Books

Monday, November 30, 2009

The title and subtitle for the work I called Swimming in the Shadow of Death have been selected by the marketing folks at Lyons Press. There seems to be a consensus that they are good choices. Here they are:
Eight Survived: The Harrowing Story of the U.S.S. Flier and the Only Downed World War II Submariners to Survive and Evade Capture.
In two weeks, we should have the editing wrapped up (The contract requires it.) Then it will be another seven or eight months before publication. You can expect the book to be available in September, I think.
Meanwhile, I'll be studying youth fiction in an attempt to hone the prose in Leaving Harwich. I've already finished a couple of youth novels and am re-reading them as part of that study. This is actually fun. Brain-stretching can be entertaining.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

A cluster of pale yellow leaves still clings to a skinny gray-barked maple up near the end of the driveway, the last remaining foliage of autumn here, the final excuse to cling to the sailing season. But in truth, my mind has for a long time been on other endeavors.

I recall a point in May, when I should have cleared my mind of all thoughts not dealing with preparations for sailing in the Bermuda One-Two, when all I could think of was the distant season for downhill ski racing.

Last week, I emailed Todd, the former US Ski Team member who has agreed to tutor me in downhill technique. I wanted to make certain we would schedule a session on a New England mountain as soon as there is snow. And we will.

It was Todd who sold me a pair of brand new downhill skis last winter. I have been imagining riding those skis ever since -- all the way to Bermuda and back.

Skiing has remained one of my passions even though, in recent years, I have devoted resources to sailing instead. Three seasons ago, I decided that I wanted to return to skiing by commiting my self to competing in downhill races.

That first season -- 2006-2007 -- I had trouble finding a downhill race to enter. I did find a Super-G race, the other discipline considered a "speed" event. But I managed to crash in practice, injuring a knee. A month later, I'd found a downhill race and entered it, only to have it postponed due to too much snow.

What I learned is that amateur downhill races seem to come in two varieties. In one class of downhill, there are a lot of gates that keep the average speeds rather low. You are lucky if you can exceed 70 miles per hour.

Then there is a pure speed event. Some times, the only gates are the starting and finish gates and you simply ski in a straight line and see how fast you can go. In one event, the racers at times exceed 90 miles per hour.

In 2008, I entered a downhill with lots of gates. I enrolled in a training camp prior to the race. I misunderstood the instructions and attempted to ski with a technique that seemed foreign. It turned out it was the exact opposite of the technique the instructor was espousing. Blame it on my inadequate understanding of modern skiing vocabular.

in 2009, I was still trying to accomplish this odd skiing technique -- a style that made me extremely slow despite my honest labor. It was only after the only race I ran in 2009 that I learned how badly I had misunderstood the instructions.

That prompted me to engage Todd as my tutor. My hope is that when I finally get in the starting gate of a downhill race in the upcoming skiing season, I'll be doing things correctly.

I don't care if I win or place. I simply want to go as fast as I can on skis. I'm expecting it to be thrilling.

Now I go to sleep at night visualizing the course that I've now run twice. In my imagination, the skis are carving through turns and, when I let them run straight, they slip over the snow barely touching. It is a wonderful fantasy.

Friday, November 27, 2009

This will be the last entry from An Irresponsible Adult. Then it will be back to blogging. Please consider leaving your comments (if you've been reading) at mondoug@verizon.net . It would be helpful.
Thanks


It is Wednesday morning, just before 7 o’clock. At 11:40 a.m., I will have completed four days at sea. In the last eight hours, Robin has covered only 17 miles. She was making as little as 2 knots of headway during the night. With daylight at 5 o’clock, I went forward to inspect the damage to the genoa. What a relief it was when I found that the snap-shackle that holds the tack of the genoa to the boat had simply popped open. I snapped it back into place, and now I’m sailing with the genoa and the mainsail and making 4.2 knots in 6 to 8 knots of following breeze. It was an adventurous night all around. Moments ago, I wrote this blog.

The importance of keeping a 20-minute watch was brought home last night. You look at the vast Atlantic and wonder how a collision between two needles in this haystack is possible. You then consider that most traffic is going to and from a handful of destinations. Now it becomes a 12-lane freeway of sorts, where anyone can hop on any lane in any direction.
After I doused the genoa last night and was making less than 3 knots, I was keeping my watch between naps. Sometimes my dreams seemed to follow me into consciousness and plead with me to return to them immediately. But every time the egg timer rang, I managed to get to my feet and walk around.
It was sometime after 11 o’clock when I noticed white lights ahead of me to starboard. I got on channel 16; gave Robin’s name, her coordinates and my course of 120 degrees; and asked for a reply from the vessel eight miles ahead. I had checked the radar to get the miles.
A voice answered and told me that he would alter his course to starboard and give me a wide berth to my port. The eight miles were consumed in less than a half-hour. Twenty minutes between watches was a bare minimum.

The gentleman in command of that ship spoke perfect English with an accent I could not identify. Perhaps he was Greek, but he might just as well have been Russian. He definitely was polite. His voice was resigned, almost grave. When I thanked him for changing course – imagine a huge ship stepping aside to let tiny Robin pass – he demurred that he was only obeying the international shipping regulations. I got a lump in my throat as I watched his lights pass two miles to my east and disappear over the northern horizon, leaving Robin and me alone once more.

I am alone now, but to get here I have been helped by many, some of whom could never have known where their kindness of a moment was leading. Two people come immediately to mind as I stand beside the nav station. On the tabletop where I spread my charts, a small harmonica is pushed off to one side. A fiddle – a raised edge on the table – keeps the harmonica and the charts from sliding off when Robin heels. There is a second harmonica in the top drawer below the table. (This is the “junk” drawer. The second drawer down is the galley drawer, where the knives, forks and spoons are kept. The lowest drawer of the three is the chart drawer, where I keep the charts I’m currently using, along with the dividers, plastic triangles and other apparati used in plotting my course.) The harmonicas are gifts, prompted by a couple of lines in blog that I wrote back in Newport.

I tried to find a harmonica, since I read in Jan de Hartog’s book that it is the purest nautical musical instrument and I want to serenade the tuna out there. In all of nearby Newport, I have yet to find a mouth harp.

I wrote that on Thursday, June 7. On Friday, the first harmonica arrived, sent by one of my talented Soundings editors, the musically-inclined Michael Labella who in each issue does his best to preserve my writing dignity. Then before the race started Saturday, my sister, Janet, arrived with the second instrument. Offshore, I have played them alternately. They have been a great comfort to me, helping to occupy me in the long spans when Robin, steering herself, has no need of me.
These acts of thoughtfulness are among the most recent. My enjoyment of sailing can be traced back 47 years, to the summer following my graduation from high school.
I had, during most of my summers growing up, spent a full month vacationing on or near water, although almost never near an ocean. My parents were outdoors folk, and our recreation involved camping, hiking and fly-fishing. My father’s employer shut down for the month of July, and from the time I was about nine years old, we headed to the forests of Maine almost as soon as school let out.
Even then, I knew I wanted to be on a boat. Occasionally, we would come upon a pond where someone had left a wooden rowboat. The ones that were not chained to a tree were waterlogged. My good parents would not let me use the chained boats. That left me confronted with attempting to make the waterlogged craft float. Since that, of course, did not work, I resorted for navigational purposes to the occasional log raft that we would find in the tundra-like vegetation that grew as a beard along the banks of these remote ponds. The ponds themselves were shallow, the deepest perhaps eight or ten feet deep. The rafts were ancient collections of cedar logs lashed together to cross-poles. They were maneuvered by pushing on long, branchless cedar poles. To anchor a raft, you would jam the pole down between the logs and into the bottom of the pond.
We caught a lot of trout on wet flies like the Coachman and the Royal Coachman, flies that we bought pre-tied at the L.L. Bean store on the drive north from Massachusetts. I spent most of four weeks with sneakers that were wet from standing on partially-submerged log rafts. I learned to move one of these craft against the cold summer wind blowing down from the surrounding alpine landscape and whipping the pond into whitecaps. I never learned to like the taste of trout, and I never lost my desire to sail a real boat.
My best friend, Joel Plastridge, the classmate with whose family I had spent winters skiing, had been raised sailing. In high school, he built a Sunfish out of plywood. We took it one day to a nearby pond, but on a hot summer afternoon there was no wind, so we did not sail. Another time, I had gone with his family to a trailer they kept on a sand spit between a freshwater pond and some tributary to Buzzards Bay. We launched a fiberglass daysailer in the pond, but again there was no wind.
Then Dan Plastridge, Joel’s father, asked me to drive the family sports car – a black Triumph TR-3 – from the coast north of Boston, where they had left it when they had boarded a bareboat charter, to Buzzards Bay, where they had sailed the 28-foot wooden ketch. My payment – in addition to being given the keys to the sports car – was a night aboard the ketch and a day of sailing on the bay.
The scenes that I remember from that experience fueled a fantasy that would live in my heart for many years to come. I awoke in a creaking hammock in the main cabin, sunlight from the bronze ports racing across the cabin wall as the boat rocked, the aroma of bacon and eggs frying in the galley filling my nose. And then, as the ketch sailed in an afternoon southwesterly, I rode on the bobstay – the cable that runs from the front of the bowsprit down to the stem at the waterline. I can still see the bow wake splashing white beneath me. Dan’s gift to me has lasted a lifetime, first in memories and now, alone, offshore, far beyond the Gulf Stream on my way to Bermuda.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Nine
Just a quick note about the blues. I ran the mile in high school — sometimes I did well. When I did not, I always had given up in the second of the four laps. It was easy to get discouraged with more than half the race to go. I’ve kept that lesson with me for the last 45 years, and I’m applying it now.
Now past the halfway point, I’ve gotten through some down moments. Part of it was due to the lack of sun out here. Another is the absolute loneliness of being unable to communicate with the other boats.
I wrote that blog entry earlier today. Now it is 11 oclock on Tuesday night, not yet the loneliest hour at sea, but close. I’m standing at the nav table by the companionway, writing in my log, bracing myself as Robin rolls. The sailing is not pleasant, nor is it fast. I’ve made only 24 nautical miles since my last log entry, even though the wind has been averaging 10 to 12 knots, enough to move Robin at hull speed under normal circumstances. There is a following sea, pushed along by a northwest wind. The faces of the waves are steep. They lift Robin’s stern and throw it to one side or the other, unpredictably, violently.
Until moments ago, I was sailing with the genoa set out to port on a whisker pole – a long aluminum tube attached at one end to the mast and at the other end to the genoa sheet. I also was using the mainsail with one reef tied in, set out to starboard. Reefing at night has become my standard practice, one recommended by a veteran solo sailor whose advice I had sought before entering the Bermuda One-Two.
The whisker pole is used to keep the Genoa stretched out to the side when the wind is coming from directly behind the boat. Without the pole, the sail tends to collapse on itself. A collapsed sail provides no power.
On a run like this, when the genoa is set to one side on a pole, the mainsail is normally set on the other side of the boat. This configuration is frequently referred to as sailing “wing-on-wing”, although a long time ago an ancient sailor quietly told me that the true term was “wing-on-wind”. The purpose is to balance the sails and to keep the mainsail from taking away wind before it gets to the genoa or jib.
But with the steep seas tossing Robin side to side, two things were happening. First, when the boat turned toward the side with the mainsail, the wind was getting on the back side of the mainsail, which was held in place by a “preventer” – a rope I had tied from the boom to a fitting forward on the boat. The wind’s force on the back of the mainsail caused Robin to veer even farther to starboard and to roll steeply on to her port side. Such a violent motion overcame the autopilot’s ability to steer, and it ripped at the boom which, in turn, wracked the mast to which it is attached.
If Robin was tossed in the opposite direction, a similar thing happened to the genoa. Backwinded against the whisker pole, the sail pumped the pole into the mast in the opposite direction.
In either case, the mast was taking a terrible beating, as were the stainless steel cables that support the mast – the three shrouds on either side and the two forestays and one backstay. Left alone long enough, the sails could weaken the mast, the rigging or the fittings that held it all together. I had to go forward and get the whisker pole down or furl the main. Then, one way or the other, I had to try to switch to a course that would lessen the violence to the rigging.
The whisker pole is about a dozen feet long and as big around as a one-liter soda bottle. When held in place by the mast, the genoa sheet and the wind, the pole is almost harmless. But to take it down, its far end has to be released from the jib sheet. Imagine a dismounted cowboy, having roped a Brahma bull, holding tight to his end of the lasso and trying to wrestle the beast into submission. With a strong wind blowing, the sailor bringing in the whisker pole is in about the same place. As the boat rocks, the sail lifts and falls and the end of the pole carves an arc in the air. Standing on the foredeck beside the lifelines, you have to reach up and attempt to move a pin in the pole end that will release the jib sheet. But the pole end, rising and falling, is yanking all the time against the very line you need to release. The tension in the line tends to bind the locking pin, making it difficult to move. Some times, if your grip on the pole or the sheet is strong enough, you will be lifted clear of the deck. So you not only have to muscle the pole free from the line; your timing is critical.
My other choice was to douse the mainsail. This seemed like the wise move. A light mounted half way up the mast was illuminating the area of the deck where I would have to work, so I went forward along the starboard rail, ready to take charge.
Just then, the wind took charge. With a bang, the whisker pole tore on the clew – the rear corner of the genoa. In the glow of the deck light, I saw the tack – the bottom forward corner of the genoa that is attached to the bowsprit – ripped up from its fastening. Then the tack began to climb up the forestay. If I left it alone, the genoa now might be ripped to shreds in the wind. I crossed the cabin top and unhooked the slashing whisker pole. Then I worked my way back across the tossing deck to the cockpit, where I hauled on the line that turned the roller furling, taking the genoa out of commission.
Now I am sailing on the reefed mainsail alone. After daylight, I will go out on the bowsprit and examine the damage to the genoa. My guess is that there is a rip on the fabric at the tack. I have two sewing awls on board and strong thread. If I must, I can repair the sail.
Back in Newport, three days before the race began, I had used one awl to make other repairs to the genoa. I had been able to use a slip assigned to Dan Stadtlander. He had taken Mirari to a marina farther up Narragansett Bay to have her hauled. Before he got to Newport, he experienced a hard grounding. He had plans to check the keel for damage and, if necessary, do some quick fiberglass work on the spot. So he offered me use of his slip.

