I'd meant to try something different, at least for me. That is, to write the first draft of a novel in semi-public view, before you, who read this blog. So the last posting was the first part of that novel, Undercurrent, which has been brewing in my brain for at least 20 years.
I would each day file a post, advancing the story, and hope that blog members and other readers would be my critics. It was, I thought, a way to pressure myself into developing an engaging story.
Then something came up. For now, I'm having to shelve the project for another that may or may not be more promising. In time, I'll report on this new project. For now, I'll apologize for failing to continue with the experiment.

Undercurrent, draft 1




I know now that I was behaving like any thirteen-year-old girl but at that moment, when Charlie Riggins swirled into my imagination, I felt so, so mature, a woman, really. He came out of church into the noon sun, his sandy hair glistening, his shirt white as sugar against his pink, shaved neck. He was fifteen and taller than most of the other freshmen boys at Frenchtown High and so handsome it made my heart feel tight. In a good way. A completely perfect way.

It was one of those warm April days in between the miserable cold-rain, wet-feet days, the grim days that seemed intent on stalling the arrival of what I thought was the real spring. Charlie was wearing a suit and tie and my mind snapped a picture, with every detail in focus. I can still see it today. His face was exactly as it would be years later – before things changed – relaxed by confidence, like he knew how spectacular he was, and I wondered, in that first moment, whether that had something to do with church.

I never went to church. On that morning, I was on my way to Phillips Rexall to buy a carton of cigarettes for my Mom. She never went in a church, either, and my Dad, who drove semis long haul then – before the mill closed – was always sleeping on Sunday mornings. So I didn’t know what went on in church, but I thought that it was supposed to be good for you in some way and I wondered whether the expression on Charlie’s face was a result of whatever happened inside the First Methodist Church of Frenchtown.

I didn’t think much more about church activity that noon. I thought, though, that I probably would have a good chance of getting Charlie’s attention if I was in his church, too. And I decided right then that the next Sunday, I’d be there.

Lucky for me, Cindy Mahon came through the big, arched church door not long after Charlie, while I was still stopped dead on the sidewalk, staring.

“Hi, Cindy!” I screamed it and sang it at the same time, like any mature woman, and didn’t hide my gawking glance at Charlie.

“Hey, Viv!” She sang back. “I didn’t see you during the service.”

“Of course not,” I sang, running up to her like she was my best friend.

Cindy wasn’t actually my friend at all. We were the same age, both in seventh grade. Our lives were as different as cake and vinegar, though. Her dad owned the local Chevy dealership out on the edge of town. They lived in a modern house that was right on the golf course. Once, my Mom was hired to be a waitress at one of their big parties. And, of course, they went to First Methodist. Almost all the families that had businesses went to First Methodist. That’s why Charlie was there, because of his family.

“I was going to Phillips and I saw people coming out,” I told Cindy, still loud, still glancing over her shoulder at Charlie, who was making his way toward the sidewalk. “You look so nice, all dressed up. I was thinking it must be fun to go to church.”

“You must be kidding.” Cindy tossed her short, dingy hair to the side and, to emphasize the misery she’d just endured, gritted her teeth, showing the yellow scum caked around her gums. That was one of her trademarks in school. She was rich and repulsive. I, on the other hand, was poor and popular. If she hadn’t come from a different social stratum than my family, I still wouldn’t have been her friend. But I was thirteen and saw no problem acting at that moment as though we were tight.

“Not kidding,” I said. “I’ve always thought I’d like church.”

‘God, it’s boring,” she groaned. “You sit there for a whole hour while that weasel in a black and purple gown drones on.” She smiled now, like she was pleased to be confessing to me. Good, I thought. Hold on to that feeling.

Then I saw that Charlie was getting into a car parked at the curb. I wanted him to see me, to notice me specially. When you’re thirteen, you get noticed by being noisy.

“Hey, why don’t you come down to Phillips with me.” Loud enough for Charlie to hear if his window was down. I started to back toward the sidewalk. “We could get an ice cream.”

“Okay,” she said, and she swung in beside me.

What I really wanted was to pick her brain about getting into the church. I didn’t know if there was a secret password or something.

I pretended to ignore Charlie when we passed the car where he was sitting. Out of the corner of my eye I could see he was looking at us, at me. By that time, Cindy was giggling at something stupid I was saying to make conversation.

There was an old-fashioned soda fountain in the Rexall, and I led Cindy to the chrome and maroon Naugahyde stools. I don’t think she had been at the fountain any more than I’d been in First Methodist, which was good. I could be sly with my questions while she was absorbing her new surroundings. I’ll admit I felt a little creepy buttering her up that way, since I knew I’d never truly be her friend.

“So how do I get to go to church?” I asked, balancing before my mouth a long-handle soda spoon heaped with strawberry ice cream.

“Just walk in,” she said.

“Then what?”

“Don’t you know anything about religion?”

“Sorry,” I shrugged.

“Well, first, you couldn’t go dressed like that.” Her head bobbed down and up as she looked at the slacks and blouse I was wearing.

“I know that,” I said.

“Well, then, what don’t you know?”

“Really? I don’t know what goes on when you’re inside.”

“You keep quiet unless it’s time to sing. There’re books with the songs in them. And you should bring a Bible. We always bring one for each of us.”

“What do you do with them?”

“Nothing. Oh, some of the old people read along in them when the preacher is talking. But you don’t have to.”

“So what’s the point.”

“You’re showing you’re a proper person,” Cindy said, then thought a bit and scooped a few spoons of ice cream into that gross mouth. “How you behave, what you wear, how quiet you can be, whether you follow the rules or not.”

“What rules? Is there a rule book?”

“Not really. You do what everyone else is doing.”

“So I can walk in there next Sunday – dressed like you, of course – and just follow along?”

“You can come with me,” she offered. “So you don’t make any mistakes.”

There were some girls in our class who wouldn’t be caught dead with Cindy Mahon, afraid they’d be labeled un-cool. I didn’t care what anyone thought, and I never would, as it turned out. In fact, I was beginning to think that when you got past actually looking at Cindy, she was almost okay.

“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

I've been rebuilding the deck that was damaged by the hurricane. Tomorrow, Robin is to be hauled from the water, officialy ending her season.
When I get back to blogging -- after all the boating nonsense is accomplished and the deck is restored -- my plan is to do something a bit strange with this space. Until then . . .

From the outset, Sunday was almost everything Saturday had not been. Most important, I had good company.
Tom and I rose at 3:30 a.m. in Chesapeake City. The cabin was warm. Outside, it was about 30 degrees Farenheit.
By 4 a.m., Robin's bow poked into a favorable current that was flooding toward Delaware City, at the eastern end of the C&D canal where it joins the Delaware River.
There is a book of tide and current charts in a drawer under Robin's chart table. We had gotten our tidal information over the Internet, though. We were informed that the current would head east at about 1:30 a.m. in Chesapeake City and that the flood tide on the Delaware River would begin in Delaware City at about 2:50 a.m.
The result was that we would have the tide with us both in the canal and, intially at least, in the River.
Soon Robin was covering distance over the ground at 8 knots.
On Friday, I'd heard over radio channel 16 that the canal was closed to all traffic due to fog. Sunday morning, there was no fog nor any wind. There have been times that it has taken Robin 3 hours to transit the canal. This day, we saw the river ahead in an hour and a half.
A ship steaming toward Philadelphia flashed by the end of the canal as we watched. When we were between the canal-end jetties, there was a tug with barge, its running lights blazing, just north of the entrance. I called on channel 13 and a gentleman with a southern accent -- it surprises me how the voices of many tug captains share the deep resonance of a cello and a southern flavor -- answered and said he saw us. He rounded into the canal beside us without incident.
Within a half hour, the eastern sky showed the first light of day. There was a high overcast as there had been on Saturday, but there were enough breaks that the sun, when it rose, could shine through.
Well before we reached Philadelphia, at 10:30 a.m., a light breeze had risen from the west. We didn't bother raising sails. No sense being greedy when you're already making good time.
At about noon, we passed under the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and slanted in toward the Riverton Yacht Club, closed for the season. I'd alerted daughter Joy that we were coming through. She brought the boys, Richie and Justin, to the yacht club parking lot, where we circled and took pictures of each other.

