Sovereign Nations

So we’re on a mooring.

As much as we dissed it last summer, having a 400 pound anchor with battleship chain makes for a restful night under all conditions.

(You got me tied down with battleship chains, 50 foot long with a 2-ton anchor…)

We were at anchor here for a while – you may remember our account of the storm.  Then we went into the dock for a little while. During that time, I started some projects.  The cockpit coamings were due for a new coat of paint.  But the big’un was the jib sheet winches.  Whew.  We hadn’t done a cleaning and regreasing yet – 4 years in with pretty constant use, and it was time.

After struggling with the retaining nut at the top for three days – soaking the bronze/stainless mating surface with Liquid Wrench and hammering at it (in the process, smashing my thumb and losing our mallet overboard…grrr, argh) – I separated the pieces and went to town on cleaning them up.

A lot of grease where it belongs and none on the pawls and springs (machine oil for those), and they went back together easily.  Now the motion is smooth and the pawls click into their teeth, making a nice crisp snapping sound.  Just like new.  Goes to show the quality of Barient winches.

And now we’re at home for the summer.

The up-sides:

The sunrises have been breathtaking and they are unencumbered by the structures of shore.  Since James leaves the boat at 6:15, I (Dena) get in the little boat with him and blink sleepily at all the beauty.  He gets up a little earlier in order to have coffee, and he gets the real glory.

Then I row back to the boat and have my own coffee before starting my day.  This rowing back and forth is only the beginning.  Our little commuter vessel is getting quite the workout.  There’s ferrying James twice a day, plus my trips to the grocery store and/or gym.

As soon as we got on the mooring and Dena took off to Montana, in classic New England fashion, it got cold and rained for a week.  Me (James) and the cat were struggling to keep each other warm and dry.  More testament to our fine equipment buying skills – the Cozy Cabin heater worked wonderfully.

Though the rain has passed over for now, we are getting daily doses of heavy fog – once again, in best New England fashion.

Just in case you’re wondering, this is all up-sides.

The star of these photos is the wooden schooner that showed up this week.  It’s from Port Townsend, owned by Anacortes natives, and being suckers for schooners, you’re bound to see lots of shots of it throughout the summer.  It’s also our nearest neighbor and does lovely things for the view.

Leaving you now, we present a Reflections shot of our new neighbor.

What a lovely vacation!

After quitting our grindingly tense jobs and keeping our noses to the boat-work-grindstone, we took some time to enjoy ourselves.

Threemile was lovely and peaceful until the night before we set off for New London. At about 3:00 am we got hit by a screaming squall with winds in excess of 40 knots broadsiding us and rocking our little home in the Hamptons for about an hour before dying back down before sunrise. After the sun came up we sailed away from Long Island heading back to Connecticut to find our summer fortunes.

As we hit the deeps of Gardiners Bay, our winds died and some of the local colors began to pop.

We motorsailed all the way across the Sound but as we made our way into the Thames (rhymes with, me, James) River our spring winds kicked back up to bring us into the downtown free moorage.

Our plan was to shag some free showers at the public moorage using the key-code that we got from them last summer. The key-code worked but the city of New London hadn’t turned on the water in the showers yet. Damn!

So we (Dena) did a little research and found out that we could transfer our gym membership from Groton to Waterford (which is about a mile from our new marina) online so she made that happen and we motored back down the river to our new digs.

On the way down river to Burr’s Marina, we got a good look at the Coast Guard training vessel S/V Eagle. I recommend you google that ship if you don’t already know about her. She’s got an incredible history!

We buried the CQR in 8 feet of water, launched the dink, and struck off on our bikes (we’d dropped the bikes off at the marina last week) for hot showers at our new work out facility.

When we got back from the gym we ran into Bill, one of the guys that works at the marina, and he told us that we could bring the boat into the marina to wait out the threatening storm if we wanted. We thanked him but declined, telling him that we felt pretty good about our anchorage.

On Friday the winds were from the north-east ranging from 25 to 30 knots all day long with gusts kicking our little butts in the 40′s. The pounding seas were ranging from 5 to 6 feet and, let me tell you, at anchor that shit is a big deal! It was a painfully long day but we lived through it and only (ONLY!!!) dragged our anchor about 60 feet toward the scary lee shore. At about noon I went out on deck to put some chafing gear on the anchor bridle, which meant I had to bring in the anchor chain about 10 feet. When I payed the chain back out the anchor came unstuck for just a few seconds, long enough to drag us to lee and freak us (the fuck) out! Although the anchor re-stuck and we didn’t move for the rest of the day we were shaken up quite a bit from the experience.

On Saturday we pulled up anchor and went into the marina to fill the water tanks and deal with some issues that were bothering us about the water tanks. We ran into Bill again and he told us that we could stay in the marina until our mooring was put in the water. We thanked him but told him that we love being at anchor so we’d head back out as soon as we could.

Of course, we thought of some errands to run while we were so accessible.  For the first time, we’re very, very close to a propane filling station – only about a half mile!  Once the marina really gets up and running (we’re at least a month early compared to their usual season), we’ll have laundry and showers on the dock, propane just up the road, and a gym and grocery store not much farther.  For us, with the bikes and trailer, this is pretty great.

The next phase of this spring is earning some money.  Since I (Dena) am keeping myself free to work on the Mystic Whaler and James wants cash in hand asap, we’re going the temp agency route.  That’s the short term answer, but James also plans to do the feet-beating job hunt.