**

It was while Robin was moored in the slip that I met Rusty Duym, one of the other competitors in our class. Rusty is a not easily categorized. He is an employee of a boatyard in Maine, a member of a steel band, an avid paraglider and a survivor of quadruple bypass surgery. His six-foot frame has substance, like an oak. Graying curls descend from his crown, and bushy muttonchops frame his bunched, red cheeks and jovial blue eyes. If you told me Rusty was a lumberjack, I’d believe you. I would never have selected him on a crowded street as a solo ocean racer. But that is one of the great discoveries you make when you enter the Bermuda One-Two. Here is a collection of individuals drawn from as many different corners as there are boats entered in the race. Each one is here for his or her own reason. Rusty’s goal is to complete the trip to Bermuda that he had to abort the last time he tried.
One of the first competitors I met was Dan. He recently turned 50. That was his motivation for competing – that and the desire to erase the bad memory of the one other time he sailed to Bermuda. He told me that story the day we met, a Saturday in March when we were in Newport, attending a seminar designed to teach us how to get enough sleep when sailing alone offshore.
March 24 was sunny but cold. I was in Newport, although my thoughts were still in Vermont. The downhill race that had been postponed three weeks before due to too much snow had been rescheduled for this very day. But weighing the relative importance of the competing events, I decided it was better to be here, where I hoped to improve my chances of sailing to Bermuda unhindered by sleep deprivation and with at least a rudimentary knowledge of weather forecasting. The weather seminar was on Sunday. Right now, as I took my seat next to the window, a bunch of old guys in outrageously skin-tight downhill suits that can reveal even the thinnest layer of lard around the abdomen were lining up to speed down Jay Peak, up near the Canadian border. I did not have a skin-tight racing suit. That was just as well. Had I been able to race, the race officials would, I suspect, have been unable to perform their duties once the laughing began.
But I wasn’t racing. I was at the Newport Yacht Club, an inauspicious place on Long Wharf, adjacent to downtown Newport. I took a metal folding chair with a view of the nearly empty winter harbor to the south. Dan Stadtlander took the chair beside me, and soon we were talking. I guess he broke the ice, asking about that odd-looking notebook opened on my thigh. It was a standard reporter’s notebook, the kind I’ve used for nearly four decades as a journalist. I probably explained that to him, and then we engaged in focused small talk.
Eventually, Dan got around to telling me about his first trip to Bermuda.
“It was in my 20s,” he said. “I had gotten bitten by the sailing bug back in my teens. I started working in a boatbuilding place right after school.” Soon he was the owner of an Alberg-designed fiberglass Kittywake. “I paid like four grand for a thing that was a wreck,” he said. “I spent a couple of years fixing it. I decided at the ripe old age of 27 – I had more guts than brain cells and I wanted to test myself out – to sail to Bermuda.
“The trip down, you could have done it on a Sunfish,” recalled Dan, who made the trip with another guy. “Perfect conditions all the way. It was like: There’s nothing to this ocean cruising. On the way back, I haven’t seen anything nearly that bad in [all] the years I’ve been sailing since.”
Dan and his friend were in the Gulf Stream when their little boat was rolled – twice. “We were down below. They were humongous waves. We rolled once and it took the mast off. The second wave, I was down below and my friend, Mike, was up above. We had a life raft that was a piece of crap. We both had our lines hooked on to the canister. I heard the wave coming. I hurled myself out the companionway and got the first board in. But the boat probably went over our heads. Some of the lines from the mast grabbed my ankles, dragging me down. I unclipped my harness and was able to get to the surface. Mike had got to the surface already.
“Your senses become very pronounced. It was pitch black,” Dan said. “I could see everything as clear as day. The canister didn’t’ have a rip cord. We had to open the box. The boat came up again, waves washing over the decks. There was no way to bail it. It was just going down. We got up on the deck, got the raft inflated, we both got into the raft and, in a couple of minutes, got flipped.”
Stadtlander had an EPIRB on board but the antenna was broken. He and Mike sat up during the night and finally figured out how to use the spring from the bottom of a flashlight to fashion an antenna.
“A TWA flight coming from Europe picked up the signal,” Dan told me. “A Russian satellite picked up the signal. The Coast Guard monitored their [the Russians’] satellite and they beamed it down. They sent a Falcon jet and they spotted us. They also spotted a container freighter, and they picked us up a couple of hours later.”
Dan’s friend Mike had since died. But when Dan turned 50, he felt he had some unfinished business. He needed to make a successful voyage to Bermuda, and the One-Two was his ticket.
That was Dan’s story. I had my own. I told him I was pursuing the life of an irresponsible adult. That was not a flippant remark. It was something that I had given a great deal of thought.
Two nights ago, my current pursuits seemed almost irrational. Then, I was battling fatigue and I was uncomfortable in a world that was entirely new. Tonight, I am tired and uncomfortable with the banging and jerking that Robin is enduring. But I have handled the current situation and brought the boat under control with apparently no damage to the rigging. My confidence is bolstered. Two nights ago, I would have given anything to be back on land. Tonight, I am content to be at sea. We’ll see what the morning brings.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Eight