Joy snapped a picture or two, while Richie poked his head through the moon roof and waved.
We made it into the Neshaminy State Marina an hour later, where Monica met us.
We never lost the current the entire trip and finished the journey with a nine-hour run. Now Robin awaits a winter and spring up on dry land, where the projects are too many to list.

A boat that has been clawing through a rough chop at two knots or, at times, less seems absolutely fleet when its speed rises to 3.5 knots, and so rise the spirits of the grumbling skipper.
Alone on Saturday, I proved to be poor company for myself in the first six hours of the voyage through the near-gale. No one enjoys being stuck with a whiner.
But then the direction of the seas bent a bit to the south, and it was possible, huddled under the dodger, to keep watch for other traffic without enduring what had been the constant jarring when Robin slammed into a steep wall of Chesapeake Bay water.
Maybe a janitor accustomed to confronting filthy public restrooms feels the same when he's promoted to tend the seldom-used facilities in the top-floor corner office.
My mood grew warmer. Robin passed Worton Creek, and the current began to change, and the boatspeed over ground rose steadily. I sat stoically, but the whining had ended.
Just a few miles more, off Still Pond, we were cranking along at over five knots. I smiled.
By the time we passed Howell Point, just south of Betterton, the sun was flashing with greater frequency through slots in the overcast. Six miles later, at Turkey Point, my chest swelled as the sun's rays fanned out low in the sky behind Robin.

Having taken this picture, my joy in boating was fully restored. Robin motored up the Elk River toward the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal, doing 7.5 knots over the bottom. A fellow in a small, red fishing boat trolled his rig across our bow and waved. I got a call from Monica, who was relieved that I was now only five or six miles from the day's destination, Chesapeake City. The fisherman in the red boat returned, slowed and slid his side window back to extend a greeting. I didn't see him before he had passed Robin, but we managed to acknowledge each other before he, my only personal contact on the water all day, sped ahead.
I set out my dock lines, looping them over the port side lifeline, in anticipation of securing to the free town dock at Chesapeake City, where Tom Gilmore was to meet me.
It is three miles from the canal entrance off the Elk to the town dock in Engineer's Cove. About half way there, I looked up to a marvelous and surpising scene: One hundred turkey vultures, flying west as a group, were overhead. One of them flying on the left flank of the formation turned to his or her right, crossed through the flock, then circled right again to fly beside a companion of his selection.
Turkey vultures, if you've never seen them at close range, are extraordinarly homely creatures, with what appear to be featherless heads like that of a turkey. But now I saw these birds in a different light, as a social group, apparently linked individually with one another. The sight gladdened my heart, and with my bum left hip I scrambled below to get the camera. The battery was weak, and when I finally got the camera to work, most of the vultures had passed. I shot anyway and got this poor photo.

The black specks above the boom gallows are some vultures.
A few moments later, the gray steel Chesapeake City Route 213 bridge came into view, about one mile ahead. It was 4:35 p.m., roughly, just before sunset. Through a slot in  the clouds, the sun sent a shaft of light and, for a moment, created for me a bridge of blazing gold.

 The vultures and the golden bridge were more than sufficient repayment for what, at times, had been a rough day afloat.

Fog cut the visibility on Friday morning in Cambridge, Maryland, to less than 100 yards. I turned on Robin's radar and headed out of the slip on the Choptank River at 7:30 a.m. -- ninety minutes later than I had planned. A thickness brought on by Thanksgiving dinner had kept Monica and me in our bunks until after the early light. She now drove north toward home and I steered Robin out of the marina and into even more dense fog.
A sailor who relies on an engine and the electricity it generates pays for his lack of purity. This morning, the forces of nature that collect this toll struck first when I pushed the button to activate the autopilot. A message appeared on the screen: "No Pilot."
I put the engine in neutral and went below for some WD-40, which I sprayed into the autopilot connector on the side of the cockpit. But after I'd plugged the autopilot cord back into its receptacle, the message was unchanged. I'd have to steer by hand.
I grabbed an air horn from the cabin top under the dodger to signal my presence to anyone out there. When I pushed the button on top, air hissed but there was no horn sound. Assuming the can had lost pressure, I went below and retrieved two spare cans I'd bought at the West Marine store. But I found that those cans wouldn't screw onto the horn, hard as I tried.
Stepping below once more, I got the brass bell from the same compartment where I stored the air cans and, topsides again, I slid its arm into the bracket that would hold close to my reach.
With Robin back in gear, I followed the chartplotter and the compass, keeping an eye on the radar, and motored slowly to the west, toward the Chesapeake Bay, clanging the bell every minute or so.
In a few minutes, I saw the gauzy image of a small crab boat off to port. One of the two men working on board returned my wave.
I was on high alert, concerned that someone in a small boat might be out there fishing or crabbing. I imagned seeing them just ahead. I performed a mental drill of my reaction to such a situation -- slow the engine to a crawl, steer sharply to starboard or port.
The sun was bright on the top of the fog bank, and it clearly was a nice day that had dawned. But the fog lasted for a full hour, until I was past the Tred Avon River and Oxford. Then, within about ten minutes, the fog disolved and I could see in the distance Tilghman Island, where I would pass under the draw bridge at Knapp's Narrows.
There was no wind on the Choptank and no need to raise the sails. Weeks earlier, I'd taken down the Genoa in preparation for Hurricane Sandy. I'd had trouble raising the sail after the storm, so it was now an unruly ball of Dacron, stuffed betweem the port settee and the saloon table. But if I needed them, I had the staysail and the mainsail available.
Passing through the Knapp's Narrows bridge, I exchanged greetings with the bridge tender and he remarked on what a good boat Robin was. Five minutes later, we turned north in the Poplar Island Channel and found a slight breeze on the port beam. I went forward and raised the main and then the staysail, and Robin made good speed with the current of the rising tide.
Past Bloody Point, the southern tip of Kent Island, we encountered a thickening fleet of small fishing boats, each one trolling for striped bass. The wind slowly built as we steered around the fishermen and women, heading toward Annapolis and the half-dozen container ships, tankers and bulk cargo ships on anchor there. Some were floating high, awaiting cargo, while others were settled to their water lines.
My destination was Mill Creek off of Whitehall Bay. I'd hoped to meet up with Ed Darwin, in whose boatyard Robin stayed for three years while I was working in Annapolis. Ed was home in Baltimore for the holiday weekend, though, so instead of going into Martin's Cove and his dock, I dropped Robin's anchor in the well-protected  creek at about 1:30 p.m. and enjoyed an afternoon of reading and boat-watching.

This boat glided prettily down Mill Creek toward Robin, whose bow faced into the breeze. Then she passed us and we saw under what handicap she moved.