It feels a bit like we’re at the end of a nice long vacation, though we worked so hard through so much of it.  We’ve been on our own time, working on our own projects, and it sure has felt good.  This is a cycle I can live with – sail, get a job, save money, work on boat, sail.  Hopefully the sailing portions will eventually be longer than the others, but hey – it’s still living the dream.

After all the intensity of sailing across the Sound on Saturday, we had significant wind for a night, a day, and a night on the hook.  Sunday drifted by while we were huddling down below dodging the heavy winds and reading.  You know, living the dream…while also prodded by our truest natures (nature? nurture?) to make something, do something, which something became our last blog post.

The photo above does a glorious job explaining how it felt to wake up on Monday morning in Threemile Harbor, East Hampton, New York, in the peace and quiet of a still dawn.

We spent the early morning cleaning up and stowing the boat.  The temperature was slated to reach 60 – leaving behind the highs of 40 and 45 for, we hope, the loosing action of a stronger sun.  We had to go out and explore our home in the Hamptons.

To actually buy a house in that part of the world you pretty much have to be a millionaire/billionaire from Manhattan (a few exceptions being made for those servants the rich cannot do without, for where would happiness be without a clerk to sell a shirt or a nail tech to buff and fill?  But, of course, those sorts are housed in special zones clearly labeled to keep out the well-behaved children of the rich while being irresistibly alluring to the older kids who know that “Mobile Home Park” is another way of spelling “Acid Score”).

Unless, of course, you’re us.

We launched the dink and gave’er a good eyeballing.  The sailing had shaved her beard and revealed a patina that reassured us.  Yes, there is real copper in the bottom paint we pay over $100 per gallon for.  We rowed the mile into a secondary channel.  Really – this place is strange.  A channel, not more than 50′ wide, brought us from Gardiner’s Bay (just off the Long Island Sound) into Threemile Harbor.  A few marinas line that channel, but more cluster at the south end, through another channel that is even narrower.  The expectation is that ever smaller boats would traverse ever narrower channels and burst out in the Atlantic Ocean.

We put the dink on a dinghy dock next to a Boatel launch that was actually launching a boat. We both thought that it a bit strange that they would be launching plastic-destroyers this early in the year.

We set off on foot for the town of East Hampton, 2.7 miles south.We had this big plan of going to see Jackson Pollack’s studio, the East Hampton windmill, and what we had read was one of the coolest little downtown Villages on the East Coast.

Well, after spending the last four days on the boat never walking more than 30 feet at a time, the 2.7 miles to East Hampton actually felt like a big deal to me (James). The little village wasn’t that great, all the grey ponytails driving around in expensive sports cars can only be laughable a few times at most before they just get old, everything was way over-priced, and – check this out – the Pollack house was not only the opposite way from where we had walked, it was closed. So we walked back.

That was no big deal really. We like walking together, even on a long one,  and just being together makes us happy.

So we headed back to our very own home in the Hamptons.  This time, I (Dena) rowed.  I felt strong and serene handling the oars.  It reminded me how much I loved living at anchor in Maine.

This is us, doing what makes us happy.  I brought us up near the Monitor.

What a good-looking stern!

We had planned to sail north to New London today and get business underway.  Our dirty clothes bag is bulging, our stores are thinning, and we’re skeptical about how much water we have left.  But rain threatened, and another day off beckoned, and today, again, we’re living the dream.

Yes!!!

After months and months of working in these tight quarters with freezing hands, sore backs, bruises, bumps, knots and filth, we did it.  We just left!

But you know, it’s kind of weird, I (James) used to tell people at West Marine that if I got caught in a big blow, so be it, but I’d never go out in one! Well that’s a lie… I should have prefaced that statement with, “that depends on my motivation!”

When we left Spicers Marina at 12:00pm on Thursday, let me tell you, we were motivated and we had to be. The winds were honking at a steady 25 knots with gusts up to 30 with seas from 4 to 6 feet on the bow inside Fishers Island Sound.  It was intense but we just had to put those months of work  to the test. So, the big seas and the howling winds almost felt good… Almost! It was also really cold but motivation can be  powerful protection from the elements at least temporarily.

Once we got the main up, the reefs in, and the Monitor set, it eased up a bit but we were beating hard, heading for Three Mile Harbor inside the South Fork of Long Island.

We met this sailor at Spicer’s, Doc, and we asked him, just like we ask all local sailors we meet, “What’s your favorite local anchorage?” and he told us it was “Beyond a doubt, Three Mile!”

…So Three Mile it was. But once we got out in the Long Island Sound and were getting our little butts spanked by Mother Nature, we started looking for other options. We could head up the Thames (rhymes with James) and shag a free mooring in New London and wait out the wind or we could go somewhere we’d never been before, like up the Niantic River, and put the hook down in a sheltered cove. Well, new is always a better choice so as we made North Dumpling Island we tacked and headed for Niantic.

Six hours after leaving Spicer’s, just before sunset, we were hook down on the Niantic River with the anchor buried in mud and the chain payed out to 10 to 1 just in case the winds got heavy.  (10 feet of chain for every 1 foot of water depth.)

…And boy did they ever!

The wind didn’t let up for the next 24 hours so we spent a wonderful day, Friday, all by ourselves in that quiet little anchorage drinking rum, playing Yahtzee and cleaning up after our sea-sick kitty (he’s okay now, it was just that first few hours in the big seas that did it to him).

The best thing about sailing in the early spring is the fact that no matter where you go you will most likely be alone.