And now it is Tuesday afternoon, and there does not now seem to be much question whether I will reach Bermuda. Robin is 368 miles from Newport at 5:21 p.m. That means that St. George’s and the finish line are only 267 miles ahead. I could, at my current rate, cover those miles in two days. Looking back at my log entries, made every six hours, I have been averaging more than 30 nautical miles in each entry. In the last 24 hours, Robin has crossed 121 miles of this incredibly blue water. In the previous 24 hours, she made 131 miles. Actually the last six hours, with the following wind blowing 10 to 12 knots and frequently shifting direction so that I was constantly trimming the sails, was my slowest six-hour run in two days. I covered only 26 miles. Back on the Chesapeake Bay, that would constitute a reasonable day of sailing, about the same as a trip from Cambridge, Maryland, down the Choptank River to Oxford for lunch and then returning home. If nothing else, I am getting a lot of practice on Robin. But of course sailing up to the finish line is the critical thing.
When I selected my three goals in August, 2006, each one seemed achievable. None of the targets represented new ground for me. I have sailed for 28 years, skied since I was five years old and I’ve written three novels, although my only published book was non-fiction. I knew when last Labor Day rolled by that it was time to settle down and begin working on the novel – my working title was Blackout, a word that in the story has three separate meanings. I was already in training for the downhill skiing. In the gym in our basement, I spent time every morning that I was home with weights and the treadmill, building up my legs and my endurance. I felt I had some time before I needed to shift into high gear on the sailing, since the race then was nine months away.
Blackout was a story that formed itself seven or eight years earlier after I began covering the New Jersey State Police for the Philadelphia Inquirer. My assignment was triggered in 1998 by an incident on the New Jersey Turnpike during which two white state troopers fired eleven bullets into a van occupied by four young minority basketball players heading south for a college tryout. As I looked into the culture of the state police, I found an institution created by and for rural white boys. It was an organization that, above all else, protected the prerogatives of its favored members and that viewed minorities – whether civilians or in police uniforms – as sub-human. There was the case of the troopers who required the black occupants of a car they had stopped to tap dance on the roadside before they would let them go. There was the minority trooper who, after he complained loudly of racism with in the agency, was called into a supervisor’s office, made to remove his state police clothing – which included everything but his boxer shorts and socks – was suspended from duty and, nearly naked, was told to find a way home on his own. Over the course of several years, I tried to turn that trooper’s story into a book. I suspected it would never happen, and so I had plotted Blackout as a novel to tell essentially the same tale. The book was already outlined in my mind.
It would take probably three to four weeks of daily, non-stop writing for me to write a rough draft of Blackout. I didn’t have that kind of time. My work for Soundings involved three 12- to 15-hour days each week which accounted for most of my work-week. I was committed to babysitting two of my grandchildren one day a week while their mother, my daughter Joy, worked. That left three days during which I could work on our as-yet-unfinished new home or spend quality time with Monica. It was out of these three days that I hoped to squeeze a few hours each week to get Blackout rolling. Each week, however, there were more urgent matters that needed my attention, and Blackout kept blending into the background like a step child that is trying not to be a nuisance.
But with each week that slipped by, not only was the novel losing its place but the skiing season was drawing closer. I sent in my check to join the organization that sanctions ski races in the United States, and I began scouring the internet, looking for a downhill race to enter. I only needed one, but on the eastern masters’ circuit – where old men and women try to recreate their memories of youth – I was unable to locate a single downhill event any time during the winter.
It had been a long time since my last – in fact, my only – downhill race. I never was any more of a ski racer in my young career than I am an ocean racer in my sailing life. I had always gravitated toward the enjoyment of the sport for its own sake. In looking back at the early years of skiing, I notice that many of my memories have little to do with enjoyment.
My first skis were under the Christmas tree seven weeks before I turned six. I have a surprisingly clear memory of them and of my first ski run. The skis were shorter than I. They had leather straps that laced over the toe of your boot and thick, round rubber bands that stretched behind the boots’ heel to keep your foot in place. The poles were bamboo with big aluminum baskets held to the pole with more leather straps. For boots, I used my galoshes – the black rubber kind with several black metal buckles.
Our house was built on a hillside. In the spring, my mother’s rock garden bloomed there in violet and yellow iris. After Christmas that year, the hill had a thick coating of snow, and one day I went outside and managed, unsupervised, to climb a few feet up the hill and to slide down to the driveway. I suspect that I did this over and over. That would have been my style.
Janet got skis the same Christmas. Her fascination with them seemed to have been outweighed by her recognition that this sport resulted in one’s feet and hands becoming wet and cold.
I have imprecise memories of frozen hands, painfully cold feet, of snow melted and then refrozen like baubles on a bracelet around the cuffs of clothing, of falling face-first into deep powder snow that snuffed up my nostrils, nearly choking me, of little ankles twisted inside galoshes, of socks that slipped down around the heels inside the boots and of sweaty clothes that became suddenly icy when the exertion ceased. Images flit through these recollections of the gray of a winter afternoon when the sun, a silvery yellow, falls behind the trees and of trees suddenly appearing in my path and my two skis tracking to either side as the tree trunk embraces me from crotch to sternum. There is the retained feeling of clothing that is really too bulky for one’s miniature body to bend where needed, of knit hats stretched by perspiration and falling over the eyes, causing instant blindness, and of stinging sleet on the face or a coating of snowflakes on the cheek, the cold skin stretched tight. Above all, there is the recurring sensation of two skis each tracking away from the intended course, pulled in opposite directions by deep snow, the result being another blinding, suffocating face plant.
By the time I turned six, I was addicted to skiing. Within a couple of years, Archie and my mother spent a winter Sunday taking me to a real ski area. They bought me a lift ticket. I didn’t get a lesson. Maybe they knew I was uneducable. I rode the rope tow many times. At the end of the day, I rode the chair lift to the top of the mountain. The only trail down was rated expert. At every turn, I crashed violently. I was thrilled. But when I reached the bottom, the day was over.
With the precision of prognostication bequeathed to high school seniors, those classmates who were in charge of the Hudson High School yearbook in 1960, when writing the part that predicts your future, had me joining the Olympic ski team. It is surprising to me that the only other member of our class who skied – my best friend, Joel Plastridge, with whose family I had spent the last five years skiing – was not given this accolade. He certainly was the better skier. But he had many other talents, and skiing was, at the time the piece was written, my lone distinction.
I chose a college because it had a good ski team, and when the first winter at college arrived, I discovered that I was actually not a very good downhill skier. I persevered in cross country skiing, however, and was to be offered a scholarship based on my small success in that grueling discipline. But at the same time, I set about to resurrect my downhill career, spending every free minute riding a pair of downhill skis from the top of one Vermont mountain to the bottom, non-stop, over and over until I had driven the essentials of good form into my brain and muscle cells.
What was good for skiing was quite bad for academics, and I was forced to withdraw from the school that spring or face flunking grades in most of my courses. Thus I was free the following December to take a job as a ski instructor at a reputable Vermont ski area. Teaching the sport actually taught me to be a better skier. But when I returned to college, I was no longer eligible for the ski team, and my racing career was all but over.
Today, skiing ranks a distant second to sailing among my pursuits. But it retains an equal footing as a passion. There is, for me, a physical element that unites both sailing and skiing. Call it the E factor – for equilibrium. One reaches a point when skiing fast or when sailing singlehanded in a stiff breeze when a balance is achieved between one’s physical self and the forces of nature. Sustaining that balance creates in my soul pure joy. Sexual pleasure, when honestly shared, can duplicate the experience. Riding a good motorcycle at speed comes close, too. I know of no other activities that compare, although I suspect a virtuoso violinist cradling a Stradivarius may understand.
I had allowed skiing to slip into the background of my life for many reasons. Although I attempted to take my kids, Joy, Nancy and Ted, skiing every year when they were young, the fact that we lived near Philadelphia and that I had taken a near-vow of poverty when I became a journalist combined to thwart our immersion in the expensive mountain sport. Once I started sailing, the resources that might have supported serious skiing went into boats. But skiing – particularly high-speed skiing – remained in my heart as might any old love.
And then I spent some hours watching the 2006 Winter Olympics. In particular, I became a fan of Bode Miller. I applauded when he flaunted conventions, on and off the slope. I was thrilled with the way he approached the descent of a mountain. I could feel in my legs and hips and arms and fists what he was feeling as he rocketed over the snow. I wanted to be in his boots. Thus, on that afternoon in Wegman’s supermarket, was the skiing goal created. Nothing less than the premier racing event – the downhill – would suffice.
But I couldn’t find a downhill to race, and even if I did find one, I couldn’t find an inexpensive way to acquire the required equipment. The racing rules spell out what sort of skis are acceptable. They can cost $1,000. The boots to go with them could cost $600 or more. Although I had, three years earlier, rented “performance” equipment in Utah, I could find no one on the east coast who rented racing gear.
Finally, certain that the winter would pass without a downhill event, I adjusted my goal. I would race in a Super-G, an event that is not quite as fast as a downhill but that is very close. I chose a Saturday race in early February on Vermont’s Okemo Mountain, and in the end, I was able to buy some used downhill gear at a ski shop there. We arrived at Okemo on Thursday, and I ran the race trail all day. I had never – even in my youth – skied as well. I was fast, daring and in control.
First thing Friday morning, I was back on the mountain. The race trail was closed, so I decided to practice on the next trail over. I started down, skiing conservatively. Something didn’t seem quite right, but it was a perfect morning and there was almost no one on the trail except a middle-aged couple ahead, skiing slowly.
I was probably cruising at about 35 or 40 miles per hour when the woman turned slowly across the mountain. I made a move to avoid her. My balance was not right, one ski caught an outside edge and in an instant I was flying head-first over the tips of my skis, my right knee twisted severely.
By the next morning – race day – I could barely walk. I put my boots on and rode the chair lift to the top of the mountain. As soon as I got off the chair, I knew I could not race. My right knee could not support my weight. I skied to the bottom of the mountain on one ski, the first of my three goals lost to one mental lapse that I could not retract.
It was February 5. My downhill pursuit would have been over, but while in Vermont I had learned of a genuine downhill race held the end of February up near the Canadian Border. And so I began an intense effort at rehabilitating my torn knee. It was almost healed by the time of the downhill. With my son, Ted, I drove to northern Vermont, hoping my tender knee would support me at 80 miles per hour. The race was scheduled for Saturday, but snow Friday night caused the race to be postponed until the end of March. But now it was time to concentrate on preparing for the Bermuda One-Two. I had not spent one solitary day on the novel, Blackout. There would not be enough spare time in the next four months to begin writing. It was clear that of all my goals, reaching Bermuda now was all that remained possible.

**

As the sun descends toward the horizon today, Tuesday evening, June 12, I am glad that the wind is blowing steadily, if with less velocity than a few hours earlier. I will make it to Bermuda. I am sure I will.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Seven

It is Tuesday morning, just before noon. I am back at the nav station, writing another entry for the Soundings blog. It has been beautiful out since sunrise. I have been steering a course dictated by some coordinates I received yesterday from weather router Herb Hilgenberg. Actually, he gave the waypoints for crossing the Gulf Stream to Monica, whom I had called on the satellite phone after I picked up part of a garbled radio conversation between Herb and Peter McCrea, who is about 120 miles ahead on his sailboat Panacea. The few words I heard from that conversation had me sufficiently worried that, even if it means I will eventually be disqualified for breaking the rule against getting unfair outside help, I thought it a matter of prudent seamanship to understand the rest of the conversation.
Herb is a volunteer weather router. You don’t have to pay for his service. All you need is a single sideband receiver to hear his forecast. With a transmitter, you can check in directly with Herb, give him your coordinates and get his customized forecast for your precise location. I have a receiver on Robin, and I’ve been struggling to get good reception. The $100 antenna I purchased on the Internet so far has not been able to bring Herb’s voice consistently into Robin’s cabin.
Yesterday afternoon, I heard Peter give Panacea’s location to Herb. I heard just a few of Herb’s words. It sounded as though he said “front forming near Florida.” Then Peter, who is sailing this race for the eighth time and who is my age, replied: “Then I’ll try to get to Bermuda by Thursday,” or words to that effect. It sounded as though he was responding to a warning, but I clearly did not know what Herb was predicting.
I had a means at my disposal of finding out, and to fail to seek the details would certainly be an unwise decision should an ocean storm be heading my way. So after deliberation, I turned on the satellite telephone and called Monica, who was at work in Philadelphia. I gave her Herb’s telephone number and asked her to call him. Ask him what he told Panacea, I said. Later, we talked again. Herb had given her coordinates for the best place to cross the Gulf Stream. There was no mention of impending foul weather. And so, after shortening sail and then lying ahull for a while in the roughest seas I had yet encountered, I began at dawn sailing toward Herb’s coordinates. My course was 20 degrees to the west of the rhumb line.
Now I am blogging about the last few hours.