The trip north with Robin last weekend was interesting in many ways, and I'll recall the ways in subsequent blog posts. There were lessons to be learned, and I may have absorbed at least one of them.
That most interesting lesson deals with heroism. Alone on a boat for a couple of days, one has the opportunity to ponder deeply. On Saturday, I had about ten hours of solitude, much of that time in near-gale conditions, enough hours make whatever observations I chose. It wasn't until today, Monday, that I found the words that for me define the truth in the particular observations I made two days earlier.
Yesterday, on the third and final leg of the trip that began in Cambridge, Maryland and ended in Croydon, Pennsylvania, I was accompanied by my friend, Tom Gilmore. Tom's a few years younger than I, and when he arrived at Robin on Saturday night, having seen the conditions on the water from shore earlier in the day, he said he was amazed that I had accomplished the trip that day from Arnold, Maryland, to Chesapeake City, a distance of about 50 miles.
"Men your age just don't do that sort of thing," he said, or words to that effect. I feigned a feeling of offense at his choice of words as they regarded my relative youth.
In fact, I took his comment as praise, since he is my mentor in extreme sailing. I was particularly pleased when, eating his crab bisque soup at a nice restaurant, he said: "I wouldn't have done it. I'd have stayed put, read a book and sipped tea."
What a hero I am, I thought, in not those precise words.
A thought exposing a dangerous lack of humility, it began visiting and combinging with my recollected observations from earlier in the day.
To be truthful, there were times when, taking a battering from a rough chop blowing out of
Baltimore's Patapsco River, I was completely miserable and even had thoughts of turning back  to the protected anchorage where I'd spent the prior night in Arnold.
I had known the forecast before I left that anchorage in the early light Saturday. Winds 15 to 20 knots, gusts to 35, from the west. The Upper Chesapeak Bay, where I was headed, slants slightly to the east, about 30 degrees from north. A true west wind would mean Robin would be on a beam reach, an easy point of sail.
Just before there was enough light to see the channel markers leading out of my anchorage, I began raising Robin's anchor. The wind was strong, even in the anchorage, but I saw that, as forecast, it was coming directly from the west.
Once I was out on the bay, I raised the staysail and, motor-sailing against the current of a falling tide, was able to add a knot of forward progress above what the current alone would allow. My chest swelled with joy as the GPS told me we were making 5.5 knots. This was going to be a great day of sailing. Perhaps I'd even be able to raise the reefed mainsail and turn off the engine.
To the north was the 4-mile-long Chesapeake Bay Bridge. I sailed toward it and then through it's center span.
That's when the wind from the Patapsco hit Robin on the bow. The chop was rough, with steep black faces on the waves and white foam -spindrift -- blowing off the wave crests.
In calculating this leg of the voyage, I had forgotten to account for the effect of the Patapsco on wind direction. I knew from the past that a strong wind, when it reaches that river, tends to follow the stream's northwest-southeast track. It was doing that Saturday morning, and it was whistling in the rigging.
The result was that Robin's progress at times, when her bow slammed into a 4 our 5 foot wall of water, stopped completely. I would guess I was averaging about two knots of progress overall. If this kept up, it would take 24 hours to get to Chesapeake City.
My mood soured. It grew darker when the staysail, stretched tightly from mast to deck, began thrashing as the direction of the wind moved closer to the bow. I went forward and took the sail down, but I was unable, with waves breaking over the bow, to stuff the sail into it's bag and had to lash it to the stanchions of the lifelines to keep it from shredding in the violence of the wind.
For the next two hours, there was no improvement. Robin crept up along the north shore of Kent Island, pushed east, ever closer to the island ,so that I had to steer a more westerly course, almost directly into the wind, to make her crab across the water and keep on course.
It was during this period that I contemplated turning back. But I'd done that last summer, aborting a voyage to Maine when I was in a funk, and I didn't want to repeat that decision.
So Robin pounded slowly ahead.
This morning, I recalled my impulse to take pride in my decisions Saturday morning, and I thought of the word "heroic." I disected the word, and what I realized is that heroism is risk-taking for a noble, selfless cause.
Without a noble cause, the same risk-taking reveals poor decision-making.
Without a selfless motive, what would have been heroic becomes, simply, stupid.                                                                               

This is a very busy week. In addition to Thanksgiving with extended family, the contractor completed repairs to the storm damage on the house yesterday, so I've begun demolition on that part of the deck that I know I have to replace. And Thursday night, Monica will drive me -- stuffed with turkey and stuffing -- to Maryland, where we'll spend the night aboard Robin. On Friday, Monica will drive home and I'll spend the weekend driving Robin north, to  the marina where she was hauled last year.
I started ripping up deck floor boards this morning. I was using a crow bar, a six-foot-long iron pry bar and a drill to back out the screws that hold down each board. It was very hard work. Lexi and Samantha supervised the project, and Zippy came by to inspect, causing Lexi and Samantha to leave their supervisory post in favor of high-cat-alert.
In that pause, I had a brilliant idea. Rather  than prying up each deck board as if I were going to save it, why not demolish it?
I went to the basement and grabbed the circular saw and began cutting decking along each side of the floor joists. In about 15 minutes, I did as much work as I'd done the prior hour.
But I have only 45 minutes left right now before I have to go pick up the grandkids from their half day of school. Better get back to work.

The big oak tree that fell on the deck during Hurricane Sandy is gone. It took the tree crew less than eight hours to complete their work. First, Steve, the tree climber, went up on a branch that was leaning against the roof and attached a thick strap to the branch. Then the crane operator lowered the hook to the strap. Steve then, with no other support, balanced himself with one hand holding the strap and, with a very sharp hand saw, began pruning away smaller limbs.

A third member of the crew coordinated hand signals between Steve and the crane operator. With the delicacy of surgery, the three lifted each branch away from the house, managing to avoid inflicting further damage to the structure.
The crane -- called a knuckle crane -- has a boom that extends hydraulically and that is hinged like a finger. It can lift a maximum of about 11,000 pounds, if I recall what Steve told me. Extended its full length, the boom can handle around 1,000 pounds. So, when they got to the larger pieces of the trunk, Steve estimated a length whose weight would fall within the appropriate range and then sliced that segment from the rest of the trunk.
Steve, who's been a tree man for about eight years, said he grew up in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where, when his parents would tell him to go outside and play, he would climb trees, build tree forts, fall from trees and climb them again. He said he found someone dumb enough to pay him to climb trees, and he feels he has the best job in the world.
I have to admit his work was appealing to an old tree climber. At a point when there was still about 10 feet of trunk left on the roots, Steve posed beside the cross-section of the trunk to help illustrate the size of the old pin oak.

Steve and the crew left me with some of the wood. Most of it is going to a neighbor who needs firewood. A couple of pieces were taken by a friend who turns wood into bowls. He offered to make a bowl for us as a souvenir of Sandy.
I'll think of it as a reminder of a noble, old tree.

One of the first things I needed to do in preparation for the next Bermuda 1-2 race in June 2013 was to get Robin's life raft inspected and repacked. So I began making phone calls, searching for a company to do the work. First, I called the nearest re-packing company, less than 50 miles from home. They could  tell me it would cost $160.50 for them to open the "valise" -- the bag containing the raft -- but they could not tell me what the final bill would be.
A life raft contains flares, lights and other items, some of which have expiration dates. Robin's raft is five years old and was scheduled for reinspection in 2010. Because we didn't race in 2011, we skipped the inspection and now the raft's flares and batteries are all out of date.
I don't want to go into a reinspection not knowing how high the cost could rise, and this company wouldn't even tell me if the repack could cost more than a new raft.
So I called the next closest company, where a man -- we'll call him Fred -- said that he would charge $285 to open the raft. He said he'd call back with the full cost of the re-packing.
I proceeded to call other companies -- in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
Frank called back in 15 minutes. He said the total cost would be $850. "Bring cash and we can do it for $650," he said.
I knew the price was good. The question was: How good would the job be? I imagined needing the raft in a gale out past the Gulf Stream and finding it wouldn't inflate because Fred had left out the inflation bottle to save me $200.
I wouldn't be doing business with Fred.
But I was concerned someone else might take his deal and pay a bigger price. So I called up the manufacturer of my life raft, on whose web page I'd found Fred's phone number. I asked how they chose vendors whose names made it to their list of inspection stations. The young lady on the phone said the manufacturer tested the vendors to be sure they knew what they were doing.
So I told her about Fred's offer and of the concerns it raised with me. She said her company couldn't dictate a vendor's prices.
It's not about the price, I said, and I suggested her company run a sting operation, calling Fred as a consumer and asking the same questions I asked.
She said she was sorry for my experience. She offered no action to address my actual fears. And she didn't offer to let me talk to her boss or anyone else in the company.
So I'm writing this to let other boaters be aware of the issues they face when dealing with safety equipment. Here's hoping no one finds themself with an item that fails when they need it because they obtained it from a disreputable business.

My friend and former colleague at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Tom Wark, is one of those people the scope of whose knowledge I find flabbergasting. He writes a blog http://bordellopianist.blogspot.com/  that often I find persuasive because he bases his judgment on a vast understanding of the world in which we both live. His judgments come from a progressive angle.


Unlike folks like Tom, I am unable to approach any topic either from right or left because my intellect and my knowledge are limited. In fact, I find it almost impossible to get past all the gray to a point where I can have a defensible black-or-white position, particularly in politics.

But still, I attempt to exercise my right as a citizen by casting the best vote I can on election day.

Normally, I don't use this blog to discuss politics. With the election over, I'll make an exception because I want to speak about why I voted -- again -- for Barack Obama.

I didn't vote for him because, as my wife, Monica -- once a staunch Republican -- said of Romney: "He's a creep."

I also didn't vote for Obama because all of his work in the past four years has been exemplary.

Before I cast my ballot in 2008, I realized that at least this one time, I had something by which I could measure a candidate. I read Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. (That was a lousy title, I thought, and it certainly didn't acknowledge what I found to be the most promising part of the book.)

What I learned from the book was Obama's preferred approach to governing. As I understood him, he said that he sought to listen to all the ideas available to address a particular problem and then to select that which, to his judgment, seemed best.

