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Thursday, December 15, 2011

Endings -- of a life, a love, a season -- are the sad price we pay for having been selected to live. When we reach the end of good things, it's best not to mourn them but to look back with thanks.

I chose yesterday to end Bluebird's season on the river. It was not the ending I'd wanted, with a stiff breeze to stretch her sails one more time. The water was oily smooth, littered with a few logs and branches washed from the shoreline by a rising tide. And although in the morning there had been frost on the stones that pave the beach, it was warm when I launched the dinghy, no ice to crunch under my soles.
I rowed the 75 strokes to Bluebird's side, transfered the winter stick that would replace the mooring ball, along with the tools to accompish that job, into the cockpit and climbed aboard one last time.
The next few minutes were too busy to recall the good season that was ending. I had to splice two thimbles on the ends of a polypropylene line that attached the mooring chain to the winter stick -- a five-foot-long PVC tube, weighted at one end and sealed to float vertically and mark the location of the mooring throughout the icy season that is probably just beginning. Then I had to remove the mooring ball from the chain and put it in the cockpit.
Before I let the chain and winter stick go and allowed Bluebird to float free, I had to start the outboard motor. It fired up on the first pull. I let it warmn while I checked various lines. Then I cast off, leaving the sailing season behind.
It was a good season. Although Monica made it aboard Bluebird only once, she enjoyed the sail and, I'm sure, will be back aboard in the spring. And I had several pleasure-filled hours aboard alone, sails when the wind was just perfect and the feel exhilerating as Bluebird balanced between the forces of wind and water.
Twice, friend Rich Vishton came along for the ride, both times a mix of wind and calm that proved what a sweet hull Philip Rhodes had designed fifty-some years earlier.
Yesterday, Rich was waiting at the boat ramp on the far side of the river with Bluebird's trailer when, under outboard power, we slanted across the current, aiming for the breakwater and the end of a lovely season.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

This is about as close as I've come to sailing in the last 10 days.

Lexi (left) and Samantha play on the front lawn of the Red Dragon Canoe Club as Bluebird sits on the mooring in the middle of the Delaware River. There's not much time for sailing with two "toddlers" in the house. But we do ride the one block over to the club every day to help Lexi get over her car sickness (I've read it's a puppy thing involving the development of the pup's ear) and once we arrive, the girls get to play on the lawn. I get to stare wistfully at Bluebird. I'll probably haul her later this week. I'm hoping there's wind that day.

Monday, December 5, 2011

I'd just opened the boathouse door yesterday afternoon when neighbor Rich Vishton drove down to the waterfront.
"Want to go out?" I asked.
He thought briefly of the chores he had to do at home and then replied, "Yeah."
So we launched the inflatable, attached the outboard and puttered out to where Bluebird was swinging in the current and a light breeze.
For the next two hours, we sailed gently, heading downstream with the current but against the wind at first, then edging back upstream in what proved to be very light air.
As folks will, we told old stories, some about boats, some about life. Rich steered and I tended the sheets.
The sun was falling fast as we crept toward the mooring near the end of another perfect autumn sail. But we were back ashore before dark. We hadn't needed the outboard. In fact, I don't think that motor is even broken in yet, it's been used so seldom.
This morning, there is a thick fog on the river and only occasionally can you see Bluebird's shadow. I probably won't take her out today, nor tomorrow, when rain is forecast. Then the temperature is predicted to drop, so perhaps the sailing season is about over.
I looked for the license plate and lights for the boat trailer this morning and couldn't find them. I'll need to act on that problem soon so that I can take the trailer to the launch ramp.
Pushing the sailing season is great fun when you get out on the water. But I don't want to find myself actually fighting the ice floes when it's time to haul.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The first section of paint has been removed from Robin's mast. That leaves a bit more than 90 percent to do.
The paint itself came off quite easily with a brass wire brush about the size of a toothbrush. But that left, in most places, a layer that appeared to be some sort of primer. The surface was a blue-ish silver, and underneath was a white layer that, when sanded, spread like thickened paint over the underlying aluminum and was quite resistant to my efforts at removal. I went through several sanding discs before quitting at the current place.
Today, I went to Lowes and bought a circular brass wire brush (I think it's brass. The packaging didn't say.) I think it will fit either on an angle grinder or a grinder/polisher that I have in the basement. I'll see on the next trip if the stripping goes any quicker.
Suggestions from experienced aluminum strippers welcomed.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Lexi and Samantha are, for the time being, couch potatoes.

I would have taken them out on Bluebird yesterday if there had been a dock. Then it would have been easy to get them aboard.
But the docks were hauled two weeks ago, so to get to the boat now requires rowing. I suspect that introducing the girls to boating aboard the dinghy would not be the most farsighted endeavor.
It was a perfect day on the water, no reefing necessary, but plenty of wind to get the Mariner going, some times in great sprints. We sailed in triangles and circles, with no destination known.
Once again, our only company was a john boat with two guys aboard and the same catamaran-type hydroplane we'd seen a couple of times before, its outboard shooting it across the flat river, the owner and his black dog in the cockpit.
Should have been two black dogs aboard Bluebird. But that will have to wait until April, when the docks return.

Monday, November 21, 2011

We got some new crew for the boats.

Lexi's in the foreground, Samantha in the rear. They are 3.5 months old and their Mom was a Sheltie. Looks like Dad was dominant, probably a black Lab. They're sweet and seem fearless, which should work well with their new duties on deck.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

It was a great day yesterday, sun out, wind blowing, but something was missing out on the Delaware River. I realized what it was only this morning.
In the nearly five hours I sailed, i was looking for it and not seeing it.
What I did see were occasional gusts coming from the west, turning the otherwise blue surface black with bunches of hard little waves as I raised Bluebird's sails, the main reefed, and cast off the mooring to sail with the current and against the wind.
On a long tack toward the Pennsylvania shore, I heard gunshots and located them coming from behind what looked like a 30-foot-high silver-gray fabric curtain, hung on telephone-type poles. As I drew nearer, I noticed a small powerboat anchored just offshore from the curtain. And even closer, I saw the power boat start up and head for me.
"This is a security zone," the captain of the boat called to me. "Change your course."
I tacked, and then I called back.
"Whose security zone is it?"
I got no answer, and tomorrow I'm calling the Coast Guard to find out.
Bluebird and I sailed past Beverly Point, to where you can look due west to the Philadelphia skyline about 15 miles away. That fetch in a westerly builds up a pretty respectable chop, and although this time it was sailable, I wasn't interested in more than a pleasant little cruise, so I turned and headed upstream.
I saw some people walking along the bank, where the tide had fallen toward low. One had a white boxer-type dog with a black spot on its left eye, like the mutt in The Little Rascals. Someone sitting on a park bench up in the trees took a photo of Bluebird.
But there were no boats on the water, and in the solitude, I kept looking for something that I couldn't identify. I looked upstream, toward the lift span bridge, thinking I'd see it -- maybe a ship heading out to sea, or a change in the weather, but there was nothing there to capture my interst.
I looked up to the sky. It was full of jet condensation trails, long white ones, the recent ones thin as an ink stroke, the older ones fat as an earthworm. They crisscrossed the blue, and caught below them were wisps of white, like cotton pulled out, swirling between the tendrils.
But that wasn't what I was looking for.
The sail went well but at the end it was somehow disappointing.
And then this morning I realized what I'd missed.
When you are out on a boat on a perfect day, the only thing you need for success is to feel the movement, sense it in all parts of your body. I'd been too focused on things and had missed the pure pleasure that's possible on an autumn day in a little boat.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The leaves, on this gray morning, are raining from the trees, racing each other to be not the last to fall on lawn and gravel driveway, on car roof and house roof and bird feeder roof. A wind, forecast to grow stronger yet, sweeps them from the branches, now nearly all barren save for a few low on the maples. Blizzards of yellow gust across the street, frantic, each leaf, not to be left behind. By day's end, autumn may well have reached its somber, naked terminal.
In one week, we give thanks for the harvest of leaves and roots, of stalks and fruits, even as we sweep and sweat to move this fallen foliage off the grass and to the curb in a ritual that defies nature's plan of rot and regeneration. A smarter folk would leave the leaves where they landed, smell their decomposition, witness their disappearance into compost, food for the future.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

