Sailing South aboard Annie Laurie

I'm Baaaaack

2011-12-29T12:11:00.006-04:00

Well I couldn't call the blog quits with an ending like that now, could I?

A little over a year ago, another trip down the East Coast was in order, as things didn't exactly go as planned with selling Annie Laurie. Without my heroes, Katie (my sister) and Super Dave (a past captain of mine), I cringe to think of the situation Annie Laurie would have fallen into, as I was unable to leave the States at the time to deal with things and to bring her across the border.

With Annie Laurie safely in Gloucester, Massachusetts, after a brutally Baltic and rough passage from Lunenburg (I wasn't there this time around, but I have certainly been there before and know the suffering!), I prepared to head south alone. A couple of friends, Eric and Alexa, were to meet me in Horseshoe Bay (just outside New York City) in a weeks time, so a series of solo day-sails lay before me.

One storm and one crushed finger later, I was on a mooring in the inner harbor of Scituate, MA. And thus commenced a week of what Alexa has coined the Scituate Situation, and they changed their flights to meet me there.

It was during the Scituate Situation that I also became acquainted with Christopher Robin, who would become Annie Laurie's best friend in the coming weeks. See below for some video taken of Annie Laurie off the coast of New Jersey.

Stay tuned...

And the Cat's Out of the Bag...

2011-02-11T23:18:00.004-04:00

And you thought I was pregnant, or otherwise consumed by the bliss of domestic life!

Bliss of domestic life, yes... but also, I have my boat back!

To be Continued...

And You Thought I Was Lost At Sea

2010-12-20T10:47:00.013-04:00

Obviously, we have made it home by now. And the whirlwind that has been the last 18 months has taken me many places, though without Annie Laurie. I had resigned myself to the fact that she had to go up for sale, considering many of my personal circumstances.

The three day passage from P-Town to Nova Scotia was bitterly cold (too much time south has made me soft), but it got off to a great start. We were just a couple of hours out of Cape Cod when we came within a few meters of a couple of massive whales, who were determined to stay by our side for a while. Shortly after, a thick fog rolled in, and our next glimpse of land was the rock breakwater in Lunenburg.

Rowing ashore one last time in Lunenburg, as I had a flight to catch shortly that would take me to Newfoundland for another forecasting contract (I think I should look up the exact definition of 'contract'), I didnt know if the next time I saw Annie Laurie she would no longer be mine. Of course I cried.

My brother Jeff and friend Dean were there to meet us at the wharf the morning after our midnight arrival, and we had a little celebration at the Grand Banker before heading back to Halifax.

I was feeling a bit shell-shocked upon arriving in St John's mid-August. It would be a bit of a change after living on a boat for over 3 years. I think that's why I sought out the apartment I did. It was at the mouth of the harbour, in what is known as the Outer Battery, closer to sea level than any other home in the city. And not a word of a lie, some days I had more seawater in the floor of my apartment than I'd ever had in the bilge of Annie Laurie.

I did a pretty good job of not allowing myself to become attached to any part of Newfoundland life. Occasional visits to the pub or parties with the guys from work, but I would always get home early for my nightly phonecall with Phil in Miami, who you might remember from previous blogs. It seemed like an impossible situation to resolve, yet I had no doubt where things were leading, and somehow, somewhere, we'd see each other again.

And in October, Phil made his first trip to Canada. He brought a gift for Effie which he couldn't wait to put on her collar. It read "Ping Pong", in remembrance of how, while in Miami at his apartment, all night we'd listen to the ping of batteries flying accross the floor, and the pong of the vase of bamboo hitting the floor yet again.

I took him to places that I thought would impress him, but like a kid who gets everything for Christmas and tosses it all aside to make a fort out of the cardboard boxes, what I really remember was his fascination with the massive pile of road salt on the waterfront that had been offloaded from a ship a few days earlier. Forget Signal Hill or Cape Spear, he wanted his photo taken next to the giant mountain of salt.

We crammed 3 holidays into the 10-day visit, knowing we wouldn't be together for Halloween, (American) Thanksgiving, or Christmas. We carved pumpkins and went into the forest for a small Christmas tree, which we decorated and placed on top of the Franklin fireplace (just a showpiece) in my apartment. We tried fried cod tongues for the first time (bleah!). I guess you'd learn to love them like the Newfies if you were desperate enough for sustenance.

In exchange for working Christmas Day (the weather doesn't stop for the holidays) I was able to take a susbtantial amount of time off afterward to fly to Miami to see Phil again. We had now spent a grand total of one month together. When it's right, it's right. Now to figure out how to remove the 2000 miles between us.

All the while, Annie Laurie was stitting outside Lunenburg awaiting a couple of repairs. I just couldn't see how she could fit into my future plans, thought I felt like a bad mother, abandoning her child when they became the slightest bit inconvenient. But, I reasoned, you have to leave certain things behind to open yourself up to new experiences. I had a pretty good run with Annie Laurie, perhaps I had already accomplished everything I had meant to do with her. The memories, though, were painful. I longed to be aboard again, and to relive so much of what I had been through. Some days I had to block the memories completely, because it was too much to take, thinking back to the extraordinarily good times, and now feeling so lost and alone in the bitter darkness of winter in Newfoundland.

She wouldnt be forgotten though. One evening before heading to bed, I had a message in my inbox, the subject heading was "Message in the Bottle". It had been nine months since I had thrown a series of messages-in-wine-bottles into the Gulf Stream on my way to the Bahamas. The message read:

Dear Laura,
I'm Cláudia. (please understand my mistakes, I don't write english very well).
I´m writing for you because my cousin found your letter in the bottle. He found it yesterday, Sunday, when he is fishing. Your letter, sailing in the sea during 9 months and became to Terceira Island, in Azores, Portugal. I like your story very much and I think is important you know where your message come. And I beleave that whith little steps we can change the world. Good luck for you and your adventures and I hope that you enjoy your opportunities along the way. Your friend in middle of atlantic, Cláudia

A very tumultuous winter seemed in the works, as I asked myself what the hell I was doing in Newfoundland when A)I didn't enjoy my current job or lifestyle, B)Phil was in Miami, and C)Annie Laurie was reluctantly for sale in Nova Scotia.

I was not feeling aligned. What was a girl to do?

Conclusion Coming Soon

2010-08-11T09:48:00.001-03:00

I do intend to finish what I started... Keep checking in!

This Isn't The End

2009-12-11T11:41:00.048-04:00

It hadn't really occurred to me that my dad might require some tips on steering the boat. As soon as we cleared Government Cut and I was relatively comfortable that we were far enough off Miami Beach, I went below to make breakfast. The only instruction I left dad was, after that next red buoy, hang a left and run parallel to the beach.

We were motoring, as there was little wind on this hot sunny summer day. When the engine is running and you are down below, it's difficult to hear anything that might be going on above deck. I was too preoccupied with bagels and eggs to realize that dad was trying to inform me that both the steering and compass had spontaneously busted as soon as I handed him the wheel. "The compass keeps spinning in circles, and I keep turning the wheel further and we keep going the wrong way!". We had circumnavigated the red buoy, and were once again inbound towards Miami. This trip was going to be a learning experience for both of us.

We had roughly set our sights on Beaufort, North Carolina as our next port. The first 48hrs in the Gulf Stream were very encouraging. Making 9kts over the ground at the time it seemed like it might be a very short trip. That first night was our last sight of Florida, as the distant lights of West Palm Beach faded with the morning light. From here, we'd be going out of our way if we were to follow the coast. Every few hours, distant threatening thunderclouds would form, and the gut-wrenching alarmist warnings on the VHF would only make matters worse, instilling panic. The electronic voice seemed to suggest that it was unreasonable to be making such a passage this time of year offshore, when frequent storms are inevitable, and impending doom seemed almost certain.

The storms stayed at bay, and cheerfully, we sailed onward.

Our first sight to make the empty sea seem less lonely was a NASA commissioned ship, out to recover the booster rockets from a launch at Cape Canaveral two nights earlier. I called them on the VHF for an update on the tropical cyclone probability, as we were now out of range of the regular shore-based broadcasts, and last I'd heard there was a high probability of tropical storm development with a particular area of low pressure in the eastern Caribbean. If development had continued, I was considering ducking back towards the mainland, and possibly pulling in to Charleston to hide from the weather if necessary. The ship informed me that the low had dissipated, and so we continued to aim for the waypoint at Beaufort.

As night number two fell upon us, the skies were crystal clear and the wind was steady, pushing us along at a comfortable 6 knots, as we continued to get a bit of help from the Gulf Stream. The wind continued to build as midnight approached, and though I'm sure it never exceeded 25kts, I became increasingly on edge. The seas were confused and I still have no idea why; the current was from behind, the wind was from behind. It was still hot, so Dad and I both stayed on deck as the autopilot did the work. As I laid down snuggling into my flannel pillow case and a super-cozy blanket Phil had sent along for the trip, I thought about how great it was that my little boat was such a 'dry' boat (no matter what the sea conditions, the cockpit generally stays dry). So, before I knew it, I was drenched and choking on a load of warm seawater. My new favorite blanket and only physical reminder of Phil would now be slimy and salty for the next 4 days and would not be there for my comfort.

Aside from being soaked, the incident left me with the feeling that something worse was on the way. The wind was already 15 kts higher than forecast, and I had a million things running through my head. After the 'rogue' wave, dad had retreated below to avoid a soaking in the case of a repeat performance. He popped his head up for a second and asked something along the lines of 'Is this normal?', to which I said, 'Yeah! This is nothing...'. He believed me, and it was in fact a true statement, though I really didn't feel that way at the time. I tend to lose the nerve required to be at sea in a small boat when I spend too much time living the easy life ashore, as I'd done for close to 6 weeks in Miami. Well most of it was the easy life, except for the part when I got hit by lightning.

Aside from the NASA ship, the sea was completely devoid of traffic until 4AM on the 4th day, when both Dad and I had inadvertently fallen asleep on deck, and he woke first to see a city of lights just off our starboard quarter. He jumped up and quite innocently asked, "What is that?". It took me a few seconds to process what was happening. Every single deck light was brightly lit, it looked like a city skyline. I couldn't find a red or green light amongst the sea of lights to indicate the direction in which the ship was traveling. I figured one of the hundred white lights I could see was a stern light, and the ship was moving away. But as my eyes came into better focus I could see the ship's green light, indicating they were moving across our stern, meaning we had just cut on front of them. We had just completed a game of chicken with a very large ship that was probably never aware we existed. This was exactly why I hadn't wanted to do this trip alone, so someone could always be awake and be on the lookout for 200-ft ships bound for Charleston. It happened anyway, but we were lucky.

And to nicely round-out the first leg of our journey, a pod of dolphins came to visit and play on our last afternoon at sea. I was glad to see how much Dad was enjoying the experience, as I myself had begun to take such incidences in stride. It's a bit sad to realize that you can come to view such an event as ordinary.

The toughest challenge of this part of the trip was actually the entry into the harbour at Beaufort, North Carolina. True to my cruising style, I had scribbled down a waypoint from online charts that would get me to the outer approaches of the channel, then I had a 'sketch' from a cruising guide that made the entrance look fairly straight-forward; red, green, red green, hang a left, hang a right, drop the hook, pop the cork in that last bottle of wine.

My first regret was that we would be arriving after dark. My second regret was the 4 kt tidal current running at its peak. My third regret was the two outbound tugboats coming around the corner towing an unlit barge, in an are where shoaling requires frequent dredging and the danger of running aground is ever-present. My final regret was not having the proper detailed chart. All the flashing red and green lights marking a winding path were all flashing different patterns that were clues as to which ones to aim for first (if I had the chart to break the code). All I could think of as I was made dizzy by the flashing lights was Phil's pinball machine, perpetually flashing !!100,000PTS!! !!100,000PTS!! It's a less exciting game when your boat is the ball, and large steel buoys and barges and tugboats and sandbars are the pins, and a strong current is trying its best to force you into a collision with at least one of them.

I found the pressure a bit intense as I struggled to figure out where we were, and constantly fearing we were on the verge of hitting bottom. My brain managed to organize all the lights into two possible channels, but I was at a loss as to which one I should follow. I looked up, and, no joke, a shooting star streamed directly down one of the two perceived channels. Good thing I believe in signs.

Around 1AM we were finally in the crowded anchorage. After dropping the hook and letting out enough chain to feel comfortable that we weren't going to drag anchor that night, I realized we wouldn't have enough swinging room when the tide turned and the current changed direction, so wearily I hauled up the anchor and was more careful the second time I set it down.

For the next few days, we would have it relatively easy. We were heading up the intracoastal waterway (ICW) to Norfolk, Virginia, so we would be motoring from mark to mark, and we could anchor somewhere every night for a good nights sleep. The only fear I constantly harboured, which would have been the same had we been out on the open ocean, was the frequent thunderstorms. The only downside of being in the constricted waterways was if a storm struck, I had little choice but to stay on deck and steer through it, to ensure we wouldn't be blown aground. At sea, I could run below and we could drift as we waited for the storm to pass.

At the end of Day 3 on the ICW, we arrived at the Great Bridge Lock. Last time I was here, my good friend Ben lived down the street. He and his wife had since moved to Cape Cod, so while I was a bit sad not to have friends in Virginia anymore, I had a reunion to look forward to later, that would mark the three-quarters-of-the-way-home mark, before the final hop back to Nova Scotia.

From the Great Bridge Lock, we made our last ICW run up to Portsmouth, Virginia, to wait for a 3 to 4 day weather window to sail directly to Cape Cod. We had managed to make it from Beaufort to to the Chesapeake Bay unscathed (as far as thunderstorms go), but this wouldn't be true for the next leg of the trip.

Most of the next 4 days was miserable. The water, and therefore the air temperature, got progressively colder, and there were frequent squalls, whose winds always seemed to oppose the prevailing winds, which made for sloppy seas. We were getting slammed around in a very unsteady and unpredictable manner, which causes me great anxiety, for no matter what I've put the boat through in the past, and how many times she's proven herself, in the back of my mind I'm always thinking 'maybe today's the day she springs a plank'. Of course, that never happened, but I have always feared that if I stopped worrying about it, that would be the time it finally happened. Now, months later and having lived ashore since August, I notice this aspect of my character re-emerging in many other situations. My favorite words of reassurance have become those of Sir Winston Churchill, roughly along the lines of 'I've had many worries in my lifetime, most of which never happened'. How often do we abandon moments of peaceful happiness as we worry about things that will likely never come to pass.

Again, the sea had been empty since we were overtaken by a Navy destroyer in the approaches of the Chesapeake Bay. We were three days along and I calculated our arrival in Quissett Harbour to be the following afternoon. We were as far from shore as we would be for this part of the trip, about 130NM from Long Island, and another black squall line with wicked fork lightning was fast approaching, and there was no avoiding this one. I had resolved to run below as it hit, but as my luck would have it, a long-liner appeared out of the mist and was on a path to cross my bow. I sent Dad below (no point in both of us getting struck by lightning) and crouched in the cockpit (like that might somehow have dampened the impact of the strike) and steered around the fishing boat and its trailing gear as the storm passed. Once safe, I called down to reassure Dad that the worst was over. Apparently he wasn't all that concerned. He was sound asleep.

After that squall, the sky turned an unnerving shade of grey, and for awhile the winds increased to 30kts, and whitecaps were appearing on the larger swells. Just 18 more hours, and we'd be in the safety of Buzzards Bay, west of Cape Cod. So anxious to get there, I decided to haul the sails in tight and motorsail the rest of the way. In the rough seas, I realized it would only be a matter of time before the remaining crud in the bottom of the fuel tank would be stirred up and clog the filters. At least this time, I could just just replace the secondary Racor filter, and wouldn't have to go through the hell that is bleeding the air out of the fuel lines of a Perkins engine.

I believe it was around 2AM when that old familiar racing sound of the fuel-deprived engine began. My newly refurbished autopilot had stopped working (electric motor was the culprit this time) so I had to wake up Dad to come steer while I went to replace the filter. Unfortunately, replacing the Racor did not fix the problem. I once again faced bleeding the engine, which, if you've been paying close attention since I began this blog 2 1/2 years ago, I have never managed to do, without killing the starter batteries and eventually relying on outside help (shorepower, borrowed generators, one person to press the manual fuel pump on one side of the engine while I cracked the various fuel lines on the other side). This would be my first attempt of this at sea. If I was unsuccessful, it could mean a very slow slog the rest of the way to Cape Cod under sailpower alone, and in the current weather conditions, this could take days.

I was very careful to do every step correctly the first time. Take the old filter off, fill the new filter with fuel before putting it on the engine, and tapping it repeatedly to ensure every last air bubble was out. I had never had to do this in rough seas in the middle of the night before, and as sleep-deprived as I was, I didn't have much faith in myself. Once finished, I clenched my hands together as Dad turned the ignition key, and to my amazement, it started immediately. First time ever, with my own two hands and no outside help. I finally felt I had conquered the last demon residing in my engine. So, 4 hours later, when it happened again, I had a lot more more confidence. By the third time (give me a break!) I was getting competitive with myself, and now it was all about speed. I knew I could do it, I just wanted to break my previous record.

We got into the lee of Elizabeth Island, Cape Cod, just as things were getting really nasty. I don't know how much longer I could have gone on, watching the waves build higher and higher from behind us. As we drifted into smoother waters, a thick fog settled in. Aside from the possibility of other boat traffic, I wasn't terribly worried about the declining visibility because, at least this time, I had charts for these waters.

Once inside Quissett Harbour, the sun broke through and the fog evaporated. We picked up a mooring, and a wireless signal, and were able to make contact with Ben's wife to let them know we had arrived.

When I had last seen Ben and Brigid on my journey south, they had a new addition to their family, a very excitable, energetic Chesapeake Bay retriever named l'il Bud. His personality hadn't changed at all, but l'il Bud wasn't so little anymore. For one of the most friendly dogs I've ever met, he has a most vicious 'smile'.

Once again Ben and Brigid opened up their new home to us, and we had a great time catching up on each others lives. We played on Ben's homemade parcheesie board and enjoyed great BBQ dinners over bottles of wine. Ben helped with various boat issues, arranging a mooring for us close to the dingy dock, fuel, fresh water, and he determined the most recent problem with the autopilot. Before leaving, I thought it would we prudent to change the fuel filter one more time, while in a calm harbour, still sitting on the mooring. I did, and do you think i could get that engine started afterwards?? After a frustrating couple of hours, it was Ben to the rescue.

I had looked forward to our reunion for so long, I was very sad to leave. Ben came aboard for a little tour as we motored out of the harbour, before jumping into his dingy and casting off. I wonder when we'll meet again.

I timed the tides correctly this time for heading north through the Cape Cod Canal. Once at the end of the canal, we had a beautiful sail across Cape Cod Bay to Provincetown. From here, it would be only 3 more days to the anchorage in Lunenburg Harbour. We were almost home.

Looks like there will have to be one more blog.

It's Been Fun

2009-10-07T10:18:00.015-03:00

This, my final blog, has been the most difficult of all blogs to write. So much time has passed, and so much Life has been squeezed into the last 3 months, it’s hard to know what to leave in, and what to leave out. It’s difficult to think about the sweet memories of my recent past, the longing to be there again is painful.