On Saturday the winds eased up just after noon so we hauled anchor and set off.

The Niantic River entrance is crossed by two bascule bridges.  One is a railroad bridge – only 11 feet off the water – and the other is Highway 156.  The highway is 32 feet off the water and all bridge heights are measured at higher high tide, so we would be brushing the bridge at low tide.  No way were we going to chance that.  Besides, there is nothing like the feeling of stopping traffic on a Saturday to go under a bridge! I called the bridge operator on Ch. 13 on the VHF and that’s all there is to it, they just stop the traffic and open the bridge for you, just like that!

One of the main reasons we went up the Niantic River, besides the newness of the whole thing, was the fact that it would set us up for a very nice down hill run most of the way to Three Mile the next day and that it did.

We left the reefs in the main (just ’cause) and were under sail less than ten minutes after coming out of the river.

All the systems that we rebuilt or newly installed were put to the test. The wind generator works, I mean it charges, but we’re really not that satisfied with it. For some reason it’s a lot louder than it ever has been before and I believe that can be attributed to the fact that we painted the propellers. Another thing about the wind generator, it doesn’t seem to be generating as much power as it used to and we can’t really figure that one out. We’re getting most of our power from our 165 watts of solar panels and even living off the grid hasn’t put much strain on our power generating capabilities.

But the Monitor Windvane Self Steering system works incredibly!

It’s such an elegant system to watch and it does the job it’s supposed to perfectly.

We sailed a down wind straight line across the Long Island Sound between the North and South Forks of Long Island through Gardeners Bay before we tacked up wind for the beat into the Three Mile Chanel.

Yeah, it was cold and the winds were a bit fresh at times but here we are again all by ourselves in a beautiful anchorage in East Hampton, N.Y. doing what we do best, being free.

There are few mooring buoys out at this time of year and no other boats in the whole of Three Mile Harbor.  The wind has picked up again and we’re sitting tight today.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll row ashore and check out some Long Island, East Hampton style.

And maybe not.  The best thing about our lives right now – we don’t owe anybody an explanation.  We don’t have to ask anybody’s permission.  We can just do – or not do – whatever we want.

So gently powered that we didn’t even bob, the boat floated across Fishers Island Sound. We’d motored out of the channel and zipped the sails into place – full, easy sails and we wouldn’t have known we were moving except the green buoy slid across the land behind it. Oh, and the GPS said 3 knots. Silence broken only by our musings on silence until the weather shifted.

The wind built and so did our speed. Starting to heel, then really heeling. We reefed to bring her back to balance but kept heading for the Island, two miles from the Connecticut shore but legally a part of NY. A small ferry passed us, crossing our bow a safe distance ahead.

We tacked.

A harder beat, colder, windier, slower against the tide. We tacked again, then ran before the wind, creating a fiction of gentle breeze. All points of sail tested and re-tested. We looked at each other, shrugged and said, “Done?”

“Done”.

We doused sail and motored back into the slip.

Sailing. I fucking love this shit.

Almost a week after Hurricane Sandy wiped us with her skirts, stomping all over New Jersey and barely hitting us at all, we returned to our boat.

It had taken us about an hour and a half to do the hurricane prep – striking the sails, removing the boom and lashing it on deck, taking everything that was loose or could be loosened and tucking it belowdecks, doubling up on all the mooring lines.  Battening down the hatches, literally and figuratively.  It took us about twenty minutes less to put it all back together and be ready for sailing.

Rather than set sail immediately to test the rig, we did another project that has been on the need-to list.  Engine maintenance.  We tightened the alternator and water pump belts, then ran the engine for a while.  Once the oil was warm, we took care of the oil and oil filter change that has been in the forefront of our minds.  This was the most-used system over the last summer and fall, and we both feel that it had been neglected more than we were comfortable with.

The next day, we went sailing.

Casting off, we got hit by a gust just as the lines were loosed.  The bow swung wide causing us to collide with the boat next to us.  No damage, not even scuffs, but it shook me (Dena) up more than a little.  Rather than tie back up and check both boats over, we continued out of the slip and got underway.

This is contrary to our agreed-upon operating principles.  One thing we established quite some time back is this: we go with the opinion of the more cautious of us.  If one of us thinks it’s time to reef, we reef.  If one thinks that we’re anchoring too close to something hard, we move farther away.  If one thinks that we need to tie back up and check the boat out, we do that.  But this time, we pushed on.

The last two weeks have been exhausting.  Long hours at work, running hard (including subbing for servers who called out and talking down an upset son, regarding whose mother I was about to call adult protective services…among other difficulties), and having to walk everywhere we’ve gone really did come to a head once we got out of the narrow channel for the marina.

Sailing teaches a person about their own limitations, their heroic abilities, and the wide grey zone between perfect comfort and either one.  Out on Fisher Island Sound, we raised sail with a single reef in the main and took comfort from the frothing bow waves and the hiss of water along the hull.  I (Dena) just sat there on the trunk house, in that grey zone, staring at the water as it swept along the beam of the boat and letting the liquid rhythm pull the nerves out of my body.  I came back to the moment, back to reality, back to sailing and wind and water and the boat and James and me.  Back to myself.

Meanwhile, I (James) was sailing the boat.  The wind was gusting, so the main with the single reef drove our broad reach to well over 5 knots.  Putting up any more sail not only would have been stressful, it was needless.  The boat was performing beautifully, but we were heading away from our home port so I knew our beat back home would be exactly that.  A beating.