I’m surprised that I’m spending so much time in Robin’s cabin. That was not my plan. I thought I would ride the whole way in the cockpit in order to keep my watch. But last night, the weather drove me inside and I’ve stayed put.
Right now, as Robin rolls side to side in a 6 to 8 foot following sea, there are ovals of sunlight coming through the ports and racing up and down the starboard side of the cabin. The sea is a deep, inky blue. I’m keeping an eye on the wave action. The waves are rollers and the ride is pleasant. But the wind is blowing 15 to 20 and I don’t know if that will rise enough to cause these waves to begin breaking. If it did, I’d want to get the “washboards” in the companionway in case Robin’s cockpit gets pooped.
I’m in the port settee, which for now is the low side of the boat. The laptop is on my thighs. In a minute, I’ll stow it and go check the instruments.
The GPS, which gives the coordinates, boat speed over the bottom and course, is mounted inside the boat near the companionway and nav station. The radar display is above the nav sation, and I check it about every half hour at night and in fog. It gives a reading out to 24 miles. No need for that right now, although a bank of clouds ahead – maybe the Gulf Stream – may change that.
Instruments [have been] checked and, a mile astern, Curlew was crossing my path. I talked with Brian Guck. Comparing notes, I realized I must have written Herb’s coordinates incorrectly. I’ve already crossed the Gulf Stream. It is a beautiful morning and I’m steering toward [Bermuda].


It would be understatement to say that I am confused. Brian’s course seems to be nearly 90 degrees east of mine, and he says he is sailing straight for Bermuda. How, I wonder, can I be so far off the path? Since I never plotted my own crossing of the Gulf Stream, I have no context for Herb’s waypoints. I am paying for allowing myself to leave Newport unprepared. I turn the satellite phone back on and this time, I call Herb directly. He is astonished. Yes, he tells me, I have already crossed the Gulf Stream and should forget about the waypoints he gave Monica. He gives me new coordinates for entering the favorable flow of an eddy south of the Gulf Stream but to my west. I write the information down and adjust my course accordingly.
I have the sense that I am flying blind. I knew where Bermuda is. I could point Robin in that direction and sail along with Curlew. Instead, I have chosen to let others guide me. Again comes that familiar sense, the one that accompanied me back in Newport Harbor just before the race began. The sun is shining and the wind is blowing, moving Robin along at about four knots, so there is no dread. But there is the feeling of inevitability, of resignation. With very little surgery, I can slice away at these emotions and locate the source. I have already written about it in a blog entry that ran on June 2, while Bill Haldeman and I were sailing somewhere off Long Island, heading for Newport.

It dawns on me that coming to the starting line of the Bermuda One-Two as the means of taking one’s first significant solo offshore sail shares many of the pitfalls involved with the first time one climbs to the top of a ski jump holding a pair of skis. In both cases, the outcome is seriously in question.
There is another way to sail to Bermuda. Go down to the dock, get on your boat and go. If you don’t tell anyone, no one will know. You may not make it. You may turn back or run into problems that thwart your attempt. But it will be a private affair, between you, your boat and the ocean.
There is almost no such option the first time a person decides to try ski-jumping. By the nature of the discipline, there will always be others to witness that first flight. To be sure, the first jump will be on a modest hill, not one of those ski-flying hills you see in the Olympics. But just as on the larger ski jumps, the smaller ones are kept in shape by teams of jumpers who use their skis to groom the landing. A solitary jumper in most cases doesn’t wait for a good snowfall and then give it a shot. He or she joins with others, first to groom and then to use the hill.
Once the grooming is done, the eager jumpers line up to climb to the top of the jump tower. (In the Olympics and other international events, there are elevators.) Every one of these athletes in line for the climb has at some point taken his or her first jump. When they did, they put their skis on their shoulder like all the veterans and began the climb.
In some cases, the steps leading up to the top of the jump are scary enough to turn back those who should not be there. The beginner who mounts the first step of these stairs suddenly finds himself not only following the skier ahead but being followed by an eager hoard. Typically, there is no “down” side to these stairs. Your only option is to climb.
At the top of one of these small jumps, there is room for only one jumper at a time on the level spot from which a jump commences. So the novice places his skis there, steps into the bindings and looks ahead. Confronting him are two ski tracks in the steep, packed snow on the in-run of the jump. He shuffles forward, and the front of his skis, from his boots forward, are jutting out in the air over the ruts.
Below him the ruts end at the takeoff, which seems to be a very long way down. Farther down is the crest of the jumping hill, which the jumper must clear. Everything beyond the crest is a great unknown from up at the top.
Having reached this precipice, the novice has no choice but to shove off, begin what seems like a headlong freefall and hope for the best.
Facing the starting line of the Bermuda One-Two feels only slightly different. There is an exit ramp. But like the ski jump, there really is no way to practice for this moment of truth. Once the starting line is crossed, all 18 of we novices will be going headlong into our own unknown.
In fact, for me, there never has been an exit ramp off the starting line of the Bermuda One-Two – not since my editor, Bill Sisson, asked me to write a blog about my planning for and entry into the race. The conversation went something like this:

Bill: So, Doug, are you really going to do it? Race to Bermuda?

Me: I’d like to, Bill.

Bill: We were thinking what if you wrote a blog for the web page.

Me: [Perhaps some hesitation marks my response, because no more than two months before, I had sent Bill a business proposal outlining how he and I could create our own blog, write about boating matters, share the space and any advertising revenues we could generate with Soundings and, with success, become wealthy capitalists. He rejected the idea because the company was already thinking about its own blogs. Now, he’s offering me the chance to do the same job in addition to my work as a Soundings reporter but with no extra income, let alone profit sharing.]
Gee, Bill, that sounds like a great idea.

Bill: Okay, we’ll need the first one by Friday.

And with those words, I was locked in as a racer. I could not fail to get to the starting line without some degree of public humiliation or the sense that I had failed my employer. I could not fail to cross the starting line as long as most of the other sailors did, again due to the humiliation factor. Indeed, in the first two days of the race, when I began asking myself why I was out here, I recognized that even if I wanted to, there was no turning back.
And now, I’m more than half way to St. George’s. At noon, I am 342 miles from Newport, with a mere 293 miles of blue water between me and Bermuda.

Monday, November 23, 2009

An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Six

Robin isn’t just any sailboat. She was designed for the very thing we are doing, and in her 31 years, she has already done it all. Perhaps she hasn’t traveled this particular route from Newport to Bermuda, although we know she has visited Bermuda by at least one other route. There are charts in a cabinet above the port settee in the saloon that trace Robin’s travels with the prior owners, Scotty and Marguerite Allen. The Allens lived aboard her for 22 years. They crossed the Atlantic four times – twice each way. They crossed the length of the Mediterranean eight times and sailed as far north as Norway and as far south as Venezuela. They spent a year in Paris and had an anchor made for Robin in Turkey. They moved from Robin onto a powerboat when Marguerite’s arthritis became too uncomfortable for her to climb the five steep steps of the companionway ladder.
We bought Robin in 2004 after narrowing our choices to this model of boat – the Westsail 32. Our decision was based on my study of available designs and Monica’s thrill when she first stepped aboard a Westsail. Her boarding was, of course, the critical moment. I had no idea that winning her over to a Westsail would be so simple. But then, these boats offer an awful lot for people who think they may one day venture offshore and who have a limited budget.
All of the other features of a Westsail 32 were secondary to its finest quality, which is revealed in The Perfect Storm. In Sebastian Junger’s book, there is the story of the sailboat Satori, which got caught in the storm that tragically took the fishing boat Andrea Gail with all hands. Satori’s owner was sailing south from Maine for the winter with a volunteer crew of two women. At the height of the storm, according to the book, the women wanted off and radioed the Coast Guard. When the brave rescuers arrived, they demanded that the owner abandon his boat with his crew. Reluctantly, he did. But he was convinced that his boat would weather the storm. Satori, a Westsail 32, washed up on a Virginia beach a few days after the storm. The gelcoat finish on her hull was scratched by the grounding, but the owner’s camera bag, which he dropped before he was hoisted to the Coast Guard helicopter, reportedly was still on her deck. Satori had not only survived one of the worst North Atlantic storms on record; had her crew stayed aboard, she would have protected them and delivered them to safety, as well as any lifeboat. This was the boat for me.
A Westsail’s survivability is a product both of its design and of its construction. Its lines are derived from the design for a North Sea pilot boat created in the 1800s by Colin Archer and refined later by William Atkins. The Westsail 32 was designed by William Crealock. She has a full keel that helps her to track in rough seas. Her rudder is big and hung off the back of the keel at the very end of the boat. Her stern is almost as pointy as her bow, giving her the ability to take following seas with ease. There is a bulwark almost a foot high along the outside edge of her deck, helping to keep the crew on board when the boat is pitching. There are 7,000 pounds of lead in her keel, meaning she is reluctant to lean too far to the side. The lead, along with one of the thickest fiberglass hulls ever constructed on any boat of less than 40 feet, makes her stiff, and these features also bring her dry weight up to 19,500 pounds. A heavy boat can be a very comfortable boat.
Unfortunately, these very qualities that make a Westsail 32 seaworthy also have encouraged an unflattering nickname – Wet Snail. Supposedly, a Westsail is slow.
And for that reason, from the first time I saw one and admired her lines and construction, I had never thought that I would buy one. No sailor wants to start out with a slow boat, even if not every sailor wants to race.
There are a lot of dreams that shape who will buy what boat. Mine had always been of offshore voyages to distant, exotic places. Right off the bat, at age 20 when I first took a close look at a cruising boat, I imagined sailing to South America. For this reason, any boat that I would consider worthy would be one that I thought could make that sort of trip. Early in my sailing career, my judgment was based on nonsense.
At the other end of the boat buying spectrum are a great many people who see in a boat a floating livingroom with attached sundeck (cockpit). Many, but not all, of these people buy powerboats. As a visit to most marinas will attest, the majority of pleasure craft spend an enormous fraction of their year on a mooring or tied up in a slip.
Monica and I had been sailing a 27-foot, 1967 Pearson Renegade for about eight years when I finally was persuaded to look seriously at a Westsail 32. I had met the captain of a commercial fishing boat who had lived aboard a Westsail 42 for eight years. He said he didn’t know about the smaller version, but that his Westsail was a swift sailor. The 42 became my dream boat.
Then one Sunday afternoon, my friend Bill Haldeman was sailing across the Cape May, New Jersey, harbor in his Mystic 30 when he was passed by a 32 under sail. He was impressed and urged me to reconsider the 32, and I did.
It turns out that the nickname is wrong. Robin’s overall length is over 40 feet. There is a 6-foot-long bowsprit up front and about 3 feet of boomkin overhanging the rudder. These protrusions allow her to carry as much sail area as some 40-foot boats. The result is that in all but the lightest air – under 2 knots – she moves quite well. She can make 3 knots beating against a five knot breeze and almost five knots reaching along the same wind. It is true that her weight keeps Robin from sprinting. But the same mass gives her inertia to keep moving in light puffs.
Equally important in the speed category, the Westsail shape and mass mean that Robin can handle a strong breeze and big seas that would give a lighter boat trouble, or at least make it very uncomfortable.
Bill Haldeman had a chance to see for himself the results of his prodding. Before the start of the Bermuda One-Two, he accompanied me on the offshore leg from Cape May to Newport. It was a voyage that, from the outset, presented Robin with some challenges. Bill was waiting on the dock when I arrived at Utsch’s Marina in Cape May Harbor after a day spent motoring down the Delaware Bay. We filled the fuel tanks with diesel, packed his stuff aboard and at about 7 o’clock on the first day of June headed for the Cape May inlet. Here’s what I wrote in my Soundings blog once we got to Newport.

