We returned to Annapolis Monday afternoon, August 28. I not only have a few things on my mind as I write this, but there is one week of this cruise that I still need to describe. So, while most of my prior posts have had one main focus, this will break that mold.
First, to catch up on the final installment of this trip, I last wrote about our passage down the so-called East River. We put into Highlands, NJ, which is located right at the bottom of Sandy Hook, a beautiful National Seashore and took a slip at Baker’s Marina on the Bay, which is not really set up to handle cruising boats, but it worked fine for us. We had the T-head dock, just barely outside the main channel and not only got plenty of wakes, in violation of the no-wake policy, but watched the tidal currents ripping along. It was a bouncy time. We stayed three nights, nonetheless, and spent two days biking over to Sandy Hook beaches. I highly recommend it but it would be best to go by bike or boat.
The beaches are beautiful and if you bike in, they are free. Because it is a federal beach, you can drink beer, which is always nice, but it is hard to carry much beer on our folding bikes when you are already carrying chairs, an umbrella, etc. The beer inventory at the beach suffered as a result. On the second day, we biked to a closer beach to avoid this problem. We are working on a longer term solution to this important problem.
From Sandy Hook, we targeted a night partway down the NJ coast in Atlantic City, so that we could avoid an overnight passage down the entire New Jersey coast. I had my doubts about a suitable place for us to anchor in Atlantic City. Someone suggested to me that I contact SeaTow to ask about overnight options for us in Atlantic City. After all, their business is to tow people out of places they should never have gone. This was a brilliant idea. I called the national SeaTow number and ended up talking to Captain John, who is a local AC captain. He gave me his phone number and then texted me a screen shot of lat/long coordinates that would be a good spot for us. He advised against trying to enter Brigantine Inlet or the harbor, except at the top of the tide. Since we would be arriving near the bottom of the tide, his advice was very helpful. Besides, in the harbor we would have been required to take a slip at the Farley State Marina, which is in the shadow of a Trump casino.
Captain John was very generous with his time and thoughts. That type of good will and friendliness was a constant experience during our transit of New Jersey (except, as Jae wrote earlier, at the Coast Guard station in Cape May). We anchored in the glow of Atlantic City lights. It was a peaceful and quiet spot to which I would certainly return. In the morning, we fired up the engine, only to discover that we had no instrument display, meaning no oil pressure gauge, no engine temperature gauge, no tachometer (we use the tach to determine how hard to run the engine) and no engine hours counter (important for monitoring fuel consumption). We hauled up the anchor anyway and set off for Cape May, a five hour trip.
Once out in the ocean, we tried to shut the engine down and see if that might be a good control/alt/delete move to get the instruments going. But, the engine would not shut off; the kill switch no longer worked either. At this point, since we were taking a slip in Cape May, we decided to keep the engine running and address this latest issue once we arrived. Did I mention that the aft toilet was no longer working?
Our spot in Cape May was cozy, but easy to access. Once tied up, we tried again to kill the engine without success. Fortunately, I know how to shut it down manually. We then restarted it a few times, but to no avail. Time to call someone, but on Saturday afternoon, that was a bust. I pulled out the engine manual and studied it for the third time. My rudimentary analysis suggested that everything is wired to an alternator except the ignition switch, which is wired directly to the battery. This explained why we could start the engine, while nothing else worked.
So the issue was as follows: the next leg, from Cape May to the Chesapeake is the longest of the entire trip with motoring required at least out of Cape May and through the C&D Canal. Did we want to try that without knowing the engine temperature? What if our trustworthy diesel overheated somewhere in the 85 nautical miles? I could hardly think of worse places to be trapped without an engine than the Delaware Bay, the Delaware River or the Canal. On the other hand, the engine temperature had been a rock; it had never moved in all the years we owned the boat, except one time when motorsailing on a port tack where the heel was so extreme, we lifted the raw water inlet out of the water. With this history, was overheating really an issue? We had a mechanical oil pressure gauge on the engine itself so we could monitor pressure and our ears are finely attuned to the right sound of the engine in terms of RPM’s, with the worst thing being to run the engine too easily, not too hard, and we could count engine hours – old fashioned math! All of these were quite manageable. Engine temperature was the only unknown and it seemed very much a theoretical problem.
The simplest answer would be to stay over Monday and get it fixed. We had planned to stay over anyway, and sample Cape May’s beach. But, the forecast for the Delaware Bay on Monday was not encouraging, with 3-5 ft. seas and high winds, all as part of an approaching coastal low pressure system. Neither of us would enjoy having the Delaware Bay throw us around for several hours. Plus, the wind direction was favorable for a Sunday transit. We tried calling a couple of friends in Annapolis for advice on whether it was a reasonable risk to proceed without an engine temperature reading, but no one answered. We had to decide because the marina gave us a deadline of 8 pm to tell them if we were leaving the next day so that we could avoid paying for the second night. Hearing nothing from our friends, we decided to leave the next morning early and went off to the Lobster House, which is next to the marina, for dinner.