In a world in which gossip is the most common form of social discourse, is it a sign of humility or of conceit to think of one's self as uninteresting to the gossips?

Monday, November 14, 2011

Bluebird has the distinction of being the only boat left on its mooring down at the boat club. Yesterday, with mainsail reefed, we went out for the afternoon in gusts of 18 to 20 knots and a more-or-less steady 10 knots the rest of the time.
With the sails raised, I prepared to slip the mooring when I saw a not-quite-mustard yellow boat coming out from the marina breakwater on the Pennsylvania side of the river (the same marina where Robin is wintering.) It happened to be friends Andy and Kathy and their son on an afternoon sail to no place in particular.
I sailed over and said hello, then shadowed them as they sailed upstream on a beam reach flying Genoa alone. Before the lift bridge, they turned around. Their mast is too high to clear the bridge when it is closed. Bluebird can make it under three of the bridge spans easily, so I sailed on up to Bristol, PA, perhaps a three mile sail from the club.
As it happened, Monica was attending a play in Bristol at a riverfront theater, having been invited with a group of women. So I sailed as far as the theater parking lot and then headed back. It was about 3:15 p.m. when I turned, giving me a little more than an hour before the sun set.
Now I was tacking against the wind, but I had the current with me and sailed onto the mooring at about 4:15.
By the time I rowed the inflatable to shore, the sun had set, illuminating the clouds a raspberry red, complementing the lavender gray of their shadowy sides.
Now at 10 a.m. I can see the maple leaves, bright yellow, tossing in a breeze that is crossing the yard, and I wonder whether perhaps I should head down to the river once more.
I hope to sail until the last leaf has fallen and, when I step ashore from the dinghy, ice crystals crunch under my shoes.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

The riverbed is paved with stones polished round and smooth. A thin frosting of silt is settled over and around those stones that rest below the line of the low tide, where the waves ebbing and flowing cannot wash them clean. You step in at low tide and the muck just beneath the surface will suck your shoes off your feet.
On the industrial banks and in the marshes that border the river, where low-value trees and shrubs wet their roots, trash collects, blue plastic drums and empty soda bottles and chunks of dirty white styrene foam.
You see none of this from the middle of the water, out in the channel where large red and green buoys mark the limits for shipping traffic. On a November afternoon, you see ripples from the wind blowing obliquly from the south, crossing the current. You see a speed boat or two and, far down the fetch, a white sail.
You hear the lapping of the water against the boat's bow, coming at you from inside the cavern that is the little cuddy cabin, and when the breeze stiffens, you hear the hum of the cable that holds the steel centerboard suspended below the hull, a stringed instrument whose tone suggests power and purpose.
You feel the breeze on every exposed hair: On the back of your neck, on your stubbly cheek whiskers, your long, aging gray eyebrows, the thin filaments rising from the withered, nicked old skin on the back of your hands. The hairs tell you direction, strength.
In the wood of the tiller, you feel the tug of the water against the rudder that slices the river three feet deep, feel the straining and the easing as the sails fill and flutter, and somehow, in combination with the signals being transmitted through your neck hairs, your fingers use the report from the tiller to keep the little boat pointing carefully along the optimal line, aiming across that current that would drive you back to the dock.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

I cut the notch in the end of the stainless steel bolt at the bottom of the mast.

With the cold chisel inserted in the notch and the pipe wrench's jaws on the shaft of the chisel, I turned the bolt. It turned easily.
Too easily.
I looked inside the bottom of the mast, where the bolt passed through an aluminum tube.

The tube was turning, too. So I got out the reciprocating, Sawzall-type saw and, after a half hour of work and two saw blades, cut the bolt through.


If you look carefully at the ends of the sliced bolt and tube, you will be hard pressed to find where the stainless steel ends and the aluminum begins, so closely have the two metals shared molecules.
Now that this riddle is solved, it's on to stripping all the old paint from the mast. I was going to repaint it, but that would require removing all the hardware which, I assume, is just as welded to the mast as was this bolt to the tube. I'm looking into the virtues of leaving the mast a raw aluminum. I think I've found a substance that will stabilize the surface. If so, this chore will soon be completed.
If there was any breeze, I'd be heading to the boathouse for a sail on Bluebird. But the air is calm, so I'll drive across the river -- or maybe take the dinghy -- to work on Robin. I'll take a photo of my project -- removing the stainless steel bolt that is stuck inside the mast, frozen inside an aluminum tube by corrosion, a situation that Dick Mills tells me is called Galling.
When the boatyard went to haul the mast, they had to use a Sawzall to cut the bolt on both sides where it passed between the mast and the mast step. That left the plug inside the tube.
I've tried heating the tube with a blow torch before using the sledge hammer and a drift pin. That hasn't worked. I've poured WD-40 into the tube. It hasn't budged. So now I'm going to try to drill a slot into the sawed end of the bolt and then use a cold chisel and a pipe wrench to try to twist the bolt free of the galling.
I'll take the photo in case my description isn't sufficient and my next attempt doesn't work and I need suggestions.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