As we approached the end of the inlet, we could see whitecaps racing across the opening, not unusual for that inlet. We got a little closer and a commercial fishing boat of perhaps 70 to 80 feet, with its outriggers spread, appeared in the foam, headed in. Suddenly, the boat swung hard to starboard and its port outrigger plunged down into the sea water. A breaking wave had nearly rolled it over. By the time we were abreast of the fishing boat, it had recovered.
But by that time, we saw the enormity of the breakers. Often rough, the Cape May inlet features rapid cross currents at its mouth and occasional surf. Bill estimates that some of the breaking waves ahead of us were as tall as a Sunfish is long – maybe 12 feet high. I pushed the tiller to port as we approached the end of the jetties and chose to squeeze out just beyond the south jetty, where the waves seemed somewhat smaller. It was a good decision. Still, Robin’s bow shot skyward several times, and she could make only 3.5 knots against the incoming current.
Rocked to port and starboard, Robin nonetheless punched through the crests and in time we were out to the sea buoy, where we unfurled the genoa, leaving in about one reef. Just then, another large fishing boat appeared , heading directly for us, even though that path would have put the vessel on the beach in minutes. We realized that in the mammoth following sea, the boat had very little steering ability. The wind caught in the genoa, and we got away.


It took Robin about 40 hours to sail the 220 miles to Newport after we had cleared the inlet. The wind blew from astern until we were in Block Island Sound, just a few miles from Newport Harbor. Robin often was sailing at well over 6 knots. There was a decent sea running, but even though we spent most of our time in the cockpit, we were never uncomfortable. (Honest reporting requires me to admit that both of us had spells of nausea, but we were both capable of that reaction on any boat. In fact, I had a bit of a history, and that had led me, in one of the very first blogs, to reveal my own predilection and to ask for advice.

The statute of limitations probably applies, so now I can admit it. On the early May 2005 voyage of the 58-foot ketch Elsie, I may well have been seasick. At the time – and at almost every opportunity since – I said it was the mahi mahi I had for dinner two nights before. The same meal sickened the captain within 12 hours. Food poisoning, for me, seemed more noble than retching for 48 hours because you have a tender tummy. There was also this. Before the voyage started in Charleston, I had taken a proper dosage of Dramamine or Bonine, just in case.
I’m thinking of this now because I really need to figure out what to bring aboard Robin so that I don’t repeat the scenario that lasted on that trip two-thirds of the way to Annapolis. Alone on the Atlantic, I will not be able to wedge myself in the head, jaw dropping into the bowl, wishing for death while someone else keeps watch for hours on end.
My physician is a nice young lady and is very smart. But once, a couple of years ago, when I asked her to recommend a good drug for seasickness, she clearly had no immediate answer. So I guess I’m on my own when it comes to making a decision. For obvious reasons, I’m not content to go back to the over-the-counter remedies.
The Charleston-to-Annapolis trip was not my first or only encounter with nausea on the open sea. In November 1965, traveling to Europe at the taxpayer’s expense aboard the troop ship USNS Rose, we were in a violent northeaster for the first three days out of New York. The crew told us that if we stayed in our bunks, we could avoid mal de mere. I was doing fine into the second day, so I decided to test the crew’s theory. My cabin was near the bow, which was heaving up several stories and, falling off a wave, dropping an equal distance. After lunch, I stood in the hallway outside my cabin for no more than 30 seconds when my lunch was transported into a conveniently-placed barf bag.
Last summer, heading to Block Island from Cape May, New Jersey, I took over the watch at 11 p.m. and Monica went below. The chili we’d had for dinner had still not settled, and within a half hour, some of it was feeding the fish in our wake. It was mid-afternoon the next day before I felt totally okay, although I finished my watch and saw first light appear in the east.
If there is anyone out there with some good suggestions, I want to hear them. My belly will thank you.

Indeed, a few folks responded with cures.

Phin Sprague wrote: I have a pretty habituated stomach. But when we are doing more miles vertically than horizontally and the g-forces confuse your brain, ears and eyes, it may be impossible to avoid nausia. ( I never want to be in the sea way that gets my wife sick!) Being skipper I am down below navigating and working away I just have to keep on going. What I get concerned about is dehydration, energy and the miserable reality of well you know.
I always stock a case of canned pears and peaches in sugar sauce. When I discover a weasy stomach mine or some one in the crew I have them chow down a can liquid and all. #1 sugar, water, solids and it tastes good and goes down easily. #2 if you can hold this down it is moving quickly into your system. #3 if you can’t hold it down what tastes good going down also tastes good coming up. Emptying the stomach is not as miserable a experience as if the sea sick individual had to deal with say…… beef stew. ( no brand names)
This works most of the time if the crew member is inclined to cooperate. It has helped many people who were locked in their bunks afraid to move because of the fear of throwing up. It often happens when you get them on deck and engaged they release the concentration on what is happening to their equilibrium and get over it.
Hope that this is helpful. If not it makes a great quick snack.
William Van Keuren wrote: Doug: As an Army Medic I was sent to Europe via the USNS Geiger. I pulled duty as night medic in the ship’s hospital. Due to a pretty violent November storm in the North Atlantic, I became very familiar with sea sickness. It is quite democratic, in that it affects majors and generals and sergeants and privates equally and with similar results. If you are prone to sea sickness, my concern is that it can be a completely debilitating disease. It can result in dehydration and virtually complete disability. We had every bed filled with men who had to be carried to the hospital. If you were so seriously affected, you would become helpless and at the mercy of the sea.
My oldest son worked as mate on the head boats out of Brielle NJ and I would sometimes go along. I am convinced sea sickness is partly mental, because I have seen passengers sea sick while the boat is still tied to the dock.
It is my understanding that if sea sickness is a problem, treatment by medication should be started one or two days before leaving. You might want to check this with a physician.
On the Brielle head boats, we often found that sucking on a fresh cut lemon was helpful in calming nausea.
Scott wrote: I may be able to help you with the seasickness issue. I, too, suffer greatly from it. Back in 1989 I did a lot of research on it and I found a drug combination that works very well. I have used it ever since and have accumulated thousands of miles in the ocean.
The drug combination is 25 mg phenergan (antinausea) and 25 mg ephedrine (counteract the sleepiness of the phenergan). The phenergan is prescription (very cheap) and the ephedrine was non-prescription, but behind the counter (very cheap, too).
Because of these meth labs, you can’t buy plain ephedrine anymore. I found on a Coast Guard web site that 60 mg pseudoephedrine has the same efficacy as ephedrine. Again, you can’t buy that in this country because of the meth labs (at least I couldn’t get my pharmacy to get it), but I did get it sent from Canada last year for about $25 for 100 tablets.
I can’t stress how much this combination works. I have tried everything else I could imagine: patches, wrist bands, all the different over the counter meds, antivert, ginger, self-hypnosis, etc. All my crews over the years have used this combination with great results.
Obviously, check with your doctor about drug interactions/complications. My kids’ pediatrician approved it for their use, too.
Allegra wrote: Hi Doug!I’ve been reading your posts and am really enjoying them. I can’t wait to hear more as time goes on. However, this one really caught my eye because unfortunately I am extremely prone to motion sickness (I have even thrown-up twice in the movie theater due to a shakey camera scene), so I like to think of myself as somewhat of an expert. Over the counter medication does help me, but no matter what they say I am always drowsy, and I’ve tried two prescriptions (a patch and a pill) but they were not worth the side effects. Plus, you are going to be on a long journey, so taking medication everyday would be a pain and probably not the best thing for you. I have found two things that really work for me without any side effects. The first is the Relief Band which is not like your normal wristband. You do wear it around your wrist, but it gives you tiny little shocks that some how relieve motion sickness. You can even put it on after you feel sick and immediately start to feel better. Here is a link to a website that sells it so that you can read more on it: http://www.2catchbass.com/store/info.php/id/721The second thing that I advise you to use is an all natural liquid that you rub behind your ears. I think you will like this as well because it is not a medication but it really works. Here is the website for that product http://www.motioneaze.com/index.html I hope these products help you like they have helped me!
Peter McCrea wrote: Doug, I like Phin’s canned pear solution! Italian foods like lasagne, pizza,spagetti, etc are verboten when sea state is such that queasies threaten. And chili? Never. That said, these “comfort foods” may be just what is needed on a slow leg south of the stream. Plan on Bland (non spicy) for the first two days out, then have a variety in the lockers to please the palate.