Hanging out at bars is often a pretty good way to solve your problems, I have learned over the years. I did not learn this from my mother or from any school , but rather from years of listening to Merle Haggard and other country music stars. They certainly seem to solve lots of important life issues in bars.
Having made our decision, we settled into the Lobster House bar to wait for a table. We then heard from our buddies Dave and Walter that we should leave as planned. They explained, however, that if we bought a heat sensor gun, we could monitor engine temperatures. I was sure it was great advice, except that it was now 9 pm on Saturday, we had no car and we were leaving early in the morning to catch the tides and to get to the Chesapeake before dark. As far as I know, 7-11 does not sell heat sensors, so where were we going to get one? If only I had been a better Boy Scout, I would have foreseen this problem.
At the bar, armed with advice we could not follow, we chatted with a young fellow. He was there with his wife and I think her parents. I say her parents because he seemed far more interested in talking to us than to them. He is a powerboater and fisherman, like virtually everyone else in Cape May and he owns a condo close by. Our instrument failure came in the conversation and I explained that we would be looking for a heat sensor gun early in the morning to address a key missing data source.
Fast forward to 6:45 or so Sunday morning. I had found a Walmart nearby that opened at 7 am and I had planned to Uber up to it, hastily buy a heat sensor, dash back and we would then get off the dock ASAP. As I was taking a last sip of coffee, a knock came on the hull of the boat. Dan, our buddy from the night before, was standing on the dock. He explained that while walking the dog, he realized he had a spare sensor in his truck. He insisted we take it. This act of thoughtfulness and generosity stunned me. I insisted on paying for it, but he would not take it. We shook hands a few times and then he left. I am so sorry that I did not think of something to give him or at least get his contact information. We will surely repay the favor down the line to someone else. And we will never think ill of any New Jerseyans henceforth, except possibly on the New Jersey Turnpike.
In fact, as I have already said, everyone in New Jersey treated us tremendously well. The beaches are beautiful and the people were great. It is really a power boater’s state because of depths and other challenges for sailboats, but that is quite OK with me. I will return, but more likely by car than by boat.
Armed with our heat sensor and with confidence that we could now monitor the engine fully, we left. I was sorry to leave so soon; Cape May is a lovely town that deserved more exploration. In the Bay, we did encounter good-sized seas, more than the 2 feet NOAA had predicted, but once we pointed up the Bay, we were able to motorsail, riding the tidal current and reaching speeds of 8.5-9 knots. We swept northward into flatter water, through the Canal, and anchored in Still Pond, surrounded by crab traps. The next day, we had a great beam reach down to Annapolis, hitting a high speed of about 9.6 knots, with the wind gusting to 22 knots. With the main reefed and our little mouseblood speckled genoa out, we were in a good place.
Past the Bay Bridge, we fired up the diesel and the alternator belts screeched again, just to give us one last little challenge before getting home. I tightened them and we cruised into Spa Creek. While it certainly felt very familiar, it also felt very strange to be home and back to living on land.
Corinthian Cruise in Narragansett Bay
I never wrote much about our Corinthian cruise. Our friends John and Diane Butler encouraged us to apply to become members of the Corinthian Club and to join their summer cruise of Narragansett Bay. It seemed a perfect thing for us to do, given our general schedule in New England and our lack of familiarity with this hallowed sailing ground. Moreover, Jae and I are also members of the Eastport Yacht Club, which has a stated goal of supporting and advancing Corinthian seamanship. We have been members for several years now and I have asked many times what Corinthian seamanship means without getting a meaningful answer. So, perhaps if we became members of this new club, I could discover the truth about Corinthian seamanship and I could stop thinking about the differences between Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns.
I am glad to report that this enlightenment did come, albeit rather fitfully. As a result of this cruise, I have concluded that Corinthian boating means helping out other boaters and club members as much as possible. It has nothing to do with ancient Greeks or columns. The Corinthian boating concept might be as old as the columns, however, because boats are at least that old and since they are boats, they have been prone to failures and mechanical problems as least since Greek civilization. Everyone knows that is the definition of a boat. So, in this manner, there might be a connection with columns. Perhaps Corinthius was both a column designer and a boater.
Anyway, the cruise started off with an introductory dinner at the Conanicut Yacht Club in Jamestown, RI. At this dinner, we learned that all sort of activities and high jinks were planned, in addition to daily sailboat races.
One rather strange activity was the chanting after dinner of the word “Fuguma.” I had never heard this word before (and may not have the spelling right). It turned out that Fuguma is the name of a Corinthian whose sole job is to be the master of mischief during the cruise. He planned various activities, along the way, to entertain and divert all of us. More on the Fuguma later.
