Sovereign Nations

The squall is building overhead and my thoughts are leaning in the direction of, Wow, I’m glad we’re not out there now…”

Ok, I’ll start over…

Dena and I were eating sushi last last night contemplating a Monday morning sail. We’d get up… whenever, ready the boat…at the pace we feel is needed and go sailing. Destination, whatever…

It was incredible, the wind was a fresh 10 knots out of the North leaving the dock, meaning, to our broadsides but we slipped out between the pilings without even getting close and just like that we were out in the upper Middle River. As we rounded in to the confluence of Dark Head and Hopkins Creek we set sail and in less than a minute we were silently clipping away at five knots at a heel of about 15 degrees to starboard. It was perfect! We tacked twice before leaving Frog Mortar Creek aft and with it we payed out the sheets for a beautiful broad reach out towards the open Chesapeake Bay. Once again, Incredible, absolutely perfect sailing!

Before making the mouth of the Bay we rounded up to head back up river so Dena could make it to work on time. We had an out flowing tide on the way down river so we knew with the up wind beat and the ebbing tide we’d be in for a little bit longer trip going back home. On our second tack upwind we luffed up into a gust so as I tightened sail Dena fell off just a touch and at that very moment we got broad-sided by a massive rogue gust from the rivers’ confluence. In the next 8 seconds the boat would be knocked down, the forward lower shroud on the port-side would be ripped out of the deck and the rig would shudder with a terrifying groan. Within that aforementioned span of time I tossed off the sheets and Dena pointed our bow into the wind. In less than ten seconds we were sailing perfectly again and I was hauling in the genny with the roller furling. We were silent with adrenaline for a few long heartbeats afterwards.

I’ve heard it said by so many sailors I’d be hard pressed to find the original quote, that “Sailing is nothing more than a series of contemplative hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror”. Today I am indeed inclined to agree with that statement.

When the water flowed over the leeward bulwarks in the knock down it scooped up one of our fenders, tossing it overboard. Without saying much to each other we both thought it a good time to do an under-sail “MOB” drill and go back and save our fender from certain piracy from the local suburban Reevers of Hog Pen Creek, Maryland. It wasn’t until we had tacked twice and gibed 3 times that we both realized we were just a little too shaken-up to do a maneuver like that, but, according to the U.S.C.G that is the absolute best time to do a “Man-Over-Board” maneuver; when you’re freaked-the-fuck-out…

We saved our beloved fender…

…But as we were settling back in to sailing up-river again I noticed that the forward-lower shroud on the port-side was tossing around the foredeck like a drunk’n sailor. I alerted Dena to the issue and went forward to inspect the damage and strike our main sail. The half inch thick chain-plate that supports the lower part of the mast on the port side of the boat had snapped in half when the spreaders went in the water during the knock down.

…And that was the moment of sheer terror, the moment we realized we really had just barely escaped death.

The fact of the matter is, if we hadn’t rounded-up into the wind and tossed off the sheets at that very moment we would have been dismasted and the entire sailing rig would have come crashing down into the cockpit where we both were at the time.

Wow…

We made it back to the dock without incident and before I got back from the head at the top of the dock Dena was gearing up for her bicycle ride to work. We bantered back and forth a bit but as she took off we both gave in to that look that we give each other every single time we live through another one of our calamitous adventures, and together we said, I love you!

Hmmm, One of the valuable lessons we’ve learned over the years of being prudent sailors is knowing when to go out and when not to go out…

In early September of 2001 we were in the little town of Newport, Oregon waiting out the weather before heading South for the San Francisco Bay. On NOAA’s weather radio the forecast was for calming seas on the morning of the first so we decided to go into town, check our e-mails  and get one last hot meal before heading off shore once again. As we walked the four miles to the Newport Library for our half hour of free internet access we both were a little more than just quiet, a rare thing for the two of us for sure, we were down right scared that the weather was going to turn on us but neither one of us wanted to deture the other one from the excitement of continuing our adventures around the world! So, we walked on in silence…

…After doing our business at the library we set off for a local all you could eat buffet but before we got there we both came out of our terror closets.

I told Dena that I thought it was a bad idea to be in a big hurry and if we both had bad feelings about leaving than we shouldn’t go, period!

And just like that, we both sighed a big sigh of relief and resigned to NEVER go sailing when either one of us even felt the least amount of reserve. It was like having a giant weight lifted off the conversation, not-to-mention liberating, we were both happy and even a little content by our decision to stay in a sheltered cove for a few extra days if for nothing else, piece of mind!

It’s a good thing we did too, that night Dena got food poisoning from the all-you-can-eat place and she wouldn’t be ready for another off shore adventure for another nine days…(*)

Somewhere in that long lost dinner conversation I’m sure were the seeds of another rule-of-thumb that Dena and I have applied to our general adventure behavior; and that was all the other “No Sailing” days in any given year while sailing in the waters of the United States of America…

…Never, and I mean NEVER! Go sailing on Memorial Day, the 4th of July or Labor day, the three days out of the year that the waters of the US are rife with idiocy! Every single ass-hole who has ever been on the water WILL be on the water on those three days, it’s a guarantee.
…Well, This year Dena and I haven’t seen each other that much over the last few months and of course that means we haven’t been sailing very much either, ok, we haven’t been sailing at all since we made land-fall in Middle River, MD!

WHAT?!

That’s totally unacceptable so, last weekend we decided to go sailing on the only day that we both had off together in at least another two months. At the time it sounded like a great idea, a bottle of wine after a day on the water… As I’ve said before, I work at (evil empire inc.) and Memorial Day is one of their biggest sales days of the year so rest-assured the build-up to such a big deal is in its self a big (fucking) deal and I spent all week worrying about going sailing on one of THOSE days… By Sunday night this past week I had fostered a very BAD feeling about Monday’s sailing adventure and felt compelled to change our plans just a little…

… Sunday night we scrapped the first idea of going out all day in the big boat in trade for a full day of sailing down Middle River in our 9 foot Cat-rigged dory, S/V Tinker. We sailed up-wind and down river with Dena at the helm past five or six ship-wrecks to the “River Watch” restaurant and bar for some rich food and a few strong rum-punches! After that we sailed with the tide and the wind at our backs back up Middle River with me at the helm all the way to the Eastern Rd. bridge then back to our home and global-circumnavigation vector, the S/V S.N. Nomad. We had an absolutely incredible all day adventure that was free, fun and relatively void of the holiday ass-hole factor and best of all neither one of us got food poisoning!
* (September 11th 2001)