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.