There was a brisk easterly breeze yesterday afternoon and I played hookey. Our inflatable is hung like laundry inside the boathouse at the Red Dragon Canoe Club nearby. Balancing it on my back, I hauled it to the gravel shore, attached the oars and the seat and rowed out to Bluebird, about 100 yards offshore.
After rigging the sails, we slipped the mooring and, sailing against the current and the wind, tacked up toward Burlington City, about two miles away.
One other sailor from the club, Del Rife, had a head start on Bluebird, so of course my little boat thought she was in a race.
Just before you reach the city, the Burlington-Bristol lift-span bridge looms above. Del turned back before he reached the bridge and before I had a chance to catch up. I sailed by with a wave and then slipped under the bridge in a weakening breeze. On the far side of the bridge, the river turns north and the wind did, too. On a beam reach, Bluebird made it all the way to the center of the city before turning back and running against the tide, which had turned.
There is no better time to sail than in autumn, when the air is crisp, the sky clear and the sun is lighting the muted fall colors on the shore. Bluebird is well behaved, liked a good dog, a perfect companion if you want to play hookey.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Through the fog an hour after sunrise, Bluebird floats in the ebbing tide, awaiting the end of her season, the temporary death of my dreaming. It's hard to let it all pass. Just beyond her, in the trees on the far shore to the left, Robin sits waiting for my ministrations. No spare time to weep.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I just returned from the river and a two-hour sail/drift aboard Bluebird. Our neighbor Rich Vishton came along. After showing a bit of passion as we stood on the dock, the wind withdrew, and to call it a sail would be to stretch the facts. Still, it was nice to be on the water.
My friend John Morrison is heading south today from our marina in Maryland. He plans to reach Marathon, Florida, where he will take a mooring for a few months. His wife, Fran, will meet him there. For now, he has as crew a fellow he knows from the marina. I've offered to spend a couple of weeks helping him along if he needs me. I owe him for the many times he's helped me with Robin. (And I enjoy sailing with him, truth be told.)
At the same time, I've applied for a job in journalism and have reached the point where I took a test yesterday. No word whether I've scraped by, and I'm frankly not certain I want to. Having spent more than two years unemployed, while I've missed the steady income and the sense of accomplishment that work provides, I've also enjoyed the freedom to move around, on the water and on land, and to be with my grandchildren.
I guess my feelings are the definition of ambivalence.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Robin made it home to Cambridge, MD, and about three weeks later, Monica and I flew to Alaska for one of those glacier cruises.
First, we went to Denali, also known as Mt. McKinley, which we saw from a bus about 75 miles away.

We took a long train ride to Anchorage through your standard Alaska spectacular scenery.

This was followed by a week on a cruise ship that got close to several glaciers, close enough to hear the thunder rumble through the shifting ice and see shards of glacier fall, as if in slow motion, from the 200-foot-high face of the glacier.

When we flew home, I fetched Robin from Cambridge, brought her up the Delaware River to a marina on the far shore from our home. There she now sits on dry land, propped up by four jack-stands, her mast disconnected and down on the ground, all of her parts awaiting my winter-long inspection.
I've begun work on a new project -- a book or a long magazine piece -- a portrait of the small New England town where I was raised, centered around or focusing on a profile of my father, Archie Campbell, who, as a newcomer to the village, became a civic leader who, twenty-five years after his death, is remembered and revered when town folk gather to discuss their community.

Monday, October 10, 2011

The thunderheads were in sight to the northwest, towering above North Jersey as they marched toward New York City. They would miss Robin.
But then the sky to our west began to gather in a steamy gray-gold wall and I suspected the city wasn't nature's only target this day. By mid afternoon, the lightning was visible over the shore towns north of Asbury Park. Robin was about three miles offshore, and soon the lightning was closer and the rain began. I had everything buttoned down, just in case the "severe wind" materialized.
It didn't, and by the time we were off the Shark River Inlet, the storm had passed.
Then a wind came up just off the bow and soon we were able to motorsail.
With the help of the wind, Robin made six knots or more all night. There was very little traffic off the coast, and I took ten minute naps to ward off that crash into sleep that can befall the sailor who attempts a true all-nighter.
Dawn came around Ocean City, NJ, and Robin was on anchor at 10:30 a.m. in Cape May Harbor, her passage from Manhasset Bay having taken an even twenty-five hours.
The anchorage was unusually full when I arrived -- unusual for a Tuesday morning in late August. I was forced to look for enough depth in parts of the anchorage I'd never before used, and I discovered plenty of deep water on the eastern end, near a green daymarker. I made a mental note to head for that spot immediately the next time I stop in Cape May.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

In preparation for this particular passage, I had studied the charts and the cruising guide specifically to search for a safe harbor in or near New York Harbor. Twice when I've made the trip down the East River, I've encountered brutal conditions at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Both times, I had help. This time I was alone.
The first time was the 2008 trip that Monica and I had taken to Cape Cod. All the way down Long Island Sound, the wind had been strong from the east. We sailed at top speed, enjoying the ride without needing the engine.
We discovered the cost of such sailing when we turned east to go under the Narrows bridge. There, the seas had been building for three days ahead of that easterly wind, and Robin confronted four to six foot walls of water, bucking her bow up to the sky again and again. On a day that we planned to end offshore with Cape May in our sights, we scurried for cover behind the arm of Sandy Hook to wait for improved weather.
The second time was in 2009, when John Morrison, Curt Michael and I ran into fog so dense that when we passed below the Narrows Bridge, we finally saw the structure, straight overhead. It was an action packed hour or so when we passed out through the ambrose Channel, searching for buoys while hearing the thrumming of massive ship engines passing by to our port, completely invisible to us.
Now, I'd searched the charts for an escape route and had found none. So my plan was to do my best to get to Sandy Hook, well beyond the Narrows by several miles, and spend the night there.
The day started overcast, and the image of a fog-bound Narrows filled my mind. I motored slowly, since I had all morning -- until about 11:30 -- to get to Hell Gate. First I passed La Guardia Airport and then Reikers Island Prison.


And then I was through Hell Gate and motoring south on the East River. There was very little traffic -- one tug with a barge and one New York State freighter connected with its environmental protection office.
As I approached the South Street Seaport Museum, I saw a high-speed ferry idling just off the wharf. I radioed on Channel 13, asking the captain where he was headed.
The surprise was that I didn't get the sarcastic response I'd earned in New London. Instead, a very polite captain came back to say that he would move out of my way.
Amazed, I took advantage of this gracious behavior to cross to the east -- Brooklyn -- side of the river in preparation for cutting behind Governor's Island, the short route to the Narrows.
Now the landmarks came one after another.

When Robin passed through the Narrows, the seas were calm, and at three o'clock in the afternoon, when we were off Sandy Hook, the sun was shining. The Coast Guard was transmitting an urgent weather bulletin on Channel 16, warning of severe thunder storms approaching New York. I could see them, but I was unconcerned. By now, I'd phoned Monica to tell her Robin and I were headed for Cape May, non-stop. I figured I be there in the morning around 9:30 if all went well. I'd be using my kitchen timer to take 15 minute naps during the darkest part of the night. But I felt invigorated and ready for the night alone at sea.
Had it been colder on Sunday morning, the weather would have been raw. There was a damp in the rain blowing from the south that got under even good foul weather gear and an intensity that bordered on fog, limiting visibility in the anchorage when I was ready to head out. I got the anchor up and then followed on the chart plotter the reverse of the course that I had established entering the evening before.
This time, I ran aground.
It was a mud bottom and so the grounding was silent and deceptive. I didn't know it had happened until the bow dipped down as the after section of the keel -- the deepest part -- ran up onto a mud mound.
I worked the throttle forward and aft and shoved the tiller to port and starboard and eventually, Robin broke free and I was on my way west in Long Island sound, bound for Manhasset Bay.
The bay was calm when I arrived, and I steered for an area of about 15-foot depth near the western shore, well protected from the existing southerly wind. Once the anchor was down, I had an opportunity to examine the bungalows that lined the nearby shore.