I guess I could begin from where I left off. Yes, the boat was struck by lightning. It was an awful storm. Lightning was reaching the surface throughout the anchorage. I heard later that 2 other boats in the anchorage were struck during the same storm. Once the storm hit, I felt it was inevitable, that I’d be struck (I’ve never seen so much chain lightning, happening all at once), and I just hoped that my lightning-rod ‘system’ would do it’s job properly. The tops of my masts are metal, the stays supporting my masts are metal, and are attached to the wooden hull by metal plates. My keel bolts are big rods of stainless, so with a thick copper wire bridging the gap from the metal plates to the keel bolts, the boat should be grounded to the surrounding ocean. When the lightning hit, I can’t explain the feeling. It wasn’t electric shock, but it was definitely some sort of ‘awareness’ attached to the event, I don’t know what other word to use to describe it. It lasted for 2 or 3 seconds, to the best of my memory. There was a ‘pop’, which was soon followed by the smell of burning. It smelled metallic, not wooden, but on instinct, I ran on deck in the midst of the storm to double-check that I didn’t have an impending disaster on my hands. Convinced all was well for the moment, I went below, grabbed my softest blanket and curled up helpless on the bunk below, waiting for the remainder of the storm to pass.

The calm sunset that followed seemed like nature’s defiance, pretending nothing had happened at all. As I wandered around the deck, it didnt take long to discover where the boat had been struck. A melted VHF antennae was the most obvious of the clues. The lack of response when turning on various electronics confirmed what I feared. My newly working autopilot and depthsounder were fried. That little boat is traditional through and through, rejecting any new technology that might make navigating and journeying easier or more pleasureable. Much like her owner, she seems prone to doing things the hard way.

So that was around the 6^th of June, and what drew me to Miami in the first place kept me there for 6 weeks. Of all the temporary friends I made while in the Bahamas, at least one has become permanent. As he had promised when we met in the Exumas, Phil showed me some of the finer things Miami had to offer. I had been through Miami twice before, probably at anchor in the area for a few weeks combined, but had never been ashore. I'm sometimes a quick judge of character, and I decided the city was full of rouges and thieves. And guns, lots of guns. While that probably remains true to a certain point, there's certainly a lot more to the place, which I'm sure I've still only had a glimpse of.

Phil took me to the botanical gardens, full of hundreds of tropical trees, plants and flowers, and world headquarters of mosquito production. He demonstrated how to drive in Miami without getting yourself killed, and how much fun it is to ride a motorcycle! (note to self: sell boat, buy Harley) We toured around the neighbourhood where he grew up, on the fringes of the city, surrounded by tropical tree farms, fruit stands, and feilds of strawberries and mango trees. We explored the extremely contrived South Beach area by bicycle. I could probably sit along one of the pedestrian streets and people watch until the end of time.

As you could expect, making the decision to leave Miami was one I struggled with for weeks, before finally accepting a job offer back in Canada. It was time to get Annie out of the hot southern waters, and I knew I had to get her back to Lunenburg sooner rather than later. I had about 2000 miles of ocean to traverse between Miami and home. Now I felt in a rush to get there, and knew very well that if I had to hop my way slowly up the coast (as I would have to do without crew or autopilot), that it would take me months, rather than weeks. I had a lot of feedback when I put out the call for crew, but in the end, only one person came through. My dad flew to Miami one evening, and we left the

following morning from the Miami River, winding our way past the construction and skyscrapers and dockyards, bound for the Atlantic.

I remember looking back one last time before we rounded the bend in the river, to see Phil standing on the stern of Retriever, wondering when we'd see each other again. At this point I had no other choice but to

look ahead and face the task at hand. About 750 miles of open ocean to North Carolina, with my dad, who'd never been to sea before.

Maybe I'll save the rest of this story for one more blog.

Sailing Home aboard Annie Laurie

2009-06-15T15:30:00.031-03:00

I will take the opportunity now to take back what I said about my engine. She is a great little engine. A bit temperamental, but ultimately, there when I need her the most. I'm so thankful I took the time to struggle with the filter change, because things may have turned out very differently in the following days if I had not...

Allans Cay was a fine place to end my Bahamian tour. The memories and impressions are book-worthy, and it left me wanting more. When I return to the Bahamas it will likely be my first stop after customs. Corstiaan and Wanda loved to snorkel, and invited me along numerous times. We'd wait for near-slack tide and go to one of the cuts, then drift in the gentle current, as if viewing the corals, lobster, shells, and myriad of fish on a slide show.

With the engine now working, and feeling content that I had seen everything at Allans Cay worth seeing, I decided it was time to leave. With my new autopilot, I made this next segment of my journey an overnighter. I decided I would head south of New Providence (home of Nassau Harbour) and up the Tongue of the Ocean, which would hopefully result in an early morning arrival at Northwest Channel, which was relatively narrow and I had no desire to face it in the dark.

I departed Allans at 0800 and arrived at the southwestern tip of New Providence amidst a thunderstorm at dusk. There were storms all around, from this point on, at any given moment, for the next 3 days. You could waste a lot of time and effort trying to steer around these storms, in the hopes of avoiding that one bolt of lightening that would take out all your electronics, or the high winds that could do other damage in many different ways. I decided to stay on my course, and for the first 24 hrs this worked very well for me. The distant (and not so distant) storms were essentially stationary, and just happened to not fall on my course line.

That first night, I probably managed 2 hours of sleep, motorsailing in light and variable winds. I had a little eggtimer that I set in 15 minute increments. It worked well. I awoke from my last catnap an hour before sunrise, and felt unexpectedly refreshed. By 0930, I was a couple of miles from the waypoint for the Northwest Channel, and watched as the harshest, blackest, most violent-looking squall line I had ever witnessed approach from dead ahead.

The Northwest Channel is essentially the end of the Tongue of the Ocean. The Tongue is wide and extremely deep, for the most part, but as you approach the Channel, it gets narrower, and eventually shoals up from its average 6000ft deep, to less than 20ft in the last 1/4 mile of the approaches.

There were a few sportsfishing boats in the vicinity, and one large catamaran under full sail going straight for the channel. He (or she) looked like they knew what they were doing, and I thought to myself, "You get scared too easily. It's probably not as bad as it looks", and I made a decision to follow the catamaran. I thought the worst case scenario would be lots of wind and lightning and rain, but I could drop my sails, motor through it, and let the autopilot do the work.

I had been thinking a lot lately, reflecting on my experiences thus far, the decisions I had made, what they had led to, and how many gut-wrenching situations I had found myself in, all with at least one other person aboard. I had been contemplating the inevitability of the day when I would find myself in a horrible situation, and only have myself to rely upon.

Today was to be that day.

I began to have serious second thoughts as I approached the waypoint and a wall of white suddenly enveloped the tall tower that marks the edge of the reef. The catamaran disappeared too. I felt sick to my stomach, and with no further ado, put the boat on the reciprocal course to what I had been running. Too far to the right of that reciprocal course, and I might hit the southern edge of the reef, too far to the left, and I might hit the north. I really hadn't left myself very much searoom... how irresponsible. I had the feeling things were about to get bad, and I turned around to see what was coming, and not 20 feet off my stern, there were 2 waterspouts. I had seen plenty of waterspouts, fairly close when I was crewing on tallships, and from afar on my own boat. But never this close, and never alone. My knees started to shake, and Effie looked frazzled as the sound of the spout hissed and salt water was being flung in our faces. I grabbed her and threw her below, but she has always hated being below with the sound of the engine running, so she promptly ran back on deck. I screamed at her, (more out of fear for the general situation than for her not staying put), grabbed her by the neck once again, and put her below again, and then I jumped in behind her. I closed the hatch and doors, and looked out my window at the one waterspout that was still visible, and just prayed it would stay where it was and not intensify. Then, the wind and lightning came.

The boat heeled over, and I felt her turn, despite the autopilot being set for a course of 130 degrees. I did not want to go on deck. The lightning and thunder were simultaneous, and I was sure I'd be struck if I went up there. Looking at one of my many magnetic compasses I had down below, I could see I was pointed due north now. I felt trapped in a nightmare, you know the one, where someone is chasing you, and your body is made of solid lead, and you're trying to crawl away but you can't move at all. I could not compute what I was seeing, my brain was like cold molasses. Where exactly am I? What are these sounds? Waterspouts, or just a solid wall of wind now? Can it really get this rough that quickly? North, north, what does that mean? I'm pointing north, why aren't I pointed southeast?

Then it hit me. North. Reef! To the north is reef!

I was already wearing my harness, the lanyard was on deck, wrapped around the mast, ready to be clipped into once I slid back the hatch. I crawled out, clipped in, jumped on the helm, and gave the engine a bit of throttle to keep ahead of the waves that she had already begun to surf. I heard Effie once, assumed she was below, though I couldn't understand how I could possibly hear her if she was locked below and the sound of the wind was as loud as it was. I quickly forgot about her, and concentrated on my compass course, as it was very difficult to keep the boat going where I wanted her to go. With every lightening strike, I winced, expected to be hit, or the boat to be hit, and I kept looking up to the top of the masts to search for damage after each strike, but the force of the rain pelting my eyeballs would have made any real attempt to see damage impossible. I don't want to exaggerate, so I'm going to estimate the winds at 50kts, though I believe they were closer to 60.

When things settled a bit (I felt I had regained control of the boat) I took stock of the situation. I had dropped my GPS as I stumbled to grab it, and I couldn't leave the helm to go below to get it. Visibility was no more than 50 feet. I was surfing down closely spaced 5 to 6 foot waves, the rain was torrential, and the wind was no less persistent. The lightning seemed to be getting ahead of me, and I was breathing a tentative and silent sigh of relief in that regard. Other than not being able to determine my location, nothing else seemed of immediate danger.

I've never felt so alone in my entire life. I thought if someone was there with me, none of it would have seemed half as unnerving. As it was, the sound of the wind, the sight of the still-building seas and the occasional bolt of lightning seeped into my veins to produce a trauma that I can't yet say I've managed to shrug off.

The storm lasted approximately an hour, and when it finally passed, I found myself nearly 7 miles away from the channel. A storm petrel had landed on the foredeck and similarly appeared to be trying to shake itself of the experience, and its soaked feathers. This was my first chance to go look for Effie, who I was certain had been somehow vacuumed overboard by one of the waterspouts. She was in the chain locker in the bow, where she stayed for the next 5 or 6 hours. I brought offerings of tuna juice, in an attempt to apologize for what was out of my control. Another small bird plopped right on top of my chart as I was plotting a position late in the afternoon, obviously blown far from home (I think I was at least 10 miles from the nearest shoreline). Effie tried to eat her, so I put her under a box on the deck until she gained a bit of strength. She didn't make it.

That night I had no option but to anchor on the banks. No land in sight, no protection, and the wind kept up at a steady 20kts which caused the boat to pitch and heave the entire night. I had rigged a new bow roller in Allans Cay, to make it easier to haul the anchor up, as well as to keep the anchor away from the hull as I hauled it up the final few feet (it had been badly dinging the hull for months). It was ripped off my bowsprit by sunrise.

Two more days and I'll be safely in Miami.

The next evening I was at Cat Cay, and a couple from a catamaran came over to offer me a lift ashore, since they had a high-speed dingy. It was good to feel solid ground for a few hours. A small gap just north of the cay was the gateway to the final 50 or so miles to Miami.

I crossed the reef at sunrise, setting my course for 20 miles south of Miami, anticipating the distance the Gulf Stream would set me out of my way. It worked out perfectly. I arrive just east of Fowey Rocks outside of Miami at sunset. I only wished I could have arrived an hour or 2 earlier, so I wouldn't have had to cross the reef on this end in the dark. By mid-afternoon, I knew this was going to be the case, and I just hoped the cloud cover would dissipate so the moon would at least make certain landmarks easier to see and navigate by. Having been in the sparsely inhabited Bahamas for 4 months, I had forgotten about the notion of light pollution, and so I need not have worried about having sufficient light around a city as large as Miami.

At 10pm, I was safely at anchor in No Name Harbour, a comfortable anchorage I have visited a couple of times before. What a tremendous relief. My ordeal of recent weeks had finally come to an end.

Now, the chance of a boat being struck by lightning in the United States is 1.2 in 1000. In Florida, that statistic becomes 4 in 1000.

These are odds I would have preferred not to beat.

Westering Home

2009-06-09T13:14:00.044-03:00

To pick up where I left off, My Life had to weigh anchor and head into Spanish Wells to find internet access, as they had a friend flying in from Canada, whom they’d been unable to communicate with for a couple of weeks.

Not being able to bear the thoughts of a third night out in these unruly seas, especially alone, it occurred to me I might make more of an effort to find the trouble-shooting manual for my Perkins diesel. After tearing every leaf of paper from bookshelves, drawers, cupboards and cubbies, I finally found the book. It was only a matter of bleeding 2 valves I had missed on my fuel pump, and within an hour, the engine was running like a champ. I somehow managed to haul up the 2 anchors simultaneously while the engine was in slow ahead, and I called Road to the Isles to say I was on my way. Three hours later I dropped my anchor beside them, in much calmer waters.

I’m still not sure why exactly Annie began to take on so much water during those few days. As is typical of boats, the actual source of the leak is in a space that is too small to crawl to, so while I could see the water pouring down the inside of the hull, the precise origin of the leak remains a mystery.

With more strong southerly winds in the forecast, most boats within a 20 mile radius moved to one of the few protected anchorages in the area from southerly winds, Royal Island. There, I spent some time in the water attempting to caulk the area around the shaft that holds the rudder in place. I couldn’t think of any other explanation of how the water was getting in. Don from Road to the Isles offered to help, so I accepted. He donned his wetsuit, and once we were both in the water I handed him strands of oakum (a traditional caulking item, like a lightly-tarred cotton, which is hammered into seams with a mallet and a wedge of some sort, in this case, a flathead screwdriver). After perhaps an hour in the water, the leak didn’t appear to slow significantly. What else could we do.

Over the next day or two, I thought long and hard about packing it in. It wasn’t just the leak… there were a multitude of troubles that been systematically arising, all seeming to indicate that a decision to begin heading north now would be wise. I had become overwhelmed with the amount of maintenance on the boat that I had not yet found the time to attend to, my cookstove was preparing to throw in the towel for good, no longer tolerating the low-grade kerosene I’d been feeding it, and kerosene is not available in this part of the Bahamas. With most things aboard either canned or dried, and the fresh produce available being extortionate, I knew my days would be numbered once the stove drew its final breath.

After much pep-talking to myself, I decided I would soldier on. The bilge-pump was maintaining the leak, the stove wasn’t completely useless just yet, and I had no one to blame but myself on the maintenance issue. All of it still needs to be tackled, no matter where I go.

I headed down to Current Cut for a couple of days, where I saw again what a small ocean it can be. On my second evening there, a large turquoise schooner anchored beside me, with my friend Jay from Key West aboard. We had shared an evening of music (his fiddle, my smallpipes) at a campfire gathering of sailors on the deserted Christmas Tree Island just off the shores of Key West. It was good to be reminded of some of the fonder memories I have of my months in Key West last year.

Next stop was Hatchett Bay, which eventually became known to us as Hotel Hatchett Bay (you can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!). The relentless high winds kept us in lock-down in this small anchorage for a couple of weeks. It used to be a salt-water pond, being fed by blue holes (underwater caves) that lead out to the Atlantic ocean. A few sticks of dynamite later, the pond became a bay, accessible by a new opening on its western side. The holding (ability of an anchor to grab the bottom) is poor throughout the bay, so the local government, in an attempt to attract more boaters, had placed an array of free moorings to make things easier. With another front forecast, and trusting that the moorings we were tied to were strong, we decided to abandon the discomfort of small boats in storms, and to do some exploring ashore.

I had read about the Hatchett Bay Caves in an old Lonely Planet guide that had come with a bundle of charts and guidebooks in a trade for my Cuba charts and guides while I was in Mexico. The directions in the guide were vague, and as we asked around town, the first few locals had no idea what we were talking about. Even if they had never visited the site, you’d expect that they would have at least heard of its existence. It runs half a mile underground, inhabited by a flock (?) of leaf-nosed bats, and displays charcoal signatures from as far back as the early 1800’s. The earliest date I saw was 1832, and to put that in my own personal context, those names were scrawled the same year my ancestors set out from Greenock, Scotland, on a ship bound for Nova Scotia.

There was little more than an old weathered sign propped up against a small stone wall off the main road. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d probably miss it. I thought if a similar cave were in Canada or the States, there’d been a woman collecting an admission fee at the opening, and we’d be broken into groups of 8 and led through by a guide, and a proper concrete surface would have paved the bottom for concern of safety (more accurately, lawsuits) and all of our possible graffiti implements would have been confiscated. As it was, we tripped our way over limestone ledges and fallen stalactites and avoided leg-breaking holes with our one dim headlamp, and I was able to use burned sticks from the field around the cave to leave my mark, “Laura and Effie, Annie Laurie, 2009”.

After a hair-raising 140 km/hr hitched ride in the back of a truck to Hatchett Bay, we returned to our respective boats. Shortly thereafter, a boat named Fabled Past entered the cut, and sometimes the smallest gestures can be the beginning of the greatest friendships. All the moorings were occupied and the wind was howling (well, if it wasn’t at the moment, it would be soon!). My Life came and rafted up to me and my mooring, leaving one free mooring, which resulted in rum punches with Beth and Tom aboard Fabled Past that evening. The rest, as they say, is history.

We all stayed in Hatchett Bay for another week or so. The small opening to escape the bay looked neither inviting nor hospitable with constant breaking waves converging and compressing into a space no more than 50 feet across.

Tom, Beth, and I took an afternoon and hitched a ride to a saltwater pond where Beth had seen rock crabs the day before. This time she came prepared with a net and a cooler, and between the two of them, they rounded up nine or ten good size crab from knee-deep water. I tried spear-fishing, swimming out a ways into the foggy water, but naturally lost my nerve quickly, as I do in water lately. A local told Beth a story, that is probably little more than folklore, that Jacques Cousteau once explored the pond, and after descending into one of the blue holes within it, was horrified by some of the creatures he witnessed, to the point of being unable (or unwilling) to talk about them. I’d like to do some research on that claim. The tactic most suited to me would be from browsing the shelves of a local library, and not swimming around the blue hole itself.

Once liberated from Hotel Hatchett Bay, we all sailed 20 miles south to Governors Harbor. It seemed to be geared more towards tourists than our other stops in Eleuthera. The town was tiny and attractive, well kept and well provisioned (four liquor stores). I hit up the local bakery for some specialty coconut and cinnamon bread, and the grocery store had the sweetest tomatoes I’ve had since the ones from the vine of mom’s tomato plant at the cottage. The town had decent water from many available taps along the road, which was a rarity in Eleuthera. Most available water is salty well-water, and though many locals are brought up on it, I could not stomach it. It was well worth hanging around Governors Harbor a few extra hours to ferry jugs back and forth to top up my tanks while the opportunity was there (Tom helped with his motor-dingy and numerous jugs). Before Tom arrived with his assistance, I was leaning over to the tap suspended from a wall of tiles. The upward draft at this position was blowing my skirt skyward, Marylin Monroe-style. It was a quiet morning, and not seeing anyone around, I made little effort to do anything about it; I was busy, one hand on the tap, and the other holding the jug. When the jug was full, I turned to make my way to the beach, only to see a rolly-polly teenager leaning against a tree, holding up his camera-phone. He displayed a wide smile as he nodded his head approvingly, and although he didn’t say a word, I could hear the voice of Austin Powers uttering ‘Yeah, baby. Yeah!’.

Fast-forward another couple of weeks, and My Life, Fabled Past, and Annie Laurie are now in Rock Sound, near the southern end of Eleuthera. The liquor store was perfectly placed for grabbing a beer on your way to the grocery store, which they gladly opened for you at the counter, and placed it in a small brown paper bag. Anywhere else, we may have looked like alcoholics, but not in the Bahamas. In Rock Sound, we would have felt conspicuous walking around with our hands empty.

One of Rock Sound’s attractions is Ocean Hole Park, a landlocked blue hole. It’s a big round crater with some shear cliffs for diving, with a depth that rises and falls with the tide. Fish flipped and snapped at bread crumbs we tossed on the surface, as Bahamian laughing-gulls tried their best to intercept the tosses.

