Rockhall Halloween

WARNING : this post contains graphic images that may be offensive to some readers. If you can't stand the site of blood on a non-human object, please do not continue to scroll down past the text.

Rock Hall Halloween

First, let me tell you that I am perfectly fine. I thought I'd tell you that up front, so you won't be tempted to flip out your phone half way through my story to call to see if I'm OK.
Prolog:
I bought the sailing vessel Flyer,  a Nordic 34, last Spring and spent the season bonding with her and a rather recalcitrant Westerbeke. Ultimately I established that I was NOT a marine engine mechanic/electrician, evidenced by the fact that my engine would not start despite lavish use of my ratchet set and multimeter. So, I called my friend Tad, who came by and showed me how to fire up the glow plugs by by-passing the solenoid with a bit of wire and a couple of alligator clips. Confident that I could get underway, I invited my friend Stefi to sail with me the following weekend.
The story:
It was a bright and small craft advisory Saturday. Stefi had to pass on the sailing trip. She was too sick, and duly noted that it was just too cold out there to anchor out without any heat. I, on the other hand, am smitten enough with sailing to put up with a bit of discomfort. Plus, it was near the end of the season and I had serious doubts about having another chance to get out overnight.
It was already 13:00 hrs. when I arrived at my boat in Back Creek. I figured that I'd sail around a bit and  then drop anchor somewhere nearby and just relax for a change. But my slip-neighbor Dave put it into my head that I could be in Rock Hall in time for dinner. Who was I to argue?
The wind was just abaft the beam at just under 20 knots. I had one reef in the main and four layers worth of fleece, wool, gortex,  and inflatable vinyl. It was some kind of ride! My face began to hurt, not from the wind and cold, but from a prolonged grin. When I turned up into the Chester River, I had to head more to windward, and both the true and apparent wind speeds picked up. So I put another reef in the main and continued on my way. I draw 6'2”, so there'd be no cutting across the bar at Rock Hall. About 20 minutes from the harbor, I started the engine without help from my alligator friends, rolled up the jib, and turned into the wind to get the main down.
Now it was pretty rough. The wind speed was a steady 23 knots and the seas were steep and short in the shallow water. I went to the mast to  lower the main, but the halyard clutch at the cockpit chose that very moment to go on strike. The sail now could do nothing but flog itself to death, and in doing so, snapped a number of slides. Evidently one of those slides still clinging to the sail, or perhaps the head board itself, hit me in the head. That hurt like a moth...I mean, it really hurt a lot!  With choice words spewing from what had been that remarkable grin,  I went aft to negotiate with the clutch over the halyard issue.
That's when I first noticed the big drops of blood splattering on the coach roof. Hmmm...that's odd. It hurt, but I didn't know it was that bad.  I had left a trail of blood from the mast to the cockpit and back again to pull the sail down. And of course I had to hug the sail around the boom to tame it well enough to get a couple of sail ties around it, so the sail was smeared with blood too.  Had Jackson Pollack been on board, we could have made millions from reprints.  (Yeah, I'm Jackson's sister by another mister).
While heading for the harbor, I hailed for any vessel in Rock Hall harbor for assistance. I was perfectly fine but didn't want to leave Flyer defenseless against the perils of the break wall should I pass out. Plus, getting the anchor down at that point seemed like risky business! Getting no reply, I hailed the Coast Guard, and despite a clear signal, the officer asked for my cell phone number (question number 50 of 1 billion, as will become evident).  I had my hands full with all the electronics; and yes, there was blood on them. (Cue spooky music.)
The officer asked a billion questions. Once he was satisfied that he'd covered all bases, and had duly noted my favorite color, he asked for my GPS coordinates. How exact do you have to be when you radio your position as just 25 yards outside the break wall at Rock Hall harbor?  Finally he told me that he'd send someone out. Now there was blood on my hands, the VHF radio, iPhone, and GPS. The electronics were but innocent bystanders.
Captain Mark,  of Blue Crab Chesapeake Charters, heard from Chris at Rock Hall Landing marina, that there was an injured person on the way in and jumped in his dinghy to rescue me. It was too rough for him to climb on board, so he followed behind me into the harbor. Once behind the break wall, he climbed aboard, took the helm, and docked Flyer at the nearest marina, which just happened to be Rock Hall Landing.
There were EMT and DNR vehicles at the ready, with requisite flashing lights and curious bystanders who looked mortified at the sight of me. Once inside the ambulance, the EMT team scouted through my matted hair to find the source of the bleeding, then bandaged my head with about a cotton-crop's-worth of gauze. They started a drip, asked a trillion questions (slightly more than the Coast Guard had, minus the request for coordinates), and took me to the  Chester River Hospital Center in Chestertown.
I was received by a fairy,  a devil,  and Peter Pan. Each commended me for the first-rate job I'd done with the fake blood.  My degree in verisimilitude finally paid off.  Still I felt obliged to point out to them that it wasn't fake. That's when Peter Pan flew to my cart and wheeled me in to an exam room. The doctor on call snipped off a bit of hair around the wound, prepared his stapler, then decided to hand-sew it instead. The stitches added a bit of clout to my inadvertent costume.  And just to add a bit more Frankenstein-esqueness, they attached some electrodes and  put my head through a CT scanner. ("It's alive...it's alive...it's ALIVE!")
Peter Pan returned to tell me that results were negative and that I could return home. She advised asking someone at home to wash my hair carefully in luke warm water.  "Umm...", I replied, "I'm on a boat by myself and have no hot water." "Oh!", said Peter Pan, "then I guess I can wash it for you." And she did. But she declined without hesitation when I asked her nicely if she'd mind blowing it dry and styling it a bit.  I could here the nurses giggling in the hallway when she recounted my request.
Corey, the DNR officer in charge of my "case" (who, buy the way, asked a mere thousand questions) stayed with me all the while and even drove me back to the boat. He needed my documentation number and insurance information anyway. I don't know how I would have gotten home otherwise. He did let me know that Flyer looked like a murder scene.  I felt so badly for my boat. Some well-intentioned person had tied her to the dock with the jib sheet, and I had visions of the jib unfurling and carrying me back to Kansas.  A few more lines and fenders later,  all was well with the world again. Then I slept (ha--that's a stretch of the imagination!).
As I surveyed the damage the next day, Capt. Mark and Chris and several hands came to see how I faired. Yep, felt just like Dorothy. Capt. Mark stayed to help me fake the main and see me off. Trouble was, the engine wouldn't start. I succumbed at last to the alligator method, bade farewell to those who had helped me, and headed out for the return trip home. There was still 20 some odd knots of wind. I still had a jib, and an engine that I figured I could keep going so long as I started it now and then along the way to keep it warm.
I must say that the return sail was almost awesome. It would have been totally awesome had the wind been a little further aft.  I had started the engine once or twice  before, and again as I approached the Bay bridge. I was in the home stretch then. All that was left to do was start the engine, furl the jib, and head for home. Except, the engine wouldn't start. The alligator method failed, and Flyer tried to head out to sea every time I went below to spend quality time with the Westerbeke.  When finally my arms ached from short-tacking and my head ached from the blood that rushed to my head each time I hung it over the engine, I took up the bloody VHF and hailed for a tow.  Flyer arrived in her slip with her tail between her legs. I didn't look much better.
Epilog:
The doctor who had stitched me up had sent me on my way with instructions to see my primary care physician for a follow-up, and to have my stitches removed in about a week. That seemed like way too much trouble. I could almost pull them out myself. And I absolutely hate doctor "visits". So, the following week, as I lay on the exam table for my annual GYN once-over,  I asked my gynecologist if she'd take a look at the other end of me for a change. She happily removed the stitches.  No tricks for the treatment necessary.