There was not a hint of ideology in his professed approach. To me, ideology is the hallmark of an ossified mind, a tool with which one can avoid the strain of thinking critically.

So I voted for Obama in 2008 and then attempted to gauge his performance against his words.

He didn't deliver in all cases, but in many it was possible to see the deliberative process and his attempt to choose a good course.

I'd say you probably could measure his success by the way he pissed off both right and left.

So I voted for Obama again on Tuesday.

End of political discussion.

It's election day, an interesting time when, as I've been, you're reading Henry David Thoreau. I started reading Walden, Thoreau's alleged masterpiece, several weeks ago, giving it the same intense attention that a Russian weight-lifter gives the kilograms on his shoulder. Truth is, I'd started reading Thoreau several times before and never could keep from falling asleep. I had trouble stringing two paragraphs together before my eyes crossed. So it was with great resolve that I attacked him this time around. Now I'm about two-thirds the way through Walden, and the notes that I've been keeping on the inside back cover are developing into quite a long list. I guess in earlier attempts, I didn't recognize that I was dealing with a philosopher and so wasted time trying to understand the plot.
In any case, the book I have is a small anthology of Thoreau's writing. A couple of days ago, I opened it not to Walden but to an essay titled: Civil Disobedience. Here, Thoreau uses his personal experience getting thrown into jail for refusing to pay his poll tax to discuss a citizen's responsibility toward the government.
Thoreau had resisted the tax because he didn't want to fund a government that supported slavery. He lived in Massachusetts, but Congress had recently enacted the Runaway Slave Act, which required any state to capture and return to their "owners" slaves that had managed to escape. Thoreau said he refused to support such a government.
That started me thinking whether there were any laws that our current government enforces and with which I have bedrock disagreement sufficient to draw me into an act of civil disobedience.
There are two. One is the law allowing capital punishment. The other is the collection of laws prohibiting the sale and use of certain drugs.
Briefly, I am opposed to capital punishment because I believe that it fails in its stated purpose -- discouraging the commission of certain crimes -- but that it succeeds in promoting one of our lowest impulses as human beings -- revenge. Hangings and beheadings in earlier times drew great crowds filled with no higher moral impulse than bloodlust . Executions are now more private and more sterile, but they still feed our lowest instincts. I don't think that humans are necessarily perfectable. But I don't see it as my government's role to to encourage such low values, either. Why, I ask myself, is it illegal for me to crush my neighbor's skull with a rock but fine for me and my fellow citizens, with my government's blessing, to stone someone to death? The one is no more moral than the other.
I could go on arguing about morality, and at some point I probably will.
But for the second issue: The War on Drugs and the laws that justify it, again briefly, the nation tried the same policy when it came to the use of alcohol. Prohibition, as it was called, did nothing to dampen society's thirst for a drink. What it did do was create a business for those individuals ruthless enough to take advantage of the law and to provide the populace with their drink. And, of course, Prohibition created an industry of law enforcement -- an industry with a guaranteed future and many advancement opportunities for police officers, judges, lawyers and jailers.
We ended Prohibition for a reason. It didn't work. But we had this "infrastructure" with little to do and so we decided to come down hard on another source of addiction. (Sure, that's simplifying a difficult situation. Drugs cause great tragedies in people's lives. But as my father, Archie Campbell, always said: You can't legislate against vice.)
Archie had another favorite saying: My country, may she always be right. But right or wrong, my country.
When I was younger, I equated that sentiment to a responsibility for blind support of one's country and the government directing the fortunes of its citizens.
Then along came the Vietnam War, and I started to wonder.
And now comes Thoreau, and I feel called upon to express to my fellow citizens the wrongness I see in capital punishment and in the drug laws.
I've checked in the dictionary for definitions of a couple of words. There's "republic" and "allegiance" and "pledge". And I've decided that one's higher calling, above allegiance to one's nation and its government, should be allegiance to what you perceive as truth. Because when the population lives by truth and charity toward one another alone, it may be  that government is unneeded.
From this point on, I will pledge my allegiance to truth and nothing less.

Saturday, we attended the fall skipper's meeting for the Bermuda 1-2 in Newport, Rhode Island. If we can find the resources, we will enter that race in 2013. I've made it my priority to do that, and spending time talking with other skippers helped me cement the idea into a commitment. I'll sail to Bermuda next June. Monica will meet me there and we'll sail back to Newport together, just as before.
In anticipation of getting to the starting line on time, I've decided to bring Robin north sooner than the December date I'd chosen. (There was another motivation -- Monica doesn't want to sail on into December -- which I'd like to do -- so there's no point leaving Robin in the water.)
The resources we'll need amount to money. We need to have the entrance fee, now at $500. We need to get our life raft recertified, another big expense. And then there are other items on the list that I'd like to have for the race: A new staysail and an antenna and a ground for the single side band radio I bought last year top the list.
On Sunday, on our way out of Newport, we swung by the Newport Shipyard to inspect some of the megayachts docked there. Below are photos of some of these boats, for which Robin wouldn't quite make it as a dinghy. The first one, although you can't see it,has a speedboat stored in its transom for use as a tender.Another is parked on the far side of, and dwarfing, a Swan 42-44, I think.
These boats are apparently mere trifles for their owners, who have left them in cold Newport when they might be sailing in the islands. Every one of these vessels, except the third one, appears to be well over 100 feet long.

                

Dan Stadtlander, our friend from the Bermuda 1-2, found the flaw in my earlier complaint about things coming unscrewed at the boat club. Specifically, he said:
 "If the bolts are vertical wouldn't the rising waters force the timber up against the bolts and force them up? Vibrations set up in the timber and bolts by wind and surf can then vibrate the fasteners causing them to walk up. But I do like the idea of a mischievous spirit playing with your bolts and nuts!"
Thanks, Dan, for the cleansing analysis. I'm sure there is a similarly simple explanation for the shackles becoming unscrewed (without mentioning the fact that I could have wired them in place.)
But I, too, did like the thought of mysterious forces at work.

To see how the rails are used for launching boats at the Red Dragon, go to this site:
the East Coast Fall Series


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hsw2YiIOlM

www.youtube.com

In an earlier post, I described how a shroud on Bluebird had become detached from its chainplate during a sail. On Friday, when I went out to bring Bluebird ashore in advance of Hurricane Sandy, I discovered that the same shroud on the opposite side had become detached. I had checked and tightened that attachment when I found the first shroud flying, so I was puzzled.
Yesterday, I helped dislodge some large logs that had been washed by the flooding river up on the rails on which we launch boats at the Red Dragon Canoe Club. There were a half dozen tree-sized logs tangled between the rails and the steel pier that extends out to the floating docks.
When the work was done, we noticed a landscaping timber lying in the parking lot up where debris marked the high water level from the flood. And then we saw the two bolts, bedded in concrete at the edge of the parking lot bulkhead, from which the landscaping timber had been floated.
The timber had been secured on those bolts by two nuts. Clearly, the nuts would not normally have twisted themselves u[ward off the upright bolts. Gravity, if anything, would have caused the nuts to tend downward on the bolt threads.
So there seems to be a mystery there on the Delaware involving the disengaging of threaded fasteners. I'm not suggesting anything like the Bermuda Triangle. But the sequence of events is troubling to a mariner.

Sandy came, went and left a message.

You can't dodge every bullet.
A pin oak with a base nearly four feet in diameter toppled onto our deck at about 10:30 Monday night. We were asleep. The sound was that of a dump truck loaded with gravel falling beside your bed. We were both asleep and came to with the same "What the . . . " cry.
We were very lucky. The tree could have fallen on our bedroom and crushed the roof. Instead, it missed the corner of the house by about a foot.
One branch punctured the roof above the kitchen. When I came downstairs at 4 a.m. to quiet the pups, I heard a dripping and found that the roof was leaking directly into the kitchen sink! Could we be any more lucky?
I put a temporary patch on the hole in the roof after daybreak. We'll wait to deal with the tree until the insurance company has had a chance to inspect it. I suspect the entire deck will have to be replaced because it's sagging under the weight of this impressive tree. There is one hole punched through the deck boards -- about a foot square -- and if you look down on it you can see the broken end of the branch that made the hole, only slightly smaller than the hole itself.
The power came back about five o'clock after being out for about 22 hours. There was very little inconvenience caused by this. It drove us to play a full round of Mexican Train domonoes.
The first report from Maryland indicates that Robin survived intact. The same is true of all our friends' boats, apparently.
The bullet only winged us, and we sail on.