The other important piece of information we learned that night was that each cruise, at its conclusion, includes a “Nothing” award. The club gives this award each year to the boater who commits such a terrible boating error that it would be best if all cruise participants knew nothing about it. The co-directors of the cruise advised us that a committee would be watching all of us for a whole week to see who should win the award. While I am certainly not going to admit that I have ever done anything that would merit a Nothing Award, I was immediately worried that our inaugural Corinthians event would end in complete ignominy with a Nothing Award and rejection of our membership application. Winning this award was surely within my grasp. We returned to Sirius that night with these weighty concerns.
From Jamestown, the fleet of about 45 boats, went to Block Island for a day and a half of fun. We did not join many of the activities there because of the chance to see friends and to go deep sea fishing, which I wrote about earlier. But we did go to a cocktail party presided over by the Fuguma in a large wizard’s hat. He is a liveaboard full time cruiser who had his long-time girlfriend, daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren aboard. We had a merry time.
While the fleet left Block Island for the Sakonnet River and Fogland harbor, we stayed put because we could not pass under a bridge in that river. We rejoined in Potter’s Cove where the fleet anchored for another night of revelry. On this particular night, the Fuguma planned a dinghy race, to be followed by a limerick contest. The rules of the race were simple: each dinghy must have a two person crew where each crew member must use one hand to row and one hand to hold, and presumably consume, an adult beverage. John and I entered the race in John’s dinghy. While we did have beverages, they were not adult beverages and this could have been our undoing. We had a great start and arguably were in the lead. But, John’s competitive fires burned very brightly and in his eagerness to win, he managed to rip the oarlock out of his brand new dinghy. It sank before he could get his hand in the water to catch it. And with it, our hopes of winning also sank.
After the race, the dinghies all clustered around a large host boat for a cocktail party. This gave new meaning to the term “passed hors d’ouevres” because plates of food passed between dinghies. There may have been 30 or more dinghies that joined in this merriment. See pictures in Potter Cove Gallery. The Fuguma then ascended to the highest deck of the host boat and the limerick contest began. Some limericks were the standard five-liners, while others were Homeric epics, including the submission by the Fuguma’s son-in-law. I wondered how they could take time to compose these long limericks; didn’t they have to read technical manuals and fix things on their boats all the time like I did? Could I compose a limerick with my head deeply in a manual?
That night, we invited John and Diane, together with their crew Deb and Bill, to join us for fresh caught grilled tuna aboard Sirius. We also invited our new friend Elliott, who brought two guitars and a massive printed song inventory. After dinner, Elliott, Bill and I played guitar and everyone sang familiar old songs. It was a great time.
We did not leave with the fleet in the morning, but we did watch an impressive parade out of the harbor by the fleet. We planned to catch up with the fleet at the next stop, Dutch Harbor, but since we were not racing, there was no rush to leave. That was the morning that the anchor chain jammed and later that day that the genoa suffered its mortal tear. While I was sure the genoa tear could not be a candidate for the Nothing award, the chain jam seemed a possible candidate. Fortunately, there was no Corinthian committee member to see it. I would have to admit it did occur, however, because I need to clear it and I would be looking for that Corinthian spirit to help me.
We limped into Dutch Harbor for another cocktail party. The Fuguma climbed up a stepladder to address his adoring crowd. We then learned that the Fuguma, in his haste to depart Block Island with the fleet, had left his daughter ashore. I think he has a 47 foot boat, so while spacious, it is not a boat on which a crew member is easily lost. I don’t know how far out they were before he discovered her absence, but he did return for her and then endured many jokes about this mistake. Also, during this party, a former master of the Corinthians, chided the co-director of the cruise, Bill Kimbell, for his improper use of the word misfeasance.
This former master is quite a proper fellow, I discovered. He also happened to be the chair of the Nothing Award committee and a past recipient of that award. Deb introduced me to him and I foolishly launched into an explanation of the difference between misfeasance and malfeasance, explaining my credentials as a lawyer (how stupid was that!). It was quite apparent that he did not appreciate my comments and I was sure I had just submitted an entry in the Nothing Award contest, this time to the top dog himself.
On our way to Bristol the next day, I called Bill Kimbell to ask who might be able to help with the chain jam. Bill had no ideas about who would have that skill, but volunteered to work with me once we picked up our mooring in Bristol. I was pretty sure Bill knew no more about these sorts of things than I did, but I was really grateful for his Corinthian offer, which I accepted – better to have two clueless captains than one, I thought. I then realized that Corinthian offers of assistance could be unskilled as well as skilled and this made me more optimistic that if we avoided winning the Nothing award, we might become members. Plus, Bill did not laugh or make any comments about the award when I told him about the chain jam. I said nothing about any misfeasance at the cocktail party in Dutch Harbor.