_____________________________________________________________

Note the broken sail slide. I think that this is what hit me.

Most of it washed out with professional cleaning (twice)

Need to Round Cape May in an Impenetrable Fog? There's an APP for That !

Friday, May 21 was hectic at best--more fixing, more rearranging of sails, bags, and supplies. Later in the afternoon, Yanik, our designated navigator, called to tell me that he needed to bail out. Said something about a job that required him to be in town on Monday. I'd been counting on him to navigate; he had the charts in his laptop with waypoints pre-plotted. But he figured Sweeney could fill in for him and that we had paper charts on board. What I didn't have was the safety factor--back-up GPS systems, and the short-cut route around Cape May. Not to mention that being down a crew meant that watch schedules would be more demanding.
Then came Saturday morning, and with it thick and heavy clouds. Not at all what I had expected nor what the weatherman predicted. Post arrived by 9 and together we installed the bilge pump (wired to run manually). The sky, meanwhile, tried to lighten up.
Left the dock at 11:00 and headed down the Barrington River, being ever so careful to avoid the ledge. Once on the Narrangasett Bay, we raised sail and headed down the channel toward Newport. Somewhere between the lawn chairs on Castle Hill and the Newport bridge, fog fell fast and thick, obscuring the channel markers and the creepy house on the little island. And that creepy little house was the last thing we'd see for a very long time.
Out came the tourist charts and Post's handheld GPS (a Garmin model even older than my own). Sweeney plotted waypoints and set the course to steer. We made a hard-copy backup the old-fashioned way, by writing the lat/long of each waypoint on a piece of paper, and stored the same waypoints in my Garmin for redundancy.
The fog didn't quit.

