There has been no opportunity, since July 18 when John Morrison and I departed Cambridge, MD, aboard Robin, to check in. A lot has transpired since then, however.
At the moment, I'm sitting in a motel room in Manchester, NH, awaiting Monica's flight to arrive just up the road. John left here for home on an earlier flight. I shook hands with him and thanked him for sharing the experiences of the last 13 days. He said I will have lots to write about. I know he will have many stories to tell, some of which perhaps will not enhance my reputation as a sailor.
The primary feature of this voyage of about 550 miles to Rockland, ME, was engine trouble. It began when we departed Cape May, NJ, on the evening of our second day.
I had a plan to sail all the way once we had left the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays behind, and after we had motored out of the Cape May inlet through a boistrous chop and steered north, we began sailing with the Genoa alone, doing a solid six knots over the bottom with the wind on our starboard quarter.
In no time, we were passing along the buildings of Wildwood Crest, a couple of miles north of Cape May, and we turned the engine off, settling in for a long, dark evening of quiet and the motion of strong swells over shallow water. We both had on our harnesses, tethered to the jackline, when I decided to go below for something. The autohelm was steering and John was seated on the high, starboard side of the cockpit.
I dialed daugther Joy, who was vacationing with her family in Wildwood, so that they could go down to the beach to see us past. We were traveling so fast that I was concerned we might just blow by before they could react. She said they'd try to gather the kids and get to the beach.
I'd just stepped through the companionway opening a few minutes later and had a foot on the ladder when John noticed a "Low Battery" message on the autohelm screen. This surprised me since we'd been motoring for two straight days and, the night before, had plugged in to shore power in Chesapeake City.
I checked the volt meter above the chart table. Both batteries registered less than full readings, with the No. 2 battery -- the house battery which was now running the steering -- quite low.
I reached up into the cockpit and turned on the engine, then rechecked the volt meter. What I should have seen was the needle jumping up into the green realm of the gauge.
But there was no change. We were running on our batteries alone. For some reason, the alternator was not charging the batteries. In time, if we fed off the batteries without help from the alternator, they would go dead. We'd have no juice for our instruments, our running lights or any other electrical equipment.
So we turned Robin around and, with the engine running -- a diesel engine will run as long as it has fuel without need of any electrical current -- we headed back for the Cape May Inlet.
By the time the inlet came in view, it was dark. The furious chop was still filling the entrance, but now we faced an additional problem. We could see the green light on the end of the southern jetty, but against a backdrop of a dozen or more red lights ashore, we could not find the red light marking the tip of the northern jetty.
Now I became confused, forgetting for the moment the old saying "Red on right returning". For some reason, I had the green light to starbaord, meaning we were about to go on the wrong side of the southern jetty.
With perhaps 150 feet to go, I saw the reflection of the jetty stones below the green light and turned sharply to starboard.
But our mutual confusion continued, prompting desparate questions about "Where the hell is the red light?"
Eventually we saw the light -- a dim glow behind Robin, which had already entered the inlet safely.
We anchored in the dark amidst a half dozen other boats and left it to the morning to unravel the mystery of the low batteries.
It would take eleven more days to solve that probelm, a span of time during which we would have many more adventures, some of which sailors actually anticipate with eagerness.
More to follow.