While I probably do not agree with, or have unbounded respect for, many of the folks who recently have participated in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, I do however doubt that in many cases there is justification, either in terms of risks taken or talent brought to bear, for the amount that the owners of these dwellings draw from our economy in comparison with the compensation paid to, as an example, an inspiring middle school teacher who opens the minds of children who otherwise would likely live their lives without appreciating their world.
In any case, I had a good night's rest, preparing for the Monday passage through Hell Gate and the voyage down the East River toward an anchorage in Sandy Hook, NJ.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

My traveling for the next two days was controlled by the time on Monday when the current changed at Hell Gate Bridge, where New York's East River ends and Long Island Sound begins. You are best served by arriving at Hell Gate at slack tide, when the waters are calm and the current is slow. Earlier or later and you will be in a boiling sea that will have more say in which way your boat goes than you do.
I wanted to make as much distance on this day -- Saturday -- as I could so that on Sunday I'd not have to push too hard to get to Manhasset Bay, my favorite anchorage near Hell Gate.
As I studied the charts, I felt that my best choices for Saturday night were along the Connecticut coast, where there seemed to be a greater selection of anchorages. I had no plan to spend money on a mooring when I had two perfectly good anchors mounted on the bow.
By mid day, I saw that my progress was sufficient that I could probably make it with daylight to spare if I aimed for the Norwalk Islands. The cruising guide talked about one spot as a well-protected anchorage, although with somewhat shallow approaches. I decided that would be my destination.
By late afternoon, when I had the anchorage in sight, the wind had picked up from the west southwest. I followed the buoys toward the anchorage, in the center of a ring of small islands, according to the charts. But now I saw that some of the islands were little more than sand spits with no trees or structures to block the wind.
By now, however, I had cast my lot. I turned into a cut between the islands that the cruising guide said was my entrance. The depth sounder red 1.5 feet as I crossed the most shallow part of the entrance. Inside, the wind was blowing 15 to 20 knots, unimpeded. I took Robin up to the center of the anchorage, just short of where the chart said the depth was too shallow for Robin's 5-foot keel. Then I reversed the engine, halting Robin's progress. Knocking the engine into neutral, I raced to the bow and lowered the 45-pound plow anchor. Then I raced back to the cockpit to put the engine in slow reverse in the hopes of setting the anchor in the sand.
Somehow, the anchor dug in on the first try, and I was secure for the night. Frazzled, I went below and heated some dinner and hoped for the best as the wind moaned through the rigging.
The morning was crisp and clear and we got started just after sunrise. We were greeted by the sight of Eagle, the Coast Guard Academy's tall ship, coming into port. (The Academy is in New London.)

It was another day of westerly winds, and so we motored all the way to the Connecticut River, our destination and Monica's final stop on this cruise.
It was mid afternoon when Robin's bow turned between the two jetties at the mouth of the river. I'm always wary of the shoals on either side of the river, always paying careful attention to the boats coming at us ahead and astern, and so I had reason to be studying the dark-hulled sailboat coming downstream toward us.
My mouth was just forming the words: "That looks like Mirari" when I noticed the captain was looking back at me with a smile. It was, indeed, Mirari and her skipper, Dan Stadtlander, he of Bermuda One-Two fame and a friend now for the last four years.
We waved and shouted hellos, and then we each kept on going, certain we'd be talking in the near future.
In a mile or so, we turned to port into North Cove in Old Sayebrook, CT, where we found a mooring with a yellow ribbon, indicating it was free for the taking.
One more splendid evening with Monica, and then in the morning she and I took a taxi to the Amtrak Station, where she boarded a train for New York while I returned to get Robin underway for the final leg of this summer's adventure.
On Wednesday, we had motored most of the way to Stonington, slicing into a headwind much of the time. But today, there was some angle to the wind. At first, we sailed on a beat, crossing Fisher Island Sound on a slant until we were in danger of running aground on the far shore. Then we kicked on the motor and motorsailed much of the way to the Thames River, which separates New London, to the west, from Groton, to the east.
New London is home base for a number of ferries that cross Long Island Sound, and as we approached the mouth of the Thames, we saw a couple coming and going. We knew we needed to be careful.
Soon, we were in the shipping channel, where scores of United States submarines have, since the beginning of World War II, sailed their maiden voyages. (They were built in the shipyard at Groton, which is now home to the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics, builder of the nation's atomic subs.)
Ever observant, we noticed that a ferry was approaching from the south and the Sound while another was just leaving it slip to the north in New London. We decided that the best move would be to cross the marked channel and motor north, to the west side of the green buoys, outside the channel.
The two ferries drew closer and closer. We were glad we made our decision to get out of their way.
Then the outbound ferry slanted to its starboard, clearly aiming on a course that would take it outside the marked channel.
It was headed directly for us, and it was coming fast.
I grabbed the microphone.
"This is the sailing vessel Robin inbound on the Thames River near green bouy (let's say 19) calling the outbound ferry approaching us. Which way are you going?"
There was a slight delay before the voice replied: "South."
That wasn't what I wanted to know. Now we were very close to the ferry's bow. To turn to port seemed suicidal, and so I steered sharply to starboard.
The voice came back on the radio: "I'm giving the inbound ferry more room."
Thanks, we thought. Thanks a lot! Either decision I might have made could have been wrong in the absence of details on which way the outbound ferry was planning to go. As it turned out, I made a lucky choice and the boat raced past our port side perhaps 50 feet away.
This wasn't the best first impression a port could make on a visiting cruiser.
We had decided to take a mooring in the new city mooring field, just south of the ferry terminal, and moments after we passed the rude vessel, we turned to port and into the mooring field. We had called ahead and knew that we were simply to pick up a mooring and then go ashore to settle up. It turned out that the city didn't yet have a harbormaster to deal with transients.
The moorings were big and stable looking, and they were clustered just off the downtown district. From the water, the town looked suspiciously like Gloucester had -- pretty blue collar. With no harbormater and no apparent security, the setup posed some important questions.

I dinghied ashore and met the young lady who collected the fee. Then Monica and I both went ashore for dinner and ice cream. When we returned to the dinghy, we were met by the skipper of another sailboat that had just taken a mooring. He had noticed that our hailing port, lettered on Robin's stern, is Burlington NJ. "I was born in Camden and grew up in Moorestown (where our local Wegman's supermarket is,)" he said.
Small world.
We settled in for our next-to-last night of the cruise, and I wondered whether we'd be visited in the dark by any pirates.
Stonington has all the comforts. There is almost no room to anchor, so taking a mooring from Dodson Boatyard is a prerequisite for a stay in this well-protected (by a seawall) harbor. The staff running the launches at Dodson's was more than helpful. All young men and women, they picked us up, delivered us to a dock in town near a bank (we needed cash) and answered all our questions, all without a fee.
Make no mistake, we paid for the launch in the $45-plus-tax mooring fee, one of the highest we encountered on this cruise. But the kids were nice and good looking, and we later discovered they had been trained by none other than our old friend, Curt Michael, aka The Old Mike
Monica liked the launch drivers. She also liked the cute shops in Stonington. And she liked the one Main Street restaurant that we patronized for both breakfast and a late lunch before we moved on on Thursday for our next stop, New London, CT..
We stayed two nights in Newport. When we arrived, we took a mooring rather than attempt to set the anchor in a crowded harbor during foul weather. But the next day, we slipped the mooring and motored around Goat Island, which separates Newport Harbor on the east from Narraganset Bay on the west. There is a low bridge that connects Goat Island and the Newport mainland, so you can't take a sailboat with a mast directly north from the harbor.
Once around and off the north point of Goat Island, we set anchor in a stiff breeze just outside a small mooring field. Because the wind was from the southeast, we were quite protected by the mainland and the island. Should the wind have veered to the west, we would have been exposed.
But the wind stayed steady throughout the day and into the night, and all the boats on anchor -- a half dozen of us -- rode comfortably.
We were the next to the smallest boat. This one was the smallest.