As you’ve surly heard me say before though, the best parts of this journey is never the guidebook attractions. Tom and Beth made us feel right at home in their company. They were fairly well-equipped cruisers compared to myself (and even moreso when compared to My Life), and we had great times aboard Fabled Past. Pizza night, burger and chips night, movies and frozen blended drinks. I didn’t want it to end, but with an upcoming weather window, they would be heading north, and I would be heading south. I take comfort in knowing it is not true in sailing that all good things come to an end. The good times are just postponed until you meet again. I now have a great incentive to make a stop in Baltimore on my way home.

Somewhere around the beginning of May, we departed Eleuthera and by sunset were anchored north of Highbourne Cay in the Exumas. En route, My Life caught a huge dolphin, which they repeatedly broadcast their excitement over on the VHF. They didn’t have a boathook to get the approximately 35-lb fish aboard, so I offered to do a quick sail-by and pass them my hook. Bad idea in 3 to 4 foot seas, and a minor collision resulted, but they got the fish aboard (turns out without the help of my hook) and it was the sushi I have long been waiting for.

The Exumas are all they’re cracked up to be. Unlike Eleuthera, the cays are sparsely inhabited, and the water is crystal clear (you can see the sharks coming). While anchored west of Highbourne, I watched as a 9 foot bull shark skirted the edge of my underwater visibility, the same type of shark that took the arm (along with the spear and the fish it was holding) of a Venezuelan tourist a hundred miles south of here 2 weeks ago. Without a speared fish and its associated blood trail, these sharks are considered to be of little threat to humans.

Highbourne Cay caters primarily to yachts and sportsfishing boats (read people with money) so anything of interest to us was really below the surface. We found an excellent shallow reef (a couple of feet at low tide) for snorkeling. On some charts, it was known as the Octopus’ Garden. On other charts, it didn’t exist; the same area was apparently more than 12 feet deep and nothing but sand. A good example of why it’s inadvisable to travel after dark. Such misprints are easily read in the daylight by keeping a sharp lookout from behind a good pair of polarized lenses.

I had heard much of the lore of Normans Cay, where the drug lord Carlos Lehder ran his operation and subsequently earned a life sentence without parol plus 132 years in a U.S. prison. Stories abound of cruising sailboats during the 70’s and 80’s being chased by machinegun-wielding guards when they ventured too close to the island. I went ashore to find villas pocked with bullet holes (like my guidebook recommended) and went for what would become an epic row around the south of the island (it didn’t seem so far when I glanced at the chart) to find the airplane destined to pick up a load of cocaine from Lehder that missed the runway in the 80’s. It sits in about 10 feet of water, and sinks a little lower with every passing year. Just a few years ago, the wreck was still in decent enough shape that you could sit in the cockpit as fish swam around your feet. Most of the fuselage is underwater now, and I was able to snorkel through its coral-encrusted casing.

I met a wonderful couple and their young son aboard a catamaran while anchored at Normans Cay. Along with great conversation and much-needed stimulation for some positive introspection on where it is this journey is taking me, Hyde offered his expertise with any problems I had aboard. I mentioned my autopilot, and how my friend Banff had determined the motor was the weak link. Hyde spent the better part of the following day disassembling the motor, soldering broken connections, calibrating the compass, and going for test runs. By the end of the day, Annie Laurie had an autopilot! Three years and thousands of miles, and always a hand at the helm. I’m looking forwards to my first overnight trip (though somewhat anxiously) where I can take catnaps while the autopilot keeps the course. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities of just how far I can travel on my own. Perhaps all the way back to Nova Scotia on my own (right mom!?)

The next couple of weeks were memorable for me, as I spent much time in the Exumas Land and Sea Park. It’s a relatively small area (about 180 square miles) where all fishing is prohibited. Wardwick Wells is home of the park headquarters. Moorings were available in various locations around the cay, either for a nightly fee, or in exchange for a few hours of volunteer work. I’m not sure why, but Brendon from My Life seemed to jump at the chance to mix (by hand and shovel) and pour concrete, which the three of us did on our first day, creating another slab of the cellar floor of the headquarters. My back has been in such pain ever since, I couldn’t have done the same work the next day had I wanted to. I believe Brendon and Trevor spent the next 2 days on the same chore. I can’t say I envied them.

The following day, the warden, Andrew, allowed me to go on the high-speed Contender as he patrolled the north and south extents of the park with 2 members of the Royal Bahamian Defense Force, in an attempt to enforce the no-fishing regulations and collect mooring fees. He pointed out all the good snorkel spots and moorings and sights to see, which was a great orientation for the following week when I headed further south with my own boat.

The highlight of my stay in the park though was meeting Phil and Zach who run a small and beautiful steel cargo boat called the Retriever between Miami and the Exumas. For two days, Effie and I joined them as we traveled around offloading cargo to various private cays in the park. We delivered everything from food, to generators, to cedar shingles. I spent much of those 2 days laughing more than I have for quite some time, and meeting the local caretakers of the islands, and just being in some generally unique situations. I’d like to have those days back again.

When the time came to leave the Park, I set my destination to Staniel Cay, home of the Thunderball grotto (where part of the James Bond movie was filmed), which I was told was not to be missed. After close to 6 hours of motorsailing, the wind increased to 25kts from directly ahead. I gave up when I realized I was making less than one mile an hour towards my destination. I turned off the engine, swung the boat around and sheeted out the main. I headed for a nearby anchorage I had spotted when traveling on Retriever, next to Bell Island. Here, I met Laurel and Mike, who invited me over for dinner just moments after I dropped the anchor.

Laurel has been coming to the Bahamas for years, and had taken on Mike as crew. Mike was much younger and very eager to check out all the snorkeling sites, whereas Laurel seemed to posses the ‘been there, done that’ attitude. So with Laurel’s fast dingy, Mike and I were able to check out some cool spots over a 2 mile radius of the anchorage. Rocky Dundas was our first stop; a small cave, which at low tide you can swim into, but at high tide, you would have to dive under the wall to come up into the round cave with 2 storey walls and a hole in the top, where beams of sunshine descend to illuminate the stalactite and stalagmite formations. It was rough that day, a strong surge trying to take our feet out from beneath us as we struggled to stand on the shallow rocks with our flippers on. Next, we wanted to check out a reef at the south end of Cambridge Cay, which was supposed to have some impressive elkhorn coral. This area, as it turned out, was very exposed to the strong southeasterly winds, and 4 to 5 foot swells, some of them breaking, were barreling in from Exuma Sound. Concerned of swamping Laurel’s dingy, we decided to forego the elkhorn coral, and head into protected waters. A small airplane that crashed while allegedly running drugs was in 15 feet of water just west of O’Briens Cay. It was tiny, and after a quick look, Mike and I ascended at the same time, and simulatenously exclaimed, “That’s it?!”. We quickly moved on to a tiny rocky outcrop known at the Sea Aquarium, where hundreds of tame fish quickly congregate on any snorkler, expecting to be fed, I guess. It was a popular spot. Many dingys came and went as we took our time taking in all the details of the fish, coral, and even one rather large turtle.

It took me some time to realize that the moment I had decided to turn Annie Laurie north the previous day, that was to be the southernmost position of my journey. As long as I had been heading south, I was avoiding thoughts of the return journey, the accumulating responsibilities of what life back home is going to bring. As I left the anchorage at Bell Island, I watched Mike and Laurel make the turn south for Georgetown, as I made my turn back to Wardwick Wells. I felt I had reached a milestone; no more new ground to cover, as far as navigatable waters go at least. It was, and still is, depressing. I spent 2 more days at Wardwick Wells, thinking too much, and finding it a great effort to be social. How much I miss out on when my thoughts overcome my ability to see what joy can still exist at any given moment, especially with so many new (though perhaps only temporary) friends around.

I awoke early and got underway at 0700 on the day of my departure from Wardwick Wells, with an absence of farewells. Once I decide it’s time to go, there’s no waiting for anyone. I sailed for Highbourne Cay once again, through hours of thunder and lightning storms. It seemed to be just one storm, settling over the boat early in the day and relentlessly following me all the way to my next anchorage. I couldn’t have been less concerned about the lightning strikes, even as one bolt struck the water less than half a mile off my stern. It seemed like childs play after sailing the coastal waters of Florida last July.

I stopped at Highbourne Cay again, hoping to get to the store before it closed for the afternoon. It was a long row from the anchorage, against a strong incoming tide, and I began to doubt I was going to make it. A couple from a boat called Independence were taking their dog Blue ashore, and offered me a tow. I gladly accepted. In the course of conversation, they asked where I was headed, and I said the Abacos, though I was recently considering Miami, but I didn’t have good charts between the Exumas and southern Florida. They said it just so happened they had an extra set of Explorer Charts for the area, including Nassau, Andros, and Bimini, and I was welcome to have them. I made my final decision at that very moment, I was going to Miami.

Before leaving the northern Exumas, there was one more anchorage to check out. Just a stones throw from Highbourne lays Allan Cays, a bit of an attraction for its resident iguana population. Besides that, it’s reasonably protected from all wind directions. It would be my last adventure with Brendon and Trevor, going ashore to feed the iguanas. They were aggressive and intimidating (the iguanas) and would come barreling towards us in an awkward fashion, threatening to chew on our toes it seemed, if we weren’t careful. I had watched high-speed tourboats from Nassau take people ashore throughout the day before I ventured in, and I was quietly scoffing at all the girls in bikinis who would squeal whenever the prehistoric creatures approached. I was embarrassed when I learned it too was my natural reaction, to scream like a girl, when a big one came running towards me.

I made the executive decision to change my fuel filter before it got too clogged up (I usually just wait until it’s so clogged that it shuts the engine down, but I was trying to be proactive this time). I didn’t want to face changing the filter while alone in a rolling sea. I was so sure I had it figured out this time… ‘don’t forget the 2 valves on the fuel pump, and everything will be just fine!’. I was thinking too far ahead. I forgot to fill the new filter with fuel before putting it on, and I subsequently ended up with so much air in the fuel lines, it was next to impossible to bleed all the air out. I was frustrated to tears, literally. I started thinking that the ruins on the adjacent island would make a nice little fixer-upper, and I tried to convince myself Allans Cay would be an alright place to live out the rest of my days.

To bleed the air, it really is a 2 person job to begin with, as the manually lever to pump the fuel is on one side, and the valves are on the other. I tried reaching over the top, while I cracked the valves with my wrench on the other side, and eventually realized I had lost all feeling in my reaching forearm. I worry I let too much fuel get on my arm, and the biocide additive in the fuel has done permanent damage. I hope it’s a result of the awkward pressure I was putting on my arm, and it’s only temporary.

So as could be expected, I eventually killed my batteries trying to start the engine. Friends from a trawler in the anchorage did their best to help, but once the batteries were dead, there was little more they could do. That’s when fellow Canadians Wanda and Corstiaan came on the scene, saying they had a little portable generator, and not to worry, they would be over in the morning and we would get my engine going.

It didn’t take long the next morning, and we didn’t do anything different than I’d been doing the last few days. It was just a matter of getting every last microscopic air bubble out of the lines, and it cranked right up. So many people, when I say I have a Perkins 4-108, say, ‘Ah, right on. Great little engine!’. I no longer think it’s a great little engine if I can never get it going after each filter change.

More to come. To be continued very shortly.

P.S.

Effie evaded almost certain death at Wardwick Wells. She came along as a group of us went over to hang out on a houseboat named Owl for the evening. Someone spooked her with a life-size and very realistic toy turtle, after which she disappeared into the night. At 0500 the following morning, it was obvious she had disappeared into the water. She was in the park wardens skiff, living up to her nickname Muskrat Willie, floating a few feet off the stern of the houseboat. The little trooper sure can swim. And, ahem... I guess to protect the innocent, I should admit now that someone was actually me.

Still Alive

2009-04-13T14:44:00.009-03:00

After leaving Hopetown, I was reunited with my friends Trevor and Brendon aboard My Life. They had enjoyed a local Full Moon party near Tillo Cay a few days earlier, and as a result had missed their weather window to cross to Eleuthera. I was glad they had, we’ve had an enjoyable and eventful couple of weeks since then.

We stayed at Tillo for a few days, swimming and spearfishing and observing our first launch of a rocket from Cape Canaveral. Brendon and I snorkeled around a small reef indicated by a cruising guide, Brendon successfully speared a lobster, which he hurried back to the dingy. I continued to take aim at various fish, mostly snapper, but spent more time diving to the bottom to retrieve my runaway spear. The largest fish to come within range was a 3 foot barracuda, and I was out of the water shortly thereafter. I don’t know why, but they instill fear in me, though I know they’re usually harmless. They can be mildly intimidating, approaching out of curiosity then hanging around, keeping a watchful eye on you, and showing no fear of a spear being aimed in their direction. In fact, all the fish I aim and fire at seem rather intrigued with the shiny metal pole, which they quickly congregate to as soon as the spear comes to rest in the sand. Perhaps all these fish are just experienced prey, and instinctively know, after taking one look at me, that I’m not a threat to their well-being.

Later in the day, Brendon speared a large Amberjack. I rowed over to the rocky outcrop he had climbed onto (when the blood of a fish starts to flow, the sharks aren’t far behind) and delivered the fish back to My Life, where Trevor (crew and cook) took on the task of cleaning the fish. We ate well that night. Lobster and wine as appetizer, fish and wine for main course, and wine for dessert. I’m not sure what sparked my memory, but I suddenely remembered that the rocket launch from Cape Canaveral had been rescheduled for that evening. We didn’t know what time, so we put the VHF on channel 68, where there is constant chitter-chatter among cruising boats, and someone announced it was 5 minutes to launch time. The trajectory was to be over Great Sale Cay in the northern Bahamas, and the sky was clear. I’d like to give a riveting description of it, but I cannot. All I can really say is you kind of had to be there! I was impressed. It left behind an interesting glowing blue cloud for a few minutes afterwards. Trevor hopped on 68 to ask anyone who was listening if they knew what it was. One guy flatly and concisely declared it was God. Then someone else explained it was from the boosters on the rocket, which made a little more sense.

We were fortunate to pick up a very strong wireless signal at Tillo Cay (labeled ‘The Coconut Telegraph’) and getting a weather forecast was easy. We were all eager to head over to Eluethera. This would involve one more daysail to take us to the southern Abacos, which would be our launch point to make the 50 mile crossing over the open Atlantic the following day. We picked our window, and sailed down to Lynyard Cay on St Patricks Day. A very weak norther was forecast for the day after, 15 knots from the northeast. It sounded perfect. We’d cross the reef just south of Lynyard at the crack of dawn, have a lovely sail with the wind behind us and 10 to 12 foot seas very broadly spaced, and cross the reef at Eluethera before dark. Well. Fifteen knots? There must be a formula that exists that allows one to calculate what the actual winds will be, based on what the forecast claims they will be. In this case, it was multiply by 2 and add 5. Twenty-five knots all night, followed by hours of squalls the next morning that brought winds of 35 knots and probably higher, torrential rains and nearby chain lightning that sent me running to disconnect my radio antenna and switch my boat batteries to OFF. One large gust heeled the boat over about 20 degrees and broke my anchor free of its hold in the part-sand part-seagrass bottom. My Life was suddenly getting bigger. I started grabbing fenders that I had tucked down below and was preparing to throw them between the 2 hulls to ease the impact of the impending collision (did I mention My Life is built of steel?) but then I felt the tug of the anchor grabbing hold of the bottom again, and, like a choreographed and well-rehearsed dance, My Life started dragging her anchor. When the boats were once again a safe and comfortable distance apart, their anchor dug again, and the excitement was over. We would not be making it to Eleuthera today.

Two days later, we had another weather window and departed. It would be a sloppy day of motoring to begin with. There was no wind, but a large swell still remained from earlier winds. The ensuing boredom of sitting at the helm for 6 hours was getting to me, and to My Life too, and we struck up a conversation on channel 17. My Life shared the story of how their various sails had been named (Jenny, Betsy, Sarah), and I asked if we had missed the exit for Dairy Queen (I was craving ice cream). By mid-afternoon, we had a gentle east wind and set some sail. As soon as I set my genoa, my engine started making the now-familiar racing sound that means it’s being starved of fuel. In rough seas, the fuel sloshes around my dirty old steel tank, and little bits of this-and-that get sucked into the lines and clog the fuel filter. Knowing what a pain it had been in the past to bleed the air out of the fuel lines after replacing the filter, I resolved to not deal with it until at anchor. Now all I could do was pray for more wind, so we could cross the reef before sunset. The wind came, and I was full sail as I crossed the reef north of Little Egg Island. Thankfully I had good charts on loan from Banff, and I was able adjust my original plan to cross the reef at a good point of sail, about 15 minutes before sunset. My original plan was to cross the reef a couple of miles further south (my other charts didn’t even acknowledge that there was a gap large enough to pass north of Little Egg Island) but that would have left me with the wind directly on the nose. I’m glad I had another option.

All of this drove home the fact that I had not followed one of my most important rules that I strive to follow, and that is to never rely on my engine. Any journey I make, I ask myself, “If I didn’t have an engine, would I be able to make this trip under sail alone?”. The fact that we were playing chicken with another (and much stronger) approaching norther, and a forecast of little to no wind for that day, begged the question, why had I taken such a risk when I decided to weigh anchor that morning? I don’t know.

I am indebted to My Life, who stuck with me the whole way, even when it originally seemed that we all would be crossing the reef after dark (to be avoided). Once over the reef, after an awesome sail for another ½ hour, they threw me a tow line and towed me close to the southern shore of Royal Island, where we hoped we’d have a bit of a lee from the upcoming front. Key word: hoped.

That evening, we gathered up our conch that we’d been saving (I kept mine in a mesh bag Banff had given me, and when I wasn’t underway, I hung them into the water off the stern to keep them alive. More than once I forgot about them, only to look back and see them waterskiing). After a couple of hours of hammering shells then beating (tenderizing) the meat (messy messy job, we’ve resolved to not bother picking up any more conch if we come across them) Trevor cooked up some conch fritters. Had we known what the next 3 days had in store for us, we probably would have bit the bullet that night and tried to transit the narrow entrance, even under the shroud of complete darkness, into the protected harbor of Royal Island (with My Life acting as tugboat) while the winds were still manageable.

The following morning, I turned on my VHF to see what boats were around, and was surprised (and delighted) to hear Road to the Isles. They had left the Abacos close to a month earlier, and were Cuba-bound, so I really never expected to see them again on this trip. Turns out they had a few problems, and they had to change their plans. Now, they were about 7 miles away, sitting at the entrance to Spanish Wells. I couldn’t wait to get there and see them again.

By this point, the wind had picked up, and I had completely drained my batteries by trying to start my engine, which stubbornly held onto those pockets of air in the fuel lines. My Life refused to leave me there alone, despite their boat being quite a bit smaller, and thereby more susceptible to the uncomfortable motions caused by the seas. They had a portable generator that they brought over, in rough seas, in a dingy that barely floats at the best of times, and we tried and tried to get the engine going, to no avail. Don on Road to the Isles strongly advised that we get into a more protected area if at all possible, and I wanted nothing more. Brendon offered to come along and help me sail, but I was not confident in my ability to sail her where I needed to go in those conditions. We tried anyway. The wind was too strong to have the mainsail set, so I had my small jib and mizzen sail at my disposal. I needed the boat to ultimately end up 7 miles due east of my current position, but with 25 kts of wind coming directly from the east, even if I sailed as close to the wind as I could, the boat was making so much leeway (being blown sideways), I was ultimately going west. I looked ahead to see seagrass reaching the surface, and I wasn’t entirely confident in where I was exactly, and I knew there were rocky shoals in the area, so I turned the boat around and started heading to where I had been anchored. Once back to the anchorage, I was further away from my destination that I had been before we weighed anchor. Sailing to safety was not an option.

