Zach's Trip

Conclusion

2007-09-02T13:03:00.000-04:00

8/29/07 – Chris loaned me her van for the day so I went over to the boat yard early in the morning. I got all of my belongings off and began cleaning and winterizing the boat. I went back to the Humming Rock to drop off some of my things. I called the US Airways because I could not find my flight information that I had aboard the boat and they told me that I was now on a flight departing Thursday rather than on Saturday, which I had been planning on. This meant that I had less than 24 hours to wrap up all I had to do with my boat. I rushed back to the marina and quickly cleaned everything, removed the engine and brought it over to the workshop to have them winterize and store it, and put non-toxic antifreeze in the water tank. I was planning on going on the boat of one of Mike’s friends for the Wednesday night races but I had to cancel in order to get everything done. I met Peter Galvin, the broker who is going to try to sell the boat and we discussed the best way to go about that. I went over to Chris and Mike’s house for a good dinner that her mother had made. Chris’ friend, Ady, came over after she was done babysitting at 10:00pm and the three of us took out three kayaks and paddled around the marshes in the area under the nearly-full moon. I went back to the Humming Rock when we got back and went to bed.

8/30/07 - Chris and Mike drove me to the airport and I flew back to Minneapolis.

Final Sail

2007-08-31T12:41:00.000-04:00

8/28/07 – Little Bird was over in Scituate Harbor so Chris and Mike decided to sail her back to Humarock and I decided to take Erica J out on a final sail. We both motored out of the harbor and put up all of our sails. We were completely becalmed so we just sat there in the water for a little while. I decided to go for a swim so I jumped in without even taking the sails down. I swam all around the boat and Chris kept telling me about the gigantic sharks that lived around there. I got back aboard and took down the sails and flaked them. I turned on the motor and began to go back in the harbor just as a little breeze came up. Little Bird slowly sailed back to Humarock while I motored through the Scituate mooring fields to Foster’s Rigging and Yacht Services boat yard. I tied up to the bulkhead and met one of the workers there. He told me that I could keep my mast up but that I needed to do a bit to prepare for the crane picking up the boat. I attached the main halyard to the main sheet and tightened it with a block and tackle as much as I could. I then took the backstay off and lashed it to the mast. This made more room for the lifting apparatus on the crane to sit over the boat. After their lunch break, a group of guys came over and put some slings under the hull and lifted her out. They pressure washed the hull and I scrubbed the topsides with a nifty chemical that the owner of the boat yard gave me. They then lifted the boat onto a trailer and towed her over to a corner of the yard. I began to take my things off and packed them into Chris’ van. I had promised to make a dinner for Mike, Mi Sun, Chris, and Mike so I left and went to the grocery store to buy supplies. I then went back to the Humming Rock to start mixing up the pasta sauce. They all came over and we had a good dinner and talked until late.

Dismasted!

2007-08-31T10:28:00.000-04:00

8/27/07 – Chris and Mike came up with the idea of taking both my boat and her boat, Little Bird, out on the ocean and taking pictures of both of them. It was a beautiful morning because the sun was out and there was a nice breeze, a perfect morning for a sail. We each got on our respective boats and motored down the South River and began riding the swift outgoing tide towards the North River inlet into the ocean. There was an east wind so it was blowing against the tide in the narrow inlet, conditions that all mariners know can create treacherous tall, square waves. Erica J was in the lead and I was able to slowly plod through them without much fear since I knew that the boat had endured much worse over this trip and that it would be far gentler as soon as we were out of the inlet. I turned my head fairly often to see how Little Bird was doing. I looked back after a particularly large wave and could not believe my eyes, Little Bird had been dismasted. I screamed an expletive and cranked my tiller over to turn around. The mast was laying over the cockpit so I was horrified that the heavy metal pole had hit Chris or Mike on its way down. As we got closer, I was relieved to see both of them looking just fine but with baffled expressions on their faces. Apparently the mast had come down right between their heads. I turned around again so I was following them and I called Chris on the phone since shouting was ineffective. We came up with several ideas but eventually decided to have both of us go to Scituate Harbor to avoid the treacherous inlet again. I followed them there and we found slips at the Scituate Marina. I helped them restep the mast with the toolkit in my boat. Mike had to walk to the local marine store to get a new pin but we were very surprised that the fix was so easy. She left her boat there and I went to a mooring in the harbor. I met Chris and her mother for a late dinner at a local restaurant called the Bridgwaye.

Radio Interview

2007-08-30T00:57:00.000-04:00

Here is an audio clip from the show "Nautical Talk Radio" with Captain Lou. His web site can be found at www.nauticaltalk.com

audio clip

Cruising in Seraffyn

2007-08-27T10:07:00.001-04:00

8/26/07 – Chris and Mike picked me up early this morning in their van. We picked up Michael Donahue and began the drive up to Salem, MA. There is a classic wooden boat show up there and Mike has a friend named George who owns Seraffyn, a wooden boat with an amazing history. She was built by a couple named Lynn and Larry Pardee and they sailed her around the world and wrote several books about their voyages. George wanted to bring his boat back to Scituate Harbor so Mike and I were going to sail down there with him. We got to the marina in Salem and looked ate some of the old wooden boats for a little while and then got on Seraffyn and cast off. As we were cruising out of the harbor, Mike called in to a radio program called Captain Lou’s Nautical Talk. He handed me the phone and I was interviewed live on the air about my sailing trip. We continued to sail through a relatively light breeze and finally had to turn on the engine about half way to Scituate because of a lack of wind. We got back to Scituate Harbor in the late afternoon and George dropped Mike and I off at the apartment where we met Chris, the other Mike, and Mi Sun. We all ate pizza and talked for quite a while and they asked me to show them some pictures of my sailing trip. We were all sitting on the couch looking through some photos when Chris shouted, “Go back! We [her father and her] built that boat!” I went back to a photo that my dad took in Connecticut of a neat looking tug boat and sure enough, it was one of four in the world that they had built. They eventually all left and I went to bed.

Sailing With New Friends

2007-08-25T23:16:00.001-04:00

8/25/07 – I woke up this morning and walked across the street to a little café that Chris recommended to me. I had pancakes, bacon, and eggs and then went back to the apartment. I did some laundry and went into the gift shop that Chris owns and she gave me a Humarock t-shirt. I walked across the South River to a little grocery store where I bought some lunch and went back to sit on the porch. In the afternoon, I went out sailing with Mike, Chris, and Chris’ husband, Mike. We came in as the sun was setting and Chris and I went to dinner at a local restaurant called the Mad Fish that had a porch overlooking the river.

Hospitality in Humarock

2007-08-25T23:10:00.000-04:00

8/24/07 – I woke up this morning and ate a breakfast of oatmeal. I had to wait a few hours to depart because I wanted to make it to the entrance of the Cape Cod Canal at slack tide, the time when the tidal current stands still. I went back to Parker’s marina and used the bathroom and then departed northward. Buzzards Bay was much choppier than the previous day because I had a good tailwind. I got to the Cape Cod Canal just as planned and the turning current carried me through in very good time. I had a great wind when I came out the other side of the canal and alternated between a beam reach and a broad reach for the rest of the afternoon. I was a little nervous because for the first time for the entire trip I didn’t have charts that gave me information about the waters that I was traveling on. I stayed a good distance offshore and paid close attention to all the information available to me and it worked out just fine. I came into the North River inlet at around 6:30 and met Mike Donahue on a pier in Humarock. He got aboard and we motored over to his friend’s floating dock in the South River. She was on the dock waiting for us and introduced herself as Chris. I gathered my things and got a ride to shore from a passing motor boat and we all went up to Chris’ house. She has an amazing view overlooking the river and the ocean. We then drove over to Mike’s house and his wife, Mi Sun, had made a delicious Chicken Parmesan dinner for us. We stayed there for quite a while and then Chris and her husband drove me to the shop that they operate in Humarock called Humming Rock Gifts and showed me to the upstairs apartment that they had offered me for a few days.

Cataumet

2007-08-25T23:04:00.000-04:00

8/23/07 – I got up this morning and it was cold and drizzling. I gathered all of my things at Max and Vicky’s house and filled my fuel tanks at the gas station. I departed at around 11:00am and sailed all the way to Cataumet. The tidal current through Woods Hole was very strong against me but I managed to get through just fine. I tried to buy some charts for the final leg of my trip at Parker’s marina in Cataumet but they were mistaken when they told me that they had some on the phone. I went out to a mooring and made myself some macaroni and cheese before going to bed.

Last Day in Hyannis Port

2007-08-25T23:03:00.000-04:00

8/22/07 – I came up with a plan to sail the boat up to Scituate, MA to a yard there and have her hauled. I will then have a broker try to sell the boat so I can go home. Since I had the plan, there was little for me to do during the day so I made some of the spaghetti sauce that the Kennedys liked last year. Bryan and I met Meaghan, Kaylee, and two of their friends in the evening and we all went to a local bar named Harry’s.

Meeting the Previous Owner

2007-08-25T23:02:00.000-04:00

8/21/07 – I spent the morning trying to work on selling my boat but still had no luck. Mike Donahue, the previous owner of the boat came to meet me in Hyannis Port. We went out for a sail and decided to stop at Baxter’s in Hyannis for a late lunch. I had the seafood platter which was delicious. We sailed back to Hyannis Port and I dropped him off at the dock and put the boat away.

Opera House Cup Regatta

2007-08-25T23:00:00.000-04:00

8/19/07 – I got up early this morning and took Jaya to the pier in anticipation of our early departure to Nantucket to race in the Opera House Cup, a big regatta for classic boats. I walked over to Max’s house and helped him figure out exactly what the wind and tides would be doing for the entire afternoon. Everyone was busy preparing for the race and we finally got going about an hour later than we had planned. We all got aboard Jaya and motored to Nantucket and hurriedly prepared Glide for the race and cast off. We got out to the harbor and tested out a few sail configurations but the race was postponed for about an hour due to the light wind. It finally got started and we witnessed a very dramatic collision between two large wooden boats on the starting line. We came in around the middle of the pack, which wasn’t too bad for a crew who hasn’t been on the boat in nearly a year. We moored Glide and took Jaya back to Cape Cod after a dinner in Nantucket. As we were coming in to the harbor, Max made a detour and we all went to Baxter’s to meet Vicky and some more of his guests. We stayed for a few minutes and then went back to Hyannis Port.

Voyage to Nantucket

2007-08-25T22:57:00.000-04:00

8/18/07 – Max had told Brian and I that the two of us would be sailing Glide over to Nantucket. During the morning, Max decided to captain the boat himself and bring a whole crew. I volunteered to drive Jaya, the 27’ fishing boat, over to Nantucket. I left Hyannis about two hours after they did and was bounced around quite a bit by large waves kicked up by a fierce wind. I saw Glide a little over half way to Nantucket. I came close to them and saw them beckoning me over. I came close and saw Max stripping down to jump in the water. He jumped in and I picked him up. He said that it was so rough that, “everyone is getting sick.” He came up with a plan to have the sickest people jump off Glide and have me pick them up on Jaya. They were terrified but jumped in and I picked them up. We drove Jaya out in front of Glide and Max jumped back into the ocean and made an amazing climb up the bow of Glide as she was bearing down on him. I took the folks on Jaya boat to Nantucket and dropped them off on one of the docks in town. I went back out in Jaya and realized that there was another round of seasick passengers. They also jumped into the ocean and I picked them up. I took them to a different dock in Nantucket before going out a third time. They were nearly in the harbor by then but there were a few passengers who wanted to get on the motor boat so that they could go to the bathroom sooner. I dropped them off at a dock and then motored over to Glide, who had just picked up a mooring. Max got on and drove us over to shore where he rounded up everyone who I had previously dropped off. Meanwhile, I went back out to Glide but just as I arrived, a huge boat came and people standing on the bow told me in a very stern voice that we were on their mooring. I had Brian take Jaya and motor around the harbor. I instructed Adam, the only other person on the boat, about how to grab the mooring when we got close. I had him cast off and I motored Glide around to grab a nearby mooring. We secured the boat and picked up Max on the shore. We needed to find a more permanent mooring so we did that with the little remaining light of the evening. We then got everyone on shore and took Jaya back to Hyannis Port for the evening.

Trying to Sell the Boat

2007-08-25T22:54:00.000-04:00

8/15/07 – I woke up on the boat this morning and dinghied in to shore. I went to Max’s house to do some more work trying to sell the boat on the internet. Kenny was leaving Hyannis Port to go back to Maine so he came over and said goodbye. I spent most of the day on the internet working on a way to sell the boat. Kevin Ward and Brando made a delicious dinner of pasta and we all watched a video that Brando had made with footage from last year. Brian and I talked with one of the nannies for a while before I went off to bed on the boat.

8/16/07 – I spent most of the day working on trying to sell my boat. In the evening, I went over to Chris and Sheila Kennedy’s house with Max’s family and Brian. We ate a pizza dinner there and then Brian and I left to pick up Meaghan, Kaylee, and Louise. The five of us went to the Foxhole until it closed and then went back to Hyannis Port.

8/17/07 – I again spent most of the day trying to find a way to sell my boat. In the evening, Brian and I went over to Kaylee’s house to play Apples to Apples with Kaylee, Nate, Louise, and Meaghan.

Cancellation

2007-08-25T22:48:00.000-04:00

8/14/07 – I got up and motored my boat to the pier. I began cleaning it out and then walked over to Max’s house. On the way there, I stopped at Teddy Shriver’s house to say goodbye to him; he was flying back to Miami for the year. I got a message from a guy who was going to come to Hyannis Port to look at my boat who canceled his appointment to see the boat. I went online and signed up for many new classified ads in the local newspaper and several web sites. I had to anchor my boat in the harbor since one of Max’s friends had taken the mooring that I was on while I was at the pier during the day. I was in an area that was not as protected because I was just outside the breakwater so I rocked all night long. I hung out with Kenny, Brian, and Sam Bacon on the pier in the evening and then went to bed.

Sailing With the Nannies

2007-08-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

8/13/07 – I got up and went ashore very early. I drove to Eddie’s hotel room but it was locked and I did not want to wake him up. I stopped at McDonalds on the way back to Hyannis Port and ate some pancakes and then continued on to Max’s house. I fell asleep on his couch and was awoken to Vicky coming down the stairs. She told me that it was ridiculous for me to sleep on the couch when there were empty beds upstairs. I went up and found a bed and took a nap. When I got up, I met up with Kenny and the nannies and we went on a sailboat ride for most of the afternoon. We sailed over to Osterville and back. I went back to Max’s house for a little while and relaxed. I walked down to the pier to see the sunset and met Brian there. I helped him put several of Max’s boats away and then he and I went to the bowling alley to meet the nannies. We all left after one game and I went out to my boat to sleep.

