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.