After we reached the mouth of the Mystic River, I asked Dena if we should tack or gybe with the intention of heading west to put us back in a reach for our return later.  But the wind was building and, as we came about, I noticed that it was solid whitecaps all through the sound.  So I said, “Want to go back?”

With very little hesitation, Dena agreed that was a good idea.

It was maybe 45 minutes of sailing, but it did the job.  We got out and got salty.  We found the sea and we got back.

Spicer’s Marina is so well protected that, once we passed the breakwater, it was a beautiful day.  Warm and calm.  Well, warmer than out on the water.  Tied up and tidied up, we felt relieved by the lack of damage on both boats.  We also felt proud of ourselves – once again, we learned a lesson and put it into practice right away.

How many times will we go a little farther than we’re comfortable with?  How many times will we learn this lesson?

As many as it takes to keep us happy.

When last we updated you, we were in the Cuttyhunk Pond, surrounded by Cuttyhunk Island.  The sail to Point Judith, once the weather calmed, was as promised by our weather sources.  Light wind from the NE and a gentle, 1-2 foot swell.  There was no remaining violence from the previous day’s wind.

Deciding it was time for showers, we sojourned at Point Judith Marina that night.  We used the marina office directions to the Matinuck Oyster Bar, which served up some of the best locally raised oysters either one of us have ever had.  My (Dena’s) only superior oyster experience was at Chinook’s in Seattle.  Strange thing is that they were serving up Blue Points and other Narragansett oysters!  This was definitely the place.

The next day was hidden by thick fog and the radar, once again, proved invaluable.  When the fog drew back, we saw that we were covered by a grey shield.  We never got more than 2 miles from shore, coming as close as 300 feet at Napatree Point, the entrance to Fisher’s Island Sound.  We sucked out every bit of wind there was to be had that day.  From full sail in the fog to frustrating motorsailing, then ultimately we struck all sails.  Windless water shone silver.  The engine sound was absorbed by the stillness and the splash of raw water from the engine cooling system disappeared.

Immediately after starting the engine, I (James) noticed a strange, intermittent squeaking sound coming from the engine compartment.  Dena was riding on the bow at that time, so I asked her to come back to see if she could hear it.  By the time she arrived at the companionway, she said, “I can smell it!”

We knew that we were burning a belt.  So, engine off.  Engine compartment taken apart.  Sure enough, there’s a thick black coating of belt detritus all around the pulley of the alternator.  I grabbed a big flathead screwdriver and a crescent wrench, then tightened the belt the best I could.  In case you’re wondering, yes – this is the same flathead we used for short circuiting the starter.  It’s the engine flathead.

That emergency didn’t last long, and after some time, formless and hard to measure, we passed the Mystic River and entered the West Cove at Noank, CT.

We pulled into the dock and made our loopy way up to the office, where we paid for the whole winter in one shot.  Settled.

The boat is at Spicer’s Marina and will be there all winter.

We plan to spend 2-3 nights a week aboard, so we don’t want to take everything off the boat…meaning cookware and such.  We moved our clothing, books, and camera gear to our new apartment at the Windham Falls Estates Independent Living Retirement Community.

Now.  Between the time that we landed and the time that we moved in, we walked.  We walked all over Noank.  Discovered its little village charm.  We walked into Groton and found the public library and a free-range chicken farm that also has the “end of the summer bounty”.  Some little bitty potatoes, green and purple beans, wrinkled jalapenos, and a few shallots.  Their chickens looked totally happy and content, roaming a 5 acre field with three open coops.  It was cool, and an old guy with an oxygen tank was crouched by the fence taking photos of the preening roosters.  As we strolled back toward the boat, we got the call confirming that we passed the background checks and had the job.

Then we got a rental car and started packing and moving.  We cleaned the boat from stem to stern and discovered that we had been very hard on the boat this summer.  She was long overdue for a de-molding.  We’ll just leave it at that.

Now she’s clean.

We turned our attention to furniture.  One stop shopping is what we found.  Homeward Bound is a furniture thrift store, and all proceeds go to assistance of various kinds for homeless people.  We got everything we needed in about a half hour, and they delivered it…two days after we were gone.

Gone?  Yep.

Starting with Holiday Retirement means a 2 week immersion training at one of several locations.  Denver picked us.  We flew out of Hartford, CT, meaning we woke up at 3am and drove there.  It sucked.  We almost ran out of gas.  Fucking Enterprise – they rented us a car that had barely a 1/4 tank of fuel.

Sunday, a week ago – drive, fly, land, fly, land.  Rental car, hotel…

And here, we leave you hanging.  We’ll write this surreal experience in the near future, when we’ve had time to process our new lives.

We took off from Onset heading southwest down Buzzard’s Bay.  We’d planned to catch the tide down the bay, but there was an unnatural phenomenon we didn’t take full account of.  When the tide is going out of two bays at once, as in the Cape Cod Bay and Buzzard’s Bay or the Delaware Bay and the Chesapeake Bay, and a man-made canal has been carved between them, there is a suction in both directions.  I (Dena) thought that Onset was far enough on the Buzzard’s Bay side of the canal that we would get only Buzzard’s Bay currents.  When we got out of the entrance channel for Onset though, and turned down the major channel to the bay, we nearly stopped in place.

Dropping from 6.2 knots down to 2.8 knots in seconds is a better than decent clue that the tide is against you.