The boat belonged to a middle-aged woman and two teenaged girls, from our observations. It was equipped for long passages but was not a vessel I'd choose to cross oceans. That may well have been what the ladies had done, however. We never got to find out, because the next morning -- Wednesday -- we left for our next stop, Stonnington, CT, which became Monica's favorite port.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Saturday began with some wind from the south, so before noon we hoisted our anchors and both Cailte and Robin headed for the Cape Cod Canal. Our course was a bit more westerly than the direct route for the canal entrance, and then the wind veered to the west. As a result, our progress toward our goal was slowed substantially.
In time, both boats were motoring into a brisk headwind. My first time making this particular crossing was aboard Cailte. This time, Robin was in the lead.

Perhaps due to the strong southwesterly breeze, although we entered the eastern end of the canal right on time for the current to change in our favor, we found an adverse current. That lasted a good half way through the canal, and it warned us of rough seas once we exited the canal in Buzzards Bay, a body of water notorious for its southesterly afternoon chop.
That complicated things, because to enter Onset Harbor, within a mile of the western entrance to the canal, requires some rapid maneuvering. If the water was bumpy, that sharp turn to starboard might be dodgey.
For once, I was introducing Tom to something new. He'd never been to Onset in his 29 voyages to Maine. So I had described the Onset entrance in detail: The green tower on a pile of rocks that marked the near end of the entrance, the green can just beyond that marked the far end, and the currents that sawed in opposite directions within a few feet and that tried to shove your bow onto the rock pile.
I radioed Tom just before we reached the entrnce. Fortunately, we were through the worst bucking that the Buzzards Bay breeze created on the ebbing current.
I made my sharp turn into Onset and, glancing quickly so as not to lose my bearing, I looked back to see Tom, his teeth gnashing as Cailte went through the Onset Waltz.
We both anchored outside the mooring fields of a marina and a yacht club, and the next day all of us went ashore for dinner with my relatives, Betty and Ted Campbell, who live nearby, and with my sister, Janet, and her husband, Dennis.
On Monday, we parted company with Tom, who waited for the arrival of his brother, Mike, to help him take Cailte back to New Jersey. It was another day of motoring, but one punctuated, when we arrived off Newport, RI, our destination, with a fanfare of lightning and thunder that escorted us into Newport Harbor.
The next morning, we were encumbered by a schedule when we motored out through the Gloucester breakwater and headed toward Provincetown, about 40 miles to the southeast. We wanted to be in Onset, at the far end of the Cape Cod Canal, on the next day, Saturday, so there was no chance of waiting for wind to blow us there.
The Sea was slick as oil, with gentle swells, and in the sky sunshine filtered through thin clouds.
We reached Race Point -- the northern tip of the Cape -- at mid afternoon and rounded the southern tip of the hooked beach off Provincetown an hour or so later. The beach was remarkably unpopulated.

It's about three miles from the tip into Provincetown Harbor, where we expected to find Tom Gilmore's boat Cailte anchored. We spotted her from a mile away and made straight for her, anchoring about 150 feet to her north. Later, Tom joined us in the dinghy for an examination of the Provincetown wildlife, which is mostly nocturnal. After dinner and ice cream, we dinghied back through an anchorage dotted with derelict-looking craft that may well have been occupied dwellings.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Out at the York, ME, sea buoy, the wind was blowing.
Hallelujah!
With the Autohelm 4000 doing the steering, we sailed all day long, reaching Cape Ann, MA, by 3:30 in the afternoon, a voyage of 35 miles. The wind had been from the northeast, on our port quarter until we were just offshore from this new cape and about six miles from the entrance to Gloucester Harbor. It had been the perfect day.
But now we had to turn to starboard to make a straight run for the Gloucester breakwater -- and a run it was, with the wind directly from behind along with a following sea that wanted to shove Robin's stern one way or another.
The smart move would have been to keep on a reach until we had the breakwater on our beam, and then to tack toward shore.
Instead, when the action got rough, I brought the sails down and motored for the next hour.
We had called ahead for a city mooring in Gloucester, a port we'd never visited. I grew up in Massachusetts but had never been in downtown Gloucester, a town that played a central role in the book (and movie) The Perfect Storm. It was that book that helped sell me on the Westsail 32. One Westsail had been caught in the storm and easily survived, and that convinced me this was the boat for us.
So our visit to Gloucester seemed in a sense preordained.
There was a drama going on when we reached the breakwater. A sailboat had sunk just off the entrance, and crews were attempting to raise the boat. We went around the two boats on the scene and motored up the outer harbor, about two miles long, while three guys in an old Irwin 30 made us look like neophytes, sailing along with Robin as her exhaust spit out water and steam.
The harbormaster met us when we were inside the inner harbor and led us to a mooring, collecting his fee and offering suggestions for our visit.
But we decided to stay aboard Robin. The dinghy was lashed on the foredeck, there was food in the icebox and we'd had a wonderful day on the water. Why not stay there?

The boats moored near Robin made clear this was a working harbor. This lobster boat, rather trashy looking, was not quite as picturesque as those we'd seen in Maine.

Nor was this commercial fishing boat going to win any councours d'elegance. There was not a waterfront mansion in sight . . .

. . . only blue collar tenaments. With no glitz to lure us ashore, we had dinner, read our books and watched the sun set behind a cathedral that stood on the far side of not some fancy waterfront bistro but a steel-sheathed warehouse on a barnacle-encrusted wharf, just north of the harbor's Coast Guard station.