Football and Meteors

2007-08-25T22:39:00.000-04:00

8/12/07 – I rode a bike from Eddie’s hotel in Hyannis to Hyannis Port and went to the yacht club and then Max’s house. Max and his guests were going on a boat trip to Larry David’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. I stayed and hung out with Teddy and Kenny. We heard of a football game being planned at Senator Kennedy’s house so we walked over there. Several of the Kennedys were there so we joined them with a few other teenagers and played the most intense game of football I’ve ever played. After nearly every play there was a frenzy of activity that included insults, disputes, mocking, scolding, and celebration. It was a one-hand touch game but it ended up being the most physical game of football that I have every played. I got many bruises and my muscles and back were sore for several days afterwards. Kenny and I left and met some of the nannies that I knew from last year on our way back to his hotel. We ate dinner and then went down to the pier to meet some of the local kids and Teddy. After a while, I left in Kenny’s car to meet the nannies at a local bar called the 19^th Hole. There was a great meteor shower at night so one of the nannies named Meagan and I took Max’s dinghy out to my boat to watch it.

Sailing With Uncle Luke

2007-08-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

8/11/07 – Luke and I were woken up by the sunlight in the morning and it was a beautiful day. We motored over to the pier and then went out on a sail that took most of the morning. We got back to the mooring and took the dinghy back to the pier. We began to walk to Max’s house to pick up Luke’s bike but we met Vicky on the way there and she told us to take their truck again and go to Four Seas Ice Cream. We had forgotten Luke’s plane key on the boat so we made a short detour back out to the mooring field and then went to a burger stand next to Craigville Beach. After that, we took Vicky’s advice and went to Four Seas. I dropped Luke off at the airport and went back into Hyannis Port to drop off the truck. I met up with Kenny and Brian in the evening and we took one of Max’s boats, Jaya, over to Baxter’s restaurant where we had a few drinks. We came back and dropped Jaya off at her mooring and then went over to a house on Squaw Island where we hung out with a few of the local kids before going back to Eddie’s hotel room for bed.

Weird Cult

2007-08-25T22:35:00.000-04:00

8/10/07 – Today was cold and rainy so not much was going on outdoors. I went out to lunch with Kenny and Teddy to a place on Main Street called Common Ground. It is operated by members of a commune who work there without pay in exchange for room and board at their communal facility. I talked with one of the members named Tallyhoo (they all had weird names) for quite a while and learned that they were part of a religious organization called the Twelve Tribes. Since they are all volunteers, they can make very small children work in their various business endeavors without fear of breaking child labor laws so the members bring their kids to work. They told me that the kids are free to leave the society whenever they turn eighteen but I couldn’t help but think that there are very few opportunities for them with nothing but the weird commune home schooling that they receive. Everyone working there seemed to be in a trance so it was just very creepy. I will not be patronizing that restaurant again.

I went out to my boat to clean it up a bit and then came back to Max’s house. I borrowed his truck and drove to the Barnstable Municipal Airport to pick up my uncle Luke who was flying in. He got there and we stopped at a Brazilian restaurant in Hyannis. The servers walked around with ton of different types of meat on sticks and cut off a piece whenever you wanted one. It was delicious and we both got a stomach ache from eating too much. We drove back to Max’s house and dropped his truck off and then walked to the yacht club pier and took Max’s dinghy out to my boat to sleep.

Arriving in Hyannis Port

2007-08-25T22:31:00.000-04:00

8/9/07 – The wind had shifted overnight and had grown in intensity so that it was blowing right through the harbor entrance, bringing with it large and violent waves. Everything that was not secured on deck was sliding around so I had to get up in the middle of the night to lash everything down. I went back down below and finished the night with broken, restless sleep. I got up as soon as the sun rose and got the boat ready to go for the day. I cast off the mooring at about 7:00am and began my trip up Vineyard Sound. I had to motor for a good portion of the morning because I had a direct headwind and a current against me that would make tacking back and forth a futile effort. I put up the sails between Woods Hole and Hyannis and sailed into Hyannis Harbor at about 2:00pm. I had talked to Mikey, the Hyannis Port Yacht Club tender operator that I knew from last year, and he let me tie up to the yacht club’s floating dock for about an hour while I gave the boat a bath. While I was there, a power boat full of people came up and had a bit of trouble docking. I ran over to help them and heard a voice that I immediately recognized as that of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He and the Shrivers had been out at Egg Island for the afternoon. The tender operator told me to take Senator Kennedy’s mooring for the night since he was up in Maine with his boat for the weekend so I motored out and secured myself to the mooring. The tender picked me up and I went back to shore. Kenny drove me to his brother’s hotel room where I took a shower. Kenny and I ate dinner at a local burrito place and then drove over to Max Kennedy’s rental house. Troy, the guy I worked with last summer, just happened to be there at the same time that I was so we caught up and talked for a while. Max eventually showed up and I talked to him for a while too. Max’s new employee, Brian, arrived after a little while too. Kenny, Troy, Brian, and I went down to the pier and met Teddy Shriver and a few other local guys for a little while. Troy, Brian, and I left after a little while to go to the Foxhole, our favorite bar from last summer.

I went to Eddie’s hotel room to sleep and I found a spot on the floor next to the air conditioner. I fell fast asleep since I was so tired but woke up at about 3:00am, completely soaked. Apparently the air conditioner was dripping lots of water onto the carpet right next to my torso and then blowing very cold air right on top of me. I was about as cold and uncomfortable as I can remember being so I immediately went into the bathtub and turned on the hot water. After I got warm again, I went back and found a different spot on the floor that was drier and continued to sleep until morning.

Cuttyhunk

2007-08-10T17:46:00.000-04:00

8/8/07 – I woke up this morning and it was raining pretty hard and the wind was howling. I checked the weather and determined that I would be safe from thunderstorms so I donned my foul weather gear and left the dry, warm cabin to weigh anchor. The visibility was relatively poor but I was able to manage just fine. I rode the ebb current out of Long Island Sound through the passage called “The Race” due to its swift currents and sailed past Block Island. The waves on this leg of the trip were the largest I have seen on the trip but they were not a big deal since I was running with them rather than against them. I briefly saw Rhode Island in the distance as I passed but went most of the day out of sight of land. I made it to Cuttyhunk Bay at around 6:30pm, just in time for a rain squall to pass. My anchor was dragging so I weighed it and motored into the more protected inner harbor. I dropped anchor and had a shouting conversation with a guy names George in a neighboring boat. I went below but soon discovered that my anchor had yet again been dragging and I was nearly on the beach. I quickly motored to safety and went back out into the outer harbor to find another location as the twilight was fading. After several more failed attempts to set my anchor, I finally tied up to a mooring ball as the last rays of light disappeared.

Thick Fog

2007-08-10T17:41:00.000-04:00

8/7/07 – I slept in this morning and took a shower at the marina. I left at about 8:45am and found out that Long Island Sound was completely becalmed. I continued to motor all morning and the air began to get hazier. All of the sudden a thick bank of fog rolled in and engulfed the boat. I got out the air horn and sounded it at least once a minute to make my presence known to any other boaters in the area to avoid collisions. I heard several boats respond with their horns but only saw two of them when we passed very close to each other. I used my compass and my GPS to carefully navigate from one navigational aid to another until I arrived in Niantic Bay. I chose an anchorage that was right in between to major rocks in a spot that I was certain that no large or fast moving boats would be coming through because I knew that they would not be able to see me until the last minute.

Yale

2007-08-10T17:40:00.001-04:00

8/6/07 – My dad and I woke up this morning and ate a breakfast of oatmeal. We took a taxi to New Haven to see the campus of Yale University. I was very impressed with the elaborate stone work on all of the old buildings. We snuck into a tour group so we got some more information about the campus. After that, we went into the main library which was designed like a cathedral. We ate some pizza for lunch and then took a taxi back to Milford. We had a little bit of time before he had to leave to go back to New York City and it was hot so we walked up to the yacht club’s swimming pool. We got a seat in the shade in the breeze so we cooled down without even having to get in the water. His taxi eventually came and he left. I made some pasta for dinner and then read before going to bed.

Milford

2007-08-06T17:14:00.000-04:00

8/5/07 – My dad and I slept in today and then walked into town again. We ate breakfast at a local bakery and bought some bread and cheese to eat on the boat for lunch. We cast off at around noon and went to a big marina on the way out of the harbor to get some fuel. It was the most crowded harbor I have ever seen with boats coming and going so much that it was imperative that I paid very close attention to what I was doing. We got out of the harbor and continued up Long Island Sound. We decided to stop at Milford, a neat little town with a very crowded harbor where we tied up to a dock. We ate dinner at the Milford Yacht Club and then walked around the marina to look at some of the expensive boats.

I began talking to a guy named Joe, who owns a boat in the slip next to ours. He told us all about the local area, including how clams and oysters are caught and how we should use a particular shower in the clubhouse because he took the water saver out of it to increase the water pressure.

Leaving Manhattan

2007-08-06T17:04:00.001-04:00

8/4/07 – My dad and I awoke this morning and ate a breakfast of oatmeal. We had invited Margo to join us on the sail around Manhattan so we picked her up at the dock and departed. We went south, passing the skyline and the Statue of Liberty before turning north on the East River and going under the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and several other huge bridges. People had been warning me about the area called Hell Gate ever since I had left Florida and we came to it at around 9:00am. This area is infamous for extremely strong currents (up to five knots) and numerous eddies and horrendous chop kicked up by moderate breezes. Hundreds of ships have sunk there in the past few hundred years. I had planned our departure time from the marina so that our arrival at Hell Gate would coincide with slack tide, the time at which the tide-driven currents are still. We were a little bit late but not enough to make it dangerous so we passed through with ease. We dropped Margo off at a marina on City Island where she took a bus back to Manhattan. My dad and I continued along in Long Island Sound for the day until we got to South Norwalk. We got to a marina and took showers before walking into town. It just so happened that the day we were there was the weekend of the biggest city festival of the year: the SoNo Arts Celebration. We walked around and saw some of the booths before going to a local steakhouse for dinner. We got some ice cream before going back to the boat since the lady playing music at the main stage was not very good. We looked on the internet and found that another band was playing later that night so we waited until they started and then walked back over there. They were called Otis and the Hurricanes and were very good.

Sunset Cruise

2007-08-06T16:59:00.001-04:00

8/3/07 – Margo, my dad, and I got up early this morning so that my dad could see as much of the city as possible during his very short visit there. We rented bicycles in Central Park and did a six mile loop and then met a relative for lunch at a café in the park. After that we took the subway downtown and saw the World Trade Center site. Andy flew in that afternoon so we went back up to meet him and then all went to the marina where I had the boat stored. We met one of Margo’s friends named Sarah and the five of us went on a sunset cruise in New York Harbor. On the way back, there was lightning all around us so we hurried as fast as we could to get back to the marina before the storm hit. We dropped Margo, Andy, and Sarah off at the dock and then my dad and I went out to the mooring field and secured the boat about two minutes before the storm hit. There was lots of heavy rain, strong wind, and loud lightning but we had little to worry about in the mooring field. We watched the storm for a little while and then went to sleep.

Times Square

2007-08-04T21:36:00.001-04:00

8/2/07 – I slept in this morning and spent the morning doing my laundry and cleaning up Margo and Andy’s house. Margo flew in and arrived in the early afternoon. I went to the grocery store with her and then we went on a walk around her neighborhood and to the school where she teaches. My dad flew in later that afternoon and we met him at her house. All three of us took the subway down to Times Square and saw what was going on there. We decided to take a cycle rickshaw ride around so we flagged one down. That was a fun ride but the fellow was a very reckless driver; we weaved in and out of traffic and even knocked into the mirror of a big bus. We tried to go into a few ice cream shops but the lines were all very long so we decided to go back to Margo’s house and eat the ice cream that I had bought earlier that day.

Broadway

2007-08-02T11:02:00.000-04:00

8/1/07 – I slept in this morning since I got home so late the previous night. I ate a good breakfast and then took a walk around the neighborhood. I then came back to the apartment and did some laundry. I wanted to see a Broadway show but they are very expensive so I decided to try to enter a ticket lottery that some shows put on. I figured that I could be in the lottery for the show Wicked and then do another one about a half hour later. I began to get very discouraged when people kept coming until there was a huge crowd of at least a couple hundred people also looking to win this lottery for the twenty eight seats. I began talking to the group in front of me, two ladies and one of their husbands. The three of us came up with a ticket sharing scheme to increase the likelihood that some of us would be able to see the show. As luck would have it, both of the women were winners so they each got two front row tickets for $25 so all four of us were able to see the show. We had about two hours until show time so the four of us went to a restaurant that my aunt Margo gave me a gift certificate for called Havana Central. We went back to the theater and got our seats. I was surprised to learn that my seat was not only in the front row, but I was straddling the very center of the stage. The pit conductor came out and I chatted with him for a minute before it started. The show was amazing. I didn’t know anything about it beforehand except that it was a bit of background on some of the characters from the Wizard of Oz. I expected it to be dopey and mildly entertaining like the movie was but was very pleasantly surprised to see that it was an extraordinarily well developed story with very serious characters. Afterwards, I took the subway back to the apartment and went to bed.

Frank Marino

2007-08-02T11:00:00.000-04:00

7/31/07 – I got up this morning and ate some leftover pizza for breakfast. It has been months since I have used a microwave so I had nearly forgotten how convenient it is to have one. Andy had snuck out to the airport before I woke up so I was alone again. I took the subway down to the American Museum of Natural History where I spent most of the afternoon. I then walked into Central Park where I took an afternoon nap.

I have been wanting to see a musician named Frank Marino ever since he came to Madison a couple of years ago. I was very excited to learn that he would be playing at BB King’s Blues Club in New York City at the same time that I was in town. I took the subway to the club and was walking to the box office when I was stopped by two scraggly looking fellows. They told me that their buddy couldn’t make it to the show and that I could buy his ticket for $20. They had arrived far longer than me so they had some of the first choices for tables. I accepted this offer and we went to the bar to wait for the doors to open. This was a dinner club so we were seated at tables in front of the stage. On the way in, they gave everyone a very thorough pat down to make sure they were not carrying any contraband. My table was in the second row so I was about fifteen feet from the stage. The cheapest thing on the menu was still very expensive so I ordered a couple of drinks to fulfill the ten dollar minimum purchase per person and took what the door men must have assumed to be a “smoke break.” I walked across the street to McDonalds where I ate a filling meal for five dollars and went back to the club a much happier person. The show started promptly at 8:00pm and lasted about three and a half hours with no intermission. I went to the bathroom at one point and they had a guy in there whose job was to squirt soap on your hands and hand you a paper towel. The show was one of the best I have seen and I had a great time.

After the show, I met up with a friend of mine named Jeff Polley who lives in New York. We went to a couple of bars and he had all sorts of interesting stories about the work he’s been doing recently. We finally parted at about 3:30am and I got on the subway back up to Margo and Andy’s house. I was very tired and it was a long train ride so I fell asleep almost immediately.