I pushed up the RPM until we were burning at 2600 and going 3.7 knots, and that was good enough.  Within 15 minutes, the speed started creeping upward.  There isn’t a definitive pinnacle where the tide reverses.  Instead, it took about 10 minutes to cover enough distance for our speed to bump back up past 6 knots.  At that point, I reduced the RPMs on the engine in order to burn less fuel.

A steel grey day faced us with constant rain.  Everything was wet outside, and we did battle against drenching the interior of the boat.  We were doing one hour watches because of the intensity of the weather.  Each time we switched places, the person who went below dried off at the foot of the companionway steps and boosted up the propane heater to dry things a bit.  We really won that war.

Outside, the winds were variable from 5 to 15 knots from the NE.  In the northern Atlantic, the northeastern wind is notorious.  We maintained a double reefed main and 100% jib, just in case the wind kicked up even more.  But since we were headed SW, the wind was perfectly on our beam, making for an easy ride.  We also had some great deep-bay waves behind us and the full force of the current helping us down the bay.

It was an incredible sail, even bundled in rain gear the whole time.  It was a rare pleasurable experience to sail in the rain that comfortably and confidently.

Reaching the bottom of Buzzard’s Bay and looking out onto the waters of Block Island Sound, the waves intensified and we sacrificed heading toward our goal for a more comfortable ride.  At the last minute, before we passed up Gull Island, we pulled in the jib, dropped the main, and motored southeast into the Cuttyhunk Pond.  As we navigated the incredibly narrow entrance (at low tide, no less), the sky began to clear.  The sun broke out while we were scoping out the mooring field and suddenly, it was a breathlessly beautiful day.

This is a good place to describe how bizarre it feels to approach a tiny island when you’ve been in the middle of the water for a while.  Here we were, surrounded by all this intense water.  We were pointing our boat at the thing – the only thing – we know can destroy it.  A pile of rocks, in the middle of the ocean.  That’s when we really have to trust the technology.  We have a great chartplotter (Simrad NSS7) and two other pinpoint GPS devices (Garmin GPS 72 and Foretrex101).  We have charts and more charts.  We can point our boat at a pile of rocks and hit only what we want to hit – a two foot mooring buoy – missing all of the hard, unyielding bits that fly past while winding through a completely unknown (to us) environment.

We tied up to a town mooring – one of dozens in the precise square that is dredged in the middle of the pond.  The thought of this place in the middle of summer, when we first thought of coming here, is terrifying now that we’re actually here.  The moorings are so close together that the three boats that are in this mooring field seem close enough.  There is an empty mooring only about 10 feet off our stern and remember – we’re only 32 feet long.  If this place were full of plastic destroyers, each swinging differently with the wind and tide, and we were trying to grab a mooring in the middle of such a tightly packed field of boats, we would almost certainly have given up and gone outside the protection of the island to anchor in the ocean.

No really – it’s ocean.

This is a really fancy part of our plan.  Looking at the weather from Portland, ME, we knew that we had some great stuff that would get us south of Cape Cod.  Then there was a full day of gales headed our way.  We wanted to be far enough along that the rest of the trip will be easier jaunts while being very well protected for the gales.  Cuttyhunk Island filled both requirements, plus it was a place we wanted to see!

Today, we’re taking a well-earned day off.  It’s gorgeous – blue sky, no clouds, and a ton of electricity.  Solar is pumping, but…did we mention gales?  The wind generator is producing so much power that it keeps clutching off, even with the refrigerator and computer running.  This is unprecedented!  We’re making enough power for everything without having to throttle things back manually – judging our consumption carefully and doing things like putting the computer to sleep when not in active use.  Our systems are working perfectly.   It’s an order of pride and also a feeling of relief.  That we were right about this set-up and our ability to live like this.

So we’re spending the day watching the mooring lines for chafe and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica.  That’s it, all fucking day.  Reading, watching, fucking, eating, sleeping.  Living the dream.

So we flew to Charlotte last Thursday, a little over a week ago.  The whole flight down, interview, and flight back seem to have been for the purposes of checking us out visually, seeing if we could make it to an appointment on time, and, perhaps, scaring us off.  She spent most of our time there telling us how hard the job is, but it doesn’t sound like anything we won’t handle easily.

She also looked into our first choices – the Canadian locations – but the Canadian district manager confirmed during the interview that there were no openings in coastal Canada…period.  So we talked about openings in the eastern district, hoping for something north.  She checked her files and told us that the two openings in the northeast were Troy, NY, and Groton, CT.

Troy’s not on the water.

We said we’d like Groton.

Of course, the word itself is horrible.  Grotty old thing.  We’ve decided to take the boat to New London and call that home port for now.  So much better.  We can’t live in a place called Groton.  Remember – that’s the forgotten place!

We flew back to Portland, bemused by the experience but still willing.  She – the recruiter – said that the next step was a Skype interview with the regional manager.  She called the next morning and asked if we could do the interview later that day (Friday).  Though we were sailing back to the Eastern Promenade anchorage from South Portland’s Knightville Landing, we agreed and set the interview for 5pm.  We were settled and fed by that time, and naked from the waist down in anticipation of our Skype interview.

The regional manager had a bunch of technical issues with his computers and couldn’t make the Skype thing happen.  There we were, on our boat in the middle of the Casco Bay, using wind and solar 12v power, totally ready for that shit.  Oh well, we did the interview by cell phone.  It was long and arduous, but of course we kicked its ass.  We didn’t feel as much like best friends at the end of this one as we did with the first recruiter, but we felt good.

