Boat, Baby

True to form (both my own and that of a somewhat sleep-deprived new parent) I've started and not completed several blog posts since the last.  Not surprisingly, they're almost all about Atlas.  I mean, who wouldn't want to read long, rambling Mom Posts about this little guy?

The Stinker.  I mean, Thinker.

But striking the balance between sentimental and humorous is tricky (see "sleep-deprived" above) and what sounded clever or profound one day just sounds stupid the next.  Or something.  Like I said.

Atlas is going through a phase (I hope) where he only wants to sleep on someone.  Like, if it ain't got a pulse, it's not an acceptable mattress.  This results in many long bladder-holding, stomach-rumbling hours of laying in bed with a very cute baby on me.  Because sleep.  Please, please, sleep.  So I've been doing some blog-reading, and what the hell did new moms do before smart phones, please?  Like, really, I want to know.  I'm so sorry for you all.

A sailing friend recommended this blog when we announced we were having a baby as a good resource for sailing with little ones.  I'd perused it in the past, but finally had the time to really get down to business reading the archives.  As good writing often does, it's motivated me in many ways.  They cruised with kids around the Pacific-side of Mexico, and were going for an Atlantic crossing before losing their boat due to an unfortunate series of circumstances and having to get evac'ed.  Which sucks, but such is life, and everyone was ok.  After getting back to shore and working to rebuild their lives, they've fully embraced small-house living and intend to acquire a new boat in a few years (those things are expensive) and move back aboard.  Anyway, as a one-time (and hopefully future) live-aboard, new parent, and small-house dweller, I'm incredibly inspired to do more of all those things better.  She's also incredibly crafty, which I am decidedly not, but I have a sewing machine and I'm not afraid of making things that look terrible.  Recently I made a ring-sling, and it is great if you don't look at the seams.  It works, anyway, and rather than using "ring sling aluminum rings" I went to Ace and bought stainless steel, because steel's real, baby.  Or it might have just been what they had.

Baby sold separately.

Anyway, Tri-oomph is in the water and more or less ready to sail.  We went for a little motor last Friday and clipped into someone's mooring (not a ton of boats in the water yet in Essex) and hung out on the tramps eating potato chips.  It was cold and windy.  Remember this time last year?  Let's see, today's Thursday, so one year ago today we were probably exploring St. Catherine Island in Georgia.  

Today I'm doing a lot of this.

There really are no bad options.   But last year I was definitely more tan.  I thought I'd get tan again this year, and then I realized that newborns really aren't supposed to be in the sun, so, well, New-England-Pale it is.  (New-England-Pale is my term for how those who spend their winters in New England and avoid the tanning bed look come March.  I've opined before that Revlon should make a shade of foundation called New England Pale, but it just occurred to me that it would be a fantastic name for a beer.  It would have to be sort of a springtime release, you know?)

But I digress.

We went for a motor on Tri-oomph because, while we'd stepped the mast and gotten her in the water, our wee deckhand had had enough by that point so we departed without getting the shrouds properly tensioned, or gotten the boom on, or really any number of little things that need to be finished before we can actually sail.  Plus, it's a little nerve-wracking having a baby on board and we are definitely going to start small and build up our confidence.  While some might think it's dangerous, let me assure you that he'll require far more vigilance once he's mobile.  At this point he either sits in someone's arms in his life jacket or is worn in the ergo.  

The best baby lifejacket.

Again, a digression.

So we went for a motor with no boom on and lazy jacks and halyards flapping in the wind and our outer shrouds looping.  That was pretty funny, because when we were cruising last summer and we saw a boat with no boom you could pretty well bet that no one was planning on sailing it.  Likely a permanent live-aboard of the variety that many wealthy Florida residents are trying to prevent from anchoring near their homes.  So we had a good laugh about that.  The sound of the outboard lulled Atlas to sleep in seconds.  Then on Sunday we pulled her up to the dock to finish getting her sail-ready.  This year "us working on the boat" is Cody working on the boat while I stand around with Atlas, but Cody held onto him in the cabin while I took care of the all the little details that still needed to be attended to.  We finally got ourselves sorted out to register her in Massachusetts, and sticking our new registration sticker to the bow was pretty rad.  When it came time to attach the boom, however, Cody carried it from the dock while I held Atlas, but he tripped stepping onto the boat and stepped on the edge of the trampoline.  You may remember from last summer that our tramps were shredded by the time we got back (combination of old thread and abrasion from the dinghy, and plenty of usage as well) so we got some new trim fabric and our rad (much more crafty than I) friend Jenny helped Cody sewed them for us.  We (and this is all on me and Cody) estimated a little short, however, so once the tramps were in place we realized they were too tight.  You could pluck the side pieces like a guitar string.  We had intentions of moving the trim out a bit to let in some slack, but hadn't done so yet.  So when Cody stepped on the edge it ripped the railing out, taking a substantial chunk of wood with it.  C'est la vie.  Boat maintenance.  He went out and epoxied and through-bolted it yesterday, and we took the tramps off to restitch, although I'm not too sure when we'll get around to that.  We can't really take her out with no tramps, so our next mini-adventure will have to wait.  We've been hoping just to anchor and spend the night on board close to home, but maybe next weekend.  

So that's the state of boating.  

