Hello and welcome to our website. Here we will chronicle our sailing adventure as it takes place, with reference to fact where absolutely necessary. As we've been underway only a few weeks now and have but a meager tale to tell, we do hope you'll stick with us long enough for things to get interesting.
Our voyage began on Sunday, October 18, 1998 with a sail from Boston to Plymouth, MA. Seas were favorable; wind was not. The trip took nine hours, port-to-port. (Of note, we returned to Boston by rental car the next day for a final visit to the marine chandlery and were there in 40 minutes. Sailing may be energy-efficient, but nobody said it was fast. Well actually, racing sailors, and Steve & Linda Dashew, have said something to that effect, but as transportation anyway, sailing is not for those in a hurry.) In Plymouth, we docked at a boat yard where we'd arranged to have a new, aluminum fuel tank installed to replace a smaller, plastic one. The tank was designed, built and hauled into the boat at the rather relaxed pace of about 2-3 days for each stage of the process. At the final stage--installation--progress stopped altogether. The yard crew decided to start again from scratch and we decided to try to think about something else.
While we waited for the work to be redone, we installed some other key equipment: a windlass for bringing up ground tackle; a boom vang for adjusting downward tension on the boom; and a radar reflector (not pictured) to improve the prospect of our being seen by other vessels at sea. Do you think we had enough gear?
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| Erika painting dinghy (neither aware of exciting dinghy adventure soon to come) |
When we weren't working on Saros, we spent a lot of time loitering around the docks, surreptitiously gathering ideas from the other sailboats. We also walked all over the scenic town of Plymouth, even venturing onto the replica of the Mayflower, which was impressive mostly for being unexpectedly small. John was fascinated to learn that the steering of the Mayflower had been done blindly from deep within the bowels of the ship, with only indirect guidance in the form of shouted information, and, one assumes, the occasional four-letter epithet, from the deckhands.
At the end of two weeks we had a nice new 39-gallon fuel tank. Unfortunately, on the morning we were to leave there was a potentially serious mishap. John had been finishing up a cockpit project which involved the use of silicone sealant. Now, the thing about silicone is that it comes in a big plastic cylinder with a nozzle you have to slice open yourself when you're ready to use it, and that you can't simply close up again when you're done. The instructions say you can seal it up with silicone itself, as if that makes any sense, but what we've always done is to stick an old, fat screw in the end. The next time we need silicone, we pull out the screw with a good pair of pliers. Well, this time John pulled it out with Vise-grips. He then laid the Vise-grips down on a cockpit seat, the silicone-coated screw still firmly clenched in its teeth and pointing skyward, and went about completing his project. He was wearing thin-soled rubber boat shoes when the screw entered his foot, about an inch back from the space between big toe and 2nd toe, and the dusky bruise that rapidly appeared on top of the foot testified to the depth of penetration. A single word--and not a very nice one--came out of his mouth in a moan before he even felt any pain, as visions of physical incapacitation and canceled sailing plans sprang to his mind. When the pain came, there were further utterances of this word; about five or six, I believe, in rapid succession.
The wound didn't look like much--puncture wounds usually don't. But wounds in the forward part of the foot can lead to ugly infections, and the fact that the screw had passed through a rubber-soled shoe (sneakers, at any rate, are known to be home to particularly nasty bacteria) and was contaminated with silicone didn't help matters. Basically, all was against this turning out well. As if that weren't enough, John was uninsured; we had just left one plan and were still in the process of applying to another. The only good thing was that he'd recently had a tetanus booster shot. That, and the fact that everything else he might need initially, short of radiographic imaging, I could take care of from the boat. When the wound had been thoroughly cleaned and explored under local anesthetic, and debrided of a few suspect gray-white curlicues of matter (either dried silicone or fleshy casualties of the screw's assault--no way to tell which), I dipped into our medicine cabinet for antibiotics and painkillers, and my job was done; the rest was a matter of soaks, elevation and luck. John did his part admirably--keeping your foot in a bowl of hot water is not easy at sea!--and our sailing plans went unimpeded. More important, the foot made an uneventful recovery.
From Plymouth, we buddy-sailed with Kip Culver, an ex-motorcycle-sidecar-racer-turned-screenwriter-turned-sailboat-singlehander we'd just met, a lifelong adventurer and terrific raconteur who, like us, was headed for warmer waters. When the engine on his Alberg 37 yawl Tres Jolie overheated in the middle of the Cape Cod Canal, we towed him to the nearest marina.
Well, OK, that's not quite what happened. We towed him out of the canal all right but when we made a right turn toward the marina into the 3-knot current of an ebb tide, everything went wrong all at once. First, it was immediately clear that we were making no headway whatsoever, and in fact were probably moving backwards. We shouted to our friend to start his engine--though it would rapidly overheat, his engine could be relied on for a few minutes in an emergency--as we could no longer tow him; then we threw off his line and struggled to keep ourselves moving forward against the tide. Something was still amiss; we were gunning the engine and getting almost nowhere. Turning to look behind us, we caught sight of our problem: the hard-shell dinghy we'd been trailing behind us was now upside down, completely submerged, and attempting to execute a nose-dive. At the same moment, we caught sight of Tres Jolie not far behind us but well to starboard and no longer within the channel. More interesting, there was no one at the helm! It seems our friend had not seen us cast off his line, had only just discovered we had done so and was now frantically pulling it on deck to prevent its fouling his propeller. With little time to spare, he got the last of the line aboard and put his vessel back on course, looking all the while a good deal less harried than we were. In the end, moving at a rate of about one knot, Saros made it into the harbor and we were able to right the dinghy. We bid our farewells to Tres Jolie, but we'll be keeping a close lookout for her as we make our way down the coast.