As the winds continued to build, the boat was hobby-horsing violently, burying the bow under the waves on a regular basis. Trevor had motored out and dropped my second anchor, but still, the sound of the stress and strain on the bow where the anchor line was tied made me feel sick to my stomach. I was just waiting for something to crack or break. We tried to distract ourselves by having a few drinks and playing card games. That was quickly halted when I went on deck to find their dingy being hung vertically on my stern. Their outboard engine was underwater, and only a bit of the bow of the dingy was still above the surface. Grabbing the dingy line, we pulled it alongside, and reached for the outboard. Everything seemed in slow motion as the motor slipped off the back of the dingy and began it’s decent to the bottom. Trevor immediately praised himself for having, thankfully, tied the engine to the dingy with a safety line. We had one more chance. Trevor grabbed a big knife from the galley, and with one whack on the taut line, the outboard was free and we pulled it aboard. Now it became a race against time to get their engine running before it seized. Oy vey.

Probably 2 hours went by. We put the engine in a bucket of water and they took turns cranking it, and Brendon pulled out the spark plugs to dry and clean them, then we’d keep cranking, and the cursing and swearing that ensued as they periodically sustained minor shocks from holding the engine in the wrong place while the other was cranking, and Trevor all the while never set down his beer, it gave us all a reason to laugh at our predicament and we wondered what the hell could possibly happen next. It was probably around that time that I noticed my bilge pump was coming on a little more often than usual.

I best save some stories for a rainy day. You never know when things might get dull.

Hopetown

2009-03-14T02:47:00.009-03:00

Today I parted ways with a new friend of barely five days. Banff aboard Blue Magic dropped his anchor next to mine last Sunday off Hopetown, and I am left with great memories, a few new skills (well, yet to be proven), improved living conditions, and a friend I look forward to seeing again on my next pass through Charleston.

My interest and enthusiasm for fishing on this trip has greatly increased since meeting Banff. I’m bored with diving for conch. They’re too easy to catch (not always easy to find, but once you see them, they’re a stationary target). Now, all I want to do is spear fish. We went out to the reef in his dingy two days in a row, one day he speared a grouper, and the next day a yellow-tailed snapper. I was all thumbs with the spear, not that I could even find a fish at which to take aim. I’m looking forward to a couple of months of practice as I sail further south into Eluethera and the Exumas.

I did come back on the second day with one good size conch. Banff suggested it would make a great conch horn, and I initially resisted the notion, not wanting to cut such a perfect shell. My friend and former co-captain from Halifax, Bob, who I stumbled upon at the anchorage at Man-o-War Cay a week or two ago (small world, eh?) agreed with Banff. He offered to use his Dremmel tool to cut the tip to make the horn. It was two against one, and I’m very pleased with the result. It’s a bit of a tradition down here, among the cruising boats anyway, to blow the conch horns at sunset. That evening, Banff showed me how it’s done (it’s not as easy as you may think to get a noise out of those things!). I used to be critical of the boaters who did it. I said it was cheesy. It is, and from now on, I’m joining them!

Banff makes a living working on boats, and was able to deal with everything that I’d gradually become completely fed-up with. Problems had compounded to the point that I couldn’t choose which one to tackle, so I did nothing. My sink was completely clogged, so I couldn’t do dishes. Both of my stove burners were on the fritz because I didn’t invest in the higher quality kerosene they require, and bread and peanut butter grows old quickly. And of course there were those things I gave up on a long time ago, the depth sounder and autopilot, neither of which have ever worked. Each morning Banff showed up to tackle another problem, and he wasted no time, obviously in his element. With the galley back in order, he turned to the depth sounder, which was fully installed and transducer embedded in the bilge in no time at all. A working depth-sounder is a very nice thing to have, and I’m sure I cannot fully appreciate the extent of the truth those words express as I write them. Now, while the autopilot is not fixed, at least he discovered that it’s the motor that’s causing me the trouble. And I’m not sure what I would have done the morning I was running my engine to charge my batteries, and the engine refused to shut down when I pulled the fuel shut-off.

Hopetown was a stop-over until the weather window opened for his final 393 nautical mile hop home to Charleston. This afternoon he was headed for a break in the reef to make his way offshore. I frequently struggle with what should be minor decisions, and I couldn’t decide whether I should stay in Hopetown for a while longer, or continue my journey southward. I felt torn and really didn’t know why. As he was making final preparations to get underway, I weighed anchor and headed south.

This evening, I’m anchored in relatively calm seas and utter blackness off Tillo Cay with a strong southeasterly breeze blowing, listening to the distant surf breaking, and I’m thinking of what it must be like on the Atlantic side of the reefs. I’m willing the moon to come up a little sooner tonight.

I understand now my need to leave Hopetown when I did. I never have liked the feeling of being the one left behind.

Lifelines

2009-02-24T13:23:00.016-04:00

I remember when I was in the beginning stages of purchasing Annie Laurie. Some shared my excitement, others expressed concern, and others shrugged the reality of it off as a pipe dream. My brother Christopher of course had an opinion on the subject, and I remember his words exactly; “Laura, you can’t just buy a boat. That’s something people do when they’re old and retired!”.

I think of those words every now and then. He may be right, in a way. Perhaps with a lifetime of experience behind me, and accumulated friendships and memories, and maybe even a partner in life, maybe everywhere I go and everything I do would hold more meaning. It’s mildly depressing when I find myself nudging Effie awake to point out a giant sea turtle swimming under the boat, or another breathtaking sunset over the water. She just doesn’t get it.

We’re not far into this trip, but she has already used up 8 of her 9 lives. One night, anchored just south of Cape Canaveral, I noticed she had been unusually quiet. I didn’t think much of it, and didn’t put a serious effort into finding her for a couple of hours. I was having a good time, cooking dinner, dancing to the reggae music station on my Sirius Satellite radio. When I eventually went on deck to see if she’d taken up her usual station in one of the sails, I heard a pathetic, weakened meow. She was under the bowsprit, carefully balanced on the stays beneath it, just above the water. Her eyes were as big as saucers as she looked at me and awaited rescue, not daring to move an inch, lest she fall in.

And the other 7 lives, you may be asking? They vanished instantly a few mornings later, when I awoke to find that she had CHEWED THROUGH MY SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO ANTENNA! I don’t think I’ve been that furious at anyone or anything or any situation since last June. Later as I was fetching buckets of salt water to wash the deck, she was foolish enough to come stand at my feet. So, oh yes, she got the next bucket, all 3 gallons. I never would have thought something so cruel could make me feel that much better, but it did. Go ahead Mom, call the SPCA.

With some careful tampering, and patience I never thought I would find, I eventually coaxed the antenna into receiving a signal again. Effie is forgiven, but my first words to her every morning are, “Good morning! Mommy’s little girl! So tell me, how many lives do you have left?”.

As planned, I met up with Road to the Isles at West Palm Beach, where we waited only 2 days for our weather window to cross the gulf stream. It was a long day, but 14 hrs and roughly 75 miles later, we were anchored in 20 feet of water on the crystal clear Bahama banks at dusk, not a breath of wind, and no land in sight.

That morning, I was up at 0230, up the mast with headlamp on, doing some last-minute fixes with one problematic roller-furling sail, then I relaxed with my coffee while listening to the latest forecast and current conditions. A little after 0400, I set my mainsail, hauled up the anchor and made my way out the Lake Worth inlet. It was generally calm, about 2 to 3 foot waves just outside the inlet, but I came face to face with one square breaking wave that sent everything that wasn’t properly stowed flying, and put the bow underwater, stripping the jib of its sail bag and the line that had it nicely furled, and I dragged the sail under the bow for a couple of hours, that is, until daylight showed me what the wave had done. Light winds and a bit of a swell caused the slack mainsheet to get caught under my hatch cover, and the next puff of wind ripped the hatch right off. It was heading for the water, there was no doubt in my mind it was a goner, but remarkably, it landed on the momentarily-slack genoa sheet, which, with the next puff of wind, sprung the hatch back on deck. What luck.

During my evenings on the waterway, after I had set the anchor for the night, I wrote 5 letters to place in bottles to be tossed into the gulf stream as I crossed. I’m curious to see how far they go, or if they’ll ever be found at all.

My favorite moment of the crossing came after I had crossed the line from dark blue water, almost a kilometer deep, to just a couple of meters of depth in under a minute. That was quite a moment in and of itself, but I find moments of awe can often be surpassed by moments of laughter, and if you’ve never seen a 2 foot flying fish speeding energetically and gracefully over the glossy surface of a green sea, only to unexpectedly smash into a wave, then proceed to somersault and skip sideways like a stone, then you really are missing out.

It’s amazing how fast you adjust to shallow water. I was dreading it, in a way, thinking I’d probably have a heart attack over any approaching dark spot ahead, expecting it to be a coral head, and for an unavoidable one to clip the side of my hull and split it open. Instead, I’ve been enjoying the curious cylindrical creatures, the GIANT turtles, the dolphins that seemed overjoyed at Annie Laurie’s presence, and the shadow of my hull and sails over the sandy bottom 7 feet below.

Being alone isn’t so bad. And when I think about it, I’m not alone at all. Meeting people while sailing is usually a chain reaction. Mine began while at anchor at Green Turtle Cay, when the wind picked up behind a passing frontal system. Dragging anchor in a crowded anchorage is a great way to meet people. Within minutes, 3 dingys converged on my boat and we set a second anchor, which after some adjusting, eventually held. That’s how I met Dave, Sid, and Jerry. Jerry invited me over for a drink that evening, where I met Jim and Jeff. The following day, I noticed Jeff dragging anchor, so I rowed over to help, arriving at the same time as Charlie. That evening, I was intercepted by Charlie while rowing back from spending the afternoon ashore, who invited me aboard, where I met his dad Charlie, and their friends Raffi, Lisa, Brenda, and Webb. Charlie introduced me to Trevor and Brendon, 2 young Canadians who sailed down from Kingston this past fall. Road to the Isles introduced me to another couple down from Nova Scotia, Heather and Peter, and I’ve since met their friends Jason, Mike, and Sward, all sailing solo. And to my great surprise and delight, who else was at anchor at Green Turtle but my old friends aboard Pathos, Mike and Jan, who I met way back in New Jersey on my way down the coast in 2007.

No, I really can’t say I’m alone. When I dropped my anchor, popped my bottle of champagne, and sat back to listen to the songbirds welcoming the setting sun, I thought of my brothers words once more, and was grateful to have arrived at White Sound, Green Turtle Cay on my 29th birthday, and not my 65th.

HONEY, I'M HOME!

2009-02-02T02:00:00.020-04:00

There she sat. Quietly, proudly, and aside for some fish carcasses left over from an osprey who had taken up residence on my mainmast, and a bit of moss and mold, she was more or less just as I had left her 6 months ago.

Leaving British Columbia was bittersweet. While very anxious to get back to Annie Laurie, I was not anxious at all to leave Squamish. Many times throughout my life, the desire to get out of town or away from certain people has dictated my mo

vement, but aside from not being on the ocean, I had no good reason to leave Squamish. Kellie and Dan were ideal roommates and are great friends, along with becoming Mary-Anne’s adoptive parents. My very brief stint with

the Squamish pipe band added another dimension to my attempted construction of a real life, and I’ll miss the socialbility of the Sunday night practices with everyone. Last but by no means least, I’ll miss Starbucks,

and most of the people I worked with. I’ve been so busy in the last 10 days preparing the boat for the Bahamas

, I’ve hardly given the place a second thought, but I do think of the people. Especially the rare moments of quiet early on Sunday mornings, when my friend Ross and I would just relax and chat about everything under the sun, and I would easily forget that I was at work, and was in fact talking with the store manager.

It’s exactly what I try not to do. Find a place I like, people I lo

ve, and begin establishing a regular way of life. There always comes the time to pull the plug, and it only makes it harder to move on. All of this compounded with the mistake of going downhill skiing for the first time on a real West Coast mountain a week before my flight. Like I needed

another reason not to leave.

So here I am, back in Florida, preparing to leave for the Bahamas. It’s just Effie and I this time around, but my apprehension about sailing to new and shallow waters by myself has been substantially alleviated by all the help I’ve received from both Bill and Shirley (my boat-sitters) as well as Don, Trish, and Cheryl, fellow Nova Scotians aboard Road to the Isles, who I sailed with in Cuba last winter. They have more collective experience with sailing and the accompanying lifestyle than I can fathom, and the necessary humor and stories to match. I’v

e spent most of my evenings aboard Road to the Isles, as well as the colder nights. I know it’s Florida, but believe me when I say, it’s cold! We’ve had a few nighttime lows that have surpassed the lows for the week in Squamish. The breeze flows freely through this wooden boat, and I wake with the cold sun earlier than I can bring myself to appreciate. If it wasn’t for Effie being a threat to Jib’s territory (Road to the Isles’ resident cat), I would probably spend all my nights in

their warm spare cabin and with their good company.

I’m not particularly looking forward to certain aspects of the upcoming voyage, especially the thoughts of being alone for extended periods of time. In anticipation of this, I decided to splurge and invest in a subscription to Sirius Satellite Radio to keep me company. I’ve had it playing in the background for 5 days now while I get the boat ready, and let me tell you, it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Having the

option of CBC while in the odd world of Fox ‘news’, not to mention a choice of music for any mood, it’s well worth the $13 a month.

I’ve completed running all my halyards and sheets, and the sails are back where they’re supposed to be. I’ve replaced my batteries, both for starting my engine, as well as supplying electricity for my lights and radios, replaced the oxidized and crumbling anchor chain with new, and have completed a thorough scrub-down of the mold-factory the boat became after sitting dormant for six months.

With just a few odds and ends to contend with, I'll be ready to head down the

Intracoastal Waterway tomorrow morning. Later in the week I will reconvene with Road to the Isles at West Palm Beach, where we'll wait for a favorable weather window to cross the Gulf Stream and the final 60 miles or so to the Bahamas.

All in all, it's good to be home.

Timing is Everything

2008-12-23T21:31:00.012-04:00

While I have yet to bridge the gap from Haida Gwaii to my eventual return to Squamish B.C. where I continue my coffee shop job, here is a previous bridge to the gap I left upon leaving Key West as I headed north alone this past summer. It was written months ago, when my writing flowed more naturally and frequently, as I hope it will again someday soon…

Palm Coast, July 19th 2008

… if timing is everything, then my advice to anyone thinking of sailing the east coast of Florida, do NOT go in July. You’ll make it a few miles unaffected, but there are rarely a few daylight hours in a row without a ripping thunderstorm with high winds, blinded visibility, and 'deadly lightning strikes', as the automated voice reading the marine forecast will report.

I was prepared to leave Key Biscayne (beautiful anchorage in a state park, from which the city skyline of Miami is visible) but before turning the engine key, something told me not to go.

And so, I didn’t.

Sometimes I think that ‘feeling’ is protecting me from approaching danger, other times I think it’s the universe directing me to people who’ll enrich my life in one way or another. This was the case in Key Biscayne and I spent a day in the company of some great folks on a motoryacht in No Name Harbor. Sure beats a day alone at sea, no matter how promising the forecast.

Leaving the following morning at sunrise, once in the gulf stream I was averaging 8 kts. The day was uneventful, one rare day without the terrifying thunderstorms with winds of 40kts and fork-lightening that seems to reach down halfway from the moon.

After 6 or 7 hrs on open ocean, I entered a narrow man-made break
in the beach that led back into the Intracoastal Waterway, from which it was only another 2 hrs of motoring to Kim and Mike’s house (folks I previously spoke of, having met them in Bahia Honda in the Keys a couple of weeks before). The next few days became a blur of fine wines, unbelievable food, rotating load after load of laundry, and running errands. It was time for Effie to get her rabies shot, and Kim patiently waited with me, on her precious day off, in line for hours at the local pet store where shots were being given at a fraction of the price of a veterinarian visit. And in search of a new electrical panel, Mike drove me all the way to Fort Lauderdale to the famous Sailorman, an emporium of everything boat related, new and second hand. Every evening was spent relaxing in their saltwater swimming pool, encouraging their golden retriever to do belly-flops into the pool (which he
never grew tired of) watching the palm trees sway and the flicker of distant lightening storms reflecting on the clouds.
After a little less than a week in their company, it was time for me to press onwards. I had booked my flight for British Columbia, and I had a lot of distance to make and a lot of work ahead of me to prepare the boat for what may be months of sitting idle.

Since leaving Key West, I was constantly torn by how exactly I wanted to make my way to Palm Coast. Would I sail on the outside the whole way, present myself with the challenge of my first 3-day non-stop trip alone, or will I play it safe, motor up the waterway and have a safe anchorage every night and get a good nights sleep? Every six hours since July 1st, I was sure I had made a final decision. Yes, go on the outside, you’ll have such a sense of accomplishment. To ‘do the ditch’,
as the waterway is commonly referred to, would be easy, but boring, and I thought I may feel like I was chickening out in a sense. I kept telling myself that people sail all around the world alone, surely I can sail a couple hundred mile by myself. But there are a lot of issues at play; most single-handers have autopilot to keep their course while they doze, and this was a coastal trip, in heavy ocean-traffic lanes. If I slept for too long, I may inadvertently run into the shore, or a tanker whose radar might not detect a small wooden boat. And if I was really lacking sleep and one o
f those storms was to sneak up on me, my ability to make good decisions might be compromised and… well, I’m this close to Palm Coast, why risk myself and the boat at this point.

By measuring 50 or 60 mile intervals on my chart, I chose a series of ports that I could day-hop between; sail offshore during the day, and go into a protected anchorage by the evening. But after Fort Pierce, to continue to sail offshore, I would have no other choice but to make that final 110 mile hop to Palm Coast all in one go. That, or motor up the waterway. Taking things one day at a time, I left Kim and Mikes, motored to the next break in the sand dunes, and set my sails, bound for West Palm Beach just 40 miles up the coast. By 10am, I was in 30kt winds, skirting the edge of a large thunderstorm. Thankfully though, the bulk of the storm continued out to sea behind me. I had good wind most of the way, never straying much more than a mile from the beach. Murphy's Law was confirmed as I approached the Fairway buoy marking the entrance to West Palm Beach though, and with little notice I was once again in gale force winds, but this time the rain was blinding, and the two 60ft sport-fishing boats I'd been tracking for the past 2 hours disappeared in the fog. A collision though wasn't at the top of my list of worries. It was the lightening. It was almost simultaneous with the thunder, and I kept thinking, 'Yup, this might just be the day'. The day my luck runs out. It's strange, the things that can get stuck in your head when you spend too much time alone, and they repeat again and again in your mind. On this day, it was the words Human French-fry. Once, I felt all the hairs on my body stand on end, I don't know what that means in terms of how close the strike must have come, but at this point I went below, closed the hatch, stayed away from metal objects, and let the boat sail where she liked for the next 15 minutes. I've never been more thankful for the change in my rig that Mike in Lunenburg insisted upon before I left Canada, providing me with a self-tacking jib. I was shivering
and shaking, partly from being rain-soaked and wearing only my bikini, but more out of fear and nerves. I kept looking out the windows, hoping to be able to spot the other boats in time if I came too close.
When I felt the storm was a safe distance away, I looked to my destination, and again, a series of white-hot forks made their way from the clouds to touch down who-knows-where. Feeling like a tall target on the wide flat sea, I made a run for the harbour, hoping visibility would stay on my side, and that I could make the 4 or so miles before the bulk of the storm hit.

I dropped my anchor in 8 ft of water not long after passing through the harbour entrance, and ran below, with a moment or two to spare. The next crack of thunder and lightening was one to surpass all the stormy situations I've been in to date, witnessed from sea or land. I started talking, muttering, nervously, incomprehensibly almost, to myself, or to the cat, or to both of us. "Did we just get hit? What just happened? Was the boat struck? Are we okay? Are we?'. I was convinced the boat had been struck, from the charge I felt myself, and from the unnerving sound of Effie's shriek a split second later. The ensuing torrents of rain calmed me though, an
d slowly I became rational, and gathered the courage to go out and check if there was a cindered spruce mast, being doused by the rains. I never did find any
evidence of a strike, but I have no doubt it was a close one.