Sandy, be she a hurricane when she arrives or a tropical storm or a mere meteorologic event, prompted me yesterday to visit Robin in Maryland. In a small breeze, I removed her Genoa, took the staysail in its bag off the foredeck, stripped the dodger frame of its canvas, bound the mainsail tightly inside its sail cover, removed all loose obects from the deck, checked the dock lines and shrugged.
About 60 years ago, when my family was camping in Baxter State Park in Maine, a storm that had been a hurricane was approaching. The water it later dumped on Mount Katahdin rolled huge boulders down Katahdin Stream and washed out a crib-work dam in the campground.
The campground ranger, Fred Pitman, a tall, lanky man probably in his 60s -- tall and strong enough to lift over his head a 55-gallon steel drum filled with trash to empty it in his pickup -- was talking with my father about the impending natural disaster. My father remembered for the rest of his life what Fred said, words to the effect: "Hurricanes, storms, blizzards. Ain't much you can do 'bout 'em. No point worrying 'bout 'em."
That's where we are today. Letting Sandy come. I hauled Bluebird from the river on Friday afternoon. She's strapped on her trailer, mast down.
A strong enough wind visits Maryland or New Jersey, things can happen.

Right now, we've brought Zippy, the cat, indoors, much to his displeasure. He's washing his paws in a yellow wingback chair. Lexi and Samantha are on the livingroom couch. Monica is watching the pre-game show on ESPN, preparing herself to knowledgeably watch football, and I'm going to catch up on some reading and watch the wind rise. I hope everyone else is secure and ready to enjoy the storm.

Samantha, left, and Lexi at just under 15 months. Monica says they are adorable. Then they come indoors, get their treats at the door and, like the hoodlums they truly are, run past the baby gate on the stairs up to the bedroom, where they gobble down Zippy, the cat's, dry food. Dr. Spock blames the parents, says I should have closed the gate completely. Says if I keep this up, they'll grow up to be obese and indolent. That sounds like a solution. Get them fat and lazy and I won't have to chase them around. Then I can get obese and indolent, too. I think I'll have another Ritz with peanut butter while I ponder thus further -- or is it farther?.

There was change in the air yesterday.  A southerly wind stirred the clouds in odd configurations and it reminded me of a day in June 2009 when I was alone on Robin, sailing to Bermuda. The sky that day was not precisely like it was yesterday. I recall two long, towering columns of white, extending off to the southwest. We were about 350 miles south of the Gulf Stream, I would guess. The air was warm and, although I'm not skilled in forecasting weather shifts, I sensed as I looked down the canyon between the columns, that rain was coming, perhaps a storm.
Out there, you cannot run from a storm or put into some convenient anchorage. You have to take what is delivered.
So I simply enjoyed the view and awaited the inevitable, whatever that would be.
On that occasion, there was a brief rain, no big winds, and then the weather passed.
The memory yesterday was a pleasant one as I looked up at the sky and then went indoors.

Tonight, I'll give a talk at the Red Dragon Canoe Club, our local boat club. I've called the talk: Cruising the Coast of Maine: The Fun and the Fear. I've assembled a Powerpoint slide show, and I'll ad lib for about 90 minutes.  I find that when you know a subject, it isn't all that difficult to wing it, as long as you have a general outline of what you want to say.
In this case, since Monica and I have made several trips to Maine aboard Robin, there is a lot to talk about as long as I stick to describing what we've seen and how we've gone about plotting and executing a cruise.
What I have to avoid is finding myself in a place where I believe I have some expertise -- that I actually know something. As soon as you think you are an authority, I've found, you're on the precipice of a great and painful fall.
So I need to enter the talk with a robust sense of my own ignorance and with a few stories to tell that demonstrate my fallibility. A few out of many, many. All the near-misses, and some of that calamitous collisions that were not avoided.

The wind was northwest yesterday on the Delaware River, the sky was a crisp blue and the foliage along the banks was electrified by some of the brightest oranges and yellows I've seen in this region, where atumn usually is a subdued tapestry.
So, of course, I took Bluebird out for a sail at two o'clock instead of going to Home Depot for a new garbage disposal.
There was quite a bit of water in the bilge and in the cabin, and that required using the electric pump to drain Bluebird of most of her burden. The pump always leaves some water, and I've learned to accept the everpresent sloshing.
With the sails raised, I headed with the current but against the wind, tacking downstream two miles past the little city of Beverly. I sailed until I reached a Pearson 28 that was sailing toward me. As if by plan, with both came about as we met, reversing our directions  and leaving each other behind. The sail upstream was with the wind, Bluebird at times was on a broad reach, at other times on a run, as we sailed the four miles to the Burlington-Bristol Bridge.
I sailed in close to the Red Dragon Canoe Club dock, where friend Bob was returning the launch. We exchanged greetings as Bluebird glided past in a breeze that carried gusts of about fifteen knots. I kept a good watch for other traffic. There were occasional powerboats, whose  captains waved as they sped by.
The sun was in the final quarter of its daily arc when Bluebird came about just upstream of the bridge and began sailing a saw-toothed track of long starboard tacks downstream and shorter port tacks across the stream.
Sitting low in the snug cockpit, I was content. Smug may be more correct, for I admit to feeling not only one with the wind but in some ways on an elevated plane compared with the rest of humanity.
Then, on a long starboard tack, I noticed a problem. The mast is supported by six slender stainless steel cables, one rising from the bow to part way up the front of the mast, a second attached to the stern and the top of the mast and, on each side, two called shrouds that keep the mast from falling  to the opposite side. On a starboard tack, the wind is pushing the sail -- and thus the mast -- to port, so the starboard shrouds have all the tension. The port shrouds are slack.
What I saw was that the "upper" port shroud was detached from its base on the deck, swinging gently out over the water. The shackle with which I'd pinned the bottom of the shroud to the deck fixture was still hanging from the "eye" at the bottom of the shroud, and its threaded pin -- which had worked free, allowing the shroud to detach from the deck fixture --was for the moment still held by one side of the shackle.
I had to laugh at my contenetment of a moment earlier.
I also had to do something or the mast would fall.
I let the sails flutter, making sure the tiller was pushed so that Bluebird wouldn't go on a port tack. Then I bent over the side and attempted to reattach the wandering shackle through the shroud eye and the deck fixture. Hard as I tugged, I was unable to stretch the shroud enough for the pin to reach the hole in the deck fixture. So I attached the shackle itself to the fixture and then, with a short piece of line that I use to tie up the mainsail when it's not in use, I put a rolling hitch around the shroud and passed the other end of the line through the shackle and tugged and tied it tight. For the time being the shroud was now stabalized and I could  sail on a port tack.
With that, Bluebird made it to the dock, where I fashioned a more stable connection between the shroud and the deck fitting, not a permanent solution but one that should keep the mast upright until I can get a proper pin.
What I learned is that you should never have a threaded  pin holding up the rigging because there is always a risk of that pin backing out, as this one did. And that reminded me that Robin, our ocean-going boat, has always had some of its shrouds held in place by bolts and nuts. I'll need to replace those with proper pins, too.              