It's funny - two years ago when we sailed around here I really had no idea what I was doing.  When we began our trip last year I also had no idea what I was doing.  By the end of our adventure I could sail at night while Cody slept by myself, and felt fairly confident that I could do just about anything that I'd need to do in such a situation.  But now that we're back in home waters I feel like I did two seasons ago.  I think it's just a question of context.  In the context of sailing around home I've only ever felt nervous and inexperienced.  Once I'm on the boat, though, I know what to do, even if I don't feel like it.  When we were tying onto the mooring the other day I managed the outboard and the tiller with a baby strapped to me.  No way could I have done that two years ago.  

He just woke up from his nap in the swing and is throwing me shade while I ignore him and work on the blog, so I'd better go get some cuddles.

On Babies, Boats, and Bicycles

For those who missed it, about a year ago I wrote this blog post.  It's pretty funny, I recommend it.  For the TL;DR version, it's about why cruising on a sail boat is like having a baby.  Obviously, at the time I'd done neither.  Now, I've done both in less than a year.  On May 11 it will be one year to the day since the two of us set off on our sailing adventure.  Three of us came home 14 weeks later.

I'd intended to write a funny follow up to the aforementioned blogpost, but trying to wrap the experiences of the last year into a few pithy paragraphs is going to be impossible.  Still, I'll give it a go.

In said blogpost I made a joke about how having an infant is sort of like cruising, because you're sleeping in shifts, and you never see each other, and you're pretty much just shoveling whatever food is closest at hand into your mouth while you set the autopilot/the baby sleeps.  This, I can confirm, is quite accurate.  Or, at least, it was accurate before Cody went back to work.  Now that he has to get up early and support us, I try to let him sleep through the night (but not on the weekend!  haha!).  So, it's actually more like when we'd sail through the night in rough weather, when I was too much of a weenie to stay at the helm and he'd have to pull all nighters, except with our roles reversed.  I remember one night when he tacked back and forth into a 25 knot headwind and 6 foot chop while I slept in the v-berth.  Occasionally we'd drop off a wave and I'd look out to see if he was still on board, then fall back asleep.  I'll get up to feed or change the baby, and Cody will stir and mutter something like, "wanmetachange?" which I think is him asking me if I want him to change a diaper, before falling back asleep.

As far as the pregnancy goes, well, not much about it was like preparing the boat for our trip.  Well, now, maybe that's not the case.  Truth be told, I didn't enjoy being pregnant much.  There were cool things about it, like when he kicked, but mostly I just felt physically lousy.  The first 18 weeks or so it was nausea, then there were a couple weeks with no gastrointestinal complaints, then it was gnarly heartburn for the duration.  I thought maybe the nausea would be like seasickness, or something like that.  Difference is that you can just take drugs on the boat!  People just keep offering you ginger when you have morning sickness.  Stop it.  Stop offering ginger.  It totally did nothing at all.

Working on the boat was, similarly, not my favorite.  It was springtime, and rather than spending hours on the trails we were in a dark warehouse sanding and painting and epoxying.  Every damn weekend.  But the true similarity is in how I feel about the process with the benefit of hindsight.  Which is to say that if I could do it again I would, and not just for the end result.  Rather, the process is part of the adventure, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time.  And when adventures come to an end I always feel nostalgic to live them again.  But to conclude that anything has come to an end is untrue, because just as we'll be back on the water this summer, our adventures with our little guy are just beginning.

Now, labor.  I have to admit, I felt pretty confident going into labor.  I figured I'd just treat it like some gnarly 24 hour bike race, and contractions would be like intervals, and yada yada yada.  No.  Just stop. That's wrong.

There is literally nothing that compares to the physical misery of labor.  People should just stop trying to describe it, because you can't.  And you're stuck in it.  It's the most committed to something I've ever been in my life, but only because there was no way out of it.  If there were I'd probably have taken it.  At one point I was trying to be really pathetic so Cody or the midwife would offer me drugs, but they just told me to breathe.  Breathing did literally nothing.  Counterpressure did literally nothing.  Here's the only analogy I can come up with that conveys even a modicum of how I felt:  it was like crossing the gulf stream to the Bahamas, when a gnarly gail blows out of the north.  Now, since the gulf stream runs south to north, a strong north wind causes it to blow up into big chop and can produce gnarly conditions.  It's not advisable to cross at these times.   Finding myself halfway through labor was like getting halfway across the gulf stream only to have that cold north wind blow through.  There's no turning back, there's nothing to be done but persevere.  No one can help you, you just have to suck it up and keep moving.

And if you make it through?  You're greeted either by that amazing bluegreen water, or, you know, your son.  And it's unreal, and amazing, and you can't believe you survived but you're oh so happy that you did.  And you're stronger, and better, and life is perfect.

Now what?  Well, we're settling into our newest adventure comfortably.  Cody's gotten to go mountain biking a few times, and I'm hoping to be back out there in another week or so.  The boat probably won't be in the water until the end of May, but that's OK, because Atlas has to be 9 lbs to fit into his lifejacket, and he's still under 8.  But we're super excited to get out sailing again and are hoping to do a weeklong family cruise northward later in the summer.  Everything is more fun with more love.