I waited a few days at West Palm Beach for appropriate weather. It was a true test of patience, being unable to go ashore because I had only one oar for my dingy, and with little else to do but sit down below to hide from the sun and in
tolerable heat. Two days passed, then I was able to begin making my way to Fort Pierce. Within a few hours, storm clouds were looming, and a loud, piercing aggravating beep over the VHF prompted me to turn the station over to the WX channel (weather station) for an emergency broadcast. I heard the weather warnings of 30kt gusts with an approaching isolated thunderstorm the front, and I thought I had reduced sail sufficiently. With a small jib and my mizzen set, and the wind coming from behind, I though when it breezed up, I would fly downwind without too much fuss. I was less than a mile from the beach, and before I

knew it, the beach was made invisible by a wall of white. A moment later, instead of breaking speed records, Annie rounded up almost into the wind, then laid down on her side. I think I was thrown, I assume I was, and I attempted to steer her all the way into the wind, to let the sails flog, and to bring her upright. But, she wouldn’t.
The rudder must have been completely out of the water. I started up the engine and hoped that by motoring, something would be different, but it wasn’t until about 10 seconds later, when the wind eased momentarily, that she went where I wanted her to, and
she slowly righted. Not being able to hear the engine for the screech of wind in the rigging, I didn’t realize I had the throttle to over 2500rpm (2000 is my normal maximum) and as soon as she righted, her bow then passed right through the eye of the wind, and the wind caught the other side of the sails, and over I went again. It took me 15 minutes of running forward to the bow and out onto the spindly wires of the bowsprit to pull part of the jib down, then running back to the helm to bring her up into the wind again, numerous times, before the sail was down then I could deal with the mizzen from the cockpit. Then my thoughts turned to the beach. I could hardly see 60ft ahead from the driving rain, and in all that fiasco I had no idea how close I may have come. I decided to steer due east until visibility improved. Not long after I was able to take the engine out of gear; the windage on the boat itself was enough to keep me running downwind at 6kts. Once sufficiently satisfied that everything was going to be alright and I had things under control, I became aware of a throbbing pain in my right arm and baby toe. I didn’t think I was one to panic, but looking back on my actions, and realizing that I had no idea when or how I had hurt myself, I wondered how I could have avoided it. I was 6 miles from Fort Pierce, and unable to move my right arm, I motored the remainder of the trip, not feeling able to raise sail again. It crossed my mind to continue around Cape Canaveral on that overnight journey, because I wasn’t sure if, once dropped, I’d be able to retrieve my anchor again. Sailing might be easier, I reasoned.

Definition of the term 'easy' is primarily is a matter of perception. When I processed the thought, that spending a night at sea, alone, on a wooden boat, in relatively unfamiliar waters, where violent and deadly thunderstorms maintained a constant watch, where cargo ships habitually had a computer at the helm with watchmen only intermittently taking the care to lookout for those little red and green lights indicating another life on that broad ocean… I laughed when I realized that all that risk would be easier for me than the alternative of swallowing my pride and asking someone in the anchorage the following morning for help hauling up my anchor.

I motored towards the inlet. It seemed I'd not be let off easy on any account, and would not relax until that anchor was deep in the mud. As I approached the inlet, an hour after low tide, I thought I had the currents all figured out. I thought I'd have a nice easy rush of water at my stern, and I'd be able to motor at half throttle in around the bend. I was a little surprised when I had 3 kts of current working against me, creating standing waves and eddies that made steering difficult and kept my heart in my throat as I struggeled to keep centered between the two rocky breakwaters. I wasn't completely surprised though. I have been wrong before.

Haida Gwaii

2008-11-21T16:24:00.022-04:00

Arriving at Banks Island early afternoon, we pushed our way through mounds of kelp, more than we had ever attempted to transit before, and got out our make-shift boat hook to nudge the pieces that managed to get lodged in the rudder. We anchored amidst a small fleet of boats offloading geoduck to the larger mothership. Geoduck (pronounced goo-ee duck, sounds appealing, doesn’t it?) was something I had never heard tell of until we met Jean-Marc. He dives from his own boat to gather these giant clams, which have a lifespan upwards of 150 years and are considered a delicacy in Asia.

While all those aboard the boats at anchor continued to work, it was time for us to play. We rowed… no... PADDLED… you paddle a canoe… ashore and poked around for evidence of the wolves. There were plenty of tracks, none too recent though. An epic canoe journey ensued, into moderate surf not suited to canoes, but we explored many small inlets and islets, and our beachcombing turned up evidence of more wolves, bears, mother-of-pearl, tiny snails, and some baleen from a whale. I’m an obsessed beachcomber, but only until the point where I become overwhelmed with too much stuff, and overboard it goes. Usually all at once.

Arriving with high hopes of a wolf sighting but leaving with mild disappointment, we set out across the Hecate Strait to the Queen Charlotte Islands. My friend Chris, who has spent time in the Strait aboard Coast Guard vessles, refers to it as the Hell-Cat Strait, and it is known for being treacherous. Like the Great Lakes of the Canada-US border, and the North Sea adjacent to Great Britain, it is very shallow. The result is steep seas with short wavelengths that can build quickly with very little coaxing from the wind. Despite the area never being too long without a gale this time of year, we had a beautiful sail.

The Queen Charlottes have recently become known as Haida Gwaii, a closer resemblance of the original name of Xaadala Gwayee in recognition of the Haida Nation and to place less emphasis on their colonial past. We had heard from many that the West coast of the Charlottes was the place to go, as most cruisers, the few that venture to the Queen Charlottes in the run of a season, head down the more protected east coast. The remnants of Haida native villages are everywhere, having been abandoned during the late 19^th Century as European explorers introduced diseases such as smallpox, typhoid, and measles. The Haida people were almost entirely decimated, their population reduced to a mere 350 from approximately 50,000 before the arrival of the explorers. As the Natives fell ill, survivors abandoned their villages and took to the woods, splitting from family and friends, and most of them eventually re-congregated in Queen Charlotte City, Masset, Sandspit, or Skidegate.

We waited a week dockside in Queen Charlotte City as gale after gale blew through, and eventually decided it was best to just head back from whence we came. Not being familiar with either the east or west coastline of the Charlottes, and having spent hours pouring over the charts on loan from Jean-Marc, it didn’t seem like there were many options for good safe anchorages from the inevitable storms along the 200 mile stretch we’d have to navigate. We picked our weather window, probably the only 10hr stretch of reduced winds in over a week, and set out before sunrise, bound once again for Banks Island and to make our way south through the Inside Passage. Re-living my visit as I write, I realize just how much I'd like to believe it was more than just another stop along the way. I want to return and take in what I missed; the remnants of totem poles over 100 years old, the antique trading beads lacing the shoreline, the long-submerged glassware of Japanese sailing ships washed ashore or uncovered on a regular basis by fierce Pacific storms, not to mention all the natural beauty of the landscape and seascape. Someday.

It wasn’t all disappointment though. We met a Haida elder who was eager to share his stories, and he gave us a driving tour of his home town of Skidegate, described their matriarchal society and how all the remaining Haida (approximately 4000) all belong to one of two social groups, or moieties; Eagles or Ravens. There are more than 20 lineages that exist within each of the Eagle and Raven moieties, and an Eagle must marry a Raven, never a fellow Eagle, and any children belong to the same group as the mother. Members of any of the Haida lineages have certain entitlements of land, hunting and gathering areas, and other natural resources.

Our guide took us to a totem pole along the shore of the reserve that was carved in the 1970s by renowned Haida artist Bill Read, whose art is also depicted on the Canadian $20 bill. His ‘Jade Canoe’ sits in Vancouver International Airport and apparently leaves a lasting impression for all those arriving on international flights (I only say apparently because I have no recollection of it despite passing through there just a few months ago). As a last stop, he left us at the newly opened Haida Cultural Center. A couple of current projects are underway at the Center, including the carving of totem poles and traditional Haida canoes. The canoes, sometimes more than 50ft in length, are carved from a single massive trunk of cedar. By hollowing the trunk, filling them with water, then dropping hundreds of pounds of red-hot rocks into the resulting wooden 'bath', the canoes can be manipulated and thwarts (seats) can be forced into place, permanently reshaping the canoe as the wood cools.

The other end of the Center focuses on the geology, biology, and history of Haida Gwaii. Here I learned of the shocking practice of the 18th and 19th century explorers confiscating anything from art, general household items, family heirlooms, and even Haida remains as trophies which they sent or carried back to their homes in Europe. Most of these items or remains eventually found themselves in the hands of museums throughout the world, and as part of the organization of the Cultural Center, a call was put out for the return of all these artifacts. Every museum known to possess these artifacts was contacted, and I was impressed to learn that every last one has complied and returned what rightfully belongs in Haida Gwaii.

Publish Something Already

2008-11-17T23:53:00.012-04:00

We made our second stop in Prince Rupert to clear in with Canadian Customs upon returning from Alaska. This time, realizing we could stay at the town dock for free, we met more friendly and interesting characters than we had at the yacht club on our previous visit. Jean-Marc, sailing aboard a large and excellently outfitted aluminum sloop he had built himself 9 years earlier on Vancouver Island, and his father Vincent. Jean-Marc has a sailor’s dream job of sailing his own boat around, collecting shellfish samples throughout the northwest to be tested for red tide, and other parasites. His father who was out visiting for a couple of weeks is a model Canadian citizen. Concerned, interested, informed, I envied his contentment as an early riser who would be up at the crack of dawn reading the morning’s news at Cowpaccinos (a perfectly unique, relaxed Tim Hortons alternative that has rekindled my desire to one day own my own little coffee shop).

In the weeks leading up to meeting Jean-Marc, Brian had told me about, on numerous occasions, an excellent documentary at this years Banff Mountain Film Festival called In Search of the Coast Wolves. Brian thought Jean-Marc’s boat bore a striking resemblance to the one in the film. Vincent said it should because it was indeed the same boat. Jean Marc was hired by the producers as the knowledgeable captain to lead the search throughout the remote islands of BC, and the resulting film is fantastic. Check it out if you can.

I almost bypassed a fascinating story of coincidence, if it wasn't for Brian drawing my attention to a small, nondescript fiberglass motorboat in a seaside park. In 1986, a lone fisherman set out from Owase, Japan for day of fishing to provide for his family. He never returned. One year and over 4000 nautical miles later, his boat was found drifting off the BC coast near Prince Rupert, Owase’s sister city. The boat is now the heart of a Mariner’s Memorial in downtown Prince Rupert.

With the perfect resource at hand, we asked Jean-Marc where we should go if we wanted to see wolves. Without hesitation, his answer was Banks Island, about 50 miles southwest of Prince Rupert. Knowing we were also bound for the Queen Charlotte Islands, he gave us all the charts we would need to either go down the east or west coast of the southern islands, providing we return them when finished.

It was necessary to make one stop on our way to Banks Island, and we found ourselves in Totem Inlet. Just wide enough to get in, and barely deep enough, I stood on the bow pulpit hoping to get the best vantage point. I hate these entries. Though we went very slow, there’s something infinitely unnerving about seeing the bottom the whole way along. After a nightmarish grounding aboard my own boat in Mexico last March, it’s something I’m not sure I will ever fully get over. It was worth it though. Once inside the full protection of the tiny bay shortly before sunset, a family of otters scurried onto the rocks beside us and up into the woods, and the atypical (for this time of year) towering cumulus clouds caused by daytime heating of the land hinted at the presence of the Queen Charlotte Islands just over the horizon. Just another 15 miles to sail the following day would leave us plenty of daylight to explore one shore of Banks Island and hopefully see one of these elusive wolves, or at least hear a howl.

Reflections

2008-10-29T14:10:00.021-03:00

"Two Grande extra-hot half sweet non-fat no whip extra foam hazelnut decaf mochas".

Yes, as I stand behind the coffee machine making various espressos at Starbucks, I find it hard to believe that this time last year I was 200 miles offshore in the North Atlantic, sitting in the cockpit of Annie Laurie. It's been one year since Ed, Effie, Logan and I set out from Surrette's Island, Nova Scotia, bound for Gloucester, or Provincetown, we had yet to wait and see. The atmosphere looked like winter and smelled of salt, and we were bundled up and in high spirits in anticipation of our final destination, Cuba. It's amazing how, despite the very best intentions and dedicated work, we can fail to meet our goals and events can unfold so differently. It's hard not to speculate, could I have known back then what the future had in store, if I ever would have even begun such a journey. Weighing the good with the bad over the last 12 months, I know it was a decision I will never regret. Certain details I'd like to delete from my life's story, feeling that they contributed to more of a regression of my character rather than an enhancement, but I suspect had I stayed home and continued my forecasting position, my life would have spiraled into an unsettled tangle of unrealized dreams and discontent.

As much as we may worry about the future and how we’re going to live it, there's no telling where all the little choices we make in the run of a day will eventually land us. Any plans I make right now have little purpose other than putting my mind at ease for the time being, fooling myself into believing I know what the future will bring. Chances are the plans I make now will bear little resemblance to where I find myself six months or one year from now. But what gets me through these land-bound days are hopes of earning the means to head back to Annie Laurie in early spring, dreams of a jaunt over the Bahamas, and a summer cruise up the eastern seaboard, hopefully arriving in Lunenburg in time for the 2009 September Classic boat race.

Making the most of what you have while working for what you want is a motto I strive to live by. I constantly remind myself how life can pass you by while you're busy making other plans. Therefore, I hope to make the most of my time in British Columbia, enjoy the company of the new friends I’ve made, while working for the winter to enable the next part of my voyage.

It's a challenge though, sitting still. I find clarity in motion and consider myself lucky to have literally endless trails throughout the mountains that loom on my temporary back doorstep. I’ve felt throughout my life that, in a sense, I've been drifting along in the dark, carried by the currents as I tread water. I rarely try to fight fate, and all in all, I don’t’ think the latitude of my existence has been hindered. Despite having the comfort of past experience telling me everything always finds a way of sorting itself out, I’m aware of a feeling of limbo, and I know something is missing. Without being able to identify what it is I seem to be waiting for to make my existence more complete, I see no better option or need to do anything but allow this current take me where it may. That being said, I’m slowly realizing that whatever the choices or currents in the coming year, they all lead to home.

Beginnegan

2008-10-16T17:54:00.067-03:00

The day we were to arrive in Alaska began as any other. Up before sunrise, a bit of mist in the air, and not much wind. We motored out of Port Simpson and within half an hour, the wind picked up. The wind was against us, but we decided to do what we could with it, rather than leave the sails down and motor a more direct course. It would be the first day that we would really have to work for our miles. Days like these are character-building, as we wove a zig-zag course up Dixon Entrance, seemingly making little to no head-way after each tack. As the day wore on, we were looking for back-up plans, because we didn't think we would make our destination of Foggy Bay, Alaska before nightfall. It's surprisingly difficult to find a place to anchor for the night. For an anchorage to be practical, the water can't be too deep, which is the main problem on the west coast. Much of the coastline of B.C. drops to depths of 600ft or more within a few feet of the waters edge. Coming up with no alternatives, we resigned ourselves to a nighttime arrival in Foggy Bay, with only a hand-sketch in Charlies Charts to go by.

The moon was on the rise as we approached the entrance to the bay, but it wasn't enough to illuminate the rocks that sat just a few feet above the surface on either side, as the diagram showed. From the bow, away from the engine, I could hear the swells breaking on the reef that offers protection from rolling seas once in the anchorage, but is a hazard when trying to get through it. There was enough salt spray in the air that the beam from the spotlight fell flat within a few feet, so was of no use. We tried to think of other options that would give us a better idea of our actual location. We had a brand new handheld Garmin GPS, which will tell you within 7ft where you are, but without a map or chart of some sort to plot that latitude and longitude, the numbers don't really mean too much. Then we remembered something. NOAA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. provides all the charts for U.S. waters free of charge online, and Brian had downloaded some of the charts he thought we may need the previous week. Luckily, there was enough power left in his laptop to bring up the necessary chart, we plotted our position on the screen, then were able to plot a compass course to follow, and we winded our way past a few more shallow spots and islands and dry reefs before finally dropping the hook at 2230. It can be frustratingly confusing navigating in the dark. Just when you think you know exactly where you are, and identify the silhouettes of the islands and rocks and think you know what's what when making comparisons to the sketches in the guidebooks, you begin to proceed between the two islands only to realize it is one island. Nights like these, we go slow. Its always interesting to see all the obstacles you dodged when departing in daylight the next morning.

The following day was our first 'official' day in Alaska. Ketchikan is the first Port of Entry where you can clear customs when arriving from the south. Effie made sure she would be the first among us to set foot on Alaskan ground, and she took a flying leap off the boat when we were still a fair distance from the dock. Since the arrival of the babies we don't have to worry about her going too far. Speaking of which, Jake is gradually learning why walking forward is the preferred mode of transportation, and isn't falling backwards off the bunk as often. Mary-Anne is my favorite (I tell her all the time). In the beginning, she seemed to have inherited Effie's kittenhood fascination with blinking eyes, and would lay quiet and motionless on my chest in the morning, waiting for my eyes to open with the morning light, before going for the gold.

Ketchikan is a small town that caters largely to cruise ships. We awoke the following morning to no less than 6 cruise liners clogging the entire waterfront. The town is on the island of Revillagigedo, which eventually became Re-Village Gigolo to Brian and I as we struggled to grasp the proper pronounciation. We stayed long enough for Brian to celebrate his birthday in style, if by accident, when we ended up in the company of a lumberjack who'd just stumbled out of the woods, quite literally. He called himself Red, wore a red bandana and... well, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think 'lumberjack'? Yes, good, 3 foot-beard, that's right... red-and-black plaid jacket, 5-lb axe... or perhaps he left that outside with the ox. He spent the evening ringing the brass bell at the end of the bar, which meant he was buying yet another round for the house. He passed out money for the jukebox and told us to pick 'songs from the soul' and bragged how he lived "totally off the grid, man", which, in his books meant kerosene lamps and candles. Yes, if you've ever wondered what you're missing out on when you hear Brian and Laura are on a boat in Alaska, now you know.

I think Brian and I came to the realization around the same time as one another that it was time to start thinking about turning around and heading home. We had reached our destination, and having set out late in the sailing season, the weather was deteriorating rapidly. Not only was the temperature becoming unbearably cold at night, but the Pacific storms were rolling in, one after another. We decided to circumnavigate Re-Village Gigolo, which would take a few days and take us up into the Misty Fjords National Park. We were 100 years too late if we wanted to see any sea-level glaciers. A glacier that graced our northernmost anchorage in the early 20th century has receded so far up the valley and around the bend that it would take a full day of hiking to reach its edge.

We were blessed with 3 days of sunny weather and decent winds. The Parks people provide moorings to tie off to, so finding a place to anchor wasn't an issue. After tying to a mooring in Punchbowl Cove, we decided to hike up to Punchbowl Lake, on the recommendation of the Visitors Center employee in Ketchikan. Upon canoeing ashore, Brian spotted some fresh bear poop and prints. As eager as I was to see a bear, I was uneasy with the prospects of coming face to face with one in such a remote area. We spent 1/2 an hour tip-toeing around, looking for more evidence, or any rustling in the trees. We made our way toward the waterfall, figuring we'd find a trail up to the lake. As we quietly stepped along the rocky shore, we suddenly heard a deep roar. Stopping in our tracks, we looked at one another, and carefully started taking steps backwards. A moment later I burst out laughing when I realized it was only a jet, high above our heads.