We encounter a number of characters each morning when I drive Monica to the bus stand at 7:45. There is the couple out for their morning exercize: he with shoulders back, chest out, arms swinging  with the drama of an old veteran in a Memorial Day parade; she, shorter than he by a foot, head down, lips moving  or at times hidden behind a white dust mask, eyes intent, lost in some message -- a lecture, it would appear -- she's delivering. We see them while we're heading for the bus. On the return, on the same street, I often pass the bald and bushy-bearded mechanic at Jim's Auto, riding his mountain bike to work, even on chilly mornings wearing but a dark T-shirt with his dark blue chino work trousers. He leads with his hairy chin, assaults the morning with elbows out, knees pumping, perhaps imagining the first stubborn nut he will work free amidst the smells of old anti-freeze and worn rubber.
At the bus stand, several women who've worked the night shift at a nearby medical supply warehouse await home-bound rides. They wear the uniform of their jobs -- dark blue polo shirts, tan chinos -- and they engage in constant, greatly-animated conversation. Monica and I sit in the heat or the airconditoning of our car and watch  these ladies and the other passengers, all of whom we've given names in order to be able to comment on their behavior.
"Well, the Smoker's here," we might say, referring to a middle-aged man with a sour disposition (according to Monica) and the smell of stale tobacco smoke. Or, "Wonder if Tips will make it today." Tips is a middle aged woman who, for some reason, bleaches only the tips of her neck-length hair.
"The Twins" are two of the warehouse ladies, whom we first named because we noticed their matching wardrobes well before we realized they wore uniforms. "The Passenger" is another warehouse lady who used to wait for the bus in the passenger seat of a co-worker's car until one of the twins would motion to her that their bus -- which is also Monica's -- was coming.
(The one who motioned could be, by virtue of her features, the sister of former NFL player and football commentator Tom Jackson, whose pontifications Monica absorbs before the Sunday games. Both this lady and Jackson have a pleasing, low-keyed counteance.)
Until The Passenger lost her ride, the Twins would hold forth at the curb in serious dialogue, during which the Jackson Twin would listen and respond to her taller co-worker, who seemed to lead the discourse, accentuating her points by jabbing the air in front of her with two straight fingers between which was clenched a lit cigarette. There seemed to be little mirth in the conversation.
Then the Passenger lost her ride and now merriment is the order of the day. The Tall Twin has been relegated to a minor role. Her brusque jabs return only when the Passenger is absent.
Of all the characters who populate our morning, I like the Passenger and the Jackson Twin best. Sitting in the silence of our car, we can feel the good will being exchanged up there at the curb. In the place of Tall Twin's vehement gestures, we see the flutter of the Passenger's hands as she shapes the funny story or, perhaps, joke she's telling. Her hands are in nearly uninterrupted motion, and when there is a lull, the Jackson Twin's hands fill the void, drafting her reply as, often as not, both ladies bend in convulsive laughter.
The Passenger and the Jackson Twin draw in new arrivals with their behavior. One younger woman whom I'll call The Apron -- for she always wears a dark-blue apron with pockets, apparently signifying her employment -- at first stood on the periphery of the discourse, smoking and swaying  her stout body from side to side. But over time, she has been welcomed into the fun, and her comments seem to have been embraced.
I told Monica this morning that on Monday, when we next visit the bus stand, I'm going to take up a place at the curb so  that I can hear what's transpiring. I'm imagining that beginning the day with the Jackson Twin and the Passenger has to be better than listening to shock jocks on the car radio or the news on NPR.

We spent two weeks away, most of it in Maine, despite my aborted sailing voyage. Nine nights we were in rented accomodations -- from a bed and breakfast to housekeeping cabins -- and five we stayed with relatives.
Maine by land is quite different from Maine be sea. We prefer the latter, having now sampled both.
The highlights of the trip turned out to be the people we visited. My cousin, Bill, who shares a birth year with me and whom I hadn't seen in 29 years, was our host in Machiaseport, a very remote fishing village near the Canadian border. He was  the same wonderful person as  the kid with whom I spent time duirng childhood.
At the other end of the spectrum were Astra Haldeman and Lou Gallagher, a couple whom we met when, as kids, they attended, and then were instructors in, our local sailing school. Astra now works in the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Lou is captain of the Helen Brooks, a charter Friendship Sloop, seen below, and they live in Northeast Harbor aboard a 33-foot wooden gaff-rigged ketch, the Evelyn, which I was privileged to visit during a fog-bound downpour. I'll post a picture of the interior of the Evelyn. It was raining too hard to take photos of her exterior.

Monica and I are sitting on the wrap-around porch of a housekeeping cabin in Lincolnville, Maine, gazing out at a blue wedge of Penobscott Bay, most of which is hidden by a wall of green trees catching the 6:15 P.M. falling sunlight. The heat of the day -- 85 degrees Farenheit at one point -- has seeped from the air, and we're sitting in shadows. The sounds of traffic on US Route 1 can be heard coming from behind our plastic chairs. All else is tranquil.
Without a boat to call home, we're having a new Maine experience. I do regret not bringing Robin north, but now we're learning to enjoy this great place in a different way.
Not ten feet from my right shoulder, the nearest branches of a woodlot reach toward us. Some of them have green berries along with their leaves. We can't identify the trees. We're hoping that in the morning, they'll be filled with berry-eating birds that we can identify.
I would guess that the cottage is about 100 feet in elevation above the bay. There is a gravel road passing 100 feet or so in front of the cabin and that road descends through a field toward the bay. In time, we'll investigate to determine how close it goes to the bay and whether, should I locate some bait and some fishing gear, it is a good place to cast a line.
With some luck, I might land a fish. There is a charcoal grill about 50 feet from the cabin. Maybe grilled fillet of bluefish is in our gastranomic future.
Or, more likely, another restaurant will be our fate.

I scuttled the voyage to Maine.
On Wednesday morning, Robin left the Cape May Inlet and turned into a choppy sea and a northerly wind. At first, she was flying a reefed mainsail, her staysail and the Genoa.
The Genoa was too much. Robin was making close to six knots against two to four foot seas with occasional six foot walls of water  thrown in, but she was well on her side.
The wind was about 20 knots at that point, so I rolled in the Genoa and, with but the staysail and one reef in the main, Robin's speed didn't diminish.
We weren't sailing toward Cape Cod. Rather, we were at best headed due east. That wasn't a problem, though. We needed to go east northeast. Right then, we were getting the easterly part done, and in another day, the forecast was for south westerly or southerly winds of 20 knots, enough to blow us to Cape Cod and beyond.
But I wasn't happy. The feeling could be traced back to the first two legs of the trip. On Monday, I'd left Cambridge, Maryland, at 6 a.m. as planned. There was virtually no wind all day, and for most of the day Robin motored against a healthy current. The trip took fifteen hours, a span during which I had to remain on constant watch.
It's amazing how fast a navigational aid or a tug and barge can appear out of the  vapor.
I was able to tie up to the town dock in Chesapeake City, which meant I could plug into the electrical system and have a fan blowing on me as I slept.
Tuesday morning, I was up at five and on my way at six. It took three hours to make it through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, as Robin fought the current the whole way. But once out onto the Delaware River, there was a strong westerly wind, and Robin began sailing on a beam reach, a first for us on that body of water. She was making up to 8.5 knots over the bottom, running with the current, and it was bliss.
Afte a couple of hours, we encountered Tom Gilmore sailing against the wind in the Bristol Channel Cutter he rescued for an obscenely small amount of money -- pocket change, in boating terms. I took a bunch of pictures, and we wished each other good sailing.
But withing an hour the wind was faltering an I was grumbling. My vision for the voyage initially was of sailing with one of my friends as crew all the way to Maine, using the engine only to charge the batteries. Motoring is a dismal business. You can make it to your destination, but it's about as rewarding as taking a bus.
In the end, no one could go with me, and now I was discovering how much that meant. I was lonely. My vision had evaporated. Although I expected to motor on this leg of the trip, I wasn't happy -- at all.
Then came Wednesday morning, and the wind blew and all was right in the world as long as that was true. After about an hour of pounding into the advancing seas, I decided to give the autopilot a break and I took over the tiller. With Robin's mass, she didn't get stopped by every wave she slammed into, and she did well holding an easterly course. I was content. I could sail like that for hours.
Then the wind slowed as Robin still dealt with those seas, and instead of sailing at 90 degrees magnetic, it was becoming 120 degrees.
The wind slowed again, and I rolled out the Genoa. But then the wind died and with it, down came th mainsail and the Genoa and Robin was left to wallow sideways to the seas, now less steep but still four to six feet high.
As I sat on the deck and Robin rolled beneath me, my torso was taking up the uneven rhythms, twisting as Robin yawed, and that part of me that is susceptible to seasickness took notice. For four hours, during which not a breath of wind stirred the red yarn telltales tied to the stainless steel shrouds, my discomfort grew until by mid afternoon, I made an attempt at relief by bowing over the starboard lifelines.
And I thought: This isn't fun. Why am I doing this.
Some time later, when I have it all sorted out, I'll answer that question. My immediate answer was to start Robin's engine and point her bow not to Maine but to Maryland.