Change of Plans

2007-08-02T10:59:00.002-04:00

7/30/07 – Andy left early this morning for a business conference. Paul and I went over to Central Park where we saw the John Lennon memorial among other things. Paul had to catch his plane back to Rochester, MN so he took the subway to LaGuardia while I walked back across Central Park. Andy called me that evening and told me that his flight had been cancelled after being postponed all day so he was coming home. A few seconds later, I got a call from his wife telling me that she had made dinner reservations at a Greenwich Village restaurant for Andy and me. We went to this place called the Chow Bar and had a good dinner before walking around the Village.

Exploring New York

2007-08-02T10:59:00.001-04:00

7/29/07 – Paul and I left the house in the morning and got on the subway. We fell asleep and missed our stop so we got off at the following stop in Brooklyn. It was raining but was otherwise a nice day so we bought really cheap umbrellas and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. We walked to the World Trade Center site and went to the visitor’s center there. We then did a bit more walking around before heading back up to Margo and Andy’s house. Andy, Paul, and I ate some pizza from a local pizza place named Fivo’s while we watched a documentary on the Enron fraud.

Daysailing

2007-08-02T10:57:00.000-04:00

7/28/07 – I got up early this morning because I was taking Andy and two of his friends on a sailboat ride around New York Harbor. I took the subway down to the World Trade Center stop and then took another train under the Hudson River to New Jersey. There were no taxis around so I just walked to Liberty State Park from the train station. I arrived about an hour later and a big black fellow named Charlie was putting his nice fishing boat in the water. I went down to talk to him and asked him f I could bum a ride out to my sailboat when he departed. I helped to get the boat off the trailer and then we cast off the dock as another boat was backing down the adjacent ramp. As soon as a woman stepped out of the passenger seat, Charlie got very excited and began to utter grand explanations about how great her bosom, among other things, was. I was a bit confused by this since the woman in question much more closely resembled Jabba the Hutt than Helen of Troy. He proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes slowly circling the area while I sat helplessly on the bow waiting for the 100 yard ride to my boat. Perhaps swimming would have been a better idea after all. I finally got to the boat far behind schedule, untangled the anchor lines, and set out. I had planned to do the trip up to the 79^th Street Boat Basin at slack tide but since I was behind schedule, it took far longer than I had expected. I finally made it up there and met Andy, Paul, and Andy’s two friends, Angela and Talus.

They had seen a helicopter make an emergency landing right next to them in a baseball diamond so as we were preparing to leave, they all talked to a New York Times reporter who later wrote an article quoting Andy. When that was finished, we went out on the boat and sailed all the way down to the Statue of Liberty and motoring back against the current. I decided to keep the boat on a mooring there even though it was expensive because I wouldn’t have to worry about it at all for the remainder of the week. Paul, Andy, and I went back to his house and rested a bit before Paul and I went to Pangea for dinner, a restaurant that my aunt, Margo, suggested for us. We then continued to walk around the East Village for a while before going back to bed.

Swimming in the Hudson

2007-07-31T10:04:00.000-04:00

7/27/07 – We got up this morning and packed our bags to prepare to go ashore. I dropped Paul and my bag on a dock on shore and I took the boat back out to the anchorage where I set both anchors. As I was about to jump in the filthy Hudson River, I heard Paul call out to me, saying that there was a small colony of rats living in the rock pile that I was planning on climbing up to get ashore. I only hesitated for a moment before realizing that my other option was to pay extraordinary amounts of money to dock in New York Harbor so I quickly jumped into the quagmire and made it ashore.

I put a shirt on and then we walked over to a guy that was fishing to ask him where the nearest place to get public transportation was. His name was Ralph and he told us that it was a very long walk but that he would be happy to give us a ride part of the way. We got into his van and he dropped us off at the end of a path that appeared to lead into a junkyard. We walked down the path and over a short bridge going over an awful smelling swamp. We finally made it to the New Jersey Transit light rail line and took that to a train station. We got on a train that took us under the Hudson River and into Manhattan. We ate lunch at a pizza place and then went to my uncle Andy’s office to pick up the keys to his house.

We took the subway up there and dropped our stuff off and I took a shower to wash the Hudson River off me. We then took the Subway back down and visited Chinatown. We were getting hungry so we decided that the one criterion for a good Chinese restaurant was its dumpiness. We finally found the perfect restaurant: the shadiest little nook of a restaurant that we had ever seen. The food was delicious. Then we went to Little Italy and bought a cannoli. We then went over to Times Square before heading up to Margo and Andy’s house to go to bed.

Sailing Into New York Harbor

2007-07-31T09:52:00.002-04:00

7/26/07 – Paul and I woke up this morning and got going early so we would have a fair current when we reached New York Harbor. We motored through a canal and under several bridges to the Manasquan inlet where we left the Intracoastal Waterway and continued northwards. The wind was nearly dead calm so we were forced to motor most of the way to New York. Entering the harbor through the Verranzo Narrows Bridge was one of the greatest feelings I have ever had. We motored up the harbor and dropped the anchor directly between Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, just outside the security zones surrounding each. I had called the Coast Guard and the state police the previous day to make sure that I would not be breaching any laws by anchoring here and both of them told me that they were not aware of any regulations that I would break before telling me to call the other agency for the definitive answer. The view was spectacular but the wind and passing boats made the surface a bit choppy so we decided to move so that we would be in the lee of an island. I checked my charts to make sure that the water was not too shallow and that I would not breach any of the numerous security zones in the area before we motored over there. Less than 60 seconds after we dropped the anchor in our new location, a large and fast police boat came screaming towards us with its lights flashing. They were not happy because I was apparently in a prohibited area. I decided that no good could come from debating my position so I just weighed anchor and went back to our original spot. We stayed there enjoying the scenery until evening when we decided to move to a protected basin right behind the Statue of Liberty. As we were motoring in, a different police boat came speeding down the channel right towards me with his lights flashing. I was even more certain than before that I was not breaking any laws so I was beginning to get upset. Luckily, he sped right past me and went to the end of the basin where a NYPD helicopter and a CBS news helicopter were circling. We never figured out what was going on. We ate a dinner of pasta and then sat and looked at the city for a while before going to bed.

Bay Head

2007-07-31T09:52:00.001-04:00

6/25/07 – Paul and I got up and weighed anchor at about 9:00am and motored and sailed throughout the day. We got to a neat little town called Bay Head at around 4:00pm and got some fuel at a marina. We then motored out into the harbor, anchored, and ate dinner. In the evening, we swam ashore and walked into town to buy some eggs and Slurpees from the Seven Eleven. We swam back to the boat and sat out on deck for a while before going to bed.

Surf City

2007-07-31T09:51:00.000-04:00

6/24/07 – Paul and I got up this morning and got going on the Intracoastal Waterway. We went through some more neat little seaside villages and anchored in the harbor of Surf City. It was a very picturesque little anchorage and we had a good pasta dinner before going to bed.

Crew Change

2007-07-25T22:18:00.000-04:00

6/23/07 – I woke up this morning and was disappointed to hear strong wind and heavy rain outside the boat. I told Kenny that he could stay below while I sailed for the few hours until we got to Atlantic City. We wandered through some very windy canals and went under many bridges to get to Atlantic City. We finally arrived at our dock and promptly got warm showers. I took a taxi cab to the Verizon store to get a replacement for my broken phone. We walked around the downtown for a bit and then Kenny took a bus to New York City to meet his sister. I walked around town for the afternoon and then went to the casinos in the evening while I waited for my friend, Paul, to get into town. He got there and we took a cab back to the marina and went to bed.

Rough Day

2007-07-23T17:26:00.001-04:00

6/22/07 – Kenny and I ate a breakfast of oatmeal this morning and weighed anchor at about 8:00am to get on the ocean. We went out the Cape May inlet and had a 20 knot wind that was from the northeast, exactly the direction that we wanted to go. We tacked several times but made five hard-fought miles toward our destination in four hours. We finally decided that enough was enough and turned around back towards Cape May. We flew there with the wind at our backs and took the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway north. My charts say, “Vessels that draw more than five feet and have a bridge clearance of more than 34 feet can not pass through this section. I draw four feet (no problem) but my bridge clearance is about 32 feet, something to worry about at high tide, which it was. The reason I decided to avoid this section of the ICW in the first place was the long, winding path and numerous bridges that I either barely fit under or had to have opened for me. I had about six inches of clearance from the top of my mast (my flexible antenna hit but that’s why it’s flexible) going under the first bridge and the tide was still rising with two other bridges to go. I slipped under the second bridge with about four inches to spare. The third bridge was the closest with what we estimated to be about two inches…we really hoped that no wakes would come while we were passing through. We tried to motor into a creek to anchor but the entrance ha shoaled since my chart was published so we ran aground. We backed out and found another place to drop the hook and had a great pasta dinner while we watched what both of us agreed was one of the best sunsets either of us had ever seen.

Delaware Bay to Cape May

2007-07-23T17:01:00.000-04:00

7/21/07 – I woke up this morning and weighed anchor at 5:30am. I wanted to take advantage of the three knot ebb current for the journey to Cape May and keep from being stranded in the middle of the bay when the current switched. We cruised at record speeds because of the currents and made it to Cape May in the early afternoon. We motor sailed through the Cape May Canal and made it into Cape May Harbor at about 2:00pm. We picked up some fuel at a local marina and then anchored just east of the Coat Guard station right next to the main channel that serviced the harbor. I was a bit unhappy with the spot I had chosen but there were few other options that would be suitable. I set out a second anchor to deal with the strong tidal currents ripping through the Cape May inlet. The anchorage soon filled in with other boats and there was a constant flow of boats traveling by us in the channel. We ate a dinner of pasta with pesto sauce and then enjoyed the picturesque harbor during sunset. A very good band started playing across the bay from us and the sound carried perfectly over the water so we sat on deck and listened to them for a little while. It has been getting a bit chilly the past two nights so I had to dig in the v-berth for the fleece pants I brought with me for the first time this summer.

Chesapeake and Delaware Canal

2007-07-23T16:47:00.000-04:00

7/20/07 – I got up early and weighed anchor at about 5:45am. Kenny continued to sleep for the first several hours of the day; he said that sleeping under sail was extremely restful due to the gentle rocking, a sensation that would make most people sick. We had a great wind of about 15-18 knots and were on a close reach for the remainder of our time in the Chesapeake Bay. We entered the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, a waterway that connects the Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware Bay, in the early afternoon. I had to time it properly so that the very strong tidal currents would be pushing us along rather than hindering us. I usually cruise at around five knots under power (you are not allowed to raise sails in the canal) so a 2-3 knot current makes it imperative that a slow boat plans their transit accordingly. We made it through and anchored behind Reedy Island. I knew that the currents in the Delaware Bay were just as strong as in the canal so I set two anchors so that the other would hold me when the tide switched.

Kenny made some pasta for dinner and we watched a great sunset and some of the best stars I’ve seen this entire trip.

Slipping By a Storm

2007-07-19T22:57:00.000-04:00

7/19/07 – We woke up at anchor this morning and motored into Herrington Harbor South to get some fuel. I talked with a guy named Bill that offered to let me use his facilities pass (this is a resort marina) if I were to stay there. I declined, partly because I could never afford to stay there but also because I need to make good time to Atlantic City, NJ. I found out that there was a West Marine at the other branch of Herrington Harbor, about two miles away on the opposite side of Herring Bay. We motored over there and I was disappointed to find out that the book I wanted was not there. We sailed out of the harbor and continued sailing for most of the morning. There was a storm system coming through but the severe portion of it was down near the Potomac River, well south of us. We continued along and just got a little sprinkle and a great tailwind for the remainder of the day. We passed Baltimore and anchored in a nice little harbor and watched another great sunset.

Herring Bay

2007-07-19T21:14:00.001-04:00

7/18/07 – We woke up and were still being bounced around by the waves. We ate a quick breakfast of oatmeal and then got going. We were able to sail out of the harbor but as soon as we made it out, the wind promptly died. We turned on the motor and continued along for a few minutes but I was confused as to why we weren’t going faster than we were. A look down the transom revealed the problem: I was dragging a fisherman’s pot. I got out the gaff hook and got it untangled and the performance was greatly improved. The wind continued to be light and variable so we had the sails down for the majority of the time. We anchored in Herring Bay and watched a sailboat race as we were eating dinner. It was a relief to be in a good anchorage in the lee of a wooded shoreline. We watched a good sunset and did a bit of reading before bed.

Crossing the Potomac

2007-07-19T21:12:00.000-04:00

7/17/07 – Kenny and I ate some oatmeal for breakfast and then weighed anchor. We motored through the Milford Haven harbor and tried unsuccessfully to buy fuel at two marinas but one was closed and one only sold diesel fuel. We continued along until we got to Deltaville, where we stopped at a marina that sold us fuel and ice and let us use their courtesy car to drive a few miles to buy some groceries. We got going again at about 11:00am and motored north for the afternoon and evening. We had a very light north wind all day so the sails would have been useless. I dropped the anchor just west to Lookout Point, knowing that the light north wind would put us in the lee of the point and make for a very comfortable anchorage. As soon as we had finished our dinner of pasta, the wind began blowing at around ten knots from the south. We had about fifteen miles of open water directly to the south of us so we began being tossed around by the ever increasing waves. We both had a cigar in recognition of the fact that we had just crossed into Maryland and then sat and relaxed before going to bed. It was a very rough night. We were bounced around so much that I sometimes had to hang on to keep from rolling out of my bed.

Into the Cheapeake Bay

2007-07-19T21:07:00.000-04:00

7/16/07 – We walked over to a breakfast restaurant this morning and got filling but cheap breakfast. We cast off from the marina and motor sailed out of Norfolk Harbor. We had a hot day but there was a good tailwind of 5-10 knots that pushed us about 53 miles. I decided to make a risky entrance to a perfect anchorage despite very shallow shoals. I was able to make it through without touching once. We had a dinner of pesto and mandarin oranges and listened to some music before going to bed.

Kenny Arrives

2007-07-19T21:06:00.000-04:00

7/15/07 – I woke up and began talking to the guy on the boat next to mine. He had a Leopard 40, a neat catamaran that I had seen in Thunderbolt, GA when my grandpa was with me. The guy was pretty nice and told me about his trip. My friend, Kenny, arrived this morning and took a taxi from the airport to the marina. He came aboard and we began stowing his things aboard but it was so hot that we decided to wait until evening. We went to lunch and then began walking around downtown Norfolk. We then went back to the boat and read and talked for most of the afternoon before walking over to dinner at a sports bar. We then walked back to the boat and read before going to bed.

Guest Entry: Kathy Bassett

2007-07-19T10:09:00.000-04:00

Tuesday July 10, 2007

Norfolk, Va.

When Zach and his siblings were young I often read to them a story called, The Runaway Bunny, in which Mommy Bunny did whatever necessary in order to follow her Baby Bunny when he tried to get away from her. Later, as they dreamed about where they themselves would go someday I reminded them, “Remember the Runaway Bunny!” And so, on July 10, I flew out to the east coast to visit my son during his sailing adventure.