Bill and I were not too far into our trip when we broke out the wrist bands – they shock you like an electric fence, apparently to take your mind off of your problems. We had already taken Bonine. I had found some ginger candies at Wegman’s supermarket, and we sucked on them, too. The cabinets were loaded with canned pears, some of which we consumed. I never did get the prescriptions that Scott had mentioned, although one of the competitors who shall remain nameless did, once I was in Newport, give me a packet of prescription drugs purchased in Great Britain that were “nearly” guaranteed to shut down the up-chucks.
A little more than 200 miles into this trip, my stomach has behaved itself. I have kept a ginger candy in my mouth like a plug of tobacco from time to time, just as preventive medicine. And I have been eating bland foods only. I can’t imagine how low some of my earlier moments might have been were I fighting nausea. I have the ginger and Robin’s good nature to thank for what, over time, is becoming a pleasant sail.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Five


I just saw the first patch of blue sky in two days offshsore. It is 10 a.m. Monday. I’ve been staying inside Robin’s cabin since last night, when a mist was blowing into the cockpit and soaking everything. The wind shifted in the middle of the night, coming from the north – to Robin’s stern. As I napped in the cockpit under the dodger, the mainsail gybed. The main sheet, stretched out because we were running, caught under the outboard motor mounted outside the stern pulpit, and yanked it into the cockpit. This happened twice. The second time, I lashed the motor to the deck.
I am sailing conservatively, with just the reefed mainsail up. Still I’m doing over six knots. There is a following sea with rollers that seem to be 7 or 8 feet high. The ride is not uncomfortable. Just have to stay off your feet.
I haven’t had radio contact with anyone in the race since some time yesterday afternoon. I suspect that doesn’t mean they are way behind me. I am a few miles east of the rhumb line and a bit over 200 miles out of Newport, or one third of the way to St. George’s. At this rate, I’ll get to Bermuda on Friday. Monica arrives Saturday, so I’ll be cutting it close. Whatever it takes, I’ll be there for that reunion. I love you, Monica.


If the end of this blog entry seems a bit wistful, it is. Finally, I am sailing under sunlight, and that is a help. Last night was the lowest I’ve felt in a very long time. In the dark, with Robin banging from side to side with the following wind and seas throwing her stern first one way and then the other, I was almost afraid. Certainly fatigue had something to do with the feeling. At best, I have been getting 90 minutes of sleep once a night. The rest of the time, I’m struggling to check the horizon every 20 minutes. If I wasn’t thoroughly frightened, I was however asking myself what I had thought would be fun about this race. Until I finally retreated inside the cabin for my naps, I had memories of being comforted as a child by my mother. The notion that this was an entirely stupid enterprise came to me. I could just as easily be in my soft bed at home with Monica and, perhaps, our beautiful mutt, Thelma, sharing the king-sized sheets. Instead, a mist coated my face even under the dodger, and with each rock of the boat, either my feet against the Honda generator or my shoulders against the life raft took up the shock. I admonished myself to remember this scene when the race was over. What possessed me to place myself out here, I asked?

I knew the answers – and there are several – to that question. The decision, at age 65, to race singlehanded across 600 miles of ocean is the product of no simple whim. The architecture of that choice involves numerous and varied building blocks. I will now describe one of those stones, for this is a story not just about a sailboat race but about the forces that shape us and how, specifically, they created – for better and worse – the personality with which I address the world. This analysis requires a little – maybe a lot – of seat-of-the-pants psychology, one of the most definitive pastimes of our era, I suppose. But it begins with a story of a day when I was about 10 years old.
It was a day not unlike the first couple of this voyage, gray and dreary. I am in Hudson, Massachusetts, the town where my father, John Archibald “Archie” Campbell, works. He is employed as the superintendent of a local heating company. The job involves everything from selling household heating systems to installing them, from cleaning furnaces to collecting bill payments to making emergency house calls in the middle of the frozen winter night. His is often a filthy and at times a dangerous employment. Many nights he comes home covered in coal dust, soot and fuel oil. Some times, he arrives in time for dinner with a bandaged, crushed finger. His back is frequently thrown out of kilter because he has tried to lift some heavy, cast-iron object or has been required to squeeze his wiry, 50-year-old frame into the bowels of a boiler.
Archie – everyone calls him that – is a buoyant fellow. He is one of those people who, instinctively, knows there is always a solution to a problem. He seems content in the assumption that he can find the solution. Lurking at the corner of is mouth is a persistent smirk. There are times when, fighting it with all his strength, he cannot contain the smirk. It dances to the center of his lips, which break into an infectious smile. Archie has a great sense of humor, although he is unable to complete the telling of a joke or funny story without breaking down in laughter.
Archie also has a sense of decorum. He loves the military. He was too young for World War I and too old for World War II. But he joined one military outfit after another as soon as he was able. The first was a cavalry unit in New York State when he was 18, the year after the first world war ended. During World War II, he joined the State Guard and patrolled sensitive properties as a guard. He loves not just the uniformity of the military but also the benefits that he sees in a disciplined approach to life. Politically, he is a libertarian, although such a label may not yet exist. He is pro-choice well before that is popular. He is anti-gun-control and owns many firearms. He believes that he should be responsible for is own actions, and he expects the same of his neighbors. He accepts the foibles of others, except in those he considers blowhards. In a few years, he will insist that I have a right to wear the beard I grew during summer vacation when I return to high school. He will urge me to demand that right, despite the accepted wisdom of 1958 that probably will dictate my expulsion.
Practically, he believes in a chain of command and the righteousness of being able to take orders and to give them with authority. He is an ossified patriot. The United States is his country, right or wrong.
On this particular day, little of these qualities is in play. He is at work, and I am with him. It is a weekday, I am certain, because on Saturdays he makes his rounds visiting the homes of folks who might not pay their heating bills if he didn’t appear at their doors. If it is a weekday, it must be summer or I would be in school. We are but a couple of blocks if that from the heating company yard, over at Larkin Lumber, a customer that I am certain pays its bills. I don’t recall why we are here, but we are standing in the sales room of the lumber yard when a fellow – a stranger to me – walks up and greets my father, addressing him as Archie.
What follows will affect the rest of my life. But you need some context, and for that you need to know a little more about Archie. Here’s where the psychology comes in. My father was the oldest child in a family of eight, if you count the boy who didn’t survive infancy. All the others lived well into what then was considered old age. His parents were, physically, an odd couple. His mother, whom I never met, was the daughter of a commercial shipping captain who, among other posts, was skipper of a tug boat in Boston Harbor and of a barge on the Erie Canal. Family lore has it that Grandmother was born on the barge. I suppose someone witnessed the birth and so could confirm that she was not the offspring of a Boston Bull Terrier, for in every photo I have seen of her, she certainly bears a resemblance to that breed, although she was insufficiently cute to win the dog show.
Grandfather, whom I also never met, appears in photos to have been tall and dapper. He was born in the rocky highlands of Scotland and, as a young man, went to work for the Bank of England. Archie says that his father emigrated to the United States because his next assignment for the bank would take him to India, where, he feared, he might contract malaria and die.
For a while, dashing Grandpa seemed to have struck a pretty good deal when he asked for Grandma’s hand in marriage. Her father had assembled quite the pot of wealth, and having someone who would take his homely daughter off his hands may well have been worth a great deal for all concerned.
Then the good skipper invested nearly all his wealth in a bogus silver mine, or so the story goes. By the time Archie had kids, the family boasted a rich vein of wit and a lot of pride but no gold. This unfortunate investment happened apparently around the time Archie entered high school, and by that time I am certain other factors had created the man whose achievements I will describe in a bit. One of these factors was his standing as the eldest child. My guess is that with each new sibling – three brothers and three sisters followed – Archie got less and less attention. An active boy, he probably looked for a solution to this distasteful circumstance. He certainly developed a habit of engaging in activities that could not be overlooked. A scrawny lad, he got into boxing to develop his physique. In early adulthood, he was a player in a rough and tumble basketball league. The games were played inside a chicken-wire cage, in part for the protection of the players from the spectators. He had stories of how a smaller player like he could even the scales with one of the backwoods giants on an opposing team. The techniques were physical and harsh and certainly not within the rules of the game but, as he saw it, within the laws of survival. So they worked. He approved not of expediency but of worthy results. In this case, he could back down a bully. He took a similar approach toward blowhards. People loved him for it.
As a young man, he found jobs in New England shoe factories, where his intelligence and drive were noticed and rewarded with management positions. In the military, he was promoted to higher rank.
By the time Archie and my mother, Eleanore, moved to rural Berlin, Massachusetts, in order to provide a home for their first child, Janet, Archie had a mantra for leadership. “If you want to do something, don’t wait for others to join you. They will follow once they see your success.”
By the time I arrived, Archie, guided by his own rules, had immersed himself in the life of the community, a small town of less than 2,000 farmers and factory workers, among whom his employment as a shoe factory foreman probably gave him some standing. He joined the volunteer fire company, was among the members who organized fund-raising whist parties at the town hall and, in time, became one of the department officers. At one point, he took a part in a play being given by some civic group. His role was brief and may have resulted from the fact that my mother, who had hunted with him, owned a big Colt pistol. In the final scene of the play, Archie burst through the stage door, dressed in a suit, wearing a fedora, the .38 special drawn as he made an arrest. I do not believe he had any lines.
As are all New England towns, Berlin was run as a pure democracy. Business was conducted at the annual town meeting, where each resident had a vote. I was not there to witness, but I am certain from events that followed that, early on, Archie was a vocal proponent in issues he felt were important. There was never a shortage of vocal citizens, but one who could present a coherent, reasoned idea would certainly have stood out. And Archie, who had on his own read classic literature and could, although he seldom did, buttress his arguments with quotes from the antiquities, no doubt got a rapt audience when he rose during a town meeting from his folding chair in the musty, 19th century clapboard town hall with the creaking stairs and worn maple floors.
My first memory that bears on Archie’s involvement in the community is of a Sunday afternoon when we visited old Miss Rice, a retired teacher and producer of the local theatrical efforts. She was delighted to have our company and served us plums in syrup. The treat was a reward for Archie’s work on a particular project in town.
Janet, who is 19 months older than I, was ready to enter school in September, 1946, and our parents took her to the Central School, where the first grade classroom shared the building with the second, seventh and eighth grades. All of the children sat at desks made of cast iron with wooden seats. There was no running water, only an old iron pump in the gravel front yard, it’s handle worn smooth by the grip of hundreds of little hands over many scores of years. Behind the school were two whitewashed wooden outhouses, one for boys, the other for girls, both occupied by large communities of houseflies. My parents were horrified, and Archie dove into the work of getting the town a new schoolhouse. In time, he was elected chairman of the school committee. It took until 1951 to get the school built, and he was in up to his shoulders for the entire project. Thus was the whole family rewarded with sweet plums.
About a year before the school was opened, I came of age to join the Cub Scouts. Soon, Archie was a member of the local Boy Scout Committee. He remained in the background as I advanced through Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. He would finally step from the shadows to replace the Explorer Scouts leader after I turned 14. This fellow’s idea of an appropriate scout meeting was to hold poker games. Archie set things right when he seized control, leading his band of teenaged boys in elaborate rescue exercises that included lowering stretchers off of 30-foot-high cliffs – with one of us strapped inside the stretcher. He got the boys out in the woods camping and out on the road giving first aid to crash victims. In time, he was responsible through the Explorers for starting the town’s first rescue squad.
The Boy Scout work followed by several years the morning encounter at Larkin Lumber. After greeting my father, the strange man turned to me, looked down and declared: “This must be Archie’s boy!”
There is little doubt that neither he nor my father saw the flash of anger that lit my eyes. My interpretation of this meaningless statement, however, suggests that I had heard the same remark before. The man clearly held Archie in esteem. Everyone in Berlin and Hudson seemed to know him and admire him. I was aware of this, and at age 10, I was proud of the respect shown to him. But I also felt that his reputation towered above me, depriving me of light that should shine directly on me. I was not just Archie’s boy! I was me, and I wanted to be recognized.
I don’t remember how long it was after this incident that I distilled into words what my soul was screaming. But I remember the words. I will do something that no one else can take responsibility for, that is all mine.