Sailing Into 2015

2014 was a big year.  2013 was no joke, what with buying a boat, and getting married, and going back to school, but 2014 . . . whew.  Well, you know most of it.  Getting the boat into ocean-cruising shape, cruising said ocean for 14 weeks, coming home, buying a house and learning that we're adding a new member to our crew in April 2015 . . . well, big year.  

As to the new crew member, if you didn't know already, surprise!  I've started a couple blog posts titled "Two Departed and Three Returned," and attempted to write a follow up to Why is Cruising Like Having a Baby? but the truth is for the first 20 weeks or so of this newest adventure I felt lousy basically all the time and didn't have much good to say about it.  Going to my Invasion Games class  and playing soccer with a bunch of competitive 20 year old PE majors while constantly fearing that I might throw up on one of them, or exhaust myself to the point of complete uselessness for the next several days, sort of sucked.  And that's too bad, because playing soccer for class is rad, and I'm a super competitive 31 year old who can usually hold her own.  So feeling lousy all the time sucked, especially compared to how physically well I usually feel.  It also made me sound super whiny and ungrateful when I tried to write about it.  Add to that the necessity of attending to school work, and . . . no blog.  

But here we are!  January 31, and we're on a fine reach!  After 4 months of not doing much riding and hardly any running I finally feel good again!  I've been running every day and getting out on some road rides (MTBing is out of the question - I can't make it up a single climb).  And that's all weird because I'm up 15 pounds and every muscle attached to my pelvis is experiencing some kind of painful metamorphosis. But my energy is so much better and I actually feel like myself again, for the first time in a long, long time.  The little second mate (position of deckhand has already been filled by Mr. Noble) is poking and kicking and moving around, too, and that's pretty fun.  My stomach is finally happy enough that I can enjoy my morning cup of (decaf) tea without incident.  Joy.

But onto sailing!  Obviously we've had none, as Tri-oomph stayed high and dry after our return.  I think I've been out on the water two days total - one paddling and one motoring, neither my favorite activities.  We were able to find barn-space for Tri-oomph to spend the winter, and have compiled a list of repairs to make before we can get off the hard in the spring.  The goal is to be sailing in early April, because getting the the mast stepped and the boat launched while responsible for a small person sounds rather more complex.  We've decided, at present, to skip the New England Boat Show this year, since they don't have a huge sailing section, and an even smaller multihull presence.  Instead, I'm trying to convince Cody that we (all 3 of us) should go down to Newport in May when the Volvo Ocean Race comes into port for a few days.  That looks to be a lot of fun.  At any rate, we plan on sailing as much as we can this summer, and are planning to finally take our long-awaited trip to the Isle of Shoals, maybe in August.  So no, not as much sailing as last summer, but hopefully many good days and nights on our little boat.  

Anyway, cheers (toasted with sparkling apple juice) to fair winds and calm seas in 2015!

So much sanding.  

 So shiny!

 She floats!

 We ate a lot of ice cream.

 Um, yeah?

 But we saw a lot of amazing sunsets.

Okay, that was a pretty pathetic highlights reel, but most of my good photos aren't on this computer, so, I dunno, maybe I'll add some later.  

Last Hurrah

We had read stories of people running into submerged logs and stumps and catching their rigging in overhanging trees on the Dismal Swamp Canal, but on our trip south along it's 25 mile length was uneventful.  Not so for the northbound trip, where we hit two or three submerged logs and caught our rigging on some overhanging trees.  Oops.  Cody was not happy.  We had arisen early and made good time, catching the outgoing lock at 1 PM despite a stop at the North Carolina Visitor's Center and a hike around some of the trails there.  We were happy to talk to Robert, the lockmaster, again, and he gave us some excellent advice for our night in Norfolk/Portsmouth.  

On our previous trip through the the area we'd stopped at the Portsmouth town dock but noticed signs indicating that overnight tie-up wasn't an option.  Robert assured us that we could tie up overnight.  We were able to find dock space, although it required a tricky piece of parallel parking that we'd never have been able to pull off at the beginning of the trip.  Go team.  Later in the evening we walked to the Commodore Theater, about 5 blocks away from the dock, also on Robert's recommendation.  The Commodore was built in 1945, and has the look and feel of the golden age of movie theaters (whatever that age is, I don't know, I just made that up).  Anyway, it's cool.  They ripped out the lower seats a number of years ago and put in individual tables, seating between 2 and 6 people.  There's a phone on the table and you call in your dinner order to the kitchen, and they bring it out to you while you watch the movie.  Super rad.  Also, the movie was incredibly cheap - $7 if you paid cash, to see a movie that had only been out for a week.  It was really neat - I wish the small theaters around here would follow the model, because it's rad.  

Anyway, we had a nice date night, but we should have known better than to tie up to the dock.  We have back luck at docks.  Our boat just doesn't afford enough privacy and sound proofing to be able to rest well with street lights and sounds coming in.  Oh well.  