Zach’s sister Shannon and I arrived in Norfolk, Virginia on the afternoon of July 10 eager to see Zach and his boat. Zach and I had agreed that I’d be more comfortable sleeping in a hotel rather than on his boat so he planned to stay in Norfolk during my visit. In the time that it took for me and Shannon to go up to our room, drop our bags, and return to the lobby, the skies opened up. We were soaked to our undies by the time we arrived at the marina to find Zachary, who was wearing nothing but a swimsuit and lots of facial hair. It was so good to see my boy!

After Zach endured a long, wet hug from his mother the three of us traipsed down the dock to Zach’s slip and there she was, the Erica J. I had seen pictures of the boat, but standing next to it, it looked a little smaller than I had expected. With the rain still coming down hard, Zach instructed Shannon and I to rush inside as soon as he opened the hatch so he could close it up quickly and avoid having all of his belongings soaked…again. Lots laughter, a flurry of activity, and suddenly the three of us were standing inside, afraid to sit down since we were all soaking wet and the seating area was covered with navigational maps, fraying straw hats, a jar of half-eaten pasta sauce, and a few dollar bills laid out to dry. Did I say standing inside? There was just enough floor space for our three pairs of feet, and just enough head room for us each to hunch over—way over—if our knees were bent. There was no room for any of us to move. It was hilarious!

With me sitting on the step/cooler and Shannon sitting on my lap, I watched my 6’7” son contort his body in this very small space in order to put on a t-shirt. I tried to see past him to the head and the v berth, but with the three of us in the cabin this was impossible. The only way I can imagine Zach being able to stretch out while he sleeps is by putting his feet in the sink.

Sopping wet and squeezed into that dimly lit and cluttered little cabin one thing was crystal clear: Zach was completely content with his living quarters, was very self-sufficient, and was quite pleased with how his adventure was unfolding. I was so happy to see this! I was also happy that I was staying in a hotel. We left three wet spots in the public transportation van while returning to the hotel to dry off before dinner.

To demonstrate the physical dimensions of the boat’s living quarters, below is a picture of Zach standing on the floor of the cabin (on a drier day) with the hatch wide open. One can imagine how he folds himself up once inside.

Wednesday, July 11

Norfolk, Va.

The highlight of the day was a tour of the Norfolk Harbor aboard Zach’s boat. Although we tried to put up the sails for a bit, there wasn’t much wind and there was quite a lot of commercial traffic so we motored most of the time. It was really fun! We saw a number of huge ships in dry-dock, and many military vessels. Shannon and I were also fascinated with the jellyfish.

I planned ahead for the heat and wore my swimsuit and a wide-brimmed hat. Forty minutes into our ride, with Shannon basking in the sun on the bow and Zach handling the tiller looking cool as could be, I had resorted to dipping an empty water bottle into the salt water and sprinkling myself. After 42 minutes I was repeatedly dumping salt water directly on top of my head.

When we finished our tour of the harbor—which I really did enjoy—I dashed into the air-conditioned building next to the marina and drank cold water. I followed this with a mercifully cold shower in the marina locker room. Zach seemed to have anticipated my limitations more than I did. He was prepared to join us at the hotel and do some sight-seeing during our visit. At home he normally uses brown paper grocery bags as luggage. Since his current home is surrounded by (and occasionally filled with) water, he has graduated to using large ziplock bags to transport his few possessions. The man lives simply!

At night we enjoyed dinner in a neighborhood seafood restaurant on a small inlet away from downtown.

Thursday, July 12

Virginia Beach, Va.

We spent the day at the beach! We swam; we snoozed; we saw dolphins! It was a perfect day. The fighter jets flying overhead every so often added a Star Wars effect to the scene. Zach stepped on a lady while trying to fly a kite.

On the boardwalk in Virginia Beach we saw an unmistakable resemblance between Zachary and Poseidon.

Friday, July 13

Berkley Plantation, somewhere near Williamsburg,Va.

After a pleasant drive through the countryside, we visited a plantation rich in history. Shannon was impressed that most of our first presidents had been hosted at this home; I was impressed that thousands of Union soldiers had camped on the grounds; Zach was impressed because the distillation of bourbon was perfected here. Go figure!

We ended the day by having what should have been a relaxing dinner. Instead, Shannon and Zach had a contest to see who could eat the most breadsticks at Olive Garden. I was so proud.

Saturday, July 14

Williamsburg, Va.

By the time Shannon and I boarded the plane to return home this evening, we were pretty tired. Zach spent the entire day with us at Colonial Williamsburg. Yes, this was my idea, but Shannon and Zach seemed to enjoy it too.

When Shannon and I arrived in Norfolk Zach had just passed the 1000 mile mark on his journey. The buoy below, in the Norfolk Harbor, is mile marker zero on the intracoastal waterway that has brought him this far north. It was a pleasure and a privilege to meet up with him during his adventure, even if I wimped out on the sailing!

Norfolk, VA

2007-07-13T21:43:00.000-04:00

7/10/07 – I woke up and ate a granola bar for breakfast. I saw Robert arrive at the lock so I walked over there and met him at the gate. He invited me in and showed me around the lock facilities. We walked into the little house that they have there and he brewed some coffee and told me some interesting stories about some close calls that have happened during his thirteen years as a lockmaster. He borrowed my handheld VHF radio to go operate the bridge (he does double duty: the adjacent bridge and the lock) and I went back to my boat to get ready to cast off. He opened the doors and I went into the lock chamber with David and Anita and one other boat. Outside of the lockmaster’s house, there is a garden with banana trees and is the ground is littered with huge conch shells that have been left by sailors coming north after a winter in the Caribbean. Robert claimed that he was the world’s best conch shell player and he picked one up and began blowing into it. We all left the lock and continued the few miles into Norfolk. We were joined by many big sportfishing boats when we got to the part where the people who took the Virginia Cut route joined us who had taken the Great Dismal swamp route. They were doing some construction on some of the bridges so we had to wait for a little while to get through. Going past the huge naval yard there was really neat. I made it to a marina in Portsmouth where the service department was going to change my oil. They had to go buy some parts but promised that it would be finished in a couple of hours. I went to eat lunch at a local restaurant and went to a maritime museum right on the water, where the doorman was so happy about the trip I was doing that he let me in for free. I finally went back to the marina and looked at my boat. It had been three hours since I arrived and they had not started my oil change so I just left. As I was in the middle of the river on my way to Norfolk, the skies opened up and it began pouring very hard. I made it into Waterside Marina and tied up. My mom and sister showed up pretty soon afterwards and I showed them the boat. I think my mom was less than impressed with the accommodations on the boat and was very happy that she is staying in a hotel. We went back to the hotel and went to a restaurant for dinner.

Into Virginia

2007-07-13T21:40:00.000-04:00

7/9/07 – I woke up this morning at the North Carolina Visitors Center and ate some breakfast. I went up to the office where they had a boaters’ book exchange and exchanged some of the books that I have finished reading. I cast off at around noon so I could make the 3:30pm bridge opening at Deep Creek. I continued up the Dismal Swamp Canal and made it to the bridge right on time. I went through and tied up to a free dock on the other side of it but before I got to the lock. I walked over to the auto parts store but they had trouble figuring out which spar plugs should be put in my engine. I got frustrated and left without buying anything. I went over to a local Mexican restaurant where they had some good and cheap food. I saw David and Anita there and they invited me over to their table so I ate with them. The lock master, Robert, walked over to my boat in the evening and told me that I should come over in the morning before he opened the lock for me to go through.

Great Dismal Swamp

2007-07-13T21:21:00.000-04:00

7/8/07 – I got up this morning and went to a local coffee shop that had free wireless internet that I could use. I ate a croissant and had a few glasses of cold milk. I was tempted to attend the 8:00am mass at the local historical Baptist church since I am told that that would be a true learning experience in the south but decided that I was raggedy enough that they would immediately know that I don’t belong there, which is completely true. I walked back to the dock and Tom and Karen helped me untie and cast off. I motored up the windy river until I got to the Dismal Swamp Canal. I had to go through a lock which raises boats eight feet to the dismal swamp. I was told that the locks on either side of the Dismal Swamp are to negate the effects of the difference in tides on the bodies of water that border the Dismal Swamp. In the locks in Minnesota, lines are provided for boats going through so I was surprised to find out that the boats needed to provide their own lines in the Great Dismal Swamp locks. I hurriedly got bow and stern lines out while I was motoring into the lock and got them secure by the time the doors were shut. I made it through the lock and continued through the narrow canal. I learned that this canal was dug by hand with slave labor in the 18^th century and that many of the slaves that dug the canal escaped during the end of their job. I stopped at the North Carolina Visitors Center, a highway rest stop that is right on the Intracoastal Waterway and provides free docking for transients. I walked up to the office and signed their guest book. I noticed that Gary and Tonie had passed through recently. I walked back down to the dock and met the owners of the other boat that was there, a 1978 Morgan 41. They introduced themselves as Anita and David. They live aboard their boat full time in southern Florida and are making their first trip north to the Chesapeake Bay. I talked with them for a while and they offered to let me ride one of their foldable bicycles into town, about five miles away. I accepted their offer and departed. I was exhausted after about two miles, partly because I am out of shape and partly because the foldable bicycles with tiny wheels sacrifice an enormous amount of efficiency for the ability to fold them into a tiny package. I finally got to town and bought a cold lemonade and some ice for my cooler. I made it back and continued talking to the folks on the dock. There were a good number of highway travelers who walked down to the docks to see what was going on but most of them were idiots. A flotilla of three large cruisers floated in and tied up the dock as well. The owner of the biggest cruiser, Corey, came back and offered to give me electricity to run a fan in my boat overnight. I told him that I had neither a cord nor a fan so I would have to decline his offer. He frowned and told me that he would loan me his fan and cord for the night. I walked back and had a cold beer with David and continued talking about boats and sailing for quite a while. One of the wives from the big cruisers walked over and invited all three of us to a homemade dinner of southern jambalaya. I excitedly accepted but David and Anita already had a pizza in their oven so they declined. I walked over and ate a hearty meal of garlic bread, salad, and spicy shrimp jambalaya that was delicious. We all ate quickly and retired to our boats because the yellow flies were beginning to swarm. I have bloody bite marks all over my feet and ankles.

Elizabeth City

2007-07-08T09:08:00.000-04:00

7/7/07 – I woke up this morning and ate a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. I weighed anchor and continued north on the Alligator River. I was very confused by some of the channel markers that had been moved since the publication of my charts but none of the water appeared to be shallower than my boat draws so I just went straight through the middle. I crossed Albemarle Sound but the weather was too calm to sail early on. I just set my autopilot on a heading and sat back to relax for a few hours. The wind finally picked up when I got to the Pasquotank River on the other side of the sound. I set both sails and continued for another few hours. In the afternoon, I passed a strange looking old building that I read was an old dirigible hangar from World War II that is currently being used by a blimp manufacturing company. I got to Elizabeth City in the late afternoon and was not exactly sure where to go. I had read that they have city docks that can be used for free but was not sure which ones they were. I was motoring around looking confused when I saw an old man waving me over and pointing to a slip. I decided that this must be the right place. I tied up to the four pilings with the help of the old dockmaster and a fellow boater. The old fellow was a cheerful old man who wore a baseball cap that read WWII VETERAN. He told me all the good restaurants in town and was very helpful. I walked around for a bit and stopped at a burger joint for dinner. I walked around for a little while longer and then headed back to the boat. As I was about to climb aboard, I began talking to the family on the boat right next to me. They invited me over and introduced themselves Tom and Karen. They and their two sons, Zack and Caleb, took a year to sail their 47 foot sailboat down to the Caribbean and back. They homeschooled the kids and have plenty of great stories from their past year. They are also keeping an internet record of their voyage at www.sailthalia.com. I learned that they had some difficulty with the same channel markers earlier in the day but it was a bigger problem for them since they draw much more than me. They told me all the best places to go along my route before I headed back to my boat. I called my dad to wish him a happy birthday and then walked over to a nearby bar where they had a reggae band playing.

Alligator River

2007-07-08T08:59:00.001-04:00

7/6/07 – The sun woke me up this morning again so I got up and ate oatmeal for breakfast. The wind had shifted during the night so I was no longer on the windward shore; the waves were able to build up for miles before they hit me so it was a bit of a rough location. I got underway at about 9:30am. I raised the main, weighed anchor, and sailed out of the Belhaven harbor. I sailed for about two hours before I got to a narrow canal. There was a bridge with a big dredging barge right under the center span. They would not answer my calls to them on the radio to see if I could get by so I took down the sails and slowly motored up to them. They gave no acknowledgement of my presence for several minutes but then moved so I could get by. The canal continued for about twenty miles. When I was about halfway through, I saw clouds and heard thunder. I could not get the NOAA radio broadcast because I was out of range and I could not get cell phone reception either. I took the sails down again and fastened everything down in preparation for a storm. It began raining extremely heavily and lightning was all around but there was very little wind, which surprised me. It passed over in about an hour and the sky cleared up again. I exited the canal and entered the Alligator River for the evening. I picked out an anchorage near the windward shore and ate some macaroni and cheese for dinner. There is another thunderstorm just to the east of me. I could hear it and see lots of lightning but it doesn’t seem to be moving towards me. It looked really cool just after the sun had set because it was still illuminated in brilliant orange light while everything else was getting very dark.

I put the screens up to keep the bugs out but soon realized that I had trapped more flies inside the cabin than were out on deck. I opened the screen to try to get them out but they seemed very content to stay inside. They kept waking me up throughout the night because they were very loud and they used my face as a trampoline every few minutes.

Sailing to Belhaven

2007-07-08T08:53:00.000-04:00

7/5/07 – I had to get up early because there was a charter fishing boat right next to the restaurant who was leaving at six o’clock. I had to move my boat over in the slip so he had room to get out. I put the boat back after he left and went back to sleep for a short time. I got up at about 7:30 and ate breakfast and cast off. I immediately regretted not going for a morning swim because I could feel that it was going to be a warm day. I stopped at a marina in Beaufort to get some fuel. As I was pulling in, I heard my name shouted and I looked over to the opposite bank and saw the guitar player from the night before waving at me. I waved back and wished him a good day. I got my fuel and began my way north. There were some narrow canals for the first five or ten miles so I motored through those but then they opened up into huge rivers and sounds. Tonie and Gary passed me early in the day so we all waved at each other as they went by. I had a south wind at 10-15 knots…absolutely perfect for sailing. I turned off my motor at about 10:30am and never turned it on again for the rest of the day. This was the best sailing day I have had this whole trip by far, I averaged over 6mph which is absolutely amazing for my boat. I got to the place where I had planned to anchor at around 5:00pm but I was having such a great time sailing and making such good progress that I decided to go until sunset. I made it to Belhaven, a record 70 miles in one day. I dropped my jib right inside the town’s breakwater and sailed under my mainsail across the town’s waterfront and threaded a needle through some shoals before heading up into the wind and dropping the hook. I felt like a true sailor.