A tense moment.
In a day or so we made our way to Block Island. The island was lovely and deserted, being now in the off-season. We spent an afternoon walking around in the brisk, November air, photographing gulls at the shore and vaguely looking out for the harbormaster to see about using the dockside showers, which were locked, but he was nowhere to be found, gone for the season, perhaps. In the end, we prevailed upon the proprietor of the Blue Dory Inn to let us shower there for a few dollars.
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| Can you spot the problem? |
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| Bad dinghy!! |
In a day or so we made our way to Block Island. The island was lovely and deserted, being now in the off-season. We spent an afternoon walking around in the brisk, November air, photographing gulls at the shore and vaguely looking out for the harbormaster to see about using the dockside showers, which were locked, but he was nowhere to be found, gone for the season, perhaps. In the end, we prevailed upon the proprietor of the Blue Dory Inn to let us shower there for a few dollars.
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| Block Island, off-season |
That evening, we consulted the tide table to determine the best time to leave the island so as to make it to the treacherous mouth of the Long Island Sound, "the Race," during a favorable tide. The answer was midnight, if one was in a hurry, or noon if one wasn't. I was eager to see my family on Long Island, so I pushed for a midnight departure. The nighttime exit proved trickier than we'd anticipated, as the channel was narrow, the current powerful, and the rocky lee shore uncomfortably close at hand. But we somehow emerged unscathed, sailed all night and reached the notorious Race in the early stage of the flood tide as planned. Though the passage went without a hitch, I have been informed we will not be making harbor exits at night again any time soon.
We arrived in Port Jefferson, Long Island, at three that afternoon and moored on a kindly-provided private mooring ball off Strong's Neck, where my parents live, in the town of Setauket. My parents hosted us for two luxurious weeks. We put volumes of paperwork and countless administrative, medical, and legal chores behind us; soaked up a large amount of food and bedrest, and had a couple of great pleasure-sails: one with my parents and some family friends, Barbara & Bob, and one with my brother Joel and his girlfriend Vickie. Finally, on November 22nd, we creakily got underway once more.
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| Pre-trip paperwork |
From Long Island we sailed to Mamaroneck, NY, to attend to some unfinished business left over from the boat yard in Plymouth (problems with our diesel heater and our engine-coolant pump had mysteriously developed as a result of the diesel tank installation). This was promptly and expertly taken care of by a sister boat yard in Mamaroneck, restoring some of our hitherto lost faith in this particular company. From there we took the train into New York for a couple of days, absorbed as much big-city atmosphere and saw as many friends as we could, and recovered from the bronchitis we'd jointly taken with us on leaving Setauket.
We sailed from Mamaroneck to New York Harbor last Friday. It was absolutely spectacular, stunning and amazing. I took two rolls of film in about half an hour. Starting with Riker's Island at the top end of the East River, past No. Brother Island and its mysterious, decaying structures, and then bridge after towering bridge.
So phenomenal was our sunset sail into New York Harbor that we forgot our cardinal rule--John's, actually--which is never to enter an unfamiliar harbor after dark. I was bent on anchoring next to the Statue of Liberty, having read a cruising guide that offered the tiniest of hints as to the possibility of anchoring there. We found the channel south of the statue, no problem, but where was the anchorage?! It was now 6pm, pitch dark, the harbor a teaming highway of fast-moving ferries, a 4-knot tidal current practically insisting we follow it out to sea. John dropped the anchor and gave one earnest attempt to set it, when suddenly I heard a heart-stopping clanngg-clanngg! over my right shoulder. I spun around in time to see an enormous bell buoy just yards away and gaining on us; whatever our anchor was doing down there on the harbor floor, it certainly wasn't helping. When my heart had resumed beating, I punched the throttle, John hauled up the anchor, and we were off. (We spent that night safely parked at a marina, I'm sorry to have to admit.)
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| Bygone NYC buildings |
So phenomenal was our sunset sail into New York Harbor that we forgot our cardinal rule--John's, actually--which is never to enter an unfamiliar harbor after dark. I was bent on anchoring next to the Statue of Liberty, having read a cruising guide that offered the tiniest of hints as to the possibility of anchoring there. We found the channel south of the statue, no problem, but where was the anchorage?! It was now 6pm, pitch dark, the harbor a teaming highway of fast-moving ferries, a 4-knot tidal current practically insisting we follow it out to sea. John dropped the anchor and gave one earnest attempt to set it, when suddenly I heard a heart-stopping clanngg-clanngg! over my right shoulder. I spun around in time to see an enormous bell buoy just yards away and gaining on us; whatever our anchor was doing down there on the harbor floor, it certainly wasn't helping. When my heart had resumed beating, I punched the throttle, John hauled up the anchor, and we were off. (We spent that night safely parked at a marina, I'm sorry to have to admit.)
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| NYC sights, viewed the next day. |
The following day, we got an early start and headed for Atlantic Highlands, NJ, where we have been staying with our friends Mari, Andris & Tony for the past few days.
But the moment I finish typing this, we will walk out the door and down to the Atlantic Highlands municipal docks, untie our beloved boat and home, Saros, and head due south. Our plan for now: keep sailing until the thermometer hits 70. From the Weather Channel, we've determined that this should be somewhere near Virginia.