We got moving the next morning with no clear destination in mind, just heading up the Chesapeake towards Baltimore.  The wind was light and variable, however, so we didn't make very good progress and dropped anchor about 40 miles north of Norfolk.  The next day we had light wind in the morning but it picked up in the afternoon allowing us to turn off the motor and have a lovely sail.  I cooked dinner while we tried to pick up a few more miles, and we ate on the trampoline while Martha the Autopilot kept us on course.  It was a beautiful evening, and as we neared our anchorage we were surrounded by a pod of huge dolphins.  Not a huge pod, but huge dolphins.  They stayed with us, feeding on fish in the shallower water, while we sailed the last mile or so.  We dropped anchor and settled in the cabin for the evening.  

There tide and wind were in opposition, creating a bit of an eddy, and Tri-oomph likes to move all around on the anchor under the best of conditions.  We twisted around and the anchor line ended up getting wrapped around the centerboard - we heard it creaking against the hull of the boat and went on deck to sort it out.  I tied a longer line to the anchor line using a bolon, and walked it around the side of the boat.  I handed the line off to Cody, who walked it around the stern and then pulled to see if it was free.  And that was when the bolon pulled free and we lost our trusted Danforth anchor that had held us in all conditions we'd encountered.  

Now, as the tie-er of this knot I felt a certain degree of responsibility (guilt) although I know in my heart it was the same solid knot I'd tied a hundred times in our anchor line to no ill-consequence.  Cody was . . . upset.  Not at me, but at the potential loss of the anchor.  We threw out the backup anchor (a smaller Danforth) and Cody decided to dive and try to find the line and retrieve the anchor.  At this point it was almost dark, however, and the water in the Chesapeake is not the same clear water of Florida and the Bahamas.  It was only 8 feet deep, but couple that with a strong current and it was an exercise in futility.  Cody realized this after a couple minutes and hauled himself back on deck with pronouncements of irate failure.  We had the presence of mind to mark a Man-Overboard point on the GPS when the knot had let go before we'd drifted too far so we had a decent idea whereabouts the anchor might be, but the line could have drifted in any direction and would surely be at the very bottom.  After trying to motor over it, dragging the other anchor in the hopes of snagging the line for about a half hour we gave up and set the small anchor for the night.

Now, we'd been getting some water in the rear outrigger supports, which in turn infiltrated the box where the electronic wiring runs.  As a result, the alarm for our depth sounder hadn't been working in a few days.  Unbeknownst to us, we left the depth sounder on that night.  At about 1 AM I awoke to a feeble beeping sound coming from the depth sounder.  I dug out the iPad and saw that we'd drifted about a mile and a half, our anchor dragging helplessly along with us, and were 3 feet of water, about to run aground.  Sigh.  Silently thanking our depth sounder for coming through in the pinch, I woke Cody and we motored closer to shore and reset the anchor.  In the eddy we'd been in before Tri-oomph had swung around again, this time wrapping the chain around the anchor flukes, rendering it no more than a light weight attached to the bow.  Hoping that this time we'd be fine, we went back to bed.  

We awoke the next day having not dragged again (yay!) and decided to dedicate another couple hours to possible anchor retrieval.  The cost of replacing the anchor alone is only about $100, but add 10 feet of heavy chain and 100 fee of good rope and it's closer to $250, which we weren't (and aren't) in a position to afford.  As we motored over to our MOB point where we'd last seen our dear anchor, we saw the water was filled with jellyfish.  Not the benign Cannonballs that we'd seen all along the Georgia coast, but tentacled, menacing Sea Nettles.  They won't kill you, unless you're allergic, but they can delivery a nasty sting.  We suited Cody up on a pair of my leggings (dashing!) and his rash guard shirt, and he jumped back in to look for the anchor.  While he didn't get stung, he also didn't find the anchor.  We gave up and bade our trusty Danforth farewell.  

Tucker was coming to get us the next day so we had to find a boat ramp that we could reach by the next morning and he could find.  We picked one up a river, unfortunately still far south of Baltimore.  We motor sailed up the river for most of the day, then found a restaurant with a tie-up and got some dinner.  We were in Maryland so I got bold and ordered crab cakes.  I don't know why.  I'm sure they're very good, but every time I eat crab or lobster I think I'm eating big sea-bugs, because that's what they are.  We asked the incredibly curmudgeonly bar tender/owner if we could stay on his dock overnight, and he allowed it.  While we ate the other guy at the bar talked Cody's ear off while I wished we'd gotten a table instead.  At one point he asked me what I did, and I told him I was in school to be a teacher, to which he replied that I'd never make any money like that.  Oh the people you meet.  

We had a good night at the dock, though, and woke early the next morning to prepare the boat for the trailer.  We packed stuff up and then dropped the mast.  We usually drop the mast with the trailer winch, but we were on a dock so we had only the spinnaker halyard.  I had the halyard with a couple wraps around the winch, and Cody stood on the cabin guiding it down.  It was easy to lower at first, but our line ended up being too short and I wasn't able to get enough wraps with the rope and the mast crashed down the last 3 feet, almost (but not quite!) cracking the solar panel.  Ugh.  

We got everything wrapped up, though, and motored across the river to the boat ramp, where we folded up the pontoons and settled in to wait for Tucker and Cody's mom who had accompanied him.  

They arrived, we loaded Tri-oomph onto the trailer, and were bound for home.  That night, at about 1 AM, we arrived back in Gloucester, 14 weeks to the day from when we'd left.  