With darkness came sleep. Monica was in the V-berth, where there really is only room for one, particularly if one needs to make middle-of-the-night visits to the head. I was in the main cabin on the starboard settee.
It was about 10:45 p.m. when I woke. I saw Monica, only a shadow, up in the cockpit, moving around.
Why is she out there, I wondered? The night was pleasantly cool, and Monica seldom wakes once she falls asleep.
Then she began fumbling with the companionway screens.
"What are you doing?" I asked. I couldn't imagine why she had gone to the bother to replace the screens if she went out to get some air.
She hadn't.
I knew this now because there was a flashlight shining through the screen into my face.
As I climbed over the lee cloth and out of my berth, the shadowy figure moved to starboard. A moment later, I was standing on the companionway ladder, fumbling with the screens.
Just beyond the dodger, two feet away from me, a large man was attempting to climb over Robin's two-strand lifeline.
Then I saw the boat and the other man. The boat was small as was the other man.
It was still confusing me, what was happening, so at first I didn't realized that the man in the boat was trying to start an outboard motor, maybe flooding the engine.
There was nothing I wanted more for the big man to climb over the lifelines. And now there was nothing I wanted more than for the outboard to start.
But I was also now aware that we had been boarded by thieves, and I was angry. Although they hadn't been aboard long enough to take anything, I didn't want them to get away with their felony.
So I reached down inside the companionway where two headlamps are hung by their straps over a regular flashlight mounted there. I seized one of the headlamps, brought it up, turned it on and shined the light at the bow of the theives' boat, where I could read their registration number. I tried to memorize it.
MS 0106, I thought.
"We've got a gun," the scrawny man operating the boat hollered. "Don't come any closer or we'll use it."
I had no intention of getting any closer. But now I was forced to think about our vulnerability if the invaders really had a gun. We were unarmed, I thought, and I got the feeling in my chest you might get staring down the barrel of a loaded pistol.
I kept the light shining on the boat, and finally the outboard motor caught and the boat began to ease in reverse away from Robin's side.
When the scrawny guy -- he reminded me of the rock star Kid Rock -- got the boat far enough aft, he motored slowly past Robin's transom. I stared into his eyes, the flashlight still shining on the boat.
"Don't try to follow us," Kid Rock said. "Or we'll come back and get you."
I realized now that he was the brains of this nincompoop operation. I also saw now that the boat was a center console about 16 to 18 feet long and that, on a tall antenna amidships, it flew -- a Jolly Roger, a pirate's flag.
The thieves motored west, toward the cathedral, and then south, near the Coast Guard station, which I was now calling on Channel 16.
"This is the sailing vessel Robin calling the Coast Guard or any law enforcement agency in Gloucester Harbor," I said, and then waited.
It was probably 15 seconds later that a young woman Coast Guard watchstander responded. I described what had happened and the culprits. She asked for my cell phone number and the called me.
The watchstander told me that a 25-foot Coast Guard boat was being dispatched to investigate.
By now, Monica had been awakened by the commotion and was standing on the companionway ladder while I stood in the cockpit, watching the thieves circle the harbor, heading now east and stopping in what I thought was called Smith Cove. Once again, the big guy's flashlight came on, bobbing about as if he had boarded another boat.
"I can tell you where they are right now," I told the watchstander.
Moments later, Monica and I saw the red and green lights of the 25-footer emerge from the darkened Coast Guard station and move slowly across the harbor, heading toward the flashlight.
Half way there, the red and green navigation lights disappeared, but we could see the silhouette of the 25-footer advancing toward the thieves.
Suddenly, a blue police light was flashing and a flood light or spotlight was piercing the darknessand we heard excited voices.
It was a few minutes later that we got another phone call, this one asking whether the Coast Guard could bring the culprits by for my identification.
Of course, I said.
The Coast Guard had the center console cleated alongside the 25-footer, and two Gloucester City police officers were in the center console, where Kid Rock was handcuffed in his pilot's seat and his beefy sidekick was in the bow facing aft, handcuffed.
The police sergeant asked if I could identify the suspects. Yes, I said. Pointing to Kid Rock, I said: "He was driving and he made the threats." Then I pointed to the big one and said, "He came aboard."
The sergeant turned to the big one and said: "What do you have to say to that?"
"I swear on my childrens' graves, I never was on that boat," he said.
"Shut the f... up," the sergeant said. Then he looked down to the deck of the boat, turned and, directing his next question to Kid Rock, he asked: "You have a permit for those lobsters?"
The two were locked up that night. Kid Rock was wanted on outstanding warrants. They both were charged with breaking and entering a vessel at night, which apparently is a federal offense. They were also charged with threatening bodily injury during the commission of a felony and threatening a witness during the commission of a felony.
Monica says she never wants to return to Gloucester.
I thought it was a much better time than reality television.
By the way, the thieves were captured at a place called Pirate's Point.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Wednesday morning, Tom got out earlier than we by perhaps 45 minutes. He was heading for the Isles of Shoals, off the coast six miles from Kittery, ME, and Portsmouth, NH. We were going to visit cousin Carol and husband-in-law Buzzy in York, ME.
Weatherwise, the trip turned out to be a carbon copy of one John Morrison and I made a year earlier, when we left from Boothbay Harbor and stopped in York to visit my college friends, The Old Mike, The Old Flag and The Old Hol. The sun was out and shining brightly in a cloudless sky and the ocean was oily flat.
And just like the year before, the wind finally arrived when we were about five miles north of Cape Neddick Lighthouse on the north side of York Beach. Some say it is the most photographed lighthouse in the world.

By the time we passed the lighthouse, we had a good breeze, enough to motorsail by the cliffs where Buzzy and Carol have their camper. But the sails came down quickly so that we could enter York Harbor. The path into the harbor is bordered by hidden ledges, and there is a spot where you have to make a sudden turn to starboard, crossing a current that seems determined to drive you on a point of land no more than 150 feet away.
We took a town mooring -- there is no room to anchor in York Harbor -- and got showers in the nearby marina. Showers posed a greater risk to life, if not limb, than the navigation into the harbor. There was standing water in the pan of the shower, water that only drained by spilling over the top of the pan, grungy water that one suspected harbored as yet undiscovered life forms. Tom's PhD Candidate daughter, Rosaleen, who is preparing for a disertation in marine biology, could break new ground in that shower.
Buzzy and Carol picked us up after our showers and took us back to their camper, parked on the top of that cliff with a spectacular view of the ocean and the rocks below and Carol fed us a wonderful dinner while we exchanged stories in the cool evening air.
We slept aboard Robin, but in the morning we went to breakfast with Carol and Buzzy at a place on the beach before we caught the last of the ebbing current out of York Harbor.
Tuesday morning we steamed out of Boothbay Harbor and headed for Casco Bay. We knew that Tom Gilmore had spent a couple of nights at Jewell Island, northwest of Portland a few miles, and we decided we'd go there, too.
This was our first return to Jewell Island since our very first cruise to Maine in 2006. Jewell was our first stop then in Maine, and we arrived in a thick fog with almost zero visibility.
At that time, I had second guessed my plotting and decided to redo a critical waypoint where we planned to round the western end of the island. I thought we would be passing between a red buoy on our starboard and a green one to port.
Then, in the fog, I saw the red to port. I steered sharply toward the buoy, which vanished in the fog before I reached it.
Next thing I knew, there were waves breaking over the top of rocks fifty feet ahead of our bow.
That was then. This time, we returned with a bit of trepidation, but also with a chart plotter.
A foggy day had turned clear before we crossed by the first islands of Casco Bay. But then, as the afternoon sun began slipping from its high perch, a wall of dark clouds appeared in the west. Lightning came a bit later, and soon, with the radar on and Jewell in sight, we stopped dead in the water. The radar screen was nearly filled with solid green splotches, indicating thunder storms.
We were about equidistant from Jewell and a rocky outrcopping offshore with a lighthouse. My concern was whether the storm brought winds that could blow us all the way to the rocks -- about two miles to the southeast.
Monica went below while I stood under the dodger with a foul weather jacket on and my eyes scanning through the heavy rain that arrived with the storm.
The wind never built, and in a half hour, the storm had passed by. We resumed motoring toward the east end of Jewell, now accompanied by a pod of mink whales off our starboard beam a couple of hundred yards.
(Mink whales look like dolphins in the way they swim, curving up to the surface in gangs. Their dorsal fins are sharper and relatively smaller than those of dolphins, but the animals themselves are larger than their mammal cousins.)
The sun was sparkling when, at about three o'clock, we rounded the end of Jewell to head into the narrow slit of an anchorage on its northeastern shore. We could see four or five boats already there. One looked familiar.

