.  The boat around me is dark.  Everyone is asleep below me.  I see only what is lit up by my computer screen: my hands, my mouse (can you believe I can’t use a touchpad and have to haul this little mouse all over creation?), the American flag fluttering in the breeze (are we supposed to take it down at night? Because we can’t fit one more thing in these lazarettes.), the tow line for the dinghy, hopping up and down as the dinghy jumps the waves of our wake, the striped cushion that I am sitting on, and my foul weather gear (have I mentioned how much I love my foul weather gear?  Hey, at least I’m getting my money’s worth out of this ridiculously expensive outfit!).  I’m wearing Chris’ Dubarry sea boots because I have been too, er, cheap, to buy my own.  They are huge on me, but we’re mostly up on deck at opposite times during the night, so it’s not that big a deal to share them.  They cost $300 and let me tell you something-they are worth every penny.  His boots are nineteen years old.  He got them for his Trans-Atlantic race in 1993 and they are in perfect condition.  My feet are so cozy right now.

Our red and green bow lights will alert other boats to our presence.  If they see our red bow light (hanging on the port/left side of the bow) and our white stern light, they will know that they are approaching a sailboat on its port side, which means it is traveling right to left.  If they see our green bow light and our white stern light, the opposite is true.  If they see only our red and green lights, they know they are heading right at us.  This information can be super helpful:)  Other types of watercraft have other lighting patterns, so I can tell a fishing boat from a tug boat pulling a freighter, even in the black of night.

Oh look!  Here comes a tug boat and freighter now!  Slow moving and ominous, the vertically stacked lights on the tugboat almost blend in with the lights on shore.  I have to pay attention to see that they are moving.  Far, far, far, far behind the tug boat are the horizontally lined up lights of the freighter.  Between the two boats is a dangerous cable that would destroy us if we accidentally sailed between the two boats thinking they were separate.  We are far off shore from the tugboat, so there is no danger.  I wonder if the captain sees us?  We both have AIS (he is required to have it).  AIS is the next generation of technology that allows boats to see each other on a computer, especially at night.  Even before I can see another ship, I can see her on my AIS screen, along with her name, position, direction, speed, port of call, and destination.  If we are on a collision course, it will sound an alarm and tell me how long I have until we meet up close and personal.  Likewise, other boats will be alerted to our presence.  There is a possible downside to this technology that pertains to piracy, so we may take special precautions when using it in the Caribbean.

On the morning of October 2, we entered the Delaware Bay and rode the current all the way up.  Woo hoo! There was a lot of shipping traffic and at one point I had a ship coming up from behind and one straight ahead of me.  I had to move way out of the shipping lanes to allow them room to pass each other.  “Gross Tonnage Rule” applies here, as we used to say.  We took in our sails and entered the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal at 1115.  It was an interesting stretch of water, with lots of turns and bridges.  Even though we know we fit under all the bridges (their heights are published on the nautical charts), from the vantage point of the deck looking straight up, it always looks like we are going to hit.

The kids had really gotten their sealegs by this point, so they were doing schoolwork.  I even gave them their spelling tests up on deck while I drove the boat!  After leaving the canal, we started down the Chesapeake Bay and wondered how far we could make it by nightfall.  We had the current with us here as well and we were flying over the bottom at up to 9.3 knots per hour!  I really hoped we could just get to Annapolis and get it over with, but Chris decided we would stop in Rock Hall, MD.  It was a good call.  By 1800, we were pulling into the harbor, holding our breaths as we carefully navigated towards Waterman’s Crab House.  The depth here is a sketchy 7’, and it was low tide.  We haven’t run aground yet, which means we aren’t real cruisers, so we’ve been waiting…

But we made it through okay and pulled the boat up to the first dock we have stayed at since we left Haverstraw on July 1^st.  Three months to sea and we have only anchored or stayed on a mooring.  Not bad.  And Waterman’s only charges $1.00 per foot for dockage.  We were pretty impressed with ourselves.

It was pretty neat to step out on land after 58 hours, having sailed 372 miles.  I was so proud of the kids.  They had played, ate, slept, and done schoolwork without complaint (once the seasickness had abated).

We made a beeline for the restaurant at Waterman’s Crab House and ordered a ridiculous amount of food, including lots of fresh crab.  We met a great couple in the restaurant, who took a picture of us as we entered the harbor.  I’m still not sure why they spoke to us at all.  We must have looked like a scary bunch after 2 1/2 days at sea (and only one of us had taken a shower in that time.) Bill is a Chesapeake ship captain, and both he and Tammy had wonderful advice for us on where to visit during our stay.  We really enjoyed meeting them and are so happy that they will be following along with us on our website.  Thanks again Bill and Tammy!  We finally stumbled out of the restaurant and down the dock.  We were delirious, full, and tired, and we couldn’t wait to get to sleep.

The next morning, we got underway at the crack of 1000 and pulled into Annapolis’ harbor at 1350.  We fueled up, took on water, and snuck under the Spa Creek bridge just as it was getting ready to close.  Up, up, up the creek we went (not to worry, we have 5 paddles on board).  We anchored all the way at the end, which was the first place we could find.  Turns out a “few” other boats had it in mind to come to the Annapolis Boat Show as well.  Two of those boats were the familiar Full Monty and Anything Goes, which we passed in the creek.  We’ve been following their blogs since we started and actually met the folks on Anything Goes back in Martha’s Vineyard.  Looks like it’s going to be a fun week in Annapolis!