Cruising without the Kids!!!

June 11, 2008 (Wed.) – We spent the day at the marina, tidying up the boat and doing odd jobs. Since Epicurus was particularly clean, Peter took lots of pictures of the interior.

Around noon, we heard a roar and went up on deck to see a rocket hurtling up into the sky. It was the GLAST probe, which was supposed to be launched the previous Tuesday. We were thrilled that we actually got to see a launch after all.

In the late afternoon, we drove to Orlando to meet my best friend from college, Susan Hendricks, whom I hadn’t seen since before marriage—for 14 ½ years. A public defense attorney, she lived in NYC for years but moved to Lake Worth, Florida, a couple years ago. She was attending a conference in Orlando, so it was a great opportunity for us to meet again since we were only an hour away. It was wonderful to catch up on our lives.

June 12, 2008 (Thurs.) – We woke up in the morning and began preparations for leaving later in the day. I ran some last minute errands and returned the rental car. The Hertz Neverlost system took me to the wrong rental agency three times before I finally decided to use the old-fashioned method and ask someone for directions.

Thunderstorms began to approach mid-afternoon, and Peter was feeling exhausted after working in the heat and humidity all day, so we decided to postpone our departure until Friday morning. We finished up our tasks, jumped in the pool, showered and had dinner at the restaurant at the marina.

June 13, 2008 (Fri.) – We were ready to leave our dock by 0800. As I opened the logbook and began our next entry, I realized that it was Friday the Thirteenth. However, to cancel out the negativity of this, two dolphins came to wish us farewell at the stern just as we were ready to cast off the lines! Just in case this didn’t provide enough good luck, a manatee also swam by.

It took about an hour to take on over 100 gallons of fuel, which was a lot more expensive than Venezuela, but finally we were ready to leave at 1030. We went in the barge canal locks separating the Banana River from the Ocean again. There were even more manatees than before. Although enormous and ungainly-looking, they glided quite gracefully along the surface and seemed to be doing synchronized swimming as they converged in a circle, heads in and tails out, as we passed when the gates opened on the other side.

I talked with Matthew as we were going past Port Canaveral. Science day camp had just ended, and he was ecstatic that he and Jared as a team had won first place in the contests to keep an egg from breaking, even when dropped from a three story building. They surrounded it with balloons and bubble wrap. Although a couple balloons burst, the egg was unharmed. For prizes, Jared got an aquarium fish and Matthew chose the dinosaur excavation kit but was going to share it with Jared since dinosaurs are his passion.

We were able to sail and go with the flow of the Gulf Stream after 1600 hours until the early hours of the next morning.

June 14, 2008 (Sat.) – The Gulf Stream really helped us along. Around 0300 hours, during my watch, the wind became too light for sailing, and we turned on the engine. With the help of the Gulf Stream, we did 11 knots the rest of the night.

The royal blue water was beckoning Peter, so at 1000 hours, we stopped the boat and took turns going overboard. He thought the open Atlantic would be a great place to clean the log, which was not working, and the prop. Visibility was wonderful, although there was nothing to see but the sunlight splaying out across the depths and few tiny fish around the prop shaft and keel. I was hoping for a sunfish!

At 1130, we started the engine again and continued northeast. Late, Peter was napping when I spotted a large pod of dolphins, apparently resting on the surface and sleeping also. They were just floating, not diving and cavorting at all. I woke Peter up and we turned back to see them more closely. We got fairly close and cut the engine. We could hear all of them breathing! As we watched, we realized that they were not dolphins because their heads were bigger. Porpoises, we thought. After a while, some of them began to move, sticking their heads out of the water, and we realized they were small whales. Peter has guessed southern right whales, but we’ll have to wait until we get somewhere with internet access to find out. We don’t have a guide to whales. We watched them for about 20 minutes, getting lots of photos and video, before turning north.

We were monitoring a thunderstorm off our starboard side and making our way past it when a large pod of dolphins, sleek with pointed snouts, spotted us and came to play all around us. They love to surf the bow wave, and they jumped and dove and stayed with us, to our great delight, for about 15 minutes.

At 1700, we were able to turn off the engine and enjoy some quiet sailing at around 7 to 8 knots, until the wind shifted too far to the south and lightened, so we had to start the engine again around 2300 hours.

With the seas calm, I was able to cook dinner, something I don’t usually do when we’re under way.