Cailte, Tom's Creekmore 46 which he built himself, was the first boat inside the anchorage. We circled and anchored off his transom. Soon, he had rowed over in his 10-foot Cape Dory dinghy, and Tom and I went ashore to hike on this historic island, where during World War II submarine chasers were stationed to hunt German U-boats.

First we crossed to the ocean side of the island to see the "Punch Bowl", a lagoon that fills with water at high tide and empties only partially when the tide ebbs. There was the caracass of a dead seal on the bank of the Punch Bowl.

We hiked to the western end of the island and climbed one of two concrete towers used by the submarine hunters to triangulate the position of subs offshore. (I believe Tom told me they never actually intercepted any subs.)
Then we dinghied back to Robin, where Monica prepared dinner.

Another storm cell threatened and Tom woofed down his meal before rowing back to Cailte. When the storm passed, the scenery in the setting sun was unbeatable.



Thursday, September 1, 2011

Not so fast.
The fog had lifted in Seal Cove, and there was almost no current when we got outside and passed through the narrows.
But we found fog farther down the Damariscotta River. There was a little visibility -- one hundred feet, perhaps -- so we could see the lobster pot buoys ahead, and we could see the lobster boats before we were immediately upon them. Because we were motoring, it was no problem to turn on the radar.
Boothbay Harbor was in the next notch west along the Maine coast. John Morrison and I stopped their in 2010, and Monica and I had visited one rainy summer day by land several years ago. But this would be Monica's first visit by sea.
The fog was relentless, and on the radio we heard chatter between boaters and the Coast Guard about a 26-foot sailboat that had run aground on a rock entering Boothbay Harbor. Between the chartplotter and the radar, however, we were able to reach each of the navigational buoys on our route outside, and soon we were turning in toward Boothbay.
Now, however, we became disoriented, at one point heading on the wrong side of an island. When we determined our actual location, we once again found the right buoys and, after calling ahead, tied Robin to a mooring at the Carousel Marina. The showers were clean and inviting. And then we took the dinghy across the harbor to have dinner in town.
Monica had her first lobster of the cruise in a waterfront restaurant, and I was able to sample that most delectable of deserts, orange-pineapple ice cream. I got the five-scoop dish, which came with a warning from the cashier that I was attempting an absurd feat.
I ate the whole thing.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The rocky edges of Seal Cove were there the following morning, August 1, as were the fragrances of pitch from the spruce and pine that grew above the rocks. But the blue sky was gone, replaced by a low cloud that blew from the south, curling over the trees at that end of the cove and dipping down closer to the water, flowing above all like a magic carpet. We put the dinghy over the side and, with our morning coffee in hand, we motored south, toward the seals we knew to expect.

I kept the outboard quiet in hopes of blending in with the exquisite scenery. In minutes, the fog swirled around Robin, wrapping her in its gauze until we no longer could see her at anchor a few hundred yards away.
At the head of the cove, I stopped the outboard and we watched the fog lift and dip and felt a faint breeze that pushed us toward the ledges on the western shore.
The tide was rising, filling in the several mud-bottomed smaller coves that slit the edges of Seal Cove, in the middle of which were two clusters of rocky islands.
On the larger island, there was what could have been a stump. But as we drifted, we realized it was a bald eagle, standing motionless.
We drifted closer and the eagle spread its wings and flew toward the far, eastern shore, dipping toward the dark water and then rising in one powerfull swoop to perch part way up a pine tree.
It was a few quiet minutes later when we noticed another bump on the smaller of the rock islands. We looked through the binoculars and saw what appeared to be a face -- a white face -- just above the rocks.
We drifted closer.


The white face was that of a seal, staring directly at us. We waited for movement, and it came when the seal felt the tide rising around its fat flanks and wriggled a bit.
There were other bumps, in time revealing themselves as two seal pups, apparantly hanging close to Mom.


In time, the tide rose enough to float "Mom" off her rock. We drifted past the two "islands" which were rapidly becoming submerged. As we floated, the seals came up to port, dove, then came up to starboard. They rose at twelve o'clock and then at seven, always 100 feet or more away but clearly not startled to have human visitors.
Robin was back in view and the fog appeared to be lifting, so we returned to her to see what the morning would bring. If we timed it accurately, we could pass through the "boiling" narrows at slack tide around 11 o'clock and be on our way to the next stop, in Booth Bay Harbor.

On Sunday, July 31, Monica and I filled Robin's tanks at a Rockland marina and headed toward Owl's Head Lighthouse, on the point of land reaching out from the southern side of Rockland Harbor..

We had decided to chance going through an inside passage to save a few miles leaving Penobscot Bay and to see some new territory. The passage runs between the mainland south of Rockland and Owl's Head and a string of rocky islands just offshore. The chartplotter made us more confidant than we'd been in the past, and just the day before, Tom Gilmore had negotiated the same passage.
Sunday morning was picture perfect -- temperature in the 70s and a clear, blue sky and bright sun. There was no wind should our engine fail, but we were pretty confident.
I'd taken John to the Manchester, NH, airport on Friday morning in a rental car and met Monica's flight there that evening. We'd spent Saturday provisioning Robin and getting settled in. Now we were aiming to get as far as Monica's two week vacation would allow.