There is not a soul alive or dead who can take responsibility for my solitary presence aboard Robin, out on the Atlantic Ocean. Whether I am happy here or not, I demanded and seized the opportunity to sail alone offshore. While the impulse had brewed for many years inside me, I had always allowed other considerations – responsibilities that I accepted gladly – to keep this particular intoxicant from filling my cup. Back at Wegman’s supermarket not quite ten months ago, I opened the tap and took a full draught. I got a bit drunk on the idea of a singlehanded adventure. The Atlantic has made me sober, but now I can’t undo the choice that brought me here. Robin and I must persist.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Four


The start of the Bemuda One-Two was a light air drifter. The wind was from the north, so the fleet was pushed across the starting line. Robin was on her way at 11:40 a.m. and we had a respectable start, but soon the lighter boats were well ahead of us, most of them flying spinnakers of one sort or another.
By early evening, Robin was off Block Island. She stayed there until around midnight, becalmed. Then the predicted northeast wind began to stir, and soon we were moving along at up to 7 knots.
On Sunday morning, I shortened sail when the wind speed hit 21 knots, raising the staysail and dousing the genoa. I had already put one reef in the main. Now, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the genoa is flying again in 10 to 14 knots of wind and we’re making 6.5 knots or better, sailing down the rhumb line.
The sat phone works but its data kit does not get me out, so I’m having to dictate this blog. Outfitter Satellite Phones tells me it is a problem with the server. Actually, they told me that last night. I haven’t heard from them since, although they said they are working on it.
I’ve been sleeping as much as possible, although I have been unable to get more than a half hour at a time. And I’m eating light and the stomach has been stable. The overcast sky has put an emotional damper on the day, but otherwise we’re doing fine 114 nautical miles out of Newport.

I have written this blog on my laptop at Robin’s nav station, a countertop just inside the companionway on the starboard side of the cabin. To send the blog, I phoned Michael LaBella, one of my great editors at Soundings, and dictated as he typed. The blog gives only a hint of what has transpired in the last 29 hours.
The troubles began just outside the entrance to Narragansett Bay. In the distance, in the misty fog, I could see the racing boats that were ahead of me. They were passing by the shadowy form of a large ship. The monster appeared to be anchored offshore. It definitely was motionless. I began making mental calculations regarding which way I should pass the ship, since it sat squarely on the rhumb line. The autopilot was steering as I fine-tuned the sails in an attempt to keep within sight of Mirari, the closest boat.
The ship would not be the only obstacle ahead. Local yacht clubs – the New York Yacht Club and others – were participating in an offshore race outside the mouth of the bay. I could see they were crossing my path ahead, coming from the right. They would have the right of way if we got close. So I was keeping a close watch, peering under the boom and over and around the black canvas dodger mounted over the companionway. The dodger is like half of a rounded tent with plastic windows. Its purpose is to protect the sailors from spray that gets blow back when the boat pounds through waves. Robin’s dodger is one of the best I’ve seen for providing protection. Sitting forward in the cockpit, you are completely under the dodger. I had the life raft lashed on the port side of the cockpit under the dodger. On the starboard side, I had a red Honda gasoline-driven electricity generator tied to the dodger’s aluminum and wood frame.
In the hectic morning before the race, I had stowed everything that I could and brought to the cockpit all the items I thought I would need. But now, clear of Newport Harbor, I took some time to arrange items, tie things down and fetch gear from the cabin that I had forgotten or that I didn’t need until now. As I worked, I noticed a pilot boat steaming by to port, headed offshore. It posed no hazard to Robin since it was on a parallel course, and I gave not another thought to that vessel’s significance.
It was only minutes later, as I continued with my chores under the dodger with occasional glances outside for traffic, that I was reminded of what happens when a pilot boat heads offshore. It’s journey is for one of two purposes: To pick up a pilot from a departing ship or to deliver one to steer an arriving ship into port.
In what had seemed a very short span, the pilot boat had reached the big tanker that was squatting on the rhumb line. A pilot had obviously climbed aboard and given the captain the order to put the behemoth into gear. A series of loud fog horn blasts caused me to look up. Ahead, I saw the towering bow of the tanker, steaming toward Providence at the head of the bay and about to run over Robin.
The wind was light, but it was enough. I punched a control button to turn off the autopilot, pushed the tiller hard to port and turned sharply to the west, away from the rhumb line. I heard no angry comment on the radio. That should have made me suspicious. Normally a ship’s captain will give the operator of a small boat a piece of his mind after a close call. Only much later would I learn the reason for the silence.
Ever more slowly, once the tanker had passed, I picked my way through the club racers, finally free of Rhode Island’s shoreline. Off to the southwest, I could see Block Island, no more than ten miles away. As evening approached, I crept closer, until the northern end of the island was nearly abeam of Robin. And then the wind died completely. It was about five o’clock in the afternoon. On the radio, I talked with Dan Stadtlander. He was still moving, at least a half dozen miles ahead of me. By now, all the boats of the last fleet to start – the mini Transats, hot 21-foot racers that were competing in the Bermuda One-Two for the first time – had passed me and I had to assume that I was solidly alone, the tail end of the race fleet.
Dark settled over the ocean. I began setting an egg timer for 20 minutes. With my foul weather gear and boots on, I curled up shrimp-like on Robin’s bridge deck, just outside the companionway, my head propped on a small pillow resting on the vinyl life raft valise, my feet curled around the Honda generator, my hips and torso resting on a flattened cockpit seat. When the egg timer alarm sounded, I sat up and looked around. I hoped for wind, but there was none. There were also no boats or ships, at least not near me. The club racers had gone home for the day. The Bermuda One-Two boats were all out of sight.
Daylight dimmed to black, and then there were pinpricks of light on the Rhode Island coast and on Block Island. Occasionally, there were the lights of boats or ships. When I saw them, I turned on the engine – allowed under the rules as long as the engine was not used to move the boat – and started the radar. [Without the support of the engine’s alternator, the radar would drain the batteries dead.] Nothing was close to me in the early evening, and actually there were very few lights in view.
But around ten o’clock, I started seeing the lights of a tug boat with a barge to the west. I checked the radar and saw the two blips, apparently headed toward me. I removed the VHF radio microphone from its hook on the side of the companionway and called, giving my location off the GPS and asking if the tug captain saw me. There was no response.
I was not concerned because according to the radar, the tug was perhaps five miles away. If he was making 10 knots, it would take him at least a half hour to reach me. So I set the egg timer and slept for 20 minutes. When I looked this time, the lights appeared to be closer, and the radar confirmed that indeed the tug and barge were about two miles away. I called again on the radio. Again, there was no response.
This time I didn’t set the egg timer, but I did doze off for a few minutes, and when I awoke the running lights of the approaching tug were very close. I could see both red and green lights, meaning the tug was headed directly for me. I decided it was time to switch to Channel 13, where ships and tugs conduct their routine conversations. [Channel 16 is the normal hailing channel between all mariners, but I had learned over time that in some cases, commercial captains will respond only on channel 13. This had happened on the trip up to Newport when I was trying to call a tug captain off of Atlantic City.]
I depressed the microphone button and announced my location, the fact that I was drifting and in a race, and I asked for the captain of the approaching tug and barge to respond.
“Where have you been?” an angry tug captain demanded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour!”
In spite of the lack of breeze, I did my best to steer away from the tug, which passed astern of Robin as I pointed back toward Newport. It was only later that I understood what had happened. I had left the radio on channel 72, where it was tuned for the start of the race. When I made my calls to the tug, I thought I was on channel 16. My voice had no audience on these waters, and calamity was nearly the result.
It was a test that I had muffed. But as if to announce that we were on to other tests, the wind came moments later. Robin began sailing steadily to the southeast. The autopilot did its work, pushing and pulling the tiller in little thrusts with an accompanying zipper sound – zip, four inches to port; zip, three inches to starboard. I shortened the sails as the wind built, and I resumed my napping, snug in my foul weather clothes, fairly comfortable as I braced my feet against Robin’s heeling, kept dry by the dodger above me.