At the end of the call, he – Mark – told us that we’d hear toward the beginning of the week if they were going to offer us a position.  We entered our weekend, feeling fine and living the dream.

Monday morning, at 8:30 am, my (James’) phone went off.  It was a very happy recruiter on the other end, offering us the positions of Co-Management team of the Windham Falls Estates community.  Cool, huh?

We pulled that shit off!  But it’s true, everything we told them is true.  This is a job that we’ll be able to handle and people will respond in a way that’s mutually beneficial.  We get to make some old folks feel good.  In turn, maybe I can wrangle some crafty old sailors into building a junk rig on our intrepid S/V S.N. Nomad.

It could happen!

Since the community is half again larger than the cookie-cutter Holiday community, there are three teams of couples working the place.  One team has experience with this sort of work and will focus on the operational aspects.  The other team will split up like us, with James and one of them taking sales – tours, visits, community outreach, and closing – and me (Dena) and the other of them working on “closing the back door” – loving up the old folks so that they don’t leave except in a hearse.  Killin’em with kindness.

What did this mean to us?

Sailing south.

Monday, 8:35am, we started downloading GRIB files and checking weather windows for an immediate departure.  The job would start with a 2 week training at one of their 4 training centers.  We would fly out of New London (or thereabouts) on October 7th.  The apartment would be available to move into starting the 3rd or 4th.  That meant we had a week and a half to get there.

No problem, right?  Except that October weather is notoriously…well, the way it turned out.

I (Dena) worked that night, before we had a chance to really plan the trip out.  Tuesday morning, we sat down and worked out the routes and timing.  In order to get the ocean voyaging out of the way while the weather permitted, we’d have to leave on Thursday.  That’s perfect, really, getting us there a day early.  Of course, that also meant leaving with only two days’ preparation.

What preparation?  We’ve been underway since the beginning of June!  Barring some minor grocery shopping, we were ready to go!

I worked Tuesday night, notifying the bosses that it would be my last shift.  I was on doors, meaning I walked about 15 miles that night.  James, meanwhile, covered slightly less distance with much more weight – he carried a propane tank to the U-Haul, where they filled it while he rode on to get oil for our Yanmar diesel engine.  He returned with a gallon of oil and added the 6 pound (awkwardly shaped) propane tank to his load, and rode back to the dinghy dock.  Once he got back to the boat, he listed my bike for sale and arranged to show it the next day when the response was swift and strong.

The next morning, I was unemployed and we sold my bike by 9:30am.  Still, we needed to go to the YMCA.  We had to say goodbye to all those good people, get one last shower in before a dry spell (so to speak), and pick up my shower kit and towel.  On the way, we got better gloves, a great vegan buffet lunch (all we could eat for less than $10 total!), and stocked up on coffee.  Back on the boat, we hauled the anchor and moved to South Portland for our last night in Maine.  Grocery shopping, water tank filling, cleaning, etc.

We had a leisurely breakfast at Uncle Andy’s, filled the diesel tank, and left!

Knowing that it would be about 27 hours, we left at 10am.  That way we would arrive in Provincetown during daylight, whether we were earlier or later than expected.

We said goodbye to Portland as we headed southeast around Portland Head.  The sailing was perfect for the first 6 hours.  That got us around Cape Elizabeth and put us on a broad reach heading due south, well into the afternoon.

As the wind died, we made the call to start the engine and motorsail.  The layers started piling on and the sun dipped lower.  The sun and moon rode a see-saw, with the sun dipping into the sea to the west while the moon rose on the eastern ocean horizon.

My (Dena’s) next shift started at 6pm.  It was mostly calm, with the inescapable rumble of the engine providing a background tone for me to hum with.  The near-full moon left glitter on the water, strewn from me to the horizon as though I’d exploded a disco ball in its direction.  I wore cotton socks under wool socks, high-tech long underwear under sweatpants, and a turtleneck under my Irish wool sweater.  Over this base, my bib overalls, waterproof coat, wool hat, and gloves finished the job of making me comfortable.  It was not a long 3 hours.

Shift kiss and update.  “I think that’s a planet,” said Dena to James.  It was Jupiter.

As Castor and Pollux broke the horizon, they appeared as a ship steaming for us from our aft starboard quarter.  It looked close enough that I (James) should be able to get some kind of reading on the radar, but nothing showed up.  I mean, absolutely nothing.  It was completely blank.  After an hour at the helm, the twins revealed themselves as heavenly bodies that stretched on the oil-slick ocean from their position in the sky all the way to our wake in an unbroken thread.

The moon had tucked itself behind the mainsail and lit the foredeck with a soft blue glow as clean as the ocean air.  A cloud system rolled in shortly thereafter, creating a gentle rain that seemed to quench the topsides of the boat.  In direct opposition to my last night shift, coming up to Maine, where my vision blurred and consciousness faded in and out, every single moment was as crisp as my immediate observable environment.

Shift kiss and update.  “A ship just passed us going so fast that they’re already out of radar range,” said James to Dena.  They didn’t appear on radar until they were broad to us, so it could have been some high-tech navy thing.

Midnight, with very little sleep.  I (Dena) plugged myself into my ipod for musical stimulation.  Singing and dancing, tapping my toes and heels, spinning slowly in order to scope the waters behind, to port, ahead, to starboard, behind, to port, ahead, to starboard…these hours were full of shifting.  My body, the boat, the clouds and moon and stars.  We all circled and swung and bobbed, but at the same time, the boat I helmed was plunging through the waters toward our interim destination.  So much purpose and achievement in every nautical mile covered; so much enjoyment of every moment.  I was high on sailing, and again, the hours passed easily.