I hope this post doesn't sound negative, or like our last week on the boat sucked or anything, because it was actually great, despite the anchor, solar panel, crab cakes, and shifty winds.  I'm writing this almost 3 weeks after getting home and I feel incredibly sad that the trip is over.  I'm happy to be home, of course, and seeing Riley was amazing, but I think I'd still rather be back out on the water (maybe with Riley in tow, this time).  We were so lucky to get the chance to take this trip, and I would do it again, no differently, in a heartbeat.  But it's always sad when adventures end, even if another is just beginning.  

Now, in a departure from my normal Simpsons and MST3K and Seinfeld quotes -

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."  -T.S. Elliot

 At the Commodore!

 Water sloshing around in the electronics box.

 So sad out of the water.

 Crossing the George Washington Bridge.

The best part of coming home.

Back in the Ditch

We'd heard good things about Oriental, NC from other cruisers but hadn't stopped on the way south because we'd hugged the eastern side of the Pamlico Sound and visited Hattaras and Ocracoke.  Because the North wind forced us into the ICW we we were passing right through Oriental and figured it would be a good place to fix our sail and get ourselves sorted out.

We pulled up to the free town dock in the morning after  spending a quiet night anchored in a river up from Morehead.  

Now, a side note.  Over the course of the summer Cody and I have been almost exclusively in eachothers' company. As you might imagine, spending that much unalleviated time with one's significant other can seriously wear on the patience. That morning as we pulled up anchor we were at each other's throats, and it's seriously a miracle neither one of us jumped (or was pushed, with an anchor tied to their ankles) from the boat. It happens.  I think that we're much stronger as a partnership for the events of the summer, and we've definitely learned to work well as a team, but sometimes we wanted to kill eachother.  Again, it happens.  I have no idea how a couple could work together.  If Cody and I owned a restaurant together I'd definitely end up hitting him in the head with a fryer basket at some point.  

Anyway, spitting mad and no longer speaking to eachother we pulled up to the town dock in Oriental.  I noted with pleasure that the dock was located just across the street from the local coffee shop, as much of my grumpiness was due to not having any coffee yet that morning (we'd lost our cloth coffee filter overboard and Cody had been filtering his through an old UNR Cycling Team sock - no thank you).  After we docked an older couple came up to us to talk about the boat.  It turned out they were bonafide seapeople, having lived aboard for 20 years and made several Atlantic crossings.  They were incredibly friendly, offering to drive us to the grocery store, and bring us to their home to shower and do laundry.  It was really fun talking to them, and we would get another chance later in the day.  We talked to them about our sail problem and they immediately called a couple they knew who does sail repairs.  The couple drove right down to inspect our sail, give us an estimate, and took it home with them, promising it by the next morning (mind you, this as a sunday).  

We hadn't had breakfast so we turned down the offer for the ride and grabbed a cup of coffee and a bearclaw before walking to the grocery store.  After being on the boat for so long it's lovely to just be able to walk (despite offers from at least half a dozen other people offering to drive us to the store).

The local grocery store was nice and shockingly inexpensive.  As we walked back toward the boat an older woman stopped in the road to offer us a ride back to the docks.  We were fairly loaded down so we accepted.  

We had a steady stream of visitors to the boat all day.  At one point we walked over to an art gallery across the street to look around.  As we were looking at some neat paintings another older couple  came into the gallery and walked over to talk to us.  They had seen the boat and were trimaran owners themselves.  Also extremely accomplished sailors.  As the day progressed we heard from a number of people, "Oh, you should meet Manfred Rott!  He and his wife have sailed all over teh place nd have great stories."  And we did!  They came and sought us out.  We felt special.  

We received a call from the sail makers in the afternoon and they told us they'd finished our repair early (on Sunday!).  We walked down to pick it up and chatted for a while.  They told us about the town watermelon social later in the day and said we should walk down to it.  Apparently a number of years ago a local watermelon grower had brought his harvest to market only to be offered a ridiculously low price.  Screw this, he said, and he gave all the watermelon to the town in the form of a watermelon social.  His wife, 96 years young, and kids still hold the social every year.  We walked down to the social that afternoon and gorged on watermelon and had another chance to talk to Anne and Neville.  Also in attendence were a number of other older couples, one of whom had circumnavigated twice and the other who had a couple transatlantics.  It was really inspring and fun to talk to them all.

Back at the dock we met another couple who had pulled in for the evening.  They were from Bozeman, MT, of all places.  They had two grown kids and had left everything behind to buy a boat and cruise.  Cody asked them if they'd sailed before making the jump.  "Nope!" They'd lived their whole lives on a ranch in Montana.  What prompted them to make such a drastic change?  The reply was the best I've heard, "Life begins when you get outside your comfort zone.  Nobody wants to hear about us sitting around watching reruns."  Life begins when you get outside your comfort zone!  So perfect.

Anyway, we finally got tucked in for the night and finally watched A Perfect Storm.  Is it weird that neither of us had ever seen it?  We got a nice night of sleep and then pulled out early to head north.