June 15, 2008 (Sun.) – We were motorsailing along in the Gulf Stream all night, and I was looking forward to being at anchor later in the day. However, based on the weather predictions, we had to decide if we wanted to risk getting stuck in an anchorage until the forecasted front with strong north winds passed on Monday or Tuesday, or, if we felt we needed to keep moving after one night’s rest at Cape Lookout, North Carolina, and probably have to deal with beating into the wind and against north swells. I didn’t particularly like either option, staying out at sea or risking adverse weather, but we chose to keep going. The real drawback was that I wouldn’t be able to talk for Matthew for a whole week since he left for church camp in the afternoon and we were not close enough to land to get a signal on our cell phones. I have never, even when in Kazakhstan for three weeks, gone more than a couple days without being in touch with him.

We continued to see storms but managed to get passed all of them. The wind changed direction and came from the south at 10-12 knots around 1500 hours, and we put up the spinnaker. However, because we were riding the Gulf Stream and getting a 3-5 knot boost from it, the apparent wind was only 5-8 knots, so it didn’t work very well. Also, we had just got it set properly when the dark clouds around us began to look more ominous, so we hauled it in and put up the genoa. We were able to sail for an hour with it and get relief from the noise of the engine, but by 1830 the wind dropped to 6 knots and we had to start the “iron genoa” (the engine) again.

On the radio in mid-afternoon, the US Coast Guard reported that right whales had been spotted off the coast around Ocean City, Maryland, and requested that mariners report any sightings and also keep a safe distance. (Yikes, I think were a bit too close, but we didn’t harass them, just floated with them in the current!) We were happy to know that the marine mammals were indeed right whales, and I reported that we saw 18 off them sleeping in the current yesterday. (postscript -- When we got back to civilization and checked the books it turned out what we saw were Pilot Whales. Right Whales are much bigger and would never been seen in a pod of 18!)

At 2000, we stopped the engine and drifted along at 4-5 knots on the Gulf Stream while Peter took a swim around the boat and we both showered on deck to refresh ourselves. I didn’t go in because the dark water at sunset didn’t look as inviting as the bright blue of ocean during midday.

All in all, it was not a good day for me. My limit is about 48 hours at sea, and then I become a zombie-like creature. My sleep schedule—well, there is no schedule and I never slept more than a few hours at a time! I never felt really sleepy, just not well. I decided, though, that we would attempt to live as normally as possible, and at least the seas were calm so it was not difficult to stay below to make meals. However, there were occasional waves and bumps, and one hit just as I turned away from the pyrex measuring cup with pancake batter in it to light the stove. In a moment, it slid off the cutting board (It would have stayed on the counter if I hadn’t had it higher than the fiddle!) and crashed to the floor of the galley. Luckily, it didn’t break. The incident, occurring right after we had decided to continue on our long voyage, discouraged me, and Peter had to make breakfast for me, even though it was Father’s Day (without the kids).

I read another book; Peter and I played Scrabble and Anagram. When he got tired after two games, I played myself in Anagram (and always won!) and amused myself with a hand-held electronic hangman game and solitaire on the computer. However, the whole day was very dull. We only spotted a couple of dolphins.

Near the coast in North Carolina were an enormous wildfires, and the smoke was blown offshore, making visibility limited to a mile or less, so we had the radar on most of the time. We exited the Gulf Stream, with its beautiful royal blue water, around 2300 hours, and were able to start sailing.

June 16, 2008 (Mon.) – The smoke continued throughout the day, and we were invaded by hundreds and hundreds of tiny flies at dawn, so we had to close up the companionway. I got up, after two or three fitful naps throughout the night, and began to feel more or less alive. I attacked the insects with spray and then hosed them off the aft deck and cockpit and got them under control, although they were still around all day in smaller numbers.

I played many games of Anagram with myself, and Peter and I played one game together as well as a game of Scrabble. He did so well making banana pancakes yesterday morning that he used that last over-ripe banana to make more this morning. They were yummy!

The sports fisherman all came out around 0600 this morning, on my watch. With the smoke, it reminded me of approaching Ocean City inlet two years ago in the fog. Luckily, there were not 500 boats, only a couple dozen.

There was not enough wind for sailing. Sometimes there were small whitecaps, but for much of the passage, the sea looked like a sheet of gray-green, rippled, leaded glass. I missed the deep blue of the Gulf Stream, not to mention the shimmering turquoise of the Bahamas and the Caribbean already!