In three days, I will begin a voyage unlike any I've undertaken. After two days, Robin will be offshore, according to plan, for most of 400 miles, but in waters that are traveled by freighters, tankers, cruise ships, sport fishing vessels, commercial fishing boats and cruisers like I.
While I've sailed the same route before, I've never done it alone. This time, that's what I've chosen to do, and it poses additional risks.
Alone, you have to keep watch all the time and sneak in sleep when you can in 20-minute intervals. That means that after a couple of days, I'll have been deprived of deep sleep and my body will want to seize slumber despite my efforts. Keeping watch will be a trial.
Also there will be no one else to help out should a problem arise requiring more strength than I can muster.
I've faced these issues before racing to Bermuda. The difference is the presence of more traffic and -- I have to admit it -- three more years of aging.
In view of these risks, I'm forced to contemplate umanageable situations, ones where I fail to survive. In doing so, I've confronted the question: What have I left undone.
I've tried to tell everyone around me how important they are to me, but perhaps I haven't done that well enough. So, to Monica and the rest of my family and friends, here's a blanket I-love-you. My three children, each of my eight grandchildren, my sister and cousins I all care for deeply. So too the many close friends I've made.
What else is undone?
I've never sat down and explained what I've learned so far. And that, too, is extremely important to me, and so I'll attempt to do that now.
What I've learned is that there is no absolute right or wrong. There is no good or bad, except in how a thing or event affects an individual.
All the time we spend cussing at our misfortunes, railing against the fates, being spiteful toward those who have hurt us is wasted. Completely and utterly wasted.
In this world, absolutely everything has a purpose, was designed for a purpose, whether we like it or not. In this universe, the designer made no mistakes.
This is not theology, I assure you. It is seven decades of observation of nature, the only reality we have, the only source of information from which we can acquire knowledge.
Fifty years ago, roughly, an image entered my thoughts. It was of a magnificent oak tree, towering above all the other life in the forest, spreading its branches as a tycoon extends his grasp, consuming and consuming nutrients from the soil and sun so that it can grow even more and the shadow of its leaves, sucking in all the benefits of the sun, deprives the life below, stifling all other growth.
Imagine that this tree, with all its advantages, could prosper indefinitely. What would be the result?
Quite simply, it would consume until no other organism had anything on which to live. It would snuff out the competition, dominate completely. And then stand alone, with nothing left to feed its enormity.
But nothing in the universe that we know could do that. The grand oak spreads its branches, but in doing so it gives the wind greater and greater leverage. In time, a branch will snap, a splintery wound will appear. That wound will become diseased, and the disease will follow the oak's vascular system, transporting rot where it goes.
A storm will take off a larger branch, and another will go, too, until the once dominant tree, with rot at its core, will fall completely to the ground. There, its dead hulk will rot and thus provide nutrition for new, vibrant life.
Like the oak, every organism, from microbes to monkeys, from nasturtiums to nations, from grandfathers to galaxies, possesses the seeds of its own destruction.
This is the perfection of the universe.
Pick a disease, any one of them, that might take you down and curse it and say that your god never meant this to happen to you. You of course waste your time. Your god, your creator, created that disease as part of the intricate system that both supports life and takes it away.
Pick an insect, the grossest bug in your world, and look for ways to destroy it. That's okay for you, but it's lousy for the insect. Pick a human behavior -- let's say global warming, a fine example -- and call it immoral.
To your creator, there's nothing immoral about global warming. It is but one way we humans have found, among the many tools provided us, to assure that our dominance will not continue forever.
The pattern is obvious everywhere you look. I think I first started looking after I heard the word homocentric used to describe man's vision of himself as the center of the universe.
I didn't recognize it at the time, but John Lennon had it figured out when he wrote his song Imagine.
The problem with this reality is that if embraced by our fellow humans as a license to take advantage of other organisms, our society would fall apart. I could go on with many words about this subject alone.
Morality is a "good" thing for the human race. Murder and crimes of similar degree are "bad" for humans. I would not be in favor of laws that permitted unbridaled behavior among members of the human race. But laws are not an antidote to our destructive seeds. We possess them, and they will be used, by us or by other organisms.
I take comfort  in understanding the situation. My understanding doesn't relieve me of the universal dread among organisms about their coming demise. The comfort comes from understanding that the world makes complete sense, always.

It was a  two-boat day.
Monday night, while we were dining with friends, cell phone rang (the new one I had to buy when the old one got caught in a downpour Saturday) and our dinner ended. Bluebird, the Mariner, had slipped its mooring in the Delaware River and was upstream and on the river bank.
In the dark, I found Bluebird, got her outboard motor started and moved her to the club dock, where she spent the night.
This morning, I hauled her out of the water on the Red Dragon Canoe Club's rickety marine railway and hoisted her onto her trailer.
She will cause no more problems for the next six weeks.
Then after lunch I drove to Maryland and fixed the problem with Robin's prop shaft that had been brought about on Saturday, just before that downpour, when I backed Robin into our slip and got a dock line wrapped around the prop shaft.
On Monday, I ordered the sacrificial coupling that had been turned into a handful of plastic and metal spaghetti when the prop, held tightly by the dock line, stopped dead and the engine kept running.
There were no instrucitons with the replacement coupling that I ordered Monday morning and that was delivered today before noon. That meant that I had to call the supplier twice to ask dumb questions so that I had a chance of making no dumb mistakes.
After more than two sweaty hours during which I was prone on my belly on top of Robin's engine, undoing eight bolts, fitting the new coupling in place and then, with adequate but not ideal tools, tightening its bolts, I ran the engine, put Robin in gear and let her strain against the dock lines while I observed the completed job.
Nothing wobbled. Nothing broke. Nothing made bad noises -- or any noises, as far as my aging ears could tell.
It is my wish that, with the completion of this repair, Robin needs nothing more in the way of attention before she leaves Cambridge and heads for Rockland, Me.

The plan in 2010 for the voyage to Maine was to sail all the way and to do it by heading east from New Jersey and then due north to Rockland, Maine, once Robin was past the notorious Nantucket Shoals.
A kidney stone the week before departure convinced me to keep closer to land and, once again as in the past trips, to rely on Robin's engine.
Last year,  the plan was to sail through Vinyard Sound, between Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, and to round Monomoy Point at the Cape's elbow. Again, we would sail the whole way.
Engine problems diverted us to Newport, Rhode Island and made it once again prudent to motor because there was the risk of losing our running lights if we couldn't charge the batteries.
This year's plan is similar to the predecessors. I plan to sail, regardless of conditions, following last year's route and motor only when that's the only way I can reach Rockland in time to fetch Monica from the Portland airport.
First, I'll have to motor north on the Chesapeake Bay and southeast on the Delaware Bay to get to the ocean. The sail-only plan doesn't include those bodies of water, where wind is fickle at best and often entirely absent.
But my experience tells me that I should get enough wind in eight days to make the (motoring) three day passage from Cape May, NJ, to Rockland.
Departure day from Maryland is next Monday. More reports to follow.

I read on the Internet, the source of all alleged knowledge, that diesel fuel is an excellent wood preservative. This means, I would assume, that I need not worry about the broken dipstick in Robin's starboard fuel tank. It will be as good as new when finally someone looks into that tank, if that be in 200 years or more.