We were luckily able to sail and make great time for the better part of the next day.  The wind was great heading across the sounds, and we were able to sail a number of rivers as well.  Finally we pulled into a marina to get some fuel.  We should have known from the look of the place that there was some bad mojo.  To get in we had to pass a breakwater, that appeared to be snow fencing like you'd see out west to keep the snow drifts from blowing across the road.  Additionally, the entire length of it was completely lined with seagulls.  Like from The Birds.  Like I'm pretty sure seagulls had eaten all the humans and now ran the town.  We pulled up to a dock, also completely inundated with seagulls, and scraped our pontoon up on it.  It was completely covered in seagull poop.  Completely.  Covered.  In.  Poop.  There was one other boat there and the guy came over as we were trying, unsuccessfully, to get tied and bumpered up before we did anymore damage to the boat.  He unhelpfully informed us that the dockmaster was gone (???) for a while, and while we waited for him so we could get fuel we should move over by his boat.  Gone?  No, we'll not be waiting for him to return, thanks very much.  He was stranded there because his alternator had gone out and he was waiting for a repair.  I wouldn't be surprised if he's still tied to that dock and has been completely enslaved by the seagull overlords.  It was a weird place.

Wait we did not, instead proceeding further on our course to another marina that did have fuel but, alas, no beer.  We wanted to get through the next stretch of canal before dark to make our next day a little shorter.  It ended up being a very pretty motor, and we saw two bald eagles!  We finally dropped anchor as the canal opened up into a larger river and had a nice calm night.

The next day we awoke to rain and fog, and I lay around in the cabin while Cody Grunden'ed up and got us moving.  We crossed the Albemarle Sound towards Elizabeth City and the wind was light and annoying and the waves choppy and annoying.  We reached Elizabeth City and decided to not stop, being not in the mood for any confederate sermonizing.  We proceeded to a marina to refuel for our next day of motoring through the Dismal Swamp, which happily stocked beer, then motored another couple miles and dropped anchor for the night.

Anyway, I guess the rest of the trip is going to have to wait for the next blog post, because this has gone on long enough.  Spoiler alert - we're home now, and now that things are feeling more settled I'm feeling incredibly wistful for the adventure and freedom of our liveaboard experience, which is motivating me to write this all down while it's still relatively fresh.  

 Docked in Oriental, NC.

 Watermelon Social!

 Yes.

 Fixed Mainsail.

We attracted some attention in Oriental and ended up on their website homepage.

Voyaging Part 2

As far as cities go (I'm more of a fan of locals sans people) Charleston is pretty cool.  We know our way around all right by now and it's pretty relaxing to anchor off of City Marina and just chill.  Exhausted as we were after our long sail up from Key Largo it was great having that time to recover.   We ended up staying an extra day - not because of Bertha so much as the strong northerly wind that was forcast.  No sense in fighting a headwind in somewhat larger seas (due to the hurricane).  When we'd been through Charleston on the trip south I'd wanted to go to the aquarium and we'd decided to skip it after a shockingly expensive trip to the Harris Teeter.  This time we went, and it was rad.

We departed on Wednesday morning in no particular rush.  We made coffee and breakfast and waited for the tide to start heading out.  Our goal was to make it to Ocracoke, NC, about 250 miles north.  We would have to head west to get around the Frying Pan Shoal before cutting north, passing just west of Cape Lookout and then going in the Ocracoke Inlet.  

Well, long story short, we didn't have as stellar of conditions for this leg of the trip as we'd had for the first.  Our first day and a half we covered barely 80 miles, making it just past the Frying Pan.  It was hot and we weren't moving.  It's difficult to express how disheartening it is to have no wind on a sailboat.  I read one book about circumnavigation and the author said something like, "and deep in the heart of the becalmed sailor lies the fear, however irrational, that the wind willl never return."  I'm completely paraphrasing, but it's sort of true.  

Anyway, on the second evening we were cooking dinner, moving along at a frustratingly sedate 1.5 knots, when the boat jybed hard as the wind abruptly switched from southerly at less than 5 knots to northerly at 15-20.  It was pretty alarming.  As a novice sailor I have a tendency to feel somewhat betrayed when the ocean or conditions do something unexpected, like a cat who thinks you're carrying her to the kitchen for dinner and then you plop her in the sink for a bath.  What - how - why?!?! How could you do this to me?!

Melodramatics aside, we had to tack west.  The wind increased and the seas built a bit.  Cody sailed us through the night.  We made surprising decent headway as we struggled against the stiff north wind. When I came on deck just before dawn Cody informed me that the mainsail had torn.  The seam just above the top battan had separated a month before and Cody had put a beautiful patch on it (sewing through all the old holes for three hours). The new rip was on either side of the patch job and it was not cool.  At this point we decided we should just take our chances with a questionable inlet and get out of the chop and north wind.  To get there we'd just drop our maimed main and motor.  

Now, our reliable little outboard is raised and lowered along an aluminum track.  The mechanism is getting a little old and the springs aren't so hot anymore.  At some point during the night we must've come hard off a wave and the impact caused the track in the motor mount to bend.  The result was that the engine was stuck in the lowest position and operation would cause it to suck in sea water.  Engines don't like that.  Cody at this point hadn't slept in far too long and was getting pretty frustrated trying to bend the mount back into place as we crashed through the chop with our sad sail. Sleep deprivation is an ugly thing.  Anyway, I suggested that we heave-to so that the motion of the boat and the drag on the motor would be lessened.  That did the trick and he was able to bend the track sufficiently that we were able to move the motor up a couple clicks.  Phew.  As we were talking about a game plan and looking at the inlet we were going to attempt to enter we noticed a half dozen dolphins swimming around the boat.  They were just sort of swimming around in circles, coming to the surface to give us some dolphin side-eye.  It was like they were checking up on us!  "You's guys OK?  Why isn't your green vessel moving?"  It was pretty amazing.  We gave them the a-okay and they swam off.  