The lake was lifeless and silent. As a previous visitor had noted in the guest book at the shelter, God forgot to put fish in the lake. The shelter was supplied with wood for chopping, a fire-pit, raised wooden platforms for sleeping and paddles for an upturned canoe by the waters edge. Though the water was cold, it was fresh, so I took advantage of it with my soap and shampoo, knowing it might be some time before I'd find a shower again.

Wanting to get to another anchorage 20 miles south before dark, we limited ourselves to about an hour at the lake before hiking back to our canoe and leaving the mooring by early afternoon.

There is a very distinct rock formation mid-channel a few miles out of Punchbowl Cove known as New Eddystone. It's the remnants of the core of a volcano, much like the outcrops on which Edinburgh and Stirling Castle are built, the hard rock core remaining where the softer surroundings have eroded away. Captain Vancouver, who was assigned by Britian to survey the coast from California to Alaska late in the 18th century, reportedly stopped and had lunch on the rock . We passed within 1/2 a mile of the rock without seeing more than a slightly smugged dark patch in the fog bank. If Vancouver was surveying these waters in the typical west coast weather, it's more likely that he ran his ship into the rock, rather than have lunch on it.

We followed the shoreline all the way to our next anchorage, the fog being so thick at times that if we had been mid channel, we would have been unable to see either shore. We picked up a mooring at the mouth of a river where dead salmon were abundant ('tis the season), and a bald eagle watched patiently atop a dead cedar, searching for a suitable dinner. Brian caught dinner this particular evening, the first (and only) fish of any substance of our trip. A flounder with partially migrated eyes, as what happens in some stage of their development. It's not my area of expertise and I'm unable to find a reliable article on the subject, but I believe they are born with their eyes on opposite sides of their head, like a salmon, and they swim 'upright', like a salmon. At some point, one eye migrates to the other side, and the fish begins to swim like a flatfish, like a stingy-ray, along the seafloor, with both eyes on top. If someone knows about this, please feel free to comment. (no funny stuff, Doug)

Before heading back to Canada, it was necessary to re-stock in Ketchikan. The wind was dead calm and the fog left us with less than a boatlength of visibility. It's bad enough navigating in the fog when you have a radar and charts, but we had neither, and we were entering a narrow and busy channel with significant currents, frequented this time of year by as many as half a dozen cruise ships per day, along with any number of tour boats and tugs and barges. We estimated our position then set a compass course and noted the time, and calculated when Forgot-the-Name Island would appear from the fog. Quite some time passed and there was no sign of the land. I was on the bow, looking for shallow areas, still unable to see more than 30ft ahead. The fog can play tricks with your vision. You think you see land, then the shape evaporates. Eventually we found land, but as we followed along, we realized we were at least 2 miles from where we had hoped. We began 'bumping' our way up the channel, overshooting our desired points over and over, once arriving at a rockpile marked at its low peak by a small green lighthouse. It was very difficult to do anything else but motor along slowly, and look at the compass, and hope to recognize bits of shoreline that we'd seen a week earlier when we had entered Ketchikan the first time. A pilot boat, sent ahead of a cruise ship, spotted us and called us on the radio to inform us of the 300ft ship to follow. The cruise ship eventually called us too, able to see us on their radar. We were unable to see him until, miraculously, the fog lifted long enough to see we were well clear of each other, then closed in once again. Ketchikan is a high-traffic area for float planes as well, and we could hear them overhead, but never did see the ones coming in for a landing this particular day. We heard a random yokel on the VHF, muttering quickly and to no one in particular, "Dat plane up thaar, is'it okay? She's goin' round and round and round in circles". Float plane pilot is an occupation that has really stirred my interest in recent weeks, but in those conditions, I feel safer in a boat. Even Brian's boat.

In the hopes of quelling any boredom of retracing our steps down the coast, we had high hopes of cruising a portion of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Things have not gone as planned, but a second visit to Prince Rupert brought an unexpected meeting with a couple of very interesting people. As always, you cannot anticipate what is going to bring you the most fulfillment or enchantment in a journey such as this.

Bella Bella and Beyond

2008-09-19T17:41:00.048-03:00

Myles Inlet was our first stop after leaving Vancouver Island, and we lost a crewmember on the way. Early afternoon and little Finbar gave up the fight. I didn't really expect it; It had been a week since their birth, and Finbar and Finnigan were considerably smaller than the other two, but I thought they were doing alright. We were hours from our next port, and Effie was mourning, so I decided it was better not to wait for a land burial, so we buried him at sea. It didn't feel very natural to drop him into the water, but eventually I did, and for a moment he looked no different from the moment he'd been born. Then our thoughts immediately turned to Finnigan. We tried to feed her warmed egg and milk, but she refused to eat. The next morning, she was gone too. A Schooner Match box was the perfect size, and we left her behind in Myles Inlet by the tidal falls. Effie was lost for a while, searching the boat for her lost kittens, but she seems to have let go now. She's very protective of Jacob and Mary-Anne, and doesn't let them get very far from their box before taking them by the scruffs of their necks and dragging them back to safety.

The next jump north was wide open to the Pacific swells. With a name like Cape Caution, the passage seemed a bit more intimidating than it was in reality. We had good wind, and despite dozens of floating logs scattered around, they were easy to spot thanks to all the seagulls resting along them. Once north of the Cape, we were back on the protected Inside Passage. An overnight stop at Pruth Bay was recommended by Charlie, the author of our 1986 cruisers guide we picked up at a sailors exchange a month ago (it's as good as the day it was written, not much has changed). Charlie's Charts, as far as were concerned, have been an essential for this trip, having purchased American published 'charts', which, upon closer inspection, are 'not to be used for navigation'. There's a reason why friends don't left friends shop at West Marine.

In Pruth Bay we spotted wolf tracks on the white sandy beach which was a short hike from the anchorage. The island is the site of a sportsfishing lodge, which had just closed for the season. Caretakers had just arrived by float plane to look after the property for the winter, and told us of the wolves, and details of the lodge, and pointed out an old cabin where John Wayne stayed when he visited the lodge many years ago.

Each day, the scenery has steadily changed. We've become completely spoiled with humpback whale sightings, and often stop and drift as they come up for their displays. Usually we see a fin, followed by a huge tail that swoops up, then falls beneath the water without a trace of a splash. A more impressive show is to see a lone whale somersaulting and slapping the surface with its long flippers, sometimes repeatedly for 20 minutes or longer. The sound it makes, in such a wild environment, is difficult to describe. When the wind and seas are calm, the only sound you hear is the ringing in your ears. It hasn't been unusual for us to go for days at a time without seeing another boat, or plane, or any other sign of civilization. I had no idea before setting out on the trip that there would be such long stretches of desolation. I do have to wonder how many outlaws seek the remoteness of this area, and live up in the mountains where, chances are, they would never be found.

Bella Bella was the first community we encountered since leaving Port MacNiell. As charming as the name sounds, I found the walk around town a bit depressing. The kids were friendly, the teens looked angry, and the shopkeepers were helpful, much like any other town big or small, but I could feel a difference. The consequence of a community that is so isolated from the rest of the province, I guess. True, BC Ferries makes a stop there ever few days, and there's nothing to stop a float plane from landing just off the shore anytime, but I think I would find it difficult as a young adult trying to find my life's calling in such isolation. Then again, perhaps growing up with a greater sense of community and having a greater reliance on one another than the average city-dweller, knowing what's important comes into focus more easily. We were easy to spot as we wandered around, not only as sailors, but as non-Natives, and sometimes I find it hard to read how people feel about tourists in their town. The reception in Bella Bella and all of the communities since has been very welcoming, and when it comes to opinions on the salmon fishery and fish farm disputes, many are eager to share their point of view.

On our way to Klemtu, I recall reading on the chart 'Waterfall Point' on the American 'chart', and I slandered the chart once again for being completely wrong. I assumed a place named Waterfall Point would have a waterfall there, but one should never assume. It eventually began to make some sense though in the following hours when we started counting waterfalls by the dozens. This would continue for many days and miles. We learned in Klemtu about the 'Spirit Bear'. On rare occasion, two recessive genes combine and a Brown bear is born white. There had been sightings in the last week, so we spent much of our time the next few days scanning the shores as we sailed along, hoping to see him. It never happened.

The only fault we have found in Charlie's Charts, which we only began to understand in Klemtu, was that most of the native communities are dry towns. Charlie was a sailor, we thought, so he must know that such information might be considered important and would deserve a mention. After 2 weeks, I began working on a design for a flag, that when hoisted would unmistakably suggest to any passing ship that our flag was the International Distress Signal for Wine and Baguettes, and to assist if possible.

Charlie never steered us wrong when it came to good anchorages though, and recommended one in Butedale next to an impressive waterfall. We entered the small bay, the site of an old cannery, where an old man name Lou is now the caretaker of the remains of the cannery and surrounding buildings. He lives alone, and advertises on a large piece of plywood by the shore that he sells ice cubes, ice cream, and showers. We tide up to his dock, which easily became submerged as we stepped off the boat, and hiked up to a nearby lake. Hundreds of felled trees remain behind in the lake, cut decades ago, and now gathered at the corner of the lake before the waterfall. Since arriving in British Columbia I've been dreaming about running around on the log booms and trying my feet at logrolling. Discovering that lake of huge trees has been one of the highlights of the trip for me, odd as it may seem. There was yet another degree of silence we experienced up there, as we made our way as close to the middle of the lake that the huge floating logs would allow. Night was falling so we began our hike back to Lou's cabin. Lou seemed delighted with the company, and after a lukewarm shower by the light of an LED headlamp strung above the faucet, we all sat around his TV to watch a very old Michael Douglass movie. Lou kept a running commentary on the film he's probably seen 2 dozen times, pausing only to top up his glass of vodka and purple Kool-Aid.

Before departing the next morning, Lou told us of a hot-spring off the beaten track. We sailed up to the end of the inlet, dropped the anchor and canoed up the river we assumed Lou was trying to describe. A short hike into the woods and we found the springs. A concrete pool was built around a spout, and the rate of flow was slow, so it wasn't as warm as we'd hoped, worth the trip nevertheless. By evening we were in Hartley Bay, another native town, and very unique in the sense that the entire town is interconnected by boardwalk. There are a couple of scooters, but the only other motorized vehicles on the island are the fishing boats. We followed one walkway up into the woods, where 3 young boys were walking back from the lake with a big salmon, and very thoughtfully and casually said, "Be careful of the bears". I still wanted to see a bear, so was eager to keep going, but Brian said it was time to phone his mom, so we turned and headed for home. I know the truth though, Brian.

Some days seem longer than others, especially when there's little wind, and we're just motoring along. There's a tendency to fall into a sort of highway hypnosis at the helm, and the boredom can lead to too much thinking. As a result, we've begun to take turns reading to one another to pass the time. I found a book in a second-hand shop in Squamish called Ralph Edwards of Lonesome Lake, about a pioneer in the Bella Coola area. Knowing we'd be sailing in the vicinity, I thought it might be of some interest, and its probably the best $1 I've spent since beginning the trip. His family became caretakers for the wintering Trumpeter swans which were dwindling in numbers and were dangerously close to extinction. He was credited for getting the species off the endangered list, which is just the beginning of his story. Suffice to say, it's a great read, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Most places we've visited, we've kept it to just an overnight stay, either exploring on arrival, or getting up in the morning for a few hours of canoeing or fishing before moving on to our final destination, Alaska. Hartley Bay had something about it, I could have stayed another day or two, but we carried on up Grenville Channel to find an anchorage in West Inlet, our final stop before the bustling town of Prince Rupert and the first pub since Vancouver Island. West Inlet was deserted aside from a large converted freighter on a mooring called the Heli-Forrester. It is a portable accommodation for a logging company that does all its logging using helicopters. We dropped the anchor in about 35 feet of water, and decided we'd like to canoe over to the Heli-Forrester and see who was around. Only one caretaker was aboard, waiting for the next crew to arrive in a few days. We talked for an hour or two, and he described the process of the helicopters plucking the felled trees from the hillside and dropping the trees into the water, where they'd later be transferred to barges and shipped away. We had a good yarn and it was pitch darkness paddling back to the boat. As we approached the boat, I was busy looking below the canoe, splashing the water to activate the phosphorescence. Once beside Nirmala, I thought I could see some leaves suspended about 3 feet below the surface, but then realized I was looking at the bottom. The boat wasn't floating anymore. "Brian, I think the boat is sitting on the bottom..." I felt terrible, thinking about how it was me that had dropped the anchor, so as I let it down I should have been able to estimate more accurately the depth of the water. The tide range is substantial here, but not quite 35 feet. Brian was really quiet for a while as he assessed the situation, and I got a bit nervous, feeling to blame, and knowing how I'd feel if I came back to Annie Laurie sitting on the bottom. I didn't know what to say, and then he started laughing, "Laura, to tell the truth, I can't believe we made it this far!". We climbed aboard at the bow, careful to keep her balanced on the keel, and made our way below. By morning we were floating again, and at 0630 the tide was falling rapidly, so we got an early start and enjoyed a good laugh at our own expense, after we were sure there was no harm done. I explained my feelings of guilt about it all, but Brian is very easy-going and understanding. He reminded me how I shouldn't worry my 'pretty little head' about such things, how I can't be expected to do a man's work, and how I'm really out of my element. A womans place is in the kitchen, not at sea! After Brian cooking blueberry waffles on the barbecue, and cleaning an inch of solidified bacon fat out of the frying pan using the cotton washcloth, I'm more than happy to take over the galley chores.

We regrouped for a couple of days in Prince Rupert, finding a shower for the second time since Port MacNiell, stocking up on groceries, doing a bit of laundry, and lowered the Wine and Baguette distress flag for the first time in 3 weeks.

Next stop, Alaska.

Surprise, Surprise!

2008-08-26T15:04:00.037-03:00

One week yesterday, Brian and Effie and I left Squamish, northward bound. Solid southeasterly breezes, uncharacteristic of this area this time of year, have helped us to northern Vancouver Island via the Inside Passage with little need for the motor. Our first stop, Smugglers Cove on the Sunshine Coast, was a popular and cosy nook with an entrance barely 50 feet wide, yet with 60 feet of depth. We've strived for early starts (9am or so) so not to waste any of this great wind, and by mid-afternoon on day 2, we were close to our next destination, Cortes Island, and were carrying a reefed main in gale force winds. We had one reef to round, before approaching the Gorge, where safe harbour would be found.

The gorge entrance itself was wide-open to the wind and swells, and also had its constant background of swirls and whirlpools. I think often of how the sound of the wind in the rig makes matters seems worse than they are, so I try to imagine complete silence in such situations, and suddenly none of it seems so overwhelming. Part of me can't get used to the fact that I'm no longer on my boat, and I feel the same stress and responsibility on board Nirmala as I do on Annie Laurie. Brian has surprised me a couple of times, such as nonchalantly pointing out the petroglyphs on the gorge wall when we're transiting the narrowest point in the entrance, and I wonder how I feel so stressed when it's his boat and he doesn't appear to be worried at all.

Once inside the harbour, we eventually found a spot protected enough from the gale that we could feel confident that we wouldn't drag into the rocks, at least not immediately. About 10 minutes later, driving rains begun, and so did frantic cries from Effie and looks of desperation, directed at me. "Whaasaaap, kittehhh?", is a common response from me when she gives me funny looks, but this time she seemed to be in pain. "Perhaps this isn't false pregnancy number three!" I said to Brian. Two little hind legs appeared, and with it, confirmation that these were Key West babies, from her boyfriend she found when the boat was hauled at Old Island Marina.

Each consecutive kitten was born with a bit more ease than the previous, and by the time the last two arrived, Brian and I had actually fallen asleep, and Effie came and walked all over my face, purring, and ran back to the box, as if to say, "Come look! More babies!". We counted five, two girls, and three boys. By early morning, there were still five, but a little later there were only four. That was 5 days ago, and all, including mum, are doing well.

Finnegan, the first born, I named for a good friend I lost a couple of weeks ago. Of the 5 of them, she was the one I didn't expect to make it through the night. But like my friend, she's proven to be a fighter, and she's now the most adventurous of the bunch, making it a full 2 meters to the other end of the bunk before Effie noticed and ran over for the retrieval. Finbar was next, and I think he'll be a hell of a sailor, named after the Admiral of the Conch Republic Navy. Brian and I laughed at the sight of the next born, the sheer size of his head, he's huge! We agreed to name him Jacob, a reference only the graduating class of 1992 from Grosvenor Wentworth Park Elementary School will know. The next morning, after the last little boy stopped breathing, I thought it may have been a bit of bad luck that he wasn't named, so now the pressure was on to name the last girl. Brian suggested Mary-Anne, after the mistress of the explorer Cortes for whom the island was named. I liked it. Turns out Brian remembered the story wrong, and her name wasn't Mary-Anne at all; it may have been Marina, but even that we're no longer sure of, so, Mary-Anne it is.

Effie has always had the proclivity to run off to other boats, especially wooden ones, and we're currently dockside at a marina in Port MacNeill. The kittens have provided the perfect solution to getting Effie to come home from her excursions. She comes running if we remove one from their box, and say, "Effie, we're stealing your babies!". She'll climb up my legs to get her baby back. (I know, Mom, what a sin... what a sin...)

We stayed a couple of days in Cortes, hitching rides in the pouring rain to explore the tiny island. Whale Harbour was by far my favorite spot, population less than 10 I would guess. The library is the size of my childhood bedroom, with the hours posted on the front door, "Open Fridays, 1 til 3".

A time consuming and somewhat challenging aspect that is defining our trip so far is the necessity to time the tides and currents. There are many small passes than must be transited at slack, or near-slack tides. Currents can easily run at 15kts, and in some cases 24kts a bit further up the coast. There are literally hundreds of mountainous islands, and dozens of routes to take. We decided we were going to go through Stuart Pass, 25 miles from the Gorge Harbour in Cortez, but the only safe (daylight) times to sail through that area were early morning and just before sunset, and there were no safe anchorages nearby. After moving to a somewhat closer anchorage, further north but still on Cortes, known as Von Dop Inlet, we changed our minds and ended up passing through Hole in the Wall, which our tide books gave slack water at 2pm. Arriving at 1:40 after a failed attempt in the areas popular and apparently fool-proof fishing hole, our cruising guide seemed to suggest near-slack tides were acceptable, and passing through the 'rapids' (the tide runs so hard, it really is like rapids) should be straight-forward. There were more than one narrow sections, it was a winding path, and the whirlpools were the best I've seen yet. The turn of the tide at the southern tip of Nova Scotia was quite a show as I recall as I left for Cuba on Annie Laurie, but it was nothing compared to what I was seeing now. I kept my eyes on the chart, trying to judge our position by the little coves and points of land I was seeing. There were rocks mid channel, I eventually noticed, but were veiled by the rapids, and looked like much of the rest of the water in the immediate area, white and frothy. Brian steered for shore to avoid the rocks, but we were still going faster on a perpendicular course. A well-powered fishing boat stopped to watch us, seeming a bit concerned and wanting to make sure we made it through to the other side alright, which we eventually did about 15 minutes later. About 45 minutes later a line-up of sailboat were motoring towards the same pass. We both thought, "Hmm, aren't they going to be at the pass a bit too late?".

We found a wonderful secluded anchorage at a low island surrounded by mountains and seals and jumping fish (couldn't catch them, either) that evening, protected from the southeast gales that were supposed to appear sometime after midnight. The current pulled us quickly, again, 90 degrees from where we wanted to go, until we were between the 2 islands marking the entrance. From there, we had to steer around long strands of kelp that was grazing the surface (it can get stuck in the propeller), but still attached to the rocks 35ft below. We were joined by a local fishing trawler who came to anchor for the night too. It felt like the calm before the storm, the water was like glass except for the occasional light rain passing, and some less-impressive whirlpools that could be seen outside the islands we had come between.