As our sail to Bristol progressed, we got very welcome news from our friend Jay Stockmann that Hinckley would solve all our problems. I radioed Bill back and proposed that rather than come aboard for a repair effort, he and his wife Kiran come for cocktails. They agreed and we learned that Kiran plays guitar and has a lovely singing voice. This led to another night in our cockpit with three guitars and Kiran’s terrific singing. We were definitely getting the Corinthian hang of things.
The cruise ended the next night in East Greenwich with a dinner that required jacket and tie. I had to wear socks and real shoes for the first time in many weeks. My shoes, stowed in a locker below the cabin floor, had a little bit of mold on them. How fitting. Once dinner ended, the “awards” presentation began. Some of these awards were rather serious, especially the awards for winning the sailboat races. Others were more whimsical. The Fuguma presided over all whimsical awards.
At length, the former master and chair of the Nothing Committee came to the podium to announce the winner of the Nothing Award. Drawing out the process and creating suspense, he went around the room noting various errors committed by members of the fleet. These would all be in the category of honorable mention. He described his encounter with me at Dutch Harbor, thus ensuring that I did receive an honorable mention. But, in the end, the Fuguma’s departure from Block Island without his own daughter guaranteed that the Fugama would win the award in 2017. This was truly a boating faux pas.
My Wife, Admiral and Constant Companion for the Last Two Months
Lastly, in this never-ending post, I must write something about Admiral Jae. We have been married for 37 years and have three grown children and one grandchild. Nonetheless, two months on a boat, together all the time, seemed likely to test our bond in a new way. On that score, I can say with certainty that we did have our tests. Some of the mechanical problems were demoralizing; when the oil pressure gauge dipped into the red while on the west side of Martha’s Vineyard, fighting the tide, we were quite worried. When the mainsail luff jumped out of the track off the coast of New Jersey and it was getting dark, this was very stressful. In Atlantic City, we dropped and picked up the anchor three times before we got it set. If it had not set, we would have spent the night off the coast of New Jersey. We were both exhausted by then and Jae wanted to skip dinner. I cooked a dinner, making it up based on what was in the fridge.
We handled all of these times and many others. Jae has bouts of seasickness or queasiness. When they come along, I can easily recognize them. First aid is as follows: (1) don’t ask her to go below; (2) get her a can of Pringle’s potato chips; and (3) ask if she wants to steer. These therapies work pretty well. We had some pretty bouncy days, including all around Block Island and everywhere in the Delaware Bay and she gamely came through all of them. For the two noreasters we had, we were either on a mooring or in a slip with no intention of going anywhere.
Over the years, we have developed an implicit understanding of who did what on the boat. Somewhere along the way, someone introduced us to the concept of “blue” and “pink” jobs. Jae adopted this concept quite happily. Pink jobs include cleaning (but only belowdecks); some cooking (when seas are calm); meal planning; making lists of things that need to be done; steering (blue crew can steer as well); managing the fuel inventory; putting up screens in the cockpit so that bugs cannot reach her (blue crew do this one as well); managing the website; calling to reserve moorings or slips; and some other things that are not coming to mind. Blue jobs generally do not include pink jobs, but instead include the following: anything to do with the heads, including toilet repair, pumping waste tanks out at sea or on a dock; all aspects of anchoring (including chain jams); washing the deck especially after the anchor has brought up a bunch of mud; anything to do with the engine or the generator; plotting navigational routes on the Surface computer, which crashes all the time (on land, the IT function is a pink job, but not at sea); and other tasks that do not now come to mind. This division of responsibility mostly happened without any conversation about it.
Jae was a graceful and gracious hostess throughout the trip. We were fortunate to have several people join us along the way and she was always working hard to make sure they were enjoying the trip. After the opening dinner of the Corinthian cruise, she snatched the lilies off one table and thereafter had a flower centerpiece in the main salon table for most of the rest of the trip. She was a mother to her daughter and daughter’s friend during their days aboard.
I may have previously written that I bought a bosun’s whistle in Cold Spring Harbor with the purpose of blowing it whenever Jae came aboard. I quickly discovered that this takes practice and skill. Bosuns used these whistles to signal commands to the crew when the weather was bad and the crew could not hear the voice commands. That included a signal for whenever the commanding officer came aboard. It seemed appropriate for me to “pipe her aboard.” But, I have since realized that I cannot use it any other time; once aboard she is the bosun. I guess in the olden days, admirals knew that when the bosun blew his whistle, they could ignore it. If I hear that whistle, I know it is time to do a blue job.
I won’t say anymore, but I wanted to give a shout-out to my Admiral.