Fourth of July

2007-07-08T08:46:00.000-04:00

7/4/07 – I woke up this morning and went for a swim off the dock. The water was very nice so I stayed out in the channel for about a half hour. I then went back to the boat to dry off and eat breakfast. Gary and Tonie had woken up and were preparing to cast off. I chatted with them for a few minutes and they took me on a tour of their boat. After living on Erica J. for over a month, their boat, Bear With Me, seemed like the Taj Mahal. I said farewell and helped them cast off. I walked into town and got a newspaper and brought it back to the restaurant to read it on the porch. When that was done, I walked over to a place nearby and got a cheeseburger for lunch and then came back to take a nap, my first of the trip. I took another swim when I woke up and talked to one of the waitresses who was sitting on the dock. She left to start her shift and I got out and walked up to grab a table.

I started talking to some guys who invited me over to their table on the porch and bought me a beer. Their names were both Mike and they were moving to Morehead City to begin some construction work. They were friendly and very interested in my trip but didn’t seem like the brightest fellows in the world. One of the Mikes kept talking about the dumbest things and I just smiled politely and was looking for some way to get away from their table without insulting them. They finally decided to leave and they both said farewell and took off.

I went back out and had a few drinks before ordering dinner. I got barbecued shrimp which was delicious. I watched the sun set over the water as the restaurant began to fill with people waiting to see the fireworks. I was sitting there as I heard my name called; I looked around and there were Gary and Tonie again. They had moved their boat to the city marina on the other side of the island and had walked over to see the fireworks. My table had the best view of the fireworks staging area in Morehead City so I invited them back to sit with me again. We were able to see fireworks from other nearby shows for a few minutes before the Morehead City ones began. They were shot off from a barge on the other side of an uninhabited island called Sugarloaf. The show began but before long we began to see flames coming from the trees on Sugarloaf Island. They only continued to grow as the show progressed and soon firefighting boats were rushing to the scene. One of the locals shook his head and said, “Geez, this is the third time in seven years that they’ve started the island on fire. Last year they sank the barge as well!” I thought that perhaps they should hire a new crew to light them off in the future. Most people left after the show was over so I sat and enjoyed the cool evening on the porch. They restaurant had a classical guitar player that night who played everything from Bach to Led Zeppelin. We started chatting and he came and sat at my table for a few minutes. I offered to buy him a drink but he said that one perk of his job was that he gets all the free drinks he wants. He was from Grenada and works during the day as a carpenter and at night as a musician. I asked him all about the Caribbean and he had a few good stories to tell. He left and I went down to the boat to go to sleep.

Morehead City

2007-07-04T09:45:00.001-04:00

7/3/07 – I slept in this morning and got underway at about 9:30am. It was a very sunny day and there were tons of recreational boaters out, presumably due to the holiday tomorrow. The unfortunate thing was that they wind was strong and straight out of the northeast and for most of the day I was forced to motor. There were a few good portions where I was able to sail but it shifted so often that I had to take down the sail every so often. I was able to turn off the motor and sail for about two or three hours during the day. I got to Morehead City at around 5:00pm and went to the dock at a restaurant that provides free docking as long as you buy your dinner there. I had talked to “Chef Dan” on the phone so he and a few of the busboys came out to help me dock. They helped me tie up by tying my bow line on and I hopped off and tied the stern line. I thanked them and they went back into the building and I began tying some spring lines up. As I was working, a guy came down from the restaurant and began retying the bow line that one of the busboys had tied. He introduced himself as Wayne and told me that if he had ever tied a knot as awfully as the busboy had, he would have been on deck swabbing duty for weeks. We talked on the dock for a few minutes and he bought me a beer that was brought out to me on the dock. After I was done putting away the things in my cockpit and tidying the boat up, I walked up and joined him at his table. We talked for quite a while about all sorts of things. He had all sorts of good stories about his career in the Navy and his various jobs as a delivery captain for large sailboats all along the east coast of the United States and the Bahamas. He was surprised that I felt safe doing this trip without a gun aboard. He told me that he never left port in the Bahamas without at least one firearm aboard. He then got into stories that included how useful his guns have been in the Bahamas. I was of course glued to my seat because I was interested in what he had to say but he eventually had to leave to get back to his wife and stepdaughter that he kept telling me how much he disliked. I walked through the town a little bit and bought some beer and ice as well as another book to read. I came back to the restaurant where I was docked and got a table for dinner. As I was walking back from the restroom, I saw Chef Dan again, a chubby fellow that appeared to be in a perpetual jolly drunken mood. I later learned that he was the owner of the place and he took great pride in selecting the best local fresh fish for the menu. Chef Dan came to it with me at my table for about fifteen minutes and he told me about the great times and not so great times he had living aboard his boat in Key West. I told him about my trip and he thought that it was very neat. He told me that I should stick around for the fourth of July at his dock because it is a very big deal around here.

My boat was not the only one on the dock, there was a 36 foot motor yacht there as well. That one needed to be moved so Chef Dan and I walked down to the dock to help them scoot down the dock so there was room behind them for another vessel to tie up. I began talking to the woman who told me that she and her husband were doing the “great loop,” a circumnavigation of the eastern half of the United States. They introduced themselves as Tonie and Gary and I invited them to my table in the restaurant. They were extremely nice folks and had plenty of good stories about their trip. They are also keeping an online journal of their trip, which can be located at www.bearwithme.talkspot.com. It was really neat comparing stories about places that we had both been and the adventures that we have had there. They gave me a business card with their contact information on it that indicated that Gary was the captain and Tonie was the skipper. After we had finished eating, Gary and I went to help two boats dock with Chef Dan. As we were sitting back down at our table, we saw Chef Dan briskly walking up the dock with two big brightly colored boxes with a huge grin on his face. He disappeared and about 3 minutes later, we were treated to a great fireworks display that appeared to come from the other side of the building. Chef Dan and the rest of the restaurant staff came out to the outdoor seating area to watch the show. Tonie, Gary, and I continued talking well into the evening until it was time for all of us to go to bed.

New River

2007-07-04T09:39:00.001-04:00

7/2/07 - I was awakened by the wakes of passing power boats this morning and I got up and figured out a plan for the day. I had to schedule my departure based on the Wrightsville Beach Swing Bridge’s schedule. I got through that and made it to the next swing bridge in perfect time. I continued for most of the afternoon with a headwind but no problems. I got to a nice anchorage just north of the New River inlet in North Carolina. There is a large derelict-looking military vessel docked here and there are several fishermen on shore casting into the anchorage. I ate dinner and then spent about an hour sitting on deck watching the sunset. This was the second night since leaving North Palm Beach that more than a couple of mosquitoes appeared so I reluctantly left the perfect evening to go below where the screens would protect me.

Algae and Barnacles

2007-07-03T23:31:00.000-04:00

7/1/07 - I slept in this morning and then walked over to a restaurant across the street. I sat down and ordered when Crystal walked up to me. She and her housemates were there eating as well. After breakfast, I walked over to the bathroom at the marina and took a shower before heading off. I went for most of the afternoon but decided to stop early at Wrightsville Beach because there was an excellent anchorage and I was tired. I anchored and decided to clean off the algae and barnacles from the bottom of the hull. I took and old rag with me when I jumped in to do the work. It worked poorly so I had the idea of using a credit card. It would be hard enough to scrape off the stuff on the hull but not so hard that it would scratch my hull. That worked very well and I got the job done in just over a half hour. I reset my anchor after someone pulled in pretty close to me in the anchorage just to be safe.

Southport, NC

2007-07-03T23:24:00.000-04:00

6/30/07- I woke up this morning and got underway after a breakfast of oatmeal. I had anchored a few hundred yards south of the North Carolina border so I crossed into a new state right away in the morning. In the morning, I sailed past many large and impressive houses which were very cool. There was a storm system just north of me but it seemed to be moving parallel to me. I called my roommate, Peter, to have him check on the online weather radar. He told me that it would probably miss me if it did not shift or grow. A couple of hours later, I saw some very dark clouds forming directly behind me and moving towards me. I called Peter again to get another weather update and he confirmed that there was something that looked pretty heavy moving right towards me. I decided that it might be best to pull into a marina to wait out the storm. I called the Southport Marina and reserved a slip. I pulled in and filled up my fuel tanks and then moved around the dock and tied up. The sky was looking extremely dark so I put on more lines than usual just to make sure nothing bad would happen if the storm were fierce. I bought some ice, drinks, and batteries in the marina office and went back to the boat to ride the storm out. It began drizzling after a little while and continued for about an hour. Then it abruptly stopped; that was the extent of the terrible storm that I had expected.

I decided to go into the town of Southport for dinner so I took my raincoat just in case it began raining again. I started off walking in the general direction of the downtown area. I walked by some people on the street and I asked them where the best local places to eat were. They introduced themselves as Crystal and Arthur. They told me to go to a place called Provision Co. We kept talking for a minute and they invited me to their house after I was done eating dinner. I said good bye and took their advice and went to Provision Co. It was a really neat restaurant; the seating was all outdoors and was right on the Intracoastal Waterway. I ordered a crab cake sandwich and went outside to wait for my food. There was a sailboat pulling up to the restaurant’s dock so I walked out to help them tie up. It was a nice looking hull but everything on deck was in awful condition. There were lines hanging off into the water, the mainsail was crumpled up and a single sail tie was holding only the very center of the sail to the boom. The passengers obviously had no idea what they were doing but we eventually got the boat tied up to the dock and the fenders out. I heard my name called and one of the servers was carrying my crab cake sandwich out onto the dock for me. I thanked him and went and found a seat. The sandwich was very tasty. After I was finished, I walked out to the dock and stood there as I finished my drink. A lady came by and introduced herself as Jackie. She invited me back to the table where she and her neighbors were sitting. I talked with them about everything, including accounting, industrial tool making, the civil war, religion, and nuclear war. The restaurant eventually cleared out so we got up and I began to walk back to the boat.

As I was walking past the spot where I had met Crystal and Arthur earlier, I remembered that they had invited me to their house earlier in the evening. I followed their directions and found the house that they had described. I went in and was welcomed wholeheartedly. I hung out and talked with them for a couple of hours. I learned that Crystal will be moving to Scotland in the fall to work on her PhD in early Christian studies. Another guy there was in the Navy and worked on the big nuclear submarines. He also had many stories to tell about his experiences in the military. I finally wandered back to the marina and went to bed.

Myrtle Beach

2007-07-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

6/29/07 – I slept in this morning longer than I normally do. The sun usually wakes me up when it rises but I was too tired to notice this morning. I ate a breakfast of powdered sugar donuts and weighed anchor. It was high tide again so the cypress swamps looked far different than they did when I dropped anchor the day before. I motored through the cypress swamps for about two hours and saw some interesting things, including a sunken boat and some strange buildings built on barges. The remainder of the morning and much of the afternoon was spent in a narrow canal that passed Myrtle Beach. I lost count of the number of golf courses that I passed. There was an eighteen mile stretch of canal called “the rockpile” because there are many rock ledges that extend out from the banks but are submerged at high tide. This means that you need to stay in the center of the channel even if it appears that you would be safe venturing out to the edges to pass someone. The notes on my charts warn that, “Mariners should use extreme caution to avoid grounding in this area.” When the tide came down, I saw the exposed ledges and how menacing they would be if I were to hit them. The timing worked out perfectly today so that I had a favorable current for nearly the entire time that I was under way.

As I came to a spot that I had found on the chart to anchor, I found that two boats had already taken the spot, one sailboat and one small runabout. I went to a nearby spot that looked pretty good but found that it had shoaled since my chart was published in 2001 so I came back to find that the two ladies on the runabout decided to leave and were beginning to pull in the anchor line. I figured that I could swipe the spot as soon as they left so I quickly motored up there. One of the ladies was old and very fat and the other was younger and skinny. It quickly became apparent that neither of them knew what they were doing. They took turns motoring the little boat up so it was right on top of the anchor and trying to pull up. As the boat drifted over the anchor, they couldn’t hold the line any more so they had to let it go. They did this over and over again so I temporarily dropped my hook about two hundred feet from them to wait for the spot to open up. They continued to do this for nearly twenty minutes. I was just out of shouting distance so I couldn’t tell them to cleat the anchor line off as short as they could get it and back into it with the motor. This would have solved their problem in less then a minute. I just stood on the bow of my boat and chuckled while they wrestled with it until they finally got it up. I lifted my anchor (without any trouble) and motored over to take their spot. Then I went for a nice long swim. I had a big pasta dinner and did some reading before going to bed.

Rural South Carolina

2007-06-28T21:54:00.000-04:00

6/28/07 – I slept in relatively late this morning and ate a hearty breakfast of oatmeal. I weighed anchor at around 10:00am and got going. There was a good south wind for a good part of the day so I sailed and motor sailed all day. I was debating whether or not to anchor in Georgetown for the evening or continue on to another anchorage further north. I finally decided to keep going because as I looked ahead on the charts, I noticed that there were very few good anchorages for about a thirty mile stretch between Bucksport and the North Carolina border. I continued north on canals through cypress swamps. These were very interesting; there were large trees that appear to be growing right out of the water at high tide. At low tide, all of their roots are exposed. I dropped my anchor at the mouth of a creek and after a day of seeing nearly no boats, a guy on a jet ski rode up and said hello. He warned me about the alligators in the marsh but said that the chances of getting bitten by one were very low. I decided to tempt fate and went swimming in the first fresh water of the trip, but only after scanning the surface of the water very carefully for ‘gators. I had a nice pasta dinner and watched the sun set over the cypress swamp.

Leaving Charleston

2007-06-28T21:14:00.000-04:00

6/27/07 – My grandpa has been sailing with me for the past week and we ended up in Charleston. We have been staying at the house of his cousin, Kathy, and her husband, Joe (you will hear more about that week in an upcoming entry written by my grandpa.) Joe made a breakfast of eggs and bacon for Kristin, his granddaughter, and me. Then I got all of my things together and packed them up. After saying goodbye to Kathy, Joe drove me to the marina and dropped me off. My new autopilot was waiting for me so I got that all set up before casting off. I motored over to the gas dock to refuel and fill my water tank for the first time since I left North Palm Beach. I then left the marina and sailed across Charleston Harbor, passing all the sights I had seen from land: the Battery, Fort Sumter, Patriot’s Point, and more. I kept motoring and motor sailing north all afternoon to an anchorage up a creek near McClellanville, South Carolina. It was a bit difficult going back to my normal eating schedule on the boat after eating like a king for the past several days. I normally eat a large breakfast and a large supper, skipping lunch so I don’t have to stop during the day. I ate a pasta dinner and for the first time since I departed North Palm Beach, the mosquitoes were bothering me enough to make me go below and put the screens up.

Guest Entry: Jim Bassett

2007-06-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

[Notice to anyone who reads this description of my week on the East Coast with grandson Zachary and cousins Kathy and Joe Schlechta: Apologies for the verbosity but I’m kind of writing this for myself as well as for other readers so you have to live with the boring stuff – assuming you find a little something in here that transcends boredom. Thanks for understanding.]