Morning we awakened to much the same, aside from the trawler getting an early start and being long gone. There was not a breath of wind, so we motored for the first hour. Finally the wind began to fill and we were flying along at 7, 8, 9, 10 kts. A while later the GPS reached a maximum of 15 kts, and all this in the northern end of the Johnstone Strait, where apparently there is always 1 to 3 kts of current against a northbound vessel. When sailing in heavy winds, I find there will come a point, even when things are going smoothly, where you feel that something is about to go wrong. With only one reef in the main, and no other options for flying any sort of smaller sail, I felt we were overpowered. I think Brian felt the same, so when we were approaching shore and it was time to gybe (turn the boat and bring the wind to the other side) we didn't feel it was safe to do with the sail raised (a quick or unexpected gybe in high winds can do a lot of damage. I've ripped reef-points and clews clean-off the sails on my boat, and on some boats it can take down the mast). So we dropped the sail, came around, and looked at the GPS. We were still able to steer and were moving in the direction we wanted to go at a speed of 7kts, with no sails up at all. I was estimating some of the gusts at 40kts, and really didn't want the sail raised again just yet. Brian agreed, like he has many times before on the trip, not because it was necessarily the right decision (in hindsight, we probably would have been fine and I think he knew that) but because he doesn't want me to feel beyond my comfort zone.

So we drifted along like that for a couple of hours, and noticed that the water temperature in the past 20 miles had dropped from 16 degrees Celsius to 8 degrees. This temperature change brought a change in wildlife too. Dolphins played on the bow, and later that afternoon, Brian spotted our first Orcas of the trip! There were at least 5 of them, and the two largest had dorsal fins that were taller than I am, an awesome sight as they came within a few boatl engths of us.

The wind was relentless until we arrived in Port MacNeill around 5:30pm Saturday. I made a phone call to my friend Chris who I haven't seen in a couple of years, who now lives in Victoria on Vancouver Island and is currently cruising the same waters. We've come within a few miles of each other a couple of times, not knowing until after the fact, as cell phone coverage is spotty and apparently we weren't monitoring our VHF radios at the same time. He's an experienced sailor and an officer in the Canadian Coast Guard, and when I finally got a hold of him the other night on the phone, he just mentioned in passing about the tide tables published by the Canadian Hydrographic Society, and why they don't work Daylight Savings Time into their tides, to make it easier for the sailors reading the tables. "Of course, Laura, you add an hour to all the tides this time of year, right?". Right. That probably explains the violent eddys and whirlpools and ridiculous currents, and that line-up of boats heading for the pass and hour and half too late! I love these learning experiences where, for some reason, nature is kinder than she has to be and lets people like us off with just a warning.

We've been waiting on the weather for a couple of days here in Port MacNeill, 35-45kts from the southeast that never seems to come. Yesterday we took the opportunity to take what must be the smallest BC Ferry in operation over to Alert Bay, on Cormorant Island. The tallest (at one time, anyway) totem pole in the world sits at the top of the hill above the town. Another area of totem poles lay as private memorials of the Namgis tribe down on Pine Street, that runs along the waters edge. As tourists, we were only permitted to view them from the street. Some are old, some are new, all are incredible works of art. Walking back from the tallest totem, we were stopped by a local who asked us how we were enjoying our visit to their island, and he shared some of his smoked salmon ('Indian candy', as he called it) that he had just picked up from his smokehouse.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the continent, Fay hit northern Florida as a Tropical Storm, with the eye, from what I gather, passing close to where I left my boat in Palm Coast. The storm surge had the dock under a foot of water, Shirley tells me, but Annie weathered the storm just fine. Thank-you to the exponent of a million, Shirley, Bill, and Art.

And with that, I once again check NOAA weather, and Hurricane Gustav may hit Florida as a possible Category 3 hurricane. This is not good news.

Close the Book

2008-08-02T20:32:00.011-03:00

Now thousands of miles from where I left off, much has changed. Warm sandy beaches have turned to towering wooded mountains, shrouded in cold rains and specked with impressive waterfalls. Intense squalls and lightening storms have been replaced by 2 tonne logs as the primary navigational hazard. Shallow coral and sand bottoms have become fathomless, and torquise waters are still torquise, but 20 degrees colder, glacial runoff being their source.

Annie Laurie is put to bed for the time being, in Palm Coast, Florida. I'm now aboard my friend's sloop, Nirmala, in Squamish, British Columbia. I'm so happy to be back in Canada. Although it's 4000 miles from my home province, I feel like I'm home. Effie's on fake pregnancy number 3, I believe. We're just home from an exciting day at the Logger's Festival, where no one in suspenders or plaid shirts were out of place. The spectator turn-out for the events was somewhat impeded by the landslide that occurred last Monday on the Sea to Sky highway, which has left Squamish cut-off from the outside world, unless you travel by boat or float plane.

So far, we've sailed to Gibsons, a small town on the Sunshine Coast only accessible by water, and paid a visit to Molly's Reach, to all you avid Beachcombers fans who recall the little pub from the longest running series on CBC. Tomorrow we leave for Vancouver Island where we hope to meet up with some very important people in our lives, after which our journey north will begin. If everything goes as planned, we will make our way to Alaska by the end of August.

I'm on the fence as to whether or not to keep this blog going. I enjoy writing, but there are times where there's too much living to do to justify spending time behind this screen.

Semi-Circles

2008-07-07T17:26:00.024-03:00

I left Key West on July 1^st, Canada Day. Hindu having left their dock vacant and well on their way to P-town, I was able to, as I had in P-town, tie up at their wharf for a while. My journey north then began on the same note as it had heading south. I was able to top-up on water and gather groceries as well as bring down all my personal items that had gradually accumulated at my conch parent’s house. I had one oar stolen my last day in the anchorage (who steals ONE oar?) so being able to come dockside greatly simplified and sped up the process of getting out of town. It’s true you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, and I found myself torn in the final hours. I suddenly became very sensitive and aware of everything I’d been taking for granted. I’ll miss rollerblading along Smathers Beach, having hollering conversations with Jared and Jonathon from their nearby boats, and even greeting the homeless drunks of Simonton Beach when rowing ashore in the mornings. I’ll miss biking around on my friend’s ‘Conch cruiser’ (which I modified to reflect my nationality, and he hasn’t been in Key West long enough recently to notice, but I hope he enjoys the incessant, “Canadian, eh? Canadian, eh? Canadian, eh?” which I frequently heard while riding it around town). I’ll miss the very social Tuesday night poker games hosted by my friend’s dad, hours of great conversation with his mom, and reading the Citizen’s Voice over a cup of Bustelo coffee well before the break of dawn. The crew of the schooner Western Union, all having an appreciation for wooden boats, came over and introduced themselves that final night, and I regret that I hadn’t met one of them in particular sooner. To think we lived within a short boat ride of one another, and we met only long enough to say hello, share a few glasses of wine, and say goodbye. Life’s like that. I can’t help but wonder if I had been more decisive and less passive with who I chose to spend time with if something more valuable and true may have arose.

But as they say, hindsight is 20/20, and so much is clearer to me now. I’m not going to dwell on what may have been. I won’t make the same mistakes again, and I’ll be a much better judge from now on who’s a hit and who’s a miss. A definite hit, Jonathon, was the last person I bid adieu to. I motored to the anchorage and announced that I was blowing this Popsicle stand, and he passed me a gift he had worked on a few nights before. A true friend.

It becomes helpful at this point to remind myself of the things I won’t miss. The mosquitos, rowing against 2 kts of current, the way my Popsicle would start to drip before I got it out of the plastic, or the feeling of having a blowtorch held to my face as I rowed across the harbour in little or no wind under a sun that seemed to ignore any ozone barrier. There were lots of good reasons to stay in Key West, and just as many to leave. It’s once again time to Trust the Universe, and welcome the unknown. There’s so much possibility and opportunity for great new friendships everywhere I drop my anchor, one of which began my first stop after leaving Key West, Bahia Honda.

I had missed this anchorage on my way down in January, instead stopping at Marathon just a few miles east, which is little more than an expensive floating trailer park community. It’s unbelievable than many cruisers make Marathon their winter destination. It’s nearly $15/day just to tie your dingy at the dingy dock. The water is too dirty for swimming, there’s no beach, and once out of the marina, you find yourself on the Overseas Highway where cars race past the Walmarts, Home Depots, and numerous strip malls. I had a certain image of what the Florida Keys would be like before I arrived. Perhaps a bit naive, but I had images of long white sandy beaches, wading out to coral reefs to snorkel among exotic fish, palm trees swaying in the breeze, and of course crystal-clear turquoise water. This is what I finally found when I dropped the hook at Bahia Honda.

There was a good current running in the anchorage, and being down one oar, I opted not to bother launching the dingy off the stern, knowing I probably couldn’t row fast enough to get to shore before I got sucked out under the retired Flagler Railroad Bridge. Instead I pulled out my flippers and snorkel and put my camera in a waterproof case and swam in. It was here I first met Kim and Mike, traveling around the Keys in a Stingray motorboat for their 2 weeks vacation. Upon introduction, they pleaded their innocence; “We’re really sailors! This motorboat thing is just temporary! We’re getting another sailboat soon!”. I believed them. I have yet to see another large motoryacht launch a bright orange 2-man plastic kayak as a dingy.

I wanted to stay much longer in Bahia Honda, but after a swim and photoshoot and the clock approaching noon, I knew I had to leave. I still had many miles of heading due east ahead of me, and the winds are unrelentingly east this time of year, so the best I could hope for was to motor against the winds while they were still relatively light. The forecast at the time gave me 8 more hours to get around the corner where I could start heading north.

Night 2 out of Key West, I didn’t make it as far as I hoped, and I found myself with darkness falling and no good place to drop my anchor. With the winds increasing to 20kts from the east, I had no place to hide, and the sea floor was either coral or sea grass. I was hoping to find a sandy spot because my Bruce anchor sets best in sand or mud. I had slowed down, and was up on the bow trying to see ahead and below for that token bit of sand, when out of nowhere appeared a high-speed boat with 4 official looking guys aboard. It was US Customs and Border Control. Great, just in time to ask them for local knowledge on where to anchor, I thought. But I let them get their business out of the way first. The young guy at the helm looked angry, like his training had taught him to intimidate no matter what the situation. The older guy in charge though was levelheaded and reasonable, and could even be described as overly friendly. I swear he was French Canadian (would US Customs hire non-Americans?). “How many aboard?” he asked. “Just us”, as I pointed to Effie. The look of surprise, which I’ve become well acquainted with, told me that none of this was going to be a problem. The guy at the helm, staying on task, demanded, “Port side or starboard side boarding, Sir?” and the fellow I was speaking with just waved his hand at him to tell him to be quiet. They weren’t going to board a vessel with a single girl aboard. He asked if I had a cruising permit, I said yes. He asked if it was handy, and when I said no, but that it was valid until November, he said, “Okay, that’s cool!”. He asked where I was from, how long I’d been sailing, what I did for a living back home, and if I’d sailed all this way by myself. He commented on how friendly Effie was, and that normally animals on boats are terrified of their two 250HP engines, and usually run below. She stood by the rail, wondering if they were going to bring their boat close enough so she could jump and have some new territory to explore. She rarely passes up an opportunity to escape.

They wished me luck and gave advice on where to anchor, which involved winding through a shallow creek with unlit marks. They had held me up just long enough for the sun to drop below the horizon, so I opted to anchor just where they had stopped me. I knew I’d drag all night in the seagrass, so I just made sure I had plenty of room to drag, and decided I'd wake up every ½ hr through the night to check my position. That was just a necessary fact, and I didn’t care because I knew sleep was going to be impossible regardless. The boat rolled and bucked in the swell all night. At the first sign of light, I got ready to go, and wondered what on God’s green earth was more difficult than hauling a 33lb anchor and 50 ft of chain from 15 feet of water in 20kts of wind and 3 ft of swells, after a sleepless night and before my morning coffee, and with no one there to sympathize with my complaints.

I left the VHF on the weather station all day as they gave continuous updates on the position and movement of a major thunderstorm moving across north Key Largo, packing 60kt winds, torrential rains that would limit visibility to 1/8 of a mile, hail the size of pennies, and the risk of ‘frequent deadly lightning strikes’, as they put it. Not comforting words when you’re sailing through the narrowest part of the reef (less than ¼ mile) and you’re the tallest thing in sight. By this time, I was sailing NNE, so the wind was sufficiently behind me to allow me to sail without the engine running. But wanting to beat this storm, I fired up the engine once more, and averaged 6.5 kts the rest of the way to Key Biscayne. The storm fell behind me, and I felt I’d made a good decision, despite the current price of diesel. Motoring through the channel, tired from stress and no sleep the night before, and dehydrated from sunburn, I clenched my teeth and crossed my fingers as I crossed over 5-ft charted depths of coral heads. I had woven through them before when I left Key Biscayne months ago, but the seas had been calm, and my mind was sharp enough to follow the incremental changes on my handheld GPS. I wasn’t feeling so sharp now, and found myself possessing the attitude, “What the hell, I’ll just hope for the best”, and I made guess at my position based on the green and red daymarks, and did my best to read the color of the water, diverting away from the whiter shades and trying to stay over the green (which I assumed to be seagrass). What can I say, it worked.

Nearly 6 months since my first visit, I am back in No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne; the first stop for my sister and I during the trip south where the water was clear enough and shallow enough to see starfish on the bottom as we sailed along. I had long anticipated my first dive into warm, clear tropical water from my own vessel. I had wondered what would be significant about it that would make it memorable for years to come. Upon arriving here in January, Katie was attempting to make everything all ship-shape before we could relax and enjoy what remained of the afternoon and evening. She dropped the deck-wash bucket over the side to retrieve some water, but as she hauled it back up, the knot let go and the line slipped off, and the bucket started to float away. It was a big white bucket whose original use was to store Tancook sauerkraut. But now, in these closely patrolled waters, it no longer fell under the classification of ‘bucket’. It was now ‘rubbish’, and subject to a $250 fine. “Jump in!” Katie laughed.

“No! You dropped it!”

“You tied the knot! You jump in!”. As blame was tossed back and forth with light-heartedness and laughter (as I like to remember it), the bucket floated further and further away. My paranoia of a Coast Guard clamp-down on the disobedience of foreign boats to local laws grew greater, and I finally stripped down to my bikini and jumped in for the retrieval. The water was not as warm as one would imagine southern Florida to be, even though it was January. But thus was my first swim in Florida waters, and what could be more memorable than looking up at your little wooden boat, with a backdrop of palm trees and a slowly cooling sunset, and to be cradling an empty bucket once abundant with good old Nova Scotian sauerkraut?

Kim and Mike arrived in No Name Harbor two days ago, and after having dinner aboard their boat and learning of their canal-side home a few miles north of Fort Lauderdale, the next portion of my journey is planned. I had been previously toying with the idea of heading offshore from Key Biscayne and going directly to St Augustine, but that’s on the side-burner for now. It’s really become one day at a time, as I watch the approach of Hurricane Bertha, which as I write this at 6pm Atlantic time Monday, is 730miles east of the Windward Islands of the Caribbean.

So tomorrow I'm heading offshore, jumping on the Gulfstream Express, which will increase my speed by 3 kts, hopefully. I'll be up to Hilsborough Inlet by late afternoon, and hopefully dockside before dark, where I'll make a toast to Annie on our 2 year Anniversary.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

2008-06-29T16:42:00.023-03:00

Another adventure arose on Friday when the schooner Hindu, whose ownership has been under dispute in recent months, was returned to her rightful owner Kevin 'Foggy' Foley. To avoid further difficulty in getting the boat underway to Provincetown, Massechussettes, where Kevin had always been intending to take her for the summer months, he decided to get the boat out of Key West promptly and take her to an undisclosed location to have her prepared for the rest of the northward journey. We had to act fast when the 'other' owner finally stepped off the boat after a 3hr standoff. Despite having received an injunction that morning banning him from the vessel, he refused to leave, and he paced the deck swinging, and occassionaly striking, a wooden mallet normally used for firing the ships ceremonial canon, while yelling at Kevin and myself and two other crew to get off his boat. When he was informed the Key West Police and County Sherriff were en route, he decided to avoid further embarrassment (the patrons and staff of Schooner Wharf Bar had a great afternoons entertainment at his expense) and he quietly stepped off the boat. We cast off the lines and started motoring away, Kevin, Finbar, Jonathan (my neighbor in the anchorage), and I.

Finbar, a good friend of Foggy's, was introduced to me as Admiral of the Conch Republic Navy. For those who don't know, the Conch Republic was established when the Florida Keys seceded from the United States in 1982 in response to a U.S. Border Patrol Blockade setup on highway U.S.1 just north of the Florida Keys. This effectively isolated Keys inhabitants from the U.S. mainland since the blockade was on the only road to and from the mainland. There was a protest, and the Mayor of Key West along with a few other 'conchs' (as the locals here are known) went to Federal court in Miami to seek an injunction to stop the blockade, but to no avail. Upon leaving the Federal Court House, the mayor announced to the world by way of the TV crews and reporters, "Tomorrow at noon the Florida Keys will secede from the Union!"

At noon, on the day of secession, at Mallory Square in Key West, the mayor read the proclamation of secession and proclaimed aloud that the Conch Republic was an independent nation separate from the U.S. and then symbolically began the Conch Republic's Civil Rebellion by breaking a loaf of stale Cuban bread over the head of a man dressed in a U.S. Navy uniform. After one minute of rebellion, the mayor, now Prime Minister, turned to the Admiral in charge of the Navy Base at Key West, and surrendered to the Union Forces, and demanded one billion dollars in war relief to rebuild the nation after the long Federal siege.

So as you can imagine, Finbar, the Admiral of the only all-sail Navy fleet in the world, and organizer of the annual re-creation of the Great Sea Battle (which, of course, never really happened), is quite the character. Jonathan informed me that he's been a lieutenant in the Conch Navy for quite some time, and his boat is part of the Navy fleet. I asked if my boat could be too, and if I could join the navy with the distinction of cabin boy. Finbar said that'd be fine and now I'm anxiously awaiting the induction ceremony!

We sailed through the night, up the Florida Keys and out into the gulf stream, and eventually made our way to the top-secret marina.

I had a lot on my mind on the brief voyage as I listened to the details of the ownership dispute between two individuals who used to be good friends. I could relate the stories to recent circumstances in my own life, and it gave me a lot to think about, how mis-communications and misunderstandings can lead to so much unnecessary confusion and strife in one's life, and how friendships can so easily, as well as not-so easily, slip away.

We can, to an extent, decide who we want to bring into our lives, but we can't decide who will choose to keep us in theirs. Most of us often see things the way we want to see them, but it would be enlightening to keep our minds open enough to at least contemplate another's perspective. By ignoring our own character flaws and simply finding another distraction to keep us from facing what is preventing us from becoming deeper and more empathatic individuals, we are ultimately delaying our own happiness. We can only work on our own issues and try to improve on the faults that others point out to us, or, if we're lucky enough, that we manage to see ourselves through our own mistakes. Others may not share our ideals in morality, loyalty, or any other important criteria that define a friendship, but to try to affect a change in their behaviour is ultimately fruitless, as many will unwittingly choose to live in blind disagreement and self-justification.

There's no time like the present to face these flaws that we all possess, and I'm beginning to see that the more a person avoids doing this, the further and further they will find themselves from ever being truly satisfied in their lives, and for that matter, sincerely loved.

Some people will spend the rest of their lives running from themselves, and others find themselves through running. Speaking for myself, a change of scenery can help to break a bad cycle of stangnant behaviour and thoughts. That short voyage on the Hindu was a wake-up; I felt refreshed, and I realized that although I love Key West and my 'conch parents' and most of the people I've met, I've been here too long.

I plan to leave Tuesday, well before the break of dawn. Just Effie and I. Heading east. Right now, that's all I know for certain of my future, and I'm tranquil in my decision to go.