The slight wind moved exactly onto our bow so I dropped the sail.  Not long afterward, I raised it again.  This shift was dressed like before except with my one-piece exposure suit instead of my bibs and coat.  I was supremely comfortable.

Shift kiss and update.  “At the end of your shift, we’ll be able to see land,” said Dena to James.

The winds came up enough from the northeast to pick up our speed from 5.6 knots to 6.2 knots.  We were clipping along a little too hard into the waves.  There was a lot of motion and the ride was wet, but it was definitely not uncomfortable in any way.  Because the moon had disappeared, the phosphorescents stepped into their role as my primary source of entertainment.  They would erupt off of the slight bow wave, swirling downward, stimulating a cascade of thousands of tiny green spectacles in the water.  Every single wave was lit up by microelectrochemical illumination.

At this point, 6am, we moved back into day mode.  Splitting the helm two hours at a time, we watched Cape Cod approach and fell alongside to make our way around the hook.  Barely into James’ next short watch, the engine spit.  Sputtered.  Then died.

I (Dena) was up and off the settee as James hollered, “Dena, there’s something wrong.”

Fuel.  That’s our first instinct.  It fucked us before, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca with a pounding sea – much the same conditions we had just experienced.  Checked the fuel-water separator – not out of fuel and no water in there.  So it was time to open the engine compartment.  That means taking three large pieces of the boat apart.  Once I had access, I wrapped the fuel filter housing in oil-absorbing pads and removed the lid.  Sure enough, there was muck floating on top of the filter.  The element didn’t look sooooo bad, but I replaced it anyway, pumping fuel in to fill the space and closing it up again within five minutes of opening it.  Then we tried to start the engine.

Click.

Nothing.

Plenty of power in the batteries.  Starter had worked prior.  No water in the engine compartment.  Moved the decompression levers back and forth to make sure there was compression.  No love.

So I’ll hotwire it, says James.  I stuck a flathead screwdriver with a plastic handle into the starter solenoid and she sparked right up.  Looking at the wiring, a shoddy job was done on the battery cable.  And then painted over to make it look like a pro job.  Goddamn previous owners!

Issue solved and we’re back underway.

While this whole thing was going on, of course, we had to maintain our sailing, which was now in 15-20 knots of wind and heavy chop coming directly on the bow.  But the sailing was great and the boat handled well enough that doing this job was a breeze.  There was no pressure to get it done immediately in order to save our bacon.  We were doing fine under sail.  We just didn’t want to sail into the small area behind the Provincetown breakwater – a place we’d never even seen before.  And we didn’t have to.

We motored up to the fuel dock and tied up very neatly in challenging conditions.  The fuel dock operator stuck his head out and said, “What a day for a sail!”  We both just smiled and gave him the thumbs up.

Seven gallons later, I (Dena) asked him about picking up a mooring ball.   He said that all the balls behind the breakwater were privately owned and the rental balls were the ones exposed to the south winds and chop.  I must have look sad in a cute way, because he promptly offered to let us spend the night on his very own mooring, tucked right behind the breakwater.

Again, we picked up the mooring very tidily – interrupted only by the harbormaster, who was on us in no time when he saw us headed toward the private area, but left us alone when we gave him the magic words “Dave said we could stay here”.  Green eggs and soygauge, napping, soysauge casserole, and more sleep.  Sounds like we needed some protein.

We woke to the alarm in a driving rain.  In order to hit the Cape Cod Canal during a favorable current, we needed to leave Provincetown around 6am.  We did so, rain and fog notwithstanding.  Our radar and chartplotter proved their worth this morning.  Winds were light but constant from the northeast, making for perfect sailing between Provincetown and the Cape Cod Canal.  The stretch that was supposed to take 6 hours ended up only taking about 4 1/2 hours because of steadily increasing winds and giant, stereotypically choppy Northern Atlantic seas.

Again, we were geared up so the weather wasn’t really penetrating us.  It was a part of the entertainment.

And it was a bit intense.

While all that howled above decks, the atmosphere below was much quieter.

Love my Grundens!

We sailed right into the mouth of the canal, dowsed sail just behind the breakwater, and motored through to Onset.  We’re anchored less than 50 feet from where we anchored July 7th, 2012.

Now to plan the next stage of this adventure.

The Campaign

At the start of the month, we were both working at Mainers United for Marriage and doing the math for living on the cheap.  Even spending only a hundred dollars a month on food and everything, anchoring to avoid moorage fees (and because it kicks ass and is how we love to live), riding our bikes, and not heeding the siren call of Hollywood’s execrable selection of late-summer movies…even with all that, we wouldn’t be able to make enough money to head to Scotland on these wages, in this boat.

We had this grand idea.  We’d ask our friends to pay for it!  And ask our friends to ask their friends to pay for it!  Our friends have great friends, right?  We also have some tenuous connections with rich people.  Let us really stress tenuous.  Meaning we can’t quite find the thread now that we’re looking for it.  Rich people are fickle and that’s how they got (or how they stay) rich.

But we forgive them for that.  And we ask that anyone reading this consider giving to our RocketHub campaign, notwithstanding our badmouthing.