The first night at sea was plain nerve-wracking. Visibility was about 75 yards, if that, and every little glimmer on the horizon was potentially a ship's light hell-bent on bearing down on us. We had two people on watch at all times, but still, Sweeney and I were stunned when a vessel emerged out of the fog on our port bow--coming toward us. It sped passed us and then it was gone. 
Morning broke as best it could given you couldn't see the sun. There were about 4-5 hours during that second day when we could actually see a horizon. And other ships. Lots of other ships. Scary to think that they were out there the whole time, but we just couldn't see them. But we were sailing! We got a solid 11 hours of pure sailing without the engine running. (Good thing, too, because Post twice had to fill the fuel tank from the jugs of diesel we had on board.).
But by dusk the fog lowered the lights and dimmed our view. There was the odd glimpse of a moon and hints of phosphorescence in the wake. We were tired, having stood four-hour watches with two hours off in between to catch whatever sleep we could.


We motor-sailed with jib furled to give us a full view of whatever there was lurking out there. By 1 AM we should have been seeing navigation markers at the entrance to the shipping channel around Cape May. (By the way, did I mention that my GPS broke during the day when it fell out of its pocket on the binnacle? You can't have too much redundancy!) But we saw nothing. No lights, no Cape. And we were missing the little edge of the charts that would have contained all the nav aids we needed. So yeah, we were lost. Kind of. That is, we knew where we were in terms of lat/long because Post's GPS told us. What it couldn't tell us was where we were supposed to go from here. Or how to get there. Need to round Cape May in an impenetrable fog when you've missed your turn into Delaware Bay? Well, there's an app for that! I powered up my iPhone and launched the Navionics chart plotter/GPS app I'd downloaded to my iPhone for the very-worthy price of $9.95. Within seconds it located Flyer on a color chart that contained all the detail for all the nav aids in the channel. Plus, we could move a little purple dot to any position and we'd get bearing and distance to the target. We held our breaths while hunting for the flashing yellow light that marked the entrance of the channel. And it was right where it was supposed to be!
The fog was so thick that we couldn't see it till we were practically on top of it, but it gave us the confidence to continue up the channel into Delaware Bay.

The fog lifted as the sun fought its way up and over the horizon. Our spirits lifted too--we were SAILING!

From there it was easy to follow the channel to the mouth of the C&D canal, though we had the iPhone at hand the entire way. Mid way down the canal you come to a point where you are no longer returning from sea (leaving red markers to starboard), but are leaving the Chesapeake (leaving the red markers to port). A bit confusing, even when you're not sleep-deprived. Luckily there's fair warning (sort of)--marked by several red and several green markers in a row.

 It rained as we entered the Chesapeake. The Johns handled it admirably while I was curled up in the quarter berth. Little by little the fog lifted and we saw very welcome rays of light. Just too bad that dusk was lurking around the corner.
Arrived in my slip in Easport about 8:45 PM,  57.5 hours after leaving the dock at Stanley's Yacht Yard.
The twin Johns, in matching white long-sleeved shirts, shorts, and boots, shared their thoughts about the relative merits of  Musto's off-shore jackets and continued for a long while with other such sartorial sea-speak. That was, of course, between glasses of well-deserved Dark and Stormies and other rum concoctions. There's no telling when we actually went to sleep that night, but I can say for certain that morning came too soon.

Thank you crew. Thank you Apple.

The Boat is Afloat

The folks at Stanley's yard splashed Flyer (again) yesterday, and so far she is--reportedly--not taking on any water. The last time they fixed the keel they also said that it was not taking on water, so I asked John Post to go over and check it out before I board my plane for Providence tomorrow morning.
The one good thing about the delay is that Sweeney has recuperated and is able to join us for the voyage south. I'm still hoping for a Saturday departure.
There is now another name in contention: Palimpsest. 