Friday, November 20, 2009

An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Three


The wind is out of the north, and as the start of the race nears, the breeze has filled in. Robin is moving with authority under sail power alone at about 4 knots. The blue and white flag on the boat that marks the end of the starting line has just gone down. That and one long blast on an air horn indicate there is less than one minute before Class 4, our class, is free to cross the starting line. My VHF radio is tuned to channel 72, where the race committee is augmenting the flags, horn blasts and cannon reports by telling us how much time is left. This is unusual in a sailboat race. Normally, each captain has to keep track of his own clock. The thought crosses my mind that in such a long race, the committee would rather avoid recalling a boat that starts too soon, let alone issuing a general recall of all the boats in the class. So we’re getting a break.
I made my turn toward the starting line about a minute ago and finally rolled out the genoa. As the seconds tick down, I am tightening the sheets on the mainsail and the genoa, increasing the power that is stretching Robin’s sails and, thus, building her speed. I don’t know all the boats in our class, which comprises older, smaller, slower boats. I think ten of us are starting. I have met three of the other sailors in the class, but right now I’m not looking for their boats. I’m just hoping I don’t get to the line too soon.
After we cross the starting line, our course will lead us southwest out of Narragansett Bay through a narrow passage between the rocky shores of Aquidneck Island, home to Newport, and Conanicut Island, also known as Jamestown. If the wind holds – if it continues to blow with some strength from the north – this passage will be like a cruise in a 1953 Mercury down a boulevard. Things could be much worse. The normal wind here on a summer afternoon is from the southwest. That would be directly on Robin’s nose and would require tacking west and east to get out to the ocean. But come to think of it, it is not yet summer. Maybe this northerly wind is normal in early June.
We’re still in Newport Harbor, but suddenly – I don’t remember hearing the canon fired – the starting line is behind us and my new friend, Dan Stadtlander, is on my starboard side, his dark blue Bristol 39, Mirari, sailing in lockstep with Robin. It is amazing. Much of my life until now has been lived like a cliché. Suddenly, I’m doing something entirely new. Dan, another novice in this race, and I are on our way to Bermuda, ready or not! That, of course, is an important phrase. In many ways, I am unprepared for what I have just begun. Months of work accomplished a lot, particularly on the boat. I finally got around to tying tapered wooden plugs by all the bronze through-hulls – valves that let seawater into the boat to cool the engine or flush the head or that drain the cockpit, the head or the sink. The plugs are there in case one of the valves fails and something is needed to keep the ocean outside the boat. On the stern pulpit – a stainless steel railing that curves around the back of the boat – I have mounted a drogue and 230 feet of Dacron line. The drogue is a cone made of fabric that can be tossed off the back of the boat and used as an anchor at sea to slow or steer Robin in an emergency.
I began work on Robin in earnest some time in March, after the ski season had ended. At the same time, I began preparing myself for the voyage. I attended two seminars here in Newport. One taught methods for getting enough sleep when sailing alone. The other was an introduction to understanding weather forecasts. I understood the part about sleeping. I still needed work on the weather stuff, but I put that off. The procrastination lasted until late May, when it was time to sail from Annapolis for Newport. The rules of the race required me to be in town five days before the start. I figured I’d have plenty of time during that week to learn everything I needed to know about both the weather and the Gulf Stream.
It turns out that I knew no more about what happens before the start here in Newport than I knew about what to expect after the start, out on the ocean. You have to be there to understand. I got to Newport on Sunday morning at 11 o’clock after a 40-hour sail from Cape May with my former boss and sailing friend, Bill Haldeman. I had six days to prepare for the race, and I had no obiligations until Monday, when Robin was due to be inspected by a race official to assure I had come with a seaworthy boat that complied thoroughly with the many race rules. I knew I had a couple of things to finish – minor things, really – so Bill and I showered at the Seaman’s Church Institute, toured Newport and had a couple of good meals. When I checked in at the Newport Yacht Club, home base for the Bermuda One-Two, I was told I could have Robin inspected on Wednesday if I wished. That gave me two days to have everything shipshape. So Bill and I did more touring Monday morning, waiting for his wife, Suze, to arrive and take him back to New Jersey.
Tuesday I felt pretty confidant. I had talked with a fellow competitor, Lindsay Lowe, who was sailing in a faster class of boats. She had completed her safety inspection. She had managed to talk her way past a couple of deficiencies. She didn’t have the required two can openers aboard, she explained to the inspector, because she was going to eat power bars. She had failed to get a ship’s bell, but the inspector let her pass because she had a pan on Flying Tiger, a Hobie 33, that she could bang.
I had to pick up a flare kit that I was renting, and I planned to do that Wednesday before the inspection. I also had to put 18-inch-high race numbers on Robin’s sides and cabintop. I had made the numerals for No. 32 out of blue duct tape. It was a ratty solution, and I was still trying to find out how the other racers came up with such sharp looking numbers. I knew I’d find an answer, but the duct tape was there for an emergency.
My good friend Curt Michael arrived Wednesday morning with his cousin, T.J. Tarbox, prepared to help me put the finishing touches on Robin. First, we had a hearty breakfast at the Seaman’s Church Institute. Before we left to pick up the flare kit, I discovered the answer to good race numbers. The other skippers had bought numbers from sailmakers, vinyl numbers with adhesive backs. So before our scheduled noontime inspection, we drove to a sailmaker near the flare rental place and took care of all the outstanding chores. Once we passed the examination, I could settle down to study the charts to Bermuda and learn more about the upcoming weather.
I was therefore stunned when Robin failed the inspection. The rest of the day and Thursday would have to be spent scrambling. I had to get a proper medical manual. It was on the list but I had simply forgotten it. And I had to prove that all the required equipment was inside my sealed life raft. The $1,700 I had paid for the raft had not bought me such a list. Where would I get one?
For now, however, I had friends who had come to give me a good sendoff, and I felt a responsibility to show my appreciation. Two more guys – Capt. Louis Lagace, a commercial clam boat owner, and Mike Troy, a folk singer – came to town and we all went out for dinner. It was a great time, except that my mind was elsewhere, wondering where all the time had gone and when I was going to begin looking at the nautical charts that would be my roadmap to Bermuda.
And then there was the issue of the satellite telephone.
I began writing a blog on the Soundings Magazine web page on March 26. I had made 69 entries on the blog, almost one a day since the beginning. Here’s an example of what I had just written about Robin’s inspection.

Ted Singsen, the inspector, arrived on time and, once aboard Robin, asked if I had completed the checklist. My mind froze. This is probably a survival instinct learned from all those college final exams I faced unprepared. I had to tell Ted I didn’t, so he went to get me a blank one. When he showed it to me, I recognized it as one I had almost fully completed and had on board. I found it .
But neither Ted nor the three of us had had lunch, so we adjourned and returned to Robin after eating. As moments of truth go, this inspection was a very friendly one. Ted went through the list. Could you show me a wooden plug at a through hull? I showed it. Do you have a second compass? I did. In the end, I was short three items. I had completely forgotten to get a book on first aid. The life raft company failed to give me a list of the survival equipment inside the raft. And I had zoned out on the fact that I had ordered a waterproof spotlight online that was to be delivered to the club offices, so I didn’t have it on board.

Writing the blog was fun. It didn’t take a lot of time. The plan from the beginning was that I would continue to write from Robin after the race started. I would do that by renting a satellite telephone. Soundings agreed to reimburse me, so I had ordered the phone. But I had failed to order a crucial item that would allow me to send email messages on the phone. It was now on order and scheduled to arrive at the Newport Yacht Club. I am as skilled with electronic devices as my grandmother, who did not live to see them invented. I had hoped that I would have the phone in hand for practice transmissions, but as of now, the “data kit” had not arrived. So I busied myself on Thursday with laundry and applying the sail numbers to Robin’s hull and cabin. My sister, Janet, came for a visit. We had a nice meal together. And by the time I settled into my berth on Robin, I had not opened one chart all day long.
But that was okay because on Friday, at the skipper’s meeting, I would attend a weather briefing, learning no doubt all I needed to know about both the weather and the Gulf Stream. And after the meeting, I would email weather router Herb Hilgenberg in Ontario. He had promised to give me a forecast for Saturday, race day, and also give me coordinates for the best place to cross the Gulf Stream.
It was a good thing that all this information would be handed to me. Friday morning, Monica, her brother, John Cusick, and John’s wife, Tina, arrived. We went to breakfast. The data kit for the satellite telephone arrived some time during the day. I emailed Herb Hilgenberg, letting him know that I would be looking for his weather and Gulf Stream comments later in the day. I found Ted Singsen, who checked off the final inspection items. Then Monica and I took a launch out to Robin. It was time to secure everything on board, to clear the deck and stow the dinghy on the foredeck. I took the satellite telephone components out of their boxes for the first time and put the installation CD in my laptop. In minutes, I found I was unable to transmit an email message on the phone. John Cusick is a computer whiz. I told Monica, no doubt in very serious tones, that we needed to go ashore and solicit his help.
Until now, I had done my best impersonation of a gracious host for each of my visitors. I felt a responsibility. But now, I was on edge, not a particularly hospitable shipmate. There were less than 20 hours until the race began, and I was overwhelmed, trying to go through a mental checklist of all the things that needed to be completed. Monica is our list-keeper. My lists are always mental. This means they are easily added to – and easily forgotten. But if I forgot something now, it could mean real trouble once I was offshore. Added to those vague concerns now was the satellite phone problem. So I kept to myself and I could feel the tension building. I felt bad about my behavior. Monica had been enthusiastically supportive. Unlike the wives of many sailors, she was eager to be part of this race. And here I was, withdrawing, uncommunicative. So on top of the layer of stress that was natural to this situation, I added a film of guilt. And that is not at all what this adventure was supposed to be about. Indeed, if entering the Bermuda One-Two had any theme, it was the shedding of a lifelong habit of assuming responsibility for others.

**

That was yesterday. Now it is not quite noon on Saturday. With Mirari to starboard, Robin is passing between Aquidneck and Conanicut Islands. The sky remains overcast, the temperature moderate – perhaps in the 60s. There are boats ahead of us – all of those in the four classes that started before us – and behind us. I am busy with the sails, looking for some edge because the wind has eased a bit. I see Dan trying to raise a light air sail on Mirari. He had sworn he wouldn’t bother, but both of us can see boats in our class pulling away from us in our flight toward the ocean, each with a billowing spinnaker. I decide to try my own light-air sail – a bargain shop $150 antique “blooper” that I purchased at the last minute and have never before flown. With the electric autopilot steering, I go forward and manage to get the sail – pale yellow, pale blue and white – to fly off the port bow. This requires dousing the genoa. Immediately it becomes clear that this is not a good trade. Robin has slowed sharply. I lower the light sail and unfurl the genoa again.
Mirari is in front of me. Then Dan steers to port, heading directly for Aquidneck’s rocks as he struggles with his sails. I can hear him cursing. He has made a couple of sail changes while I’ve been fooling with my own rig. We’re both seeing the fleet pull away. I pass Mirari, but then Dan tacks back and finally gets into a groove. I make a choice to sail a bit farther west than he is traveling to avoid any shoals. Since I haven’t made a detailed examination of the charts, I’m trying to stay on the safe side of the buoys marking the shipping channel. Dan sails inside and puts some distance between Mirari and Robin. Evenutally, I will steer onto the same course Dan is following as he aims for Bermuda. I know that the rhumb line – the straight course between Newport and St. George’s, Bermuda – is 162 degrees magnetic. But for now, it could honestly be said that, with nothing plotted on my charts, I really don’t know where I’m going.