We respect our friends.  We know that they’re sensitive to things like great ideas and to the environmental pressures that we bring up in the campaign.

The people who stay in our lives are the people we share values with.  Meaning poor.  Meaning at the end of the week, they’re looking at 75 cents in their hand, proud that they paid everything, but struggling.  Or knowing they didn’t pay everything and hoping things will turn around.  At the most well-off, our friends are working class and happily surviving, dependent on that paycheck.

Yep – we are the 99%.

The Rig

When we started this adventure in 1999, the rig that was on our original boat, Sovereign Nation, was the same rig that we have on Nomad, was also the same rig on Sapien, and is the rig that we have always sailed.  We’re comfortable with this rig.  It’s referred to as the Marconi masthead rig.

Meaning it is triangle sails, arranged fore-and-aft, designed to point high into the wind.  There’s hundreds of years of physics involved – we’re going to skip that part.

Another rig has thousands of years behind it, costs very little to deploy, is easy to repair, and uses sails we could make ourselves while underway.  Doesn’t this sound like an essential piece of equipment to take around the world?

We’re talking about a junk rig.

Developed in China about a million years ago, it’s a proven rig configuration and reefs easily in heavy winds with a shorthanded crew.  Also, when reefed, the center of effort (the combination of where the wind’s force hits all the sails) doesn’t move forward or aft, just down.  Thus, an increase in stability without changing the steering effect. It has no standing rigging (meaning no holes in the deck required for chainplates and more room to move around on deck in heavy weather) and no expensive parts like goosenecks.  If you have to replace a mast, you go onto an island, cut a tree down, and replace that mast.  Planting another tree, of course.

The slightly more modern variation is called the balanced lug.  We have more research ahead of us to figure out which will work best for us.

But we know the limitations of the Marconi rig and we’re ready to move on to a more intelligent design for our needs.  We don’t have support crew that flies into port to fix our gear.  We don’t have people with stop-watches checking our times.  We’ve chosen, again and again, for our greatest joy, to go slow and go cheap.  This is what works for us, and that means we need to look at getting a different boat.

The boat that we never changed the name of, that we always wanted to, that we put so much work into over the last 4 years.  That has taken us thousands of miles through the Chesapeake and up into Maine.  We’ve decided to sell this boat and get another in which we will have even more confidence.

We believe we can do this on the cheap.  Here’s one way: Boat Bits.

The thought of building our dream boat from a nightmare on the water doesn’t scare us in the least, shit, it’s what we did with the boat we’re on now!

The Gig

Then there’s a job opportunity that came up this past week.

I (James) quit the job at Mainers United for Marriage, rode the bike back to the park, rowed Tinker out to Nomad, jumped up into the cockpit and my phone rang…

This job would be $50k a year with all of our food, rent and utilities including phones and internet paid for.  We’d have offices and lots of free time for writing our books and working on whatever boat we choose to refurbish.

The ad read: Wanted.  A couple to co-manage an independent living senior community.

It’s exactly what you’re thinking.  An extended stay hotel with all meals, maid service, and lots of activities, all included in one monthly payment.

We would have to dedicate a lot of time to this, but in the time we spent in Baltimore, we could refurbish a boat with the rig of our choice and have enough left over to sail around the world in style.  The company has over 300 locations across the US and Canada.  We could go anywhere we want, including Victoria, BC, or St John, NB, or a location in WA or ME or CT or…

Ah, the choices.

Also, I (Dena) have been finding while working for Mainers United for Marriage that I really enjoy and connect with old folks.  I don’t like kids, and I really don’t like apathetic people in the ages I associate with passion – late teens and early twenties.  People who seem to know everything and are completely oblivious at the same time.  On the other hand, I’ve had dozens of great conversations with folks over 65.  Not all of them have been swayed by these conversations, but I’m amazed and impressed by their willingness to engage with me and consider changing their ideas.

That’s cool.

Fuck yeah.

So we applied.  Depending on how well you know us, you may or may not have an idea what that entailed.  We made a list of all the most important information given in the ad, including their favorite key words.  We combed their website, adding to the arsenal of nomenclature and our understanding of what they wanted to hear.  We brainstormed ideas on how we would handle some of the challenges they brought up.  And then we wrote a letter.

A seriously kick-ass letter.

That letter got us a call-back 48 hours later.  That was the phone call that James got the moment he reached the boat after quitting.

Serendipity, man.  Gotta love it.

So we did a phone interview and tore it up.  The woman who interviewed us lived in Key West, FL, and has dreamed of living on a sailboat all her life.  Oh, and she’s trying to write a book and is keeping our phone number in case she needs advice on either endeavor.  Yep, it worked on her.

We also did our usual trick of passing stories back and forth, working smoothly as a team.  After an hour and 20 minutes on the phone, we were all laughing and joking like we were old friends and she recommended us for the position.

Next step, having the same effect on the team of regional managers that wants to interview us.

They’re flying us to Charlotte, NC,  for a face-to-face interview on Thursday and we’re going to give it the old college try.  We bought suits.  We’re going to get hair cuts.  I (Dena) briefly considered a manicure, but that’s a can of worms I don’t really want to open.  We’re going for it.

We’ll do whatever it takes to continue living our dream.  This is our threek in the road.  We can have our friends pay our way around the world.  We can sell the boat and buy something dirt cheap in Nova Scotia, rebuild and continue from there on a shoestring junk rig.  Or we can work for the next 2-3 years, buy a boat at the location we choose to work in, and continue our adventures from there.