Rocky Horror Picture Show (Without the horrifying bits) - The Debut

Another fitful night, but no new names to report. That rock thing still has my nickers in a knot.
Spoke to Sue at Stanley's Yard yesterday. She couldn't say for sure if the boat was in the water but said that either she or Steve would call me back. But they haven't. I'm trying to not take it personally. I'm booked on Southwest Air for this coming Thursday (5/20), and it would be really neat if we could actually depart on the 22nd.

Now, sit back and enjoy the show (but feel free to do the time warp--again--as you do so)

Flyer in Stanley's Yacht Yard, Barrington RI: Our first on-the-water encounter.

Given no boom, it appears that she sails well with just the back stay adjusters.

Main salon.  Check out those chain plates. And that's a newly-painted mast.

Double stainless steel sinks with a view of the nav table.

The head. Right where I'd put it. And look...there's a pot to pee in too!

Electric panel. Note that the Radar switch actually runs the Refrigerator.

And that would be the inverter control panel. 

V-berth with Tina's new custom cushion covers. There are two hanging lockers in there.

Cockpit is a bit small, but very nicely "decked out"

Rock Bottom Post Part 'em Depression Naming Rights

It's almost 3:00AM and my jaw hurts from grinding my teeth. Can't sleep 'cause I'm worried about my baby. (Enter twang of country music in the background.) Either that, or I didn't have enough to eat for dinner, which sometimes causes the same symptoms. In either case I've been unable to think of much else besides getting the boat fixed and underway post-parting of the keel and parting the boat from Post.
Unconfirmed reports claim that the keel has been rebedded and the seam is soon to be glassed.
BoatUS sent a surveyor up to inspect the damage. He reported that there are "three areas that indicated possible damages that should be further checked out by sanding and grinding (if necessary), etc....
· One area located approx. 6” port side with the second area located approx. 6” starboard side of the vessels centerline. These areas are located near the after end of the sump.
· The third area is located along the radiussed corner in the sump (where the sump turns from vertical to the horizontal along the bottom) about midway between the leading and trailing edge."
The yard has been advised.
Meanwhile the pursuit of a name continues. The list of candidates fall into the following themes:
· Tattoo You blog post theme, brought to you by John Post and the Rolling Stones: Bigger Bang, Hot Rocks, Black and Blue, Emotional Rescue, Aftermath, and of course, Get Your Ya Ya's Out!
· The aftermath of my encounter with the Edson steering wheel nut: Edson, Shiner, and, as sister Elle suggested, Bruiser
· The grounding, brought to you by Jeff Munson: Dr. Shoals, Soundings, or "The Navigator was relieved for Cause" (which, he adds "might be too long to fit on the stern")
· This morning's musings: Shalemate, Post-Part'em, Rock Bottom.

But my latest candidate, which has floated to the top of the list, is Touchstone.

The next opportunity to herd all the Johns together for the delivery is the weekend of May 22nd. I'll go up a couple days earlier to ensure that the boat is sea-worthy, install the fresh water pump (with its new upper housing/switch bits), bilge pump and float switch, and various switches and circuit breakers on the electric panel. Then there's provisioning, filling of fuel jugs, etc. etc.
Right now I'm thinking that I should find something to eat so that I can go back to sleep.
Good night moon.

About to Keel Over

Steve Trehue called with an update: he hauled the boat, loosened the keel bolts, packed them in 5200 and float-tested the boat again. That seemed to take care of the forward bolt leaks, but only served to send the leak to the aft keel bolts. Remember, you can neither create nor destroy matter. However, it is a good idea to try to keep liquid matter from weeping up through keel bolts.

He suggested that we haul again and this time drop the keel to find the source of the problem. He also suggested that I file an insurance claim. I'm going to send him a suggestion box for his birthday.

It may take the rest of the week to complete the job and test the new repair. He hopes to have me in the water by the weekend and will keep me posted along the way.

I'd keel over for sure at this point if not for the fact that Flyer is such an awesome boat. (Can't wait till you get to sail her!)

On the Hard. On the Mend? Hard to Say.

Just spoke to Steve Trehue. He is certain that the structural integrity of the boat is solid and that the problem is "a nuisance problem." He doesn't think that any damage was caused to the bolts at all. The plan now is to haul and seal the bolts with 5200. Then he'll do a water test and go from there.

He promised to call with an update later this afternoon. To make me feel better, he did tell me that the weather is not favorable for the next 36 hours up there. Um...not sure that helped much!