Saturday has come and gone. The decking is finally in place and looking good, and there's more diesel fuel aboard.
That's two steps forward.
It's the steps backward that are most interesting.
Once the deck boards were bolted to the boomkin, we prepared to move Robin to the fuel dock. Robin faces east-northeast in her slip. The wind was east-southeast and we needed to turn to starboard, across the wind, to go out the fairway. The risk was that the wind -- not very strong; maybe five to eight knots -- would keep the bow from turning to starboard.
We analyzed the situation and decided that we needed to keep a line from the outer starboard piling, running back to the midship cleat, in case we needed to warp the bow around the piling. I explained this to Monica and told her that when I said "Now", she was to drop that line in the water, leaving it attached to the piling. We could pick it up when we returned to the slip.
With all the other dock lines shipped or on their pilings, I moved Robin forward. She turned without a problem, so I told Monica to drop the line. Robin's stern moved to port as we turned, so there was no risk of fouling the dropped line.
At the fuel dock, we took on 17 gallons of diesel even as the clouds darkend rapidly to the west, threatening an electrical storm. I checked the fuel level with the wooden dipstick at 17 gallons. When I pulled the stick out, it looked as though we only had 27 gallons aboard, which surprised me. I thought I would have 32. So I inserted the dip stick once more.
When I retrieved the stick, it caught on something, split and two feet of wooden stick stayed in the fuel tank. That had never happened in the eight years we've had Robin. I still haven't learned what diesel fuel will do to wood. There is no port in the fuel tank by which to remove the stick. Perhaps I'll learn the answer by experience.
But I had no time to ponder. Now the storm was approaching rapidly, so we left the fuel dock, did a U-turn and steamed back to our slip.
As usual, I hugged the edge of the fairway on the side of our slip and, just before we reached it, pushed the tiller hard to port. Robin responded predictably, her bow sweeping to starboard.
Just before the stern reached the piling on the near side of our slip, I shifted into reverse and gave it a lot of power. The water boiled, Robin stopped in her tracks and then began surging rearward.
The boomkin poked into our slip, heading across it toward our neighbor's boat, just as expected, so I shifted into forward and gunned the engine enough to stop her retreat and begin her moving forward.
The result of this maneuver is predictable. The stern sidles sideways to port enough so that the next time I shift to reverse, we'll be headed straighter down the slip.
Which is what happened. Perfect.
Then I shifted into forward once more to improve our line, and that's when we took the second step backward.
I hadn't calculated that all my maneuvering would create a current in the slip that would draw the dock line we'd left hanging. It was a long line, plenty long enough to get caught by the propeller, to wrap several times around the prop shaft and to stop it dead.
There is a flexible coupling between the engine and the prop shaft. It is there to be sacrificed in such an event. The power that I delivered to the engine was enough to shred the coupling, leaving us powerless but, thank goodness, protecting the engine from a severe trauma.
The rain began splattering. We tied Robin's port side to the outer slip pilings of three slips. I went overboard, cut the rope away from the prop shaft. Saw that the prop had been pulled back into the rudder. There was no chance of motoring.
So I swam a long line from the stern to the piling supporting the dock at the deep end of the slip. Then, with the help of a couple who had seen our predicament, we hauled Robin manually back into the wrong slip, even as the thunder began go crash and the lightning to flash.
Perhaps on Tuesday, a new flexible coupling will arrive in the mail. At that point, I'll return to Maryland and fix the damage and hope that, finally, Robin's ready for Maine.

The goal yesterday had two parts:
a.) Replace Robin's five-year-old batteries and,
b.) Replace the rotting plywood platform which allows you to stand on the boomkin, the array of stainless steel pipes that sticks out past Robin's stern and supports the back stay.
The battery work left me sprained in several locations. Robin has two batteries, one mounted on either side of the engine, under the cockpit. To get to them, it is necessary to take down the four steps of the companionway (inside the cabin) and to physically back into the opening and sit on top of the engine.
The old batteries were Group 31. I remembered that they were difficult to install five years ago because they weighed a lot. I swear they have gained weight in the interim. Each must tip the scale at at least 75 pounds.
Like most jobs connected with a boat, handling the batteries was a one-person chore. So I set to yanking them out, one at a time, hoping that I wouldn't drop one and crush the engine.
Once they were removed, I took them to the local NAPA auto parts store in Cambridge, where I traded them in on two Group 27 batteries, each one with as many amps or watts or whatever as the old ones.
The Group 27s were much lighter, which made installation significantly easier but left me wondering what I'd given up in the process. The older NAPA gentleman assured me I'd forfeited nothing.
Next, I took the screws out of the plywood decking on the boomkin. The wood on the port side was so rotten that it came out in two pieces.
I'd fabricated (as in, made) replacement decking out of a dense rain forest wood, solid planks that I doweled and epoxied together and then stiffened with cross braces epoxied and screwed in place.
Since I'd made the decking at home, I didn't realize that the cross braces were in a space that, on the boomkin, is occupied by a one-inch diameter tube. On Saturday, we'll visit Robin and I'll perform surgery on my decking and then, finally, bolt it in place.
In the meantime, about half of Robin's provisions are on board for the upcoming voyage, now less than two weeks away.

It's been a while. Robin is in Cambridge, MD. The trip down two weekends ago with Tom Gilmore

 as crew was uneventful. We learned that one of the batteries could no longer hold a charge, so I'll be replacing both. They have lasted five years. The refrigeration worked great. Kept everything cold when we shut it off from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. to conserve battery power.
Now the provisions are being gathered for a voyage to Maine in two weeks. Our pups, Lexi and Samantha, will be staying with their cousins in Massachusetts. Crew for the trip north is now uncertain. I may be single-handing, which is fine if lonely.
We had our second sailboat race at the Red Dragon Canoe Club this past weekend. Bluebird got a second and a first -- out of three boats. The racing was quite close between Bluebird and another boat, with our booms overlapping  each others' decks at times as we approached the finish line in the first race. Bluebird lost that one by a quarter-boat-length.
Most interesting  thing to happen here in the last week was the visit by a dog whisperer. She is a disciple of Cesar Millan, the TV star dog trainer.
We had had a couple of problems -- one minor, the other potentially serious -- with Lexi and Samantha. Lexi liked to jump on people as a form of affectionate greeting. Samantha liked to roar after dogs she met on walks as a means of getting near their throats, we worried.
Christine walked into the house, stood like Wonder Woman before the girls, who were in their crates, and within three minutes had both waiting to be shown what to do.
I've taken Samantha on walks since then and we've met dogs. She sits nicely, not making a peep. And Lexi doesn't jump on Monica as she had moments before Christine arrived. We need to have a visitor arrive at the front door so we can teach her how to not jump on them.
I'm ready to be come a disciple and spread the word. No dog needs to be ornery.

The gathering wasn't large -- maybe 30 people in all -- but considering that the temperature up on the highway was at one point 102 degrees Farenheit yesterday, it was surprising that five kayaks and two canoes actually came to the waterfront at the Red Dragon Canoe Club for the Summer Solstice Paddle for Cash Race.
Every boat paid a $10 entry fee, and half the money went to the club. The other half was to be divided amongst the top three finishers in a race, boat-for-boat, no handicapping, around a triangular course through the club's mooring field.
The first heat of three boats started at about 6 p.m. on this, the longest day of the year, lining up along an imaginary line in front of the dock. Race Director Bill Van Keuren waved each boat close to the line, the fleet facing into the current of a falling tide. When he was happy that all the boats were close to the line, Bill sounded an air horn and everyone sprinted for the first race marker, a large yellow sphere attached to a boat on a mooring.
An entire lap round the three huge inflated markers took six to eight minutes. There were two qualifying heats and then a race between the first two finishers in the respective heats.
The winner was a member of a nearby boat club, paddling a western Greenland replica kayak that he had built himself. (Or was it western Iceland?)
On shore, a cookout was underway, with burgers and dogs. And the meteorological gods favored us with a breeze off the river, so that no one was sweltering ashore or on the water.

Work aboard Robin is nearing an end and the day that she heads downstream is near. The electrician finished rewiring the mast yesterday. The windlass is mounted on deck. Today, in the continuing heat, I begin removing tools and trash and anticipate the day that our lady will be pretty, clean and ready to voyage once again.

Success! Robin has refrigeration. I kept a couple of cans of ginger ale cool this morning while I worked on the roller furling. That project was half done when I had to leave, but we'll be back at it tomorrow. The wind is blowing now perfectly for heading down to the sea -- an east by northeast breeze of about 12 to 15 knots that you could ride all the way to the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic. It has me dreaming!

The evaporator -- which is the ice-making part of the refrigerator -- is installed in the box and the lids are ready to be closed.

Today, I make the final connections to the compressor and, with a turn of the switch, everything should be cool aboard Robin.

Some may think our work is play. No, this is play.

The paddlers of the Red Dragon Canoe Club visited the New Jersey shore at Barnegat Bay on Saturday. Monica, in her flashy new life jacket, paddled almost as much as she talked with our companions. As always, she was, I'd venture, the life of the party.
There were 17 boats -- 2 canoes and 15 kayaks -- and 19 paddlers. Some were in their 20s, some may even have been older than we. The weather was sunny with a gentle breeze to keep us cool. The currrent was mild.
This was not a strenuous voyage -- only a few miles in protected water -- but it was completely pleasant and was followed by a cookout for luch at the beach house of one of the paddlers.
Another fine way to spend time on the water.

A wistfulness overcomes me when, crossing a set of railroad tracks, I pause to look, to see as far as the rails are straight -- to the next bend or the crest of the grade --and the disappearing tracks leave a question: What's beyond?
The same thing happens when I walk down to the river. Where we live, the river runs from the northeast upstream to the southwest downstream. In one sense, I know what's beyond: The mountains upstream, the ocean downstream.
But there is a pull nonetheless. I want to follow the water downstream, always and immediately, and when I cannot, I"m not fully at peace.