Sometimes one lucks out and gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something truly irreplaceable.

That’s what happened to me this past June when I was asked by grandson, Zachary, to accompany him on all or part of his epic journey by sailboat from Florida to New England. Fortunately, the week of Tuesday, June 19, through Tuesday, June 26, worked for me so that became the appointed time.

I found some really cheap airplane tickets on Airtran, flying to Savannah GA on June 19 and returning from Charleston SC on June 26. In the meantime, I realized that for several years, I’ve had an open invitation from a long lost first cousin, Kathy Alexander Schlechta, who lives in Charleston with husband Joe, to come and stay with them and to see all the sights that Charleston has to offer.

I should point out that the last time Kathy and I saw each other was probably at our grandmother’s funeral in 1959 or thereabouts. So, this whole journey was beginning to turn into a wonderful adventure.

I flew out of MSP early Tuesday morning after Mary and I went to the wrong airport terminal, not realizing that Airtran uses an auxiliary terminal in Minneapolis. Fortunately, we had allotted enough time so that I made it with many minutes to spare.

After an uneventful flight, I arrived in Savannah, not quite knowing how I was going to traverse from the airport to Thunderbolt Marina where Zach and the boat were staying. However, I grabbed a Shamrock Cab Company cab, along with some other folks, and I discovered that I had one of the most helpful cabbies ever. He not only gave us a nice “tour” going into town but, after he had left all the other passengers off, he drove me to where he thought I could catch the #24 bus to Thunderbolt.

Unfortunately, the cabbie had the wrong street so, after kind of stopping lots of traffic as I frantically caught a bus going back to the right street and then caught the #24 (for the horrendous fare of $1.00), I made it out to Thunderbolt where Zach was waiting at the bus stop for me. Problem number one solved.

I needed a haircut so found a barber shop near the boat – an all-black barber shop, I think. I asked the guy who was about to cut my hair for a haircut just like he had (dreadlocks) but to no avail. He said he couldn’t help me so he cut it short just like always. Kind of fun listening to the guys and gals in the shop discussing current events in the neighborhood while I was being sheared.

We had supper at Tubby’s, the only decent eating place within walking distance of the marina. Nice place with some good nautical atmosphere.

We decided to take Wednesday for some Savannah touring so went back downtown Wednesday morning where we hooked up with an Oglethorpe tour. Our tour guide turned out to be a rather nice lady who grew up in Wisconsin and had a cabin in northern Minnesota. The tour was good and we were able to at least get a nice overview of the city. One of the places I really wanted to see was the Mercer house, featured in the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, a story set in Savannah. We saw it!

We also saw enough rain to just about flood downtown Savannah. At one point the water was running over the curbs. We wound up running from building to building and getting pretty much soaked. However, we did manage to get to a lunch place, an old railroad dining car at a depot turned into a museum and visitors’ center, where we waited out one downpour before wending our way to a maritime museum where we had too little time to see much but we at least did see something.

Then, back on the #24 to Thunderbolt. After returning to the boat, we walked to some gas station/convenience stores and tried to stock up on food and drink but the pickings were sparse. We got enough though to fend off starvation. Then back to Tubby’s for supper.

We departed Thursday morning after having some nice conversation with a guy and his wife who were sailing a beautiful 40’ Leopard catamaran. Pretty interesting boat and fun to talk to the owners.

Sailing was not really sailing Thursday. We motored (with the 9.9 hp Yamaha outboard motor) nearly all the way although we did have the jib out for a couple of hours. The jib is oversized and it provides a lot of power, assuming the wind is right. We went out into the ocean for most of the morning but it was quite rough and we were continually having waves wash over us so we decided that getting back to the Intracoastal Waterway would be better. We came back into the lee of Hilton Head Island about noon and spent the afternoon in much better conditions although we were already soaked so it didn’t make a whole lot of difference.

We anchored north of Beaufort SC and settled down to some gourmet spaghetti prepared by Chef Zachary. Considering the source of the spaghetti, a gas station, it was quite good although I’m hoping Zach doesn’t quit his day job.

One of the highlights of the day was watching the dolphins which accompanied us a lot of the time. It’s pretty fun seeing them in the wild.

Friday we continued on the Waterway, motoring most of the morning but sailing in the afternoon. The Waterway ranges from being really wide, sort of like Lake Pepin in Minnesota, to really narrow, like going up a river. However, with the right wind, it’s pretty easy to sail even if it’s a narrow passage.

One downer during all this time – and during the whole journey – was the fact that Zach’s autopilot was broken. I think it broke the day before I arrived and he got it fixed the day after I left. Dang! Rotten timing! It would have been nice to have it running but we survived using our arm power to control the tiller.

Another downer about this time was that we didn’t have the forward hatch dogged down tight so a lot of water came in and soaked Zach’s computer. It quit working and he wound up having to buy a new one in Charleston. We tried to get the old one fixed but when the fixing guy heard it had seen salt water he told us to forget about it. Apparently salt water is death on electronics.

We anchored in a neat little inlet Friday night in what the chart said was 11’ of water. After a pleasant supper and a good night’s sleep, we awoke in the morning to discover that we were high and dry. The chart had lied to us. We could tell that we were about at the low point for tide so we knew we’d eventually get out but we had to wait until noon to get going after the tide had come in.

In the meantime, we were making arrangements for the big meeting with Kathy and Joe, meaning a number of phone calls to report our progress.

We also got a phone call from son (uncle) Luke, telling us that he and wife Amy have a friend in Charleston, Jason Crandall, who owns a slip at a marina in Charleston, which was empty at the time and which we could use. We had made a reservation at another marina kind of out of town which was going to cost us $60 per night so this was really welcome news. We called Jason and made arrangements at his marina.

After we got afloat again Saturday, we went the final thirteen miles or so to Charleston, found the marina and finally found the slip we were supposed to be in. We showered, called Joe and Kathy and were picked up by them. This was certainly a thrill for me, seeing a rather close relative for the first time in nearly half a century. We went to a nice restaurant, Locklear’s, for supper and then went out to their house.

Zach and I had intended to stay on the boat. The outside temperature was about 95 degrees with humidity to match. The inside temperature in Joe and Kathy’s house was about 70 degrees with low humidity. They pretty much insisted that we stay with them so, after a few feeble protests, we decided that we’d better do that. I had told Kathy previously to be careful about what she asked for because she might get it. So, she wound up with a couple of groady sailors staying at her house.

As one might expect, we were treated like visiting royalty by the Schlechtas. Wow! We spent Sunday visiting Fort Sumter, the Civil War submarine Hundley (the first submarine in history to sink a warship), and the site of the Sofa Company fire which had taken place the Monday before. The fire took place only minutes from Schlechta’s house. The site was a very somber place, as you might imagine. There were lots of flowers, mementos from fire departments from all over North America and a lot of tears. Not a fun place to visit, of course, but a place that had to be seen. If people didn’t appreciate fire and police people before seeing that, they would have to afterward.

We ate supper that evening in one of the nicest restaurants I’ve ever been in, California Dreaming. It’s on the waterfront and has gigantic windows overlooking the harbor. When you walk in you are almost overwhelmed by the view. They could have served corned beef and hash and I still would have been awed.

We decided for Monday’s activity to go to a plantation so we chose one that seemed to be sort of representative of the area, Middleton Place. It dates back about 250 years and was the site of a very large rice growing operation. We kind of did the whole shebang with a horse drawn tour of the grounds, a tour of the buildings and an African American tour, all of which pretty much filled up the day. One of the nice things about this visit was that Joe Schlechta who went with us had never been there before so it was a new thing for him as well as for Zach and me.

I liked California Dreaming so much that I asked Schlechtas if they would mind going back for a second evening in a row, which they graciously agreed to do. We called Jason Crandall who went along with us and who told us lots of good flying and sailing stories. He’s an Air Force pilot whose girl friend just went through pilot training in Oklahoma with Amy, our daughter-in-law. Since Joe Schlechta is a retired Navy guy, they had lots of military stories to swap and, of course, Zach and I ate all this up with relish.

Departure day was Tuesday morning or, more precisely, Tuesday in the middle of the night, or so it seemed. Joe got up at what I thought was an ungodly hour and took me to the airport for another uneventful flight home.

All in all, this was one of the great adventures of my life. Plus it was a bit of a double-edged sword with the sailing and the meeting with Kathy and Joe, all in one trip. Zach and I had a great time on the boat and I even learned a thing or two about sailing from him. (But I try hard not to admit that my grandson knows more about sailing than I do.) And certainly when one sees a close relative for the first time in nearly fifty years it is a thrill that very seldom happens. I wouldn’t trade the week for anything.

Savannah to Charleston

2007-06-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

My grandfather joined me for a week from 6/19/07 to 6/26/07. There will be a special guest-entry written by him coming in the next few days.

Nearing Savannah

2007-06-26T19:18:00.000-04:00

6/17/07 – I motored and motor sailed up to about fifteen miles south of Savannah today. I found a good anchorage with some houses nearby so I could steal some of their wireless internet to check my email and update my blog for the first time in nearly a week.

6/18/07 – I made my way up to Thunderbolt today and saw many very large houses during the trip. I went a little ways up a creek to anchor and found a very good spot. I ate dinner and read some more of my book. The tidal current changed in the evening as expected. The wind also picked up but as usual, the wind and the current were opposite directions. The boat swung back and forth for a good while and finally the anchor line got tangled up in the rudder as she swung over the anchor line. I thought I would have to go swimming but was able to untangle the line from the rudder with the gaff hook before any damage was done. I did not want this to happen again so I set out a second anchor from the stern and pulled myself so that I was suspended between them. This configuration will not allow me to swing but can put tremendous stress on the vessel and the tackle so I will need to be careful if any storms come up tonight. There has been thunder and lightning to my north, west, and south all evening but so far there have been clear skies above me.

More Georgia

2007-06-17T19:02:00.001-04:00

6/16/07 – I sailed all day through more marshes and large wide-open sounds. I stopped to anchor in the afternoon on a shoal in the middle of a large river. There was very little wind so this unprotected anchorage was perfectly suitable. I had a nice dinner of macaroni and cheese and watched a very good sunset. I was miles away from any city or even any other human beings so there was very little light pollution when the stars came out.

Georgia Swamps

2007-06-17T16:48:00.000-04:00

6/15/07 – I ate some oatmeal for breakfast and weighed anchor. I sailed through Jekyll Sound and Saint Simon Sound but had to motor through the narrow, windy rivers that made up the rest of my day’s journey through the vast Georgia marshes. I decided to anchor in a little creek just off of mile 666 on the Intracoastal Waterway. I jokingly wondered if bad things would happen at that particular location. The current was very strong but the wind was even stronger going in the opposite direction. The boat could not decide which way she wanted to lay to the anchor that I tried to set out. It did not help matters that I was in the middle of a giant swamp for miles around and the bottom was the softest mud I had ever seen. Soft mud is extremely difficult to set an anchor in. I tried all sorts of things and finally got one anchor set after quite a while of trying various tricks. Not wanting to drift into a bank of the creek and rip my rudder off in the middle of the night, I set out a second anchor which seemed to hold reasonably well. I went below to read and try to figure out how to get a new jacket and autopilot. I noticed that the wind had begun to shift so I went outside to see what this would do to my anchoring situation. Both anchors began to slip as I drifted downstream. I was very frustrated with this anchorage so I picked up both anchors and backtracked a bit to another small stream off the Intracoastal Waterway. I had some more difficulty setting an anchor in the very soft mud but I think I got it figured out.

Wild Horses

2007-06-17T16:43:00.000-04:00

6/14/07 – Some heavy rain woke me up at about 6:00 this morning. I got up to shut the hatch so I could go back to sleep without fear of having my things get wet. The rain stopped about an hour later and I got up again and ate some cereal for breakfast. I bought some milk at the beginning of the trip that is super-ultra-pasteurized and packaged in boxes similar to juice boxes. It keeps for months without refrigeration so I bought a whole bunch of it to use for cereal in the mornings. After breakfast, I lifted anchor and began my final leg of the trip through Florida. I came to Fernandina Beach at around noon. The first thing that I noticed was the smell of the huge paper mills in the city. They made the whole area smell awful. I stopped for some fuel at the city marina and then continued into Cumberland sound. This is where the Saint Marys River exits to the ocean, which is the boundary between Florida and Georgia. The very southern part of Georgia is very sparsely populated so I was not able to get cell phone reception. I saw some tall and dark clouds coming up so I went to put my raincoat on but the zipper broke as I was zipping it up. Just then it started to rain. I found some spare line in the cabin and wrapped it around myself several times just to keep the jacket closed. I did not stay very dry but at least it was better than nothing. Later, my tiller pilot broke. I had noticed some water droplets under the screen earlier that morning that concerned me but it was just beeping whenever I plugged it in and it did not do anything. I got to a good anchorage about twenty miles into Georgia next to an island with wild horses running around on it called Little Cumberland Island. The wind shifted in the evening so I was no longer on the windward shore so my boat was tossed around by the waves but I didn’t feel like backtracking several miles to the last good anchorage so I just stuck it out.

I woke up in the middle of the night and went outside. I had anchored right next to a beach but when I looked around, I was at least half a mile from any shore. I had to think for a minute to get my bearings. The tide had risen and covered the sand that was right adjacent to my boat. Since I was far away from everything, the stars were very bright and the phosphorescence in the water was quite impressive.

Ocean Passage to Jacksonville

2007-06-17T16:40:00.000-04:00

6/13/07 – I had to get up extra early this morning because the Bridge of Lions was under construction so they only open a couple times per day. I wanted to make the 7:00am opening so I had my anchor up and was waiting in the channel by 6:45am. I made it out and decided to go out on the ocean for the trip up to Jacksonville because it was a nice day with very good wind and the tidal currents in the Intracoastal Waterway would be against me the whole time. The waves were much larger than when I went out the Ponce de Leon inlet with my father and sister the other day. The radio said that they were 2-4 foot seas. I made pretty good time; I had a nice northeast wind so I was on a broad reach the entire time. I made it to Jacksonville in the early afternoon passed a large military seaport with an aircraft carrier and several other navy ships. I reentered the Intracoastal Waterway for a leisurely trip up to an anchorage about five miles north of Jacksonville. As soon as I got back into the Intracoastal Waterway, it began raining very hard. I was soaking wet by the time I had set the anchor and gone below for some dinner. I realized that in the rainstorm, all of my matches had gotten wet so I had to eat my soup cold.

Solo Again

2007-06-17T16:38:00.000-04:00

6/11/07 – The sun woke me up this morning and I walked over to West Marine to buy a new latch for the hatch that had been broken the day before. I stayed in the store for as long as I could, knowing that this would be the last air conditioned building I would be in for a while. I walked over to a place that I had found the night before where I could steal some wireless internet. I walked back to the marina and cast off. I had to stop at the gas dock to return my marina key so I filled up my gas tanks while I was there. I got going in the late morning and continued northward. There was a line of thunderstorms directly to my west and I heard very loud thunder for several hours as it slid south, just missing me. I only got about a half hour of light rain that was very refreshing. I continued all day until sunset and dropped my anchor about ten miles south of Saint Augustine.