Aquaphobia

2008-06-24T16:30:00.006-03:00

Recently, I went swimming against my will (the boat made me do it). I was trying to get a head start at cleaning the bottom growth off the hull before I hauled her two weeks ago. I can’t explain it, but since arriving in Key West, I’ve been afraid of the water. It’s an irrational fear, I know. I’ve grown up by the sea, swimming in icy waters in both Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I’ve swam alongside barracuda in the Caribbean, and jumped into unfamiliar and frigid black waters that seemed bottomless from the edge of the rocks in the Isle of Mull in Scotland. But when I get in the water here (latest marine reports put the water in Key West Harbor at 88 degrees Fahrenheit) I panic, and breathing becomes difficult, and any string of seaweed slipping across the back of my neck or any distant splash causes me to race to the front of the boat where I can grab onto the head rig and pull myself out of the water, if only to hang above the surface for 30 seconds to regain my composure.

It’s a whole other challenge to then put my head under the water. I find something unsettling about seeing my boat from underwater, how she seems to be suspended so effortlessly in air. And the silence is, well, disquieting. Paradoxically, it somehow feels peaceful and protected. I think about how a boat is finally safe once it’s resting on the bottom, and while it marks the end of the ship’s story, it also dissolves the almost constant worries of the weary sailor who has fought so long to keep her afloat. I guess the trouble with all these thoughts are that they just seem too soon to relate to my boat.

Eventually on this particular day, I did put my head under, so I could scrub further under the hull. I tried not to let my eyes wander from the job at hand; I didn’t want to see the flow of the sea grass on the bottom, just a few feet deeper than the keel. For me, staying in the water is like being dropped into a pit full of innocuous grass snakes apart from for one token rattlesnake, while blindfolded and not knowing where, when, or if that rattlesnake is going to strike. This may sound extreme, but to me it is an accurate analogy. I managed to focus for about 10 minutes. I worked my way from stern to bow, scrubbing away and occasionally slicing my hands on barnacles as I braced myself away from the side, until a passing boat tossed me a glove (seems they’ve done this before). The cuts they leave are like deep paper cuts, and they stung in the salt water. I was less worried about the pain though than what the blood may have been attracting! As I completed the upper portion of the port side, I approached the bow and allowed my eyes to drift forward to my mooring chain, following it down to the bottom. It was the first time I saw what was actually responsible for holding my boat in place. Yes, it is indeed a sunken boat, but not just ANY boat… it is a wooden boat. No seaweed or splashing fish or hammerhead shark could have made my clamber out of the water any faster. This reaction may take some explaining, except to my fellow wooden boaters. Seeing the remains of the little boat, which by the looks of her was quite a sweet thing in her day, it was like finding a corpse. This was the first feeling that developed upon first glance, but it’s probably rooted in a deeper fear; a fear of knowing that it is the eventual fate of most wooden boats, mine being no exception. My next job is to face my fears, and go back down there and accurately assess how strong the remains are, and how my chain is attached. I’m hoping it’s wrapped around a lead or iron keel, rather than some part of the disintegrating hull.

I found it coincidental that my boat should end up being tied to another wooden boat whose days were up, wooden boats being scarce as they are around here. I struggled with how to feel about what laid before me… is it bad luck? Is it a testament to the extremes of weather and the challenge to keep any boat safe in Hurricane zone? Or is it little more than a testament to neglect, a boat whose owner had turned his (probably) back on her, and was left to survive the storms without the help she obviously needed?

Or is it good luck? Is it a less fortunate boat, now settled with its own lot and willing to oversee the survival of a sister still afloat? The thing about such superstitions is that we have a tendency to make them mean whatever suits our own desires best.

Boatyard Blitz

2008-06-20T14:04:00.035-03:00

I had put it off for long enough. I finally realized that I didn't know what I was waiting for, so therefore had no excuse not to go over to Old Island Boatyard and book my haul-out.

I was to haul at 0800 on Thursday, so I decided I would head over with the boat on Wednesday night, to be sure to be there in plenty of time. Around 4pm I turned the key to start the engine, and..... click. Nothing. I had just started the engine 2 days earlier and there was lots of juice the the batteries. I couldn't figure out what killed them so quickly, but, not much time to dwell on that. I had to get the engine going so I could motor the 6 or so miles to Stock Island. There was little wind, and the heat from the sun was absolutely unbearable, so I decided I wasn't going to be rowing ashore in the heat to borrow a battery from a friend. My neighbor Jonathon soon offered another solution. A friend of his had a portable generator that I could plug my battery charger into, and get the voltage high enough to start the engine. Only problem was, it was all out of gas. Jonathon was going ashore anyway, so I gathered up the quarters and dimes from all over the boat, and eventually found about $4.20 worth of loose change, and a couple of hours later, Jonathon returned with 0.88 of a gallon of gas. We ran the generator until after 9pm sometime, and finally, the engine started. With reefs all around, and a narrow entrance at Stock Island, I wasn't willing to head over in the dark, so I resolved to get up before sunrise the next morning. Just to be sure, I let my engine run for another 2 hours to charge the batteries enough that I could rest assured that they'd start the engine the following morning. As I shut down the engine around 11pm, I was looking forward to the peaceful silence. But then I could still hear a gentle hum, bearly audible, but still within the boat. It sounded like the bilge pump, but it wasnt accompanied by the usual splashing noise that the water from the bilge makes as it's expelled out the hose over the side of the hull. I pulled up the floorboards, only to find far too much water in the bilge. I opened up the door to wear the bilge pump sits, and there it was, hose disconnected because both hose clamps had completely corroded off. The bilge pump is connected to a 'float switch', so when the water in the bilge reaches a certain level, the float rises up, and the bilge pump kicks in, powered by the 12-volt battery bank I have aboard. It pumps the water overboard until the water in the boat is low enough for the switch to lower and to automatically shut off. With the hoses no longer attached though, the pump just kept recycling all the water within the bilge itself, as the water level slowly kept rising. I figure it had been running steady for about 48hrs, while the boat was slowly sinking, unbeknownst to me. Now I knew why my batteries were dead!

It was a 0530 wake-up on Thursday, and I knew I had plenty of time to make my 0800 appointment. That was if my engine hadn't started overheating. My engine is cooled indirectly by salt water being pumped through it. Instead of motoring along at my usual 5 kts, I had to go a bit slower, between 2.5 and 3 kts, to give the engine the chance to keep its temperature down. I have yet to find the cause of that little problem. Anyway, I made it by 0900, and it's their slow-season down here, so no one at the yard was too upset about it.

To my knowledge, my boat has never been picked up out of the water by a Travel-lift. It is a deisel-run lift that has a series of slings that are adjustable, so you can hopefully distribute the boat's weight evenly. The other methods, that I'm accustomed to, involve always having a full-length of solid ground or wood, so the boat rests evenly along the entire length of her keel. So I was a bit nervous watching her being lifted up out of the water. I was required to sign a waiver to haul in this yard (for a couple of reasons) so if anything were to go wrong, I might have been looking for a new hobby. And house, and mode of transport, lifestyle, blogging material etc etc. I did get a bit carried away in my thoughts of impending doom, but all's well that ends well.

Once she was placed in her spot in the yard, she was lowered onto supporting blocks, so the weight of the boat was on the keel, and the 'jackstands' placed on either side were put in for extra stability.

I had booked to be be out from 0800 Thursday, and to 'splash' her at 1600 Friday, and with all that needed to be done, I went into high gear and didnt want to waste a precious minute. I had my spotlight and headlamp and spare batteries on hand, fully intending to work well into the night. But I certainly chose the right boatyard. Not long after I arrived, the manager, Alan, offered for me to stay the weekend and splash at 1600 Monday, at no extra cost ("Must be great having boobs" all the men who own boats in the yard would say to me over the next few days). I was surprised and very impressed at the offer! I took him up on it, of course, but rather than taking it easy and not pushing myself too hard, I extended my list of 'things to be done' and I decided to face a challenge that has been a constant worry to me, but that I had just assumed I would have to leave until I got back to Nova Scotia, and for my shipwright Mike to deal with. If there's one thing I can admit to being very skilled at, it is making things more difficult than they have to be. So I will briefly describe what my big concern was; one that I thought would involve hauling the boat for over a month and ripping out parts of the interior.

My boat is a series of mahogany planks fastened over oak frames. No one plank is long enough to extend the full length of the boat, so where 2 or more planks have to be put in line, the 'butt end' of the planks have to be attached to each other. This is done with a 'butt block'. Most of them are approximately 6 inches squared, and they are placed to span the 2 planks. There are 2 fasteners in each of the planks. Now, almost the entirety of the planks are fastened to the oak frames with bronze fasteners, which is a good choice of metal. Stainless steel comes second, and galvanized aren't great at all. Mixing any combination of these metals makes matters worse. Electrolysis will eat up the inferior metal. So although most of the boat has bronze screws, all the butt blocks were fastened with galvanized bolts. Over the years, these bolts have begun to crumble, and if any of them let go, then I will probably have a sprung plank on my hands. This was always going through my mind when I was out in any sort of unsettled weather, especially off Cape Fear. So my solution, until Josh simplified the whole dilema and proposed a better one, was to replace every nut and bolt and butt block, most of which are buried behind different parts of the interior construction of the boat. Someone suggested putting a bronze screw to reinforce each plank end. That way, it could all be done from the outside of the hull. Brilliant. So why leave that until I got back to Nova Scotia? Why not have the peace of mind now? Again, finding no good reason why I should wait that long, I bought a box of silicon bronze screws from Cubanitos, and my friend's dad helped me with drill-bits and counter-sinks, and wooden plugs to cover the screws once they were in place. Less than 8 hrs from when I began, I had drilled, screwed, plugged, and painted over 60 new holes below the waterline. I never thought myself able to do such a thing even a week ago, not considering my experience sufficient enough to drill holes in the most important component of the boat, but with some helpful advice, the job is done, and now I see further horizons as being attainable... perhaps a spring 2009 journey across the Atlantic to Scotland?

There were a few other things I had to deal with while she was high and dry. She was missing bottom paint from a few places after it was chafed off with the anchor chain in a storm. There were sacrificial zincs that needed replacing (same idea as the fasteners; the zincs are attached to metal below the waterline, like the propeller shaft, and the metal brackets that hold the rudder, so the electrolysis attacks the zincs first). I had a moderate leak in the stern that I wanted to caulk, and the bronze propeller needed to be tidied up.

Once I hauled the boat, I preferred to bike back to Key West to my friend's parent's place and have a comfortable (air-conditioned) room before going all-out during daylight hours. Effie took the opportunity to make her great escape while unattended on night two. She had leapt the 6 or so feet onto a sawhorse and took off into the night. From the moment the boat was hauled, she showed her eagerness to escape her prison ship that she had been confined to since late February in Cuba. She dangled over the side, and I'd say "No!" then she would meow, and I'd say "No!" then she would disappear. I figured she was up to no good, and I later found part of a bouquet of flowers that someone in the anchorage left me a few days earlier, no longer feeding off the fresh water in the vase, but rather the salt water from the toilet.

Once free, I thought she'd be dazzled by the shore life and swooning over tomcats, so I didnt hold out a lot of help of finding her. Then I thought about what a lackluster ending to her story that would be. Having sailed all the way from Nova Scotia, to Cuba, and Mexico, and back again, in fair seas and through storms, then to just disappear in a boatyard, never to be heard from again? I didnt like the sounds of that, and I started wishing she'd just come home.

A big part of this whole yard experience for me was the presense of another wooden boat. A Rosborough designed schooner built in Nova Scotia, no less. Just like mine. Mathew was overseeing the cold-molding of the hull of Compass Rose (a process by which a wooden boat in hopeless condition is given new life by its hull becoming fiberglass) . He has a lot of wooden boat experience, so was very helpful on a daily basis, providing me with some of the larger tools I required but dont carry aboard, and was always offering welcomed input. Most evenings I went over and had dinner and wine with him and his work crew. It was my favorite part of the day. On my last day, after the boat had been re-launched and was tied a ways down the dock (not where Effie had left her) I was at Compass Rose, having some wine and trying to convince Matt's dog Riley that we really should be friends (he almost removed one of my fingers on our first encounter) . There were witnesses who said Effie had returned to where the boat had been, and curled up next to my bike. She was gone though by the time I returned.

With a few glasses of wine in me, I was less shy about spinning around on my bike on that quiet evening and calling "Effie, come to mommy!" into the trees and into the direction of other boats she may have stowed away upon. It wasn't long before I was met with one long continuous meeeeeeoooooowwwww as she ran along the fence trying to find a gap to come over to my side. Her apparent lover followed her to a certain point, then realizing perhaps that I had more of a hold on her than he did, he gave up the chase, and sat and watched as I scooped her up and put her in my bike basket to go back to the boat. I reassured Effie that she deserved much better, if he let her get away that easily.

So with Effie home, and boat in the water, I was prepared to sail the following morning and go home to Key West. But one final check before leaving proved that I hadn't done very well fixing my leak. The wood had swelled up somewhat overnight, but I knew I could do better. Steve and Humberto ("Hey Baby, I will-a do ANYthing for you, Baby!") who handled the Travel-lift said that they weren't too busy, and were willing to pick the boat up again, and just leave her in the slings for an hour or two while I attended to the leak. You might not think it possible, but I actually made the leak worse. I started to investigate further than I should have, and discovered a soft-spot in the wood that would have been better off left alone. I think I disturbed it sufficiently that it will need replacing before it will ever stop leaving back there. Now that I've already brought the boat back to Key West, my remaining option is to try the sawdust method, where I will take a handful (or, more perhaps) of sawdust and hold it to the leaky spot, and the flow of water should suck it up into the gap, and eventually, I hope the leak will be reduced to a trickle. We will see!

All in all, I'm pleased with how things went. I am relieved that no worms got into the unprotected wood where the bottom paint was missing, and I am confident the boat is sturdier than before she was hauled.

Back to the Start

2008-06-09T16:35:00.017-03:00

Scanning the scene down below, it’s hard to believe that this is the same boat, the same space, that was shared with my sister and friends as I made my first passage from Halifax to Lunenburg with Rissa, as Annie Laurie was known back then. Seems very long ago, and was in fact rather far away.

When we set out that Friday morning in August 2006, our planned destination wasn’t even Lunenburg, it was Second Peninsula. The re-launching of the fully rebuilt ‘Valkyrie’, a 29-ft wooden sloop originally built and launched on the beach at Second Peninsula in 1946, was taking place that Saturday on the afternoon tide. The work was completed by a professional boat builder named Eamonn Doorly who works for the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. I had become acquainted with Eamonn a month earlier when he recognized my boat as that of his friend and co-worker Terry Shaw, who had succumbed to cancer a year earlier. I bought Rissa from his widow, Sjan. The launching would also be a memorial for Terry, Sjan would be there, and Eamonn asked if I would bring the boat down for the event.

Wanting to get an early start, I planned a departure of 7am. Having owned the boat for less than a month, I was still becoming acquainted with her systems, and I shouldn’t have been shocked when the engine wouldn’t start right off the bat. The batteries were dead (what did I know about properly maintaining 12-volt batteries at the time? Not much.) I didn’t know what to do to remedy this situation quickly, and I did feel rushed, it being nearly 55 miles we had to make that day. I called my friend Super Dave, a past captain of mine from a tall ship on which I had done a short stint to Gloucester, Massachusetts. He’s the same Scot who helped me a month earlier when I signed the final papers and took possession of the boat. Without him, I would have planted her square onto James’ Rock moments after leaving the dock (I was unprepared, no charts, no idea how to get out Purcell’s Cove, no radar, thick of fog etc etc). He recognized the tell-tale signs of shallow rocks by the seaweed that was licking the surface dead ahead. His sailing and engineering skills I know and trust. While I was still in Nova Scotia, he was usually the first person that came to mind when I needed help, and he never let me down.

The invitation to Second Peninsula forced me to cram many things I had been avoiding, and a quick radio check (VHF radio) confirmed that I was able to receive, but not transmit. It’s law, but more importantly, it’s common sense not to leave port without a working radio. By 10:00, Dave had the engine going and the batteries charging, and a spare handheld VHF for me to bring. We were off to the races! Well, we would have been, if there had been a breath of wind. Nevertheless, thanks to the ‘iron jib’ (my Perkins 4-108 diesel) we didn’t have to wait for wind nor tide.

I guess it’s time to introduce my original crew. There were three aside from myself; two sailors and a wooden boat builder. My sister was up for the weekend excursion, and I knew that with her would come chocolate and great breakfasts, as well as her unfailing ridiculous and nonsensical behaviour that would keep me laughing, if no one else. I was thrilled when my friend Colin offered to help, giving up his coveted 1 day-off every 2 weeks from sailing the Bluenose II. Colin Duann is also a very talented artist in the field of film and photography. I'm grateful for the record of memories he created with our cameras on that trip, providing me with photos and footage of the 'early days' which I might not have made the effort to record on my own (please treat yourself to his Into the Mystic Bluenose film on Youtube, under 'whoneedsahandle'). Lastly, a visiting boat builder at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic was looking to increase his sailing experience on wooden boats, rather than just assembling them. I happily agreed, thinking if I encountered any sort of major leak, Wyatt would be just the man to have aboard.

As I was saying, we motored out of Halifax Harbor, and it appeared the fog would continue retreating from coast. It didn’t take Katie long to notice that the co-ordinates on my archaic handheld GPS hadn’t changed since we left the dock. Not knowing how to reset it, it became useless to me. That’s alright, I thought. I could finally put to the test everything I had learned over the years on the various ships I worked on. It’s different though when it’s your own boat and you feel the lives of your crew are in your hands. Sometimes I long for those days of working on other peoples boats, where the ultimate responsibility and worry belonged to someone else. Through all the learning that took place on other ships, I always knew that the officer of the watch had that ultimately responsibility, and they were double-checking every plot you made on the chart. Now, that was up to me. Without a GPS, I was relying solely on my compass and paper charts, taking sights of 3 known points of land and plotting our position as where the 3 lines coincided. I was pleased with myself as we progressed, and I seemed to get more and more accurate (a self-check is how small the resulting triangle is that’s formed by the 3 lines. If your third line falls directly over the ‘X’ of the first 2, then you have a very accurate position).

It was about 1PM when we spotted the famous Nova Scotia landmark, Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse. It is a very distinct sight, one that every Nova Scotian is very familiar with, as it is represented on everything from place mats to Christmas ornaments, and is a popular destination for Sunday drives any time of year. It is unmistakable to any native to Nova Scotia.

Most Maritimers know the expression, ‘If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute…’ and not that any of us were complaining, but moments after taking a final sight of Peggy’s Cove, mist and fog began to roll in, and visibility quickly diminished to a varying ½ to 1 nautical mile. Now I wished I had that GPS. I was left with the most basic of navigational techniques, dead reckoning. For the next 10 hrs we would try our best to keep on our compass course, while watching how fast the water passed the hull so we could make a guess at our speed through the water.

I went below to take another look at where we were, and I gave Colin a new compass course to account for the shift in the wind direction that accompanied the fog. The wind had increased, and we were finally able to sail. That was reassuring, because without radar, it’s hard to know if you’re about to hit another boat in the fog if you can’t have some sort of audio clues, which the sound of the engine can disguise. If another boat on a collision course with you is also under sail, without radar or foghorn, well, we don’t really like to talk about that.

At some point that afternoon, I decided to change our destination to Lunenburg. I had sailed in and out of there many times on other boats, like the Bluenose II and Highlander Sea, and it had a well marked harbor and channel. Foghorns and bell-buoys would be there to guide us in, though I really was banking on the fog lifting well before. Second Peninsula was an obscure little bay to me at the time, with small day-markers that weren’t lit, let alone fitted with any kind of sound signals. I had never been there before, and I didn’t want my first time to be