Cody finally got to go to bed and I motored us through the nasty chop towards the inlet.  I heaved-to again for another hour or so hoping to have a favorable tide.  There were three huge Navy ships doing some sort of training exercises in the bay around us - blowing things up and stuff.  It was entertaining while we waited.  

We made it in the inlet, only running aground twice!  The tide chart I'd consulted had lied to me and we were, in fact, fighting a tide despite my best intentions.  C'est la vie.  We dropped anchor and both took a 4 hour nap.  It was amazing.  We woke up just long enough to heat up some prepared soup and watch a stupid movie, then fell back asleep for the night.  

When we awoke the next day the weather was gloriously cool!  We'd gone from baking heat to rain and a north wind during our sail, so the partially cloudy skies and cool air temperatures felt like heaven.  We motored up the ICW to Morehead City and tied up to a restaurant dock for lunch.  There were a couple other boats tied up there and a big deck with full tables adjacent to the dock.  When we were casting off I made some snarky comment to Cody about not waiting for me to get the bowline and he says everyone on the dock heard me and started cracking up.  I guess when you're at sea for a little while it's easy to forget that in public you might want to moderate the snarky commentary.  Or not.

At any rate, why were we on the ICW?

First a story  

When I raced bikes I would almost always reach a point in the season when I got burned out and didn't want to ride anymore.  Or, if I was racing road I wanted to ride my MTB, if I was racing CX I wanted to MTB and go to yoga or something.  It's as abrupt as loving it one day and waking up the next morning filled with dread for having to go to a race, or go do intervals.  

Well, I reached that threshold with the boating life.  When that north wind snuck up on us I was abruptly Over It, and wanted to do whatever the opposite of sailing is (drowning?). Cody talked to his brother Tuck when we were anchored south of Morehead and he offered to drive down and pick us up with the trailer.  Sold!  How much do I freaking owe my brother-in-law (and Elise!) after this trip?  They watched Riley and my kitties (they even learned Big KItty's spirit name, and it is Gandalf, and he will forever be known as such), and now this.  Um, maybe I can weed the greenhouse or something for you guys?  Or, uh, work on your bikes?  I lack the skills to be of much use to people who make and grow things for a living.  I try not to be, but I'm a killer of plants.  

But I digress.

So as you can see, our voyage back into a cruise northward, trying to get further up so Tuck doesn't have to drive as far.  And more on that later!

I love the aquarium! Cody says it's ok

Cap needs a captains hat, right?

Whatever else I have to say about being offshore, the sunsets are indisputably superior.

It was damp.

Voyaging Part 1

Key Largo to Charleston - 500 miles - 3.5 days

We departed Key Largo on Thursday morning at 3:00 AM.  Why 3?  For some reason it's become our agreed-upon appropriate hour of departure.  Cody took the first watch while I caught a couple extra hours of sleep - probably the only reason why I've agreed to our agreed-upon departure time.  We quickly progressed into the gulf stream, where we got 4 free knots from the current.  We made good progress with a southeastern wind, generally trying to stay out of the sun.  We heard that the heat index was up at 105.  Hot hot hot.  For some reason now, I can't remember much of our first day.  We started a log book, but after the first night I was the only one filling it out so it was, unsurprisingly, quickly abandoned.  My note in the "comments" section coming off watch on Thursday afternoon was, "F#$%ing hot."  At one point I saw a fin emerge off the starboard bow, and a large black shape moving just below the surface.  "Cody!  A dolphin, or shark, or whale or something!" I said.  As we passed 6 feet away from it we saw that it was a big whale shark!  15 feet long, very cool.

There were some thunderstorms rolling around the Florida coastline that evening but we threaded a couple needles and never got caught in one.  At West Palm Beach we diverted out of the strongest path of the gulf stream and paid a price for it when we were becalmed the next day.  We were moving at an excruciating 1 knot for a couple hours as we tried to make our way further west and into the stronger currents.  The gulf stream may throw some wacky weather at us, but nothing is worse than being becalmed, in Florida, when it's 105 degrees.  We folded out the bed and lay around the cabin, letting the autopilot guide us and popping out every 20 minutes or so to watch for boat traffic (you know what voyager Larry Pardey said about being becalmed?  Es tiempo por amor.)  The wind picked up later in the afternoon, and between that and the current we were ripping along at 10+ knots.  Cody had been dragging a fishing line and we caught a little bluefin tuna as I was beginning to cook dinner.  We probably wouldn't have kept it but it had a rough trip back up to the boat and was, well, dead by the time we pulled him in.  We had one of our nicest dinners of the trip - blackened tuna, red beans and rice, and steamed kale.  Pretty classy.