First Ocean Sailing

2007-06-10T22:06:00.001-04:00

6/10/07 – After a night of being periodically woken up by dolphins surfacing in the marina, we were suddenly woken in the morning by some fisherman and their very large motor. We got up and ate some of the grocery store powdered donuts for breakfast and left at around 11:00am. Until this morning, I have sailed exclusively on the Intracoastal Waterway, but we decided that it would be a good idea to go out on the ocean. The Intracoastal Waterway is a channel that is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers that is sheltered by land from the actual ocean. There are inlets periodically that allow boats to get from the ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway. We left the waterway at the Ponce de Leon Inlet and shut off our motor. The wind was acceptable for a short time before it completely died. We decided to go swimming with the exception of my sister, who thought that the many dolphins that we were seeing would mistake her fingers for the fish that consist of their diet. She eventually jumped in, only to hurriedly climb in about ten seconds later. The wind eventually came up and we sailed around for a couple of hours. We were sailing back to the inlet and my sister was down in the galley making some peanut butter sandwiches. My dad and I just happened to be looking when a big shark jumped way out of the water in a spiraling motion about 100 feet off our port bow. We estimated that it was about 6-7 feet long and its tail was about 2 feet out of the water at the height of its jump. We began to think that Shannon may have been right to be afraid of swimming in the water. We continued into the inlet just outside the edge of a thunderstorm that we had been watching brewing before heading up to Daytona Beach. We docked in a marina and took showers to wash all the ocean salt off of us before going to dinner at what appeared to be a very nice place. As we walked in the door, I was worried that they would frown upon my t-shirt and shorts until I saw a guy at the bar with a giant grey beard, a tank top on, and a big tattoo covering his bald head. It ended up being very good food. We walked back to the boat after dinner and my dad and sister packed their things and got a taxi to the airport.

note: I have been informed that what we saw was almost certainly not a shark. It was, however, very large and ferocious looking.

New Smyrna Beach

2007-06-10T21:35:00.000-04:00

6/9/07 – My dad, my sister, and I took a shower at the marina (a luxury that I have taken for granted for a long time) and went to a local bakery before departing Titusville in the morning. There was very little wind in the morning again so we motor sailed for a good portion of the day. We went about thirty five miles north to New Smyrna Beach. We called a marina and the guy working let us stay on one of their service docks but this marina had no bathroom or shower facilities. We walked over to a restaurant a short distance away and had some bad tasting fried food. We walked back over to the boat before going to bed.

Space Shuttle

2007-06-10T21:26:00.000-04:00

6/8/07 – My dad and sister arrived this morning. They flew into Orlando and rented a car to drive to Titusville. We went to the grocery store when they arrived to get some things to eat during their visit since they were not too excited about the prospect of eating canned food for every meal. We went back to the marina and put some of their stuff away. My passing through Titusville and their visit coincided perfectly with the space shuttle launch which was very lucky so we motored out into the body of water separating Titusville from the Kennedy Space Center where the launch pad is located. We waited around for about an hour and my dad called a local restaurant to see if we could get reservations. He was told two very disappointing things: that all of the restaurants in Titusville were booked because of the shuttle crowd and that the launch had just been scrubbed. We were very disappointed to hear the news but decided to stick around just in case. We had no radio or television to confirm anything, plus the bridge to get back to the marina was closed so we had to just sit around anyway. Much to our relief and excitement, it blasted off right on time. It was very bright and very loud. The bridge didn’t open for ninety minutes after the launch so we decided to go for an evening sail which ended up being the best sailing of their short trip.

Titusville

2007-06-08T11:21:00.001-04:00

6/7/07 – I motored into Titusville Municipal Marina this morning and tied up in a slip. As soon as I was finished tying up, I saw three manatees sitting behind my boat. I had seen signs warning of them ever since I had left Palm Beach but had not seen one yet. They are very strange creatures. I spent a couple of hours cleaning the love bug carcasses out of every nook and cranny of the boat. I went to take a very refreshing shower and then walked over to Burger King. Gross fast food never tasted so good after eating canned soup for a week. Next, I walked to West Marine to pick up some parts that I had ordered earlier in the week and then went over to a local bread shop where they had wireless internet. They didn’t have any electricity plug-ins so I went next door to a cigar shop where they also had wireless internet. I bought a cigar and went to sit in their smoking lounge where they have giant leather chairs, a 50 inch plasma screen TV, and a Bose sound system to check my email and update the blog. I walked around the area a bit more in the evening and got to the park where all the locals told me was a really good place to watch the space shuttle launches. I began to walk back to the marina and came across a group of people sailing remote controlled sailboats on a pond. I stopped and talked to them for a little while and one of them let me race his boat in a race. I got second out of three boats on my first try. I finally left and did some laundry at the marina and read a book in the evening.

Lots of Wildlife

2007-06-08T10:42:00.000-04:00

6/4/07 – I left my anchorage in Jupiter this morning and continued my way north through the Intracoastal Waterway. I made about fifty miles in about 10 hours of sailing. I just put my jib up in the morning because I had to go through a few bridges so putting up the main would be impractical. I passed the last low bridge in the late morning and put up both sails. I had a fair wind so I turned off the motor and continued for several hours under sail alone. I arrived in Vero Beach in the evening and the area that was marked as an anchorage on the map had been taken over by the local marina and turned into a mooring field. I did not like this because it usually costs money to tie up to a mooring. I knew that the tide was rising so I felt comfortable searching around the area for a good anchorage but I suddenly came to a halt as I was motoring around. I had run aground on an uncharted mud mound. Luckily, I was able to back out of my situation and came to the conclusion that it might be best to just tie up to a mooring for the night.

6/5/07 – I got up and made myself a good breakfast of oatmeal. I had to make it watery so I could drink it from a cup since I still had no spoon. I got going in the morning but there was again very little wind. I put up both sails but had to keep the motor going to continue along at about 3 knots. At around noon, the wind picked up and I turned off the engine again. I began hearing noises that sounded like a cross between a shrieking child and a giant rodent squeaking. I was really confused as the noises continued to slowly increase in volume until I saw a fin and an air spout. All of the sudden, many more fins and spouts popped up all around me as a school of dolphins surfaced around me. I tried to get photographs but the shutter delay on my camera was just long enough for them to dive again before I could get any pictures. I continued to sail for the day until I got to another anchorage. I came to the designated anchorage and realized that it was not protected at all from the waves since the wind was from the east rather than from the west. I found a place on the chart that on the other side of a bridge that looked better and saw that I was not the only one to have the same idea when I arrived at the location. There were about five other boats anchored in the same spot. I dropped the hook and ate another canned soup dinner before bed.

6/6/07 – I left the anchorage this morning and there was again very little wind. I didn’t even bother putting up the sails because the wind was variable and just motored at a leisurely rate. For the previous two nights, I had seen what I later learned were “love bugs.” They are about ½ inch long and do not bite or sting. This morning, they were particularly bad, with dozens crawling all over the boat. They slowly increased in number until there were several hundred crawling over the boat and swarming in the air all around me. I saw a boat coming through a bridge that I was heading towards and everyone aboard was swatting furiously. I thought that they must just be wimps because I had the bugs as well and they were annoying but not overly so. Once I got up to the bridge, it became apparent why they were more worried about the bugs than I was. Suddenly, a new wave of them appeared in the thickest concentration of bugs I have ever seen. Thousands upon thousands were crawling over the boat and swarming all over everything, including me. They were so thick that I killed at least 30 in one single swat of my hand against the seat. They slowly decreased over the afternoon until there were just a few hundred crawling around by the time I arrived in Titusville in the afternoon. I noticed that none of the other boats at anchor in Titusville had the thick blanket of dead bugs that my boat had. I spent the next several hours killing bugs while I set the anchor and ate a canned soup dinner.

Finally Sailing

2007-06-03T22:02:00.001-04:00

6/3/07 – I woke up in the hotel this morning and took a shower in the bathroom across the hallway. I packed my few clothes and went to check out. I had to walk through a kitchen to the office and found that it was locked. Confused, I turned to the people in the kitchen and they explained that the owner of the hotel had run off to get everyone breakfast. I was happy about this and sat down to wait with them. It quickly became apparent that I was by far the most normal one in the room. One fellow kept shouting sentences that didn’t really make sense regarding cops showing up to the hotel last night. There was a lady there that was also saying strange things and kept saying that some of her money was missing. After a few minutes of this, the man left and I was left alone in the kitchen with this woman. I tried to make small talk with her and she kept talking about what a horrible day she had yesterday. She proceeded to tell me how she has been living in her car and this hotel for some time and some complicated mumbo-jumbo regarding an ex stealing her money. I really wanted to leave but had no place to turn in my key. She talked about how the cops showed up last night. I said something like, “I hope it wasn’t too serious.” She then told me about how everyone thinks that she’s crazy and that the cops kept trying to put her back in the mental institution. Apparently they showed up after some “crack head” showed up to her room and stole a bunch of her money. She kept going with no prompting from me and gave me an in-depth history of her mental problems. This conversation kept going on for far longer than I would have liked and culminated with her standing up, walking over to me, grasping my right hand with both of hers very tightly, looking into my eyes, and saying, “Do you think I’m crazy?” One of the housekeepers finally walked through the kitchen and I hurriedly gave him my key and left.

I spent the next couple of hours buying a few last-minute things for the boat and doing a few last minute fixes. I drove the rental car down to the office and took a cab back up to the North Palm Beach Marina. I got everything stowed and untied from the dock. I pushed off and motored over to the gas dock and tied up. I told the attendant that I just needed to fill up with water and was absolutely shocked when I was told that it would cost me fifteen dollars to fill my twenty gallon water tank. I argued with him for a minute and told him that I could fill my tank with bottled water from the store for les money. He argued that Florida is experiencing one of the worst droughts in modern history right now and that I was more than welcome to go to the store and buy bottled water if I chose. I finally gave in and paid the ridiculous price for the water since I had no real alternative. I waited for the bridge to open and then cast off from the dock. I had a headwind for the beginning of my journey so I motored for a couple of miles. I went through several bridges and saw plenty of people coming in from a Sunday fishing trip on the ocean. I picked out a spot in the evening to anchor and dropped the hook.

I was a bit hungry so I got out the stove and a can of soup. I opened up the can and reached for a spoon to scoop the paste into the pot. It then dawned upon me that as well prepared as I was, there was one thing that I forgot: silverware. I reached into the can with my finger to empty its contents into the pot. As I was swirling my finger around to get all the soup off the can walls, I sliced my finger on the sharp edge of the can. I started bleeding immediately. I wiped it off with a paper towel and went to the sink to get the rest of the water to mix into the condensed soup. My sink is a hand pumped faucet that is connected directly to the water tank. Its gasket is leaky so you have to pump furiously until you get the water up the tube and into the faucet. This furious pumping aggravated my finger wound and so the leftover noodles mixed with my blood and this mixture was shot all over the inside of the cabin by the extreme hand motions. I finally got water and cleaned everything up. I stirred my soup with one of the wrenches from my tool kit and drank it out of a cup. I ate some canned fruit by hand but being very careful to keep my fingers away from the edge. I then used my fingers to eat some chocolate pudding for dessert.

First Encounter With the Law

2007-06-03T00:18:00.000-04:00

6/2/07 – I woke up in the v-berth of my new boat this morning. I would have slept in one of the aft-berths but since I was tied up to a dock, the wind was blowing the rain towards the stern of the boat and making it drip in through the hatch and right where my head would have been. I made sure that nobody was walking by when I climbed out and walked to my car because it is this yacht club’s policy that nobody is allowed to sleep on their boats. I thought that this was a dumb rule and figured that nobody would notice if I showed up very quietly yesterday evening and went to bed without even turning a reading light on. I went to West Marine and Wal Mart again to buy more supplies to install a fresh water tank and hook the starting battery and thus the alternator on the engine to the house battery system. These improvements will give me fresh water and allow me to charge the house battery (which runs all the lights, radio, and 110v alternator) by running the engine rather than having to plug into shore power at a marina.

As I was crawling around in the bilge under the cockpit, I heard footsteps approach the boat. This was the first human that walked past my boat since the evening before. He told me to come out so I could talk to him. He asked me tons of questions and didn’t believe that the boat was mine so we had to walk through the rain to my rental car and go through the paperwork that I had gotten the previous day at the closing. He finally became satisfied that the boat was mine and then told me that the reason he was here was that he had received a complaint that someone had been sleeping on a boat in the marina. I tried to contain my shock since I had not seen a single other person walking around that could have even seen me. He instructed me to tell anyone else who asked that I worked on the boat all night and perhaps just had a little nap when I was overwhelmed with the work. He said that he wouldn’t do anything about it this time but made me promise to find lodging elsewhere in the future otherwise he would be forced to take action.

I did a bunch more work installing an autopilot and grocery shopping before I went to a cheap hotel in Lake Worth to sleep.

Buying the Boat

2007-06-01T20:45:00.001-04:00

6/1/07

I called the broker as soon as I woke up to see what the deal was with the paperwork. He said that it should be here by the afternoon but he had said that for the past several days so I was a bit skeptical. I went to eat lunch and got a call from him saying that he had finally got the papers in the mail. I spoke with my dad over the phone and then headed over there. We made the transaction and I drove straight to the boat. I dropped a bunch of stuff off and then went to Wal Mart and West Marine to get a bunch of supplies. I am very relieved to finally have a boat after over a week of uncertainty.

Today is also the official start of the hurricane season. The rain from tropical storm Barry is pouring down and should continue through tomorrow.

Killing Time

2007-06-01T20:36:00.000-04:00

5/31/07

Today was just another day of killing time while waiting to get possession of the boat. I was talking with the park ranger and she was telling me that as long as I was here, I should explore the Loxahatchee River that runs through the state park. They rent boats there but I asked her if any alligators or other ferocious wildlife would bite my rubber dinghy that I bought yesterday if I took that on the river. She said that she could not guarantee anything but that it was rather unlikely that anything too bad would happen to me. This was obviously good enough for me so I inflated the raft and carried it down to the river. I was hoping to see all sorts of interesting critters but unfortunately I did not see anything except a few birds. I got several strange looks as I was coming back to the boat launch but I just smiled and waved to the folks in their fishing boats.

More Palm Beach

2007-05-31T12:08:00.000-04:00

5/30/07

I have been waiting for the paperwork to show up in the mail so I can actually take possession of the boat and get her ready for the trip. I figured that I will have plenty of down time over the summer so I drove to Singer Island to pick up a very cheap guitar that I found on the internet. The guy who sold it to me was a University of Wisconsin alumnus but was a bit strange. I drove down to Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon to buy a used dinghy for pretty cheap. The guy who sold it to me was also very strange. One entire wall of his living room was covered in fish tanks with exotic fish in them. He kept talking about his fish even when I was asking him questions about the dinghy. As I was carrying the boat out to my car, he made sure to follow me out and began a long lecture about the origins of the shrubbery in his yard.