And so we headed down the passage with the foreboding name Muscle Channel. I was glad to have Monica aboard and not all that sad that we were heading home instead of cruising north past Bar Harbor. The stress of the trip to Rockland was still gnawing at me, and although I'd dropped some earlier thoughts about selling Robin, I wanted to complete this voyage before determining the extent of our future together.
We had tentatively chosen to head for Seal Cove this day. Tom had spent a couple of days there and recommended it highly. On an earlier trip to Maine, I'd sailed up the Damariscotta River as far as a small cove without a name on our nautical charts. Seal Cove was a couple of miles upriver from that cove, and the cruising guide said it was also past a narrows where, on the ebb tide, the water "boiled" around a red buoy.
Once we were out on the ocean, around Burnt and Allen Islands, we picked up some wind, and we had a strong breeze when we rounded into the Damariscotta. We also had many, many lobster pot buoys. I wanted to sail up through them to avoid the risk of wrapping a line around our propeller, but Monica was concerned with the threat of the boiling water ahead so we doused the sails and began motoring.
About three miles up the river, we rounded the point near the cove where I'd stayed once before. In another mile or so, we were approaching a big, red buoy and the current was swift. And then we were beside the buoy, which leaned downstream under the thrust of the river pouring through a narrows just above.
Robin's speed dropped rapidly. Beside the buoy, we were making about 2.5 knots. With it off our starboard quarter, we were down to 1.5 knots.
We stayed at that speed almost all the way through the narrows and were still very slow when we were abeam of the point of land to starboard which marked the entrance to Seal Cove.
And then, quietly, we were in the cove, where the cruising guide warned of all sorts of hidden rocks and ledges. Emotionally exhausted, we set the anchor -- we had a debate concerning how far down the cove to go, and Monica won the contest. We knew there were seals to be seen near the head of the cove, but we put that experience off until morning and settled in for a quiet evening.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Jonesy arrived by launch about 9:30 a.m. Thursday but he didn't board Robin immediately. Instead, he got out a clipboard and began sketching.
I looked down from Robin's rail, with John and Tom Gilmore peering over my shoulder, as Jonesy, a man in his 30s, I would guess, drew a diagram of the wires connected to our Beta Engine. Here, he said, is where he expected to find our problem. Here, in the harness with the two plastic connectors that I'd already, at Stanley Fiegenbaum's suggestion, inspected.
I don't recall if it were at this precise moment, when Jonesy was declaring his expectations, that I emphasized my desire that he check every possible point where our problem could originate. It probably was.
I remember Jonesy saying that in the vast majority of cases matching ours that he encountered, the problem was corrosion in those couplings.
Jonesy wonder aloud whether the engineers that designed electrical systems for boats ever were aboard boats. If they were, he thought they should know about the moisture in which their elecrical systems had to function.
In any case, Jonesy assured me that he would check everything, even if he found what he expected in the wiring harness.
He explained that a poor connection that didn't allow the current to flow where it was designed to go could actually result in the current finding another path -- one that could, in essence, confuse the alternator, making it work too hard. Enough bad connections and reversing currents could drive the alternator mad, burn it up.
He drew these reversing currents on his clipboard
John and I had unbolted the cockpit sole and removed it before Jonesy arrived, so he had complete access to the Beta engine. Once he boarded Robin, Jonesy settled in the cockpit, at the rear of the engine where, as I could have told him, the harness coupling was thoroughly corroded.
I took up a position inside the cabin, where I'd removed all of the companionway ladder steps and could watch all his movements.
I'd imagined that Jonesy -- his name is so close to Jonesport, a Maine harbor -- was a Maine native, so I asked. No, he said, he was from California. Grew up in Wassila, Alaska.
John and I had the same thought simultaniously.
"You and Sarah Palin," one of us must have said.
"Yeah, and I'm a conservative, too," Jonesy said. I don't know if it was a warning or a challenge.
Jonesy kept up a constant patter as he worked, so at this point he told us that Palin was a year ahead of him in high school and was in the glee club. "I was in the 'Don't tell my parents' club," he said.
We laughed.
Having seen the corroded connectors in the harness coupling, Jonesy began hard-wiring them together, bypassing completely the coupling, one color-coded wire at a time. First, he snipped one wire free from the coupling and trimmed the insulation back about a quarter inch. Then he crimped on a connector before snipping and trimming the end of the wire on the other side of the coupling. After putting on a piece of shrink-wrap tubing and sliding it down the wire, he crimped this second end into the same connector as the first, then melted the shrink-wrap over the whole crimped assembly with a butane lighter so that no moisture could penetrate the crimping.
Jonesy repeated this process until every wire was removed from the coupling. Then he wrapped the whole assembly with black electrical tape.
Jonesy worked methodically, steadily, occasionally having to relieve a cramped muscle as he crouched in the cockpit. Then he moved into the cabin and replaced the alternator with one that I had ordered from Beta, explaining as he went why he made each move.
I'd like to report that I'm such a fine student I remember every detail of Jonesy's instructions. He was a fine teacher, but I don't.
In the end, I felt Jonesy was the finest boat mechanic I've ever encountered. He was confident of his analysis. That's not particularly unusual. What was rare was that he went beyond the first thing that worked -- and would have even had I not insisted he do. He was systematic in his diagnosis and when he finally left Robin, she was in shape to complete her voyage.
He left initially so that I'd have two hours to run the engine and charge the batteries. He returned and performed what I believe he called a load test and found that the batteries -- they are four years old and their condition had to be questioned -- were strong.
At one point, he noticed the new pump I'd installed in Robin's air conditioning system and remarked that he had one just like it back on his bench that he'd removed from a boat that was changing AC systems. When he came back for the load test, he brought the pump, almost new, with him and gave it to me, along with instructions to get the old alternator rebuilt and keep it as a spare.
Compare Jonesy's time on Robin -- about three hours in all -- to the time the mechanic in Cape May spent -- maybe one hour. Jonesy's bill was less than $150, compared with $462.24 in Cape May.
You can guess which mechanic impressed us more.
Which is not to say that I wouldn't worry the whole way back to the Chesapeake.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

There was wind from the east at 6 a.m. Tuesday when I climbed back on deck. To the west, we could see Monhegan Island, a gray specter under dense clouds.
We turned Robin to fill her jib and resumed sailing into Penobscot Bay, where the wind seemed to turn to the northeast and make sailing straight toward Rockland a matter of pinching, of squeezing as much as we could out of close hauled sails.
We placed phone calls once we were within cell phone range. Monica was glad to hear from me and, I think, hadn't been too worried. But she issued an ultimatum. She would fly to Maine on Friday, as planned, only if I would agree that instead of cruising north as we'd planned, I'd agree to head back toward the Chesapeake with her as my crew. She didn't want to spend time frivolously cruising and then leave the stressful chore of the return voyage to me alone. And at that point I had no other crew.
I didn't know what awaited me in Rockland as far as mechanical assistance, so I agreed.
Tom Gilmore, up ahead in Rockland, was relieved, having expected us the night before. He warned us that we faced a thicket of lobster pot buoys. But thanks to the fact that we had no engine, I didn't need to concern myself with getting the propeller snagged on a buoy line.
At one point, we came up behind a lobster boat tending its pots directly on our course. Because we were squeezing every bit of northerly way from the wind, I didn't want to fall off to go around the boat, but I was certain I would have to.
In this instance, we were engaging a thoughtful lobsterman who noticed our predicatment and, when he'd deposited his baited pot overboard, moved his boat out of our path with a smile and a wave.
A bit farther up the bay, we saw a ketch coming from our port through a break in the chain of small islands there, and as it drew nearer, we saw that it was not just a ketch, but a magnificent example of classic yacth design, with long overhangs bow and stern that tapered exquisitely. It reminded me of Cotton Blossom, the William Fife-designed 72-footer on which my friend Richard Griffiths once served as captain. This prompted me to call Richard in Oxford, MD.
When I described the boat, Richard named it -- Belle Aventure, an 82-footer with a solitary doghouse cabin amidships.
We watched he sail past our transom and then were able to remain on a starboard tack all the way to a point about three miles west southwest of the Rockland jetty, off of Owls Head lighthouse. Then we began steering toward the harbor. I had decided that we needed to get a mooring in order to have a mechanic come aboard. I've found anchoring in Rockland Harbor tricky due to an unpredictable bottom.
But I didn't think it would be wise to sail into the vast mooring field to take a mooring. Robin is a cutter, which is a fine offshore rig. But in close quarters, it can be difficult to tack the Genoa around the inner forestay -- difficult and slow. And sailing with the staysail alone, which can be tacked easily, is best done with a steady, strong breeze.
I didn't want to risk either method, so I'd called TowboatUS and they had arranged for a local towing company to bring Robin to a city mooring once we had sailed into the harbor.
The tow cost $150 and took us perhaps 500 yards to a mooring. The towboat operator was a bit rough, banging into Robin's hull twice, roughing up her cosmetics.
Once we were secured to the mooring, I called the local Beta Marine dealer, Johanson Boatworks. Stanley Fiegenbaum at Beta had told me they were good people, and that their mechanic, Jonesy, was excellent.
I scheduled Jonesy's visit for Thursday, his next available opening, and John and I settled in for a couple of days of decompression. All the while, I reminded myself to make sure this Jonesy didn't settle for the first solution he found to Robin's problems.
Make him check everything became my mantra.