I took the first watch of the night while Cody tried to get some sleep.  The wind and seas built as the sun fell and I performed my first solo-sail-reefing.  Eventually the wind was gusty enough that I wanted to drop the jib, but this time I woke Cody up to help me out, then he went back to sleep.  Running on only the reefed main we were still moving along at 8+ knots, so I figured we were making good progress. Too much time spent staring at the compass made me a little seasick, so I awakened Cody an hour before the end of my watch and crawled into bed.

The wind dissipated throughout the night and by the time I relieved Cody in the morning we were flying full sail and had slowed down a bit.  We continued to lose speed as we once again met those mid-morning doldrums.  At this point we were 80 miles off the coast of the Georgia/Florida border and still 160 miles from Charleston.  Still, we were moving with the current.  Again we hunkered in the cabin during the afternoon, avoiding the blazing sun.  The wind and seas picked up earlier in the day, and we were happy to be moving along at 10 knots again.  Cody was taking a nap in the cabin  while I stood on deck enjoying the cooler evening air and our speed.  I saw a black fin emerge just ncxt to the starboard pontoon, then other off port.  Dolphins!  We were moving at 9 knots and they were swimming alongside us, keeping pace!  They moved behind us and raced along in our wake, and I could see that they were spotted dolphins.  "Cody!"  I kept calling him, but he was dead to the world.  Finally I knew I had to get him, this was so cool!  I shook him awake - he thought that something must be terribly wrong at first - and told him to come look at these dolphins.  Of course by then they were gone.  And I learned a valuable lesson - don't fall overboard while Cody's sleeping, he won't hear your screams.

Haha.

Anyway, Cody took the helm at 10 or so after we'd reefed the main to keep the boat from lurching around too much in the 20+ knot gusts.  I slept until 3:30 AM, then came on deck to give him a break.  He had reached the Hallucinatory Stage of sleeplessness, and once on deck I saw that all along the South Carolina coast, about 30 miles away, were massive thunderstorms with nonstop lightening strikes.  Nonetheless I sent him below to sleep and I reduced our sail hoping that by the time we reached the shore the storms would have dissipated.  The sun rose and I could see that they hadn't.  Oh well.  As I tracked the movement of the storms in front of us I saw that we were going to get hit no matter what course I took (if you don't count going backwards).  I decided to drop sail altogether and just motor.  I went below to tell Cody that I'd be starting the motor (he'd been asleep about 2.5 hours at this point).  I gently shook him awake and told him my plan.  He groggily replied, "Are we on a bouy or at anchor?"  I stifled a giggle and patted his head, replying, "We're underway, but you'll remember eventually."  I motored for a bit, then decided that was stupid, so I just killed the motor and we both went to sleep in the cabin for 2 hours while Tri-oomph drifted around in the storms.  We were out of any boat traffic and far way from anything to run aground on, so we figured we were safe.  During our 2 hour nap we drifted about 1.5 miles southeast, but it was definitely worth it for the restful nap.  By now we were only 26 miles from Charleston and surrounded by storms and choppy seas.  Donning our foul weather gear we motor sailed with the reefed main until the wind became more favorable, then raised the jib and killed the engine.

We reached Charleston and dropped anchor by 3 in the afternoon, making out first leg of this return voyage an even 3.5 days to cover the 500 miles.  We rejoyced in being out of Florida and back in Charleston, where we'd spent several days on the southbound journey.  It almost felt like coming home.  We walked the mile to downtown and got dinner at the bbq joint we'd eaten at with Noble when he'd been with us, then walked home (the boat) and got the most solid night of sleep I can remember ever experiencing.  This morning we met a nice guy from Minnesota on a lovely steel boat with a little terrier mix named Butter who rides on the front of his kayak and then sits on his lap when he pedals his bike wtih her paws on the handlebars.  It's amazing.  I cannot wait to be with my dog again.  Cannot.  Wait.  It's rainy and cool and it feels so flipping amazing to not be sweating and hot.  Tropical Storm Bertha is passing well offshore, and when we head back out to sea tomorrow the most we'll see from it is some 5 foot seas.

The truth is that we were out in stuff the last couple days that is completely safe for a competent sailor, but would have scared the life out of me a couple weeks ago.  I'm so happy with how we managed everything and worked as a team.  I'm thrilled with how Tri-oomph handled everything, and I'm happy to say that I am understanding what she has to say, instead of just trying to intuit what needs to be done (like being able to feel from the handling if sail needs to be reduced or trimmed, rather than having to guess or ask Cody).  We could not have done this trip without our amazing autopilot, a Raymarine ST1000 we've named Martha.  Bless you, Martha.

Our next stop is Ocracoke, although there's a very good chance we won't stop at all.  We'll go out and around the Frying Pan, around Lookout Shoals, and into Ocracoke inlet.  From there we'll sail up the Pamlico Sound and motor through the Dismal Swamp Canal (I'm excited to see the lock operator, Robert, again and share danish and coffee with him again).  From Norfolk, VA it's only 400 miles to Massachusetts, and we hope conditions allow us to make it in a straight shot.  Through the canal, across Massachusetts Bay, and into Gloucester.  It's too early to start thinking about the implications of the end of a fantastic adventure, but never to soon to get excited to see my dog.

You just can't beat the sunsets at sea.

Foul weather-ready.

Hello, Charleston!

That was a really boring collection of photos given the awesomeness of the trip. I'll do better next time.