I drove back up to Palm Beach and decided to go for a walk on the beach at sunset. I came back to the parking lot and discovered that it was closed for the night and someone had closed and locked the gate to the parking lot for the night. I began to get worried because it was several miles from my camp site and I had no way of getting the car out the gate. I drove down the entire length of the parking lot and got to the end before the guy could lock the last gate for the night.

I was reading in the camp site in the car because it had a light. All of the sudden I heard a tremendous rustling in the woods right next to my tent. It sounded as if two enormous beasts were having an epic battle. I naturally wanted to see what was going on so I grabbed my flashlight and ran over to where the sounds were coming from. I just saw the brush wiggling for a minute or two until an armadillo popped out. He lazily waddled across the camp site. I decided to get a photograph of him so I ran and grabbed my camera. I turned it on and crouched down and just as I was about to push the button, my phone rang. The armadillo’s leisurely stroll instantly became a frenzied sprint for the cover of the bushes. His sudden movement startled me so I jerked the camera up and to the side and just got a picture of some bushes.

Boat Search, Day V

2007-05-29T10:35:00.000-04:00

5/28/07

I got up in the campground and began to prepare for the day. Since I was planning on looking at one boat in Palm Beach and possibly one in Marathon, I did not know where I would be spending the night so I packed up all of my things and took them with me. I made the drive up to Palm Beach and met the broker in the parking lot of a marina. He showed me the boat, a 25 foot Triton built in 1984, and I liked what I saw quite a bit. I spent about an hour going through the boat and found a few things that could use some fixing. When I was finished looking at the boat, I told the broker that I would call him and then spoke with my dad. We decided that this boat would be a god one for my trip, so I made an offer to the broker. We set up a sea trial for tomorrow. I went to West Marine to buy some supplies for my trip and then drove to Jonathan Dickinson State Park, which has a campground where I set up camp. I called my mother to tell her about the signs in the campground that tell people to leave the alligators alone. I saw plenty of wildlife including rats and tons of lizards but unfortunately no alligators. I did some research on dinghies to buy in the area and then went to the local movie theater since there was no wind in the campground to cool me down.

Boat Search, Day IV

2007-05-28T07:53:00.000-04:00

5/27/07

When I got up this morning, I was still very frustrated at the situation I was in. I had spent lots of money and lots of time trying to find a boat and I had absolutely no solid leads on a vessel so I was on the verge of giving up. I spoke with my father who encouraged me to give it a few more days. I drove to the University of Miami, where I told the librarian that I was a prospective student so that she would let me into their library. I went in and continued to do some more research on boats in the surrounding areas. I found an interesting one in North Palm Beach and began to look more into it. She was a 25’ Pearson Triton with all sorts of nifty features that would come in handy for my trip. I called the broker and set up a showing for tomorrow at 10:00am.

I went over to Burger King for lunch and while I was eating, I got a call from a fellow named Jason who I had left a message for several days ago. He apologized for the late reply and told me that he just got a new phone after dropping his in the water while sailing. He had a very interesting boat in Marathon, Florida and I spoke with him for a while about that as well. As disappointed as I was in the morning, I was getting very optimistic about the summer after my several disappointments. With nothing much else to do in the evening, I went to a movie theater and saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie before heading back to the campground for bed.

Boat Search, Day III

2007-05-27T21:08:00.000-04:00

5/26/07 –

I got up this morning and took a shower. I spoke with my grandpa over the phone about having him possibly come visit me within a week if I end up buying Richard’s boat. We both were getting excited and looking forward to it. Then I called Richard and asked him for copies of the three documents that he showed me yesterday. “I don’t know about that,” he said, “What do you need those for?” I explained to him that I wanted to take them to an attorney just to make sure that everything could be taken care of in a timely fashion. After a lot of uncertainty, he finally agreed to email me some Adobe Acrobat files with the documents in them as soon as he got home in a couple of hours.

Satisfied and excited about the prospect of getting a very nice boat, I checked out and went to the University of Miami campus to explore and use their library. I did some more research on boats and unsuccessfully tried to contact some more sellers. Since it is Memorial Day weekend, it is extraordinarily expensive to stay in a hotel so I went to Target and bought a tent and drove down to Larry and Penny Thompson campground, the same one that Bryce and I stayed at when we came down in January. There were far fewer RVs and far more tenters and the grass was about as high as my knees. I set up my new tent and realized that it was far bigger than I thought based upon the little mini show model that they had up in the store.

I called Richard to see why he hadn’t sent me the copies of the documents and also to schedule a sea trial for his boat. As soon as he realized that it was me calling, he sounded somewhat nervous and told me that he had decided to keep the boat after all. I was very shocked and disappointed. I asked him if he was sure, because I was very interested in it but he assured me that he just decided that he wanted to use her rather than sell her. I will probably never know why he suddenly changed his mind after being very eager to sell the boat the day before, but I will undoubtedly conjecture for some time to come.

Boat Search, Day II

2007-05-27T21:07:00.000-04:00

5/25/07 –

I woke up this morning in the hotel on South Beach and took a shower. I immediately began working on trying to find a boat on the internet again and made a few more phone calls before I had to check out. While I was walking over to the beach to my car, I got a voicemail from a guy named Richard who has a pretty nice 30 Pearson Flyer sailboat. I called him back and set up a time to go look at her. I killed some time by going to a library and stealing wireless internet outside of people’s houses.

That afternoon, I arrived at the marina where Richard was keeping his boat and climbed aboard. The first thing I noticed was how huge she was compared to Lazaro’s boat. There was ample room inside for several people and all of their things. I was very interested and told him so. Almost as an afterthought, I asked him if he had a clear title. He looked down and fidgeted as he explained to me that he has only owned her for a week and thus does not have a title. “Oh,” I replied, “well then you have the previous title that has been signed over to your name then?” He fidgeted again and explained that the guy he bought it from had not transferred the title from the previous owner. This all seemed a little fishy to me so I asked to see any documentation of ownership that he had. He pulled out three crumpled and waterlogged pieces of paper from a bag and showed them to me. The first was a title from 1982 that was in the name of one owner, “Bill,” and had been signed over to another owner, “Frank.” The second was a bill of sale from Bill to Frank, and the third was a handwritten bill of sale from Frank to Richard. I pondered this bizarre situation and told Richard that I would keep in contact with him.

Later that afternoon, I called my father who suggested that I obtain copies of these three documents and bring them to an attorney here in Miami. I checked into a hotel and called my sister to wish her a happy birthday. The family sung to her while I was on the phone and began eating cake while I ate a donut hole. I did a little more boat research and then went to bed.

Boat Search, Day I

2007-05-25T22:25:00.000-04:00

I got up in my hotel and immediately got very excited to go see the boat I had seen over winter break and have had my eye on for the past several months. I checked out of the hotel and drove to the seller's house. I got there and saw him crawling around inside the boat. I was somewhat surprised since he said that he was going to have it ready to go for a sea trial as soon as I got there. There was apparently a problem with the electrical system that had recently appeared. After the two of us fixed that problem, a few other issues with the electrical system became apparent. Rather than trailering the boat to the ocean right away, the two of us worked for a couple of hours fixing things and getting her ready.
We finally hooked the trailer up to his truck and I followed him to a public boat launch. We had to hit the trailer with the tire iron for a long time to extend the trailer tongue that was completely rusted. Once that was finished, we tried to step the mast with his homemade winch thing. After the mast nearly fell over, he called his friend to come help us. His friend showed up and helped us steady the mast as it was raised. When we were finished, he backed the trailer down the ramp and put the boat in the water. I crawled inside and immediately started checking the hull for leaks. The propeller shaft began to leak so I kept that in the back of my mind as I kept checking the rest of the boat.
Next, I checked the head. I opened the seacocks and filled the bowl. As I pumped the bowl empty, the contents of it began spewing out all over my hands and onto the floor. I was getting very worried about the boat at this point so I crawled into the tiny engine compartment to see what was in there. I reached my hand down into the bilge and came up with a handful of rotten wood so that was about the final straw.
I decided not to buy the boat and told the owner this. He was visibly disappointed but understood that his boat would not be the best for a long trip. I helped him derig the boat and came up with a new rope system that made it possible for a single person to take down the mast.
I was completely disappointed that the primary boat that I had been looking at fell through. I went to a hotel and started from square one searching for boats again. My parents helped me out quite a bit and I tried to contact several people that are trying to sell their boats but was only able to leave messages.

The Flight

2007-05-23T22:15:00.000-04:00

My mom drove me to the airport early this morning. I forgot my glasses on the boat last night so we had to stop there on the way to the airport. The flight was pretty long and connected in Charlotte. I took a shuttle to a hotel that the car rental agency was located and I picked up a car. Then I drove to my hotel and got dinner at Wendy's. I spoke with the guy who owns the boat that I want to buy and set up a time to meet him tomorrow morning. Tomorrow will be a very important day.

Winter Road Trip

2007-05-10T15:08:00.000-04:00

At around noon on New Year’s Day, Bryce and I packed up my parents’ car and started driving. As we drove through Madison we ate dinner and picked up some mead, a honey liquor that Bryce has been brewing and perfecting all year.

We left Madison and started driving south. The drive down there was very long but rather uneventful. We had to stop once or twice to take a little nap in the parking lot of a truck stop but we were just excited to be on the road. We drove through Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and then finally Florida. We arrived in Miami at about 3:00 am in the morning after a day and a half of driving.

We had found a campground on the internet before we left that cost only ten dollars per night so we decided to go there and wait for it to open so we could set up the tent and sleep. We parked in their lot and tilted the seats back to nap for a few hours. We were awakened by a groundskeeper knocking on our window. He told us that there was no need to wait and that we could just set up our tent and pay for the site during the day. We gladly obliged and slept like logs for most of the following day.

That evening, we drove to Miami Beach to do a little exploring. There were lots of interesting people and very expensive homes and cars. I bought a few cigars made by a cool Cuban guy and had one as we walked along the beach. After a night of exploring, we went back to the camp site and went to sleep. The following day was just another day of exploring, swimming in the ocean, and talking to interesting people that we met. I also set up meetings with a few of the people I had been communicating with over the internet so I could go see their boats for sale.

The two of us woke up the next morning and ate a quick breakfast of oatmeal. We were meeting a guy so I could look at his boat. We found the marina where he told us to meet him and waited. He finally showed up and introduced himself as Rex.

Rather than keeping his boat at this marina, Rex had his boat anchored in an unused harbor in Biscayne Bay. We walked over to a very rickety old metal dinghy on the shore that he untied. We helped him push it into the ocean and got in. The oar locks had long since broken off and there was one oar that had broken in the middle and one that seemed flimsy but was nonetheless in one piece. He sat in the front and Bryce and I sat in the back. He paddled on the port side and I paddled with the broken oar on the starboard side. We finally made it to his boat after zig-zagging back and forth and we tied up. He invited us aboard and what we found was very surprising. There was junk everywhere: broken boat pieces, a disassembled bilge pump in the sink, cigarette butts everywhere, and not a working piece of electronics in sight. I poked around the boat for a while and finally took the floorboards off to look in the bilge. I found the bilge nearly filled up to the floorboards and the water smelled very strongly of feces. I asked him why the bilge pump was not working and he replied (from outside where he couldn't see the filled up cesspool that was the bilge,) "This boat is tight as a drum; I don't even have a bilge pump because I never need one."

I finished looking through the boat so we all got back in the dinghy and began to row towards shore. I asked him if he usually towed the dinghy behind when he went on sailing trips. “Oh yes, I've never had a problem with it,” he replied. A very small wave hit us as I shifted slightly. The dinghy was so poorly constructed that the hull twisted and water started pouring in at an alarming rate over the stern. He was not aware of the swamping that was in progress since he was facing forward and paddling ferociously with his broken paddle. In between frantic strokes with my own paddle, I asked him whether or not he ever has ever had a problem with water getting into the boat. To my astonishment, he replied, “Oh no, this little boat is unsinkable, it would take a hurricane to get any water inside this thing.” As soon as he was finished uttering those words, another very small wave hit us at the wrong angle and water gushed over the stern at a rate which would cause any seasoned mariner to abandon ship. We somehow barely stayed afloat and continued the now very difficult paddle to shore. As we were nearing shore, the second of the two paddles snapped in half.

We tied up the dinghy and began walking back to the car. I had earlier expressed an unwillingness to leave a boat I buy anchored for five months until I was able to come back and begin my trip. Rex, in his infinite wisdom, decided to show me another harbor owned by a friend of his that I could keep the boat anchored. He told us that it was a very protected harbor and would be very safe there. He then went on to explain that I should not tell the owner of the bay before I anchored it there because he was trying to keep derelict boats out of the harbor. I was again floored by this since it was quite clear that the few boats that were in the harbor were most definitely derelict and were horrible eyesores. When I told him this, he replied, “Oh, those are just fine because they are owned by [names random people that neither of us knew.]” I had had quite enough and told Rex that I would call him the following day with my decision and we drove off.

After this very interesting and humorous adventure, we visited a very cool boat that is cheaper, in better condition, and not owned by a crazy idiot. I am considering buying it but have several kinks to work out beforehand. In the evening Bryce and I drove up to Miami Beach and walked along Ocean Drive and the beach. On our way back, Bryce refused to go with me to sneak into the fancy hotel pools and hot tubs on the beach so we just drove back down to the campground. As we got in, a ranger pulled up to out site in a pickup truck and started talking to us. At first I thought that we had broken some sort of rule (like we did earlier in the day when we hung up a clothesline) but he turned out to be a crazy old man that was desperate to talk to someone. He told us about all the best strip clubs in town and knew exactly how much each of them cost. Even as Bryce and I slowly backed up signaling him to leave, he continued to talk to us about Britney Spears' new boyfriend and Jenifer Lopez's child support payments. He finally left and Bryce and I had a cool glass of mead before going to bed.

I eventually looked at a couple of other boats, all of which were better deals than Rex's. I found one that I liked in particular but for a variety of reasons decided not to buy it at the time, but instead to keep in contact with the seller over the next several months.

The Idea

2007-05-10T14:41:00.000-04:00

Last summer I was talking with my friend, Jake and it somehow came up that we should plan some sort of grand adventure. We discussed a motorcycle trip to all of the nation's national parks, a canoe trip down the entire Mississippi river, and backpacking all around the Yukon. We finally decided that the coolest trip would be to sail up the east coast of the United States in a little sailboat. Over the next few months, this idea grew into a serious plan as I decided that it would be feasible after all. I determined that I could use the savings from my past several jobs to afford such an adventure, while Jake decided that being employed would be more valuable to his future, and thus the trip became singlehanded. As I continued to plan in the fall, I became convinced that it would better to purchase a boat during the winter and have it stored until spring. My parents agreed to let me use their car to drive down there on my winter break so I recruited my friend, Bryce, to join me.