At 1830, we tied up at a private dock--the same one Peter used a year and a half ago, on Lake Wesley at Virginia Beach. A very nice man, Mason, welcomed us, and four people came out to help us with the lines and fenders. Mason used to cruise himself and said he always appreciated hospitality then, so now he tries to help others by giving them a place to dock. (The last time Peter was here, Mason even let him use his car!)

It seemed like we used the engine a lot over the last three and a half days, but Peter calculated that we only had the engine on about 50 hours and only used about 45 gallons of diesel. Considering how much fuel other forms of transportation use, it is amazing how little it takes to move 27 tons through the water.

As the sun set, a cool breeze blew in from the north; the temperature and humidity below deck dropped dramatically very quickly, making it quite comfortable for a good, full night of sleep.

June 17, 2008 (Tues.) – Apparently, we slept very soundly. We were told by Mason and his wife Donna that two inches of rain fell in the night during a torrential storm accompanied by lightning and thunder. Since we often go to bed with the hatches open, Peter has grown accustomed to waking up at the slightest patter of rain in order to rush on deck and close them. We were oblivious, though.

Mid-morning, Mason and Donna visited us on our boat and took a little tour. They are wonderfully easy to talk with, epitomizing southern hospitality in its typical understated way that makes it easy to take it for granted. We went up to their home, which is an older wooden house built in the 1940s, sitting in contrast to the new, huge brick and concrete mansions on the other side of the water. The unimpressive outer walls of their house, however, belie the charm inside their comfortable house, which is actually much bigger than it seems from the waterfront. Donna cut fresh herbs from her garden before we left.

The wind was not favorable for our direction of travel, but the seas were calm and dolphins escorted us as we motored into the Chesapeake Bay. Across the mouth at Hampton Roads, we found a lovely place to dock for the night at Salt Ponds Marina, nestled among the wetlands with lots of birds to enjoy. I tried taking the helm dock since the wind was light, but Peter had to take over. At least he missed getting a line to the dock hand so I didn’t look like the only slightly incompetent one. I did a great job with the lines! We seem to have become used to our chosen tasks but obviously need practice with the jobs we don’t usually handle.

We walked about ¾ miles, mostly along the beach, into the middle of the town of Buckroe Beach to have dinner at a small restaurant called Mona Lisa. The restaurant was not much more than a pizzeria, but it was pleasant and the food was delicious.

It was a quiet evening as we walked back. The nearly full moon shone like a brass disk above the water, orangish-gold from the remaining smoke in the higher atmosphere. The air we were breathing was clean, though, a refreshing relief after the dismal gray, particle-filled miasma we had endured for nearly two days.

June 18, 2008 (Wed.) – Peter was up at dawn and savored the pink light of sunrise bathing the smooth water and hundreds of boats in its warm glow. I was up by 7:00, and it felt good to be on a normal schedule of sleeping and waking. After breakfast, we paddled the kayak up the creek through the marshes, enjoying the quiet and the wading birds—including the striking yellow-crowned night heron—and gulls, barn swallows and blackbirds.

After lunch, we cast off and continued on our way north. As we passed Langley Air Force Base off our port side, the British Red Arrows, a squadron of poppy-colored jets similar to the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds in the U.S., put on a spectacular air show. They even went right over top of us a couple times.

Once we entered Mobjack Bay in the late afternoon, the wind increased to almost 10 knots and, even though we had to tack several times because of the direction, we enjoyed sailing at our leisure. It has not been often over the past three years that we have sailed merely for the fun of it; we always seem to have set destinations and deadlines (usually sundown) which force us to motor if the wind is not favorable to hold a straight course.

We went up the East River, passing bucolic, verdant green shorelines with large farmhouses and barns sheltered in the tall pines and deciduous trees near the water, and anchored in Put In Creek. All that we could hear before sunset were birds. It became even more still as the full moon rose, and, lying in the cockpit enjoying the peace, we could only discern the usually unheard ticking of Peter’s watch.

June 19, 2008 (Thurs.) – Peter was up at dawn again, but I had been up in the night so slept later. The local rowing club went by in five sculls as well as one waterman harvesting crabs from his pots while we enjoyed a peaceful breakfast. After that, we kayaked across the wide river to visit Zimmerman’s Boatyard, a highly recommended place we might consider for work on Epicurus.

After lunch, we motored up to Deltaville to anchor. Thunderstorms started rolling in before sunset and, safe at anchor, we enjoyed the grandeur of the lightning and thunder and the sheets of rain pouring down. Between two storms, a rainbow appeared in the east before the sky darkened. We fell asleep to flashes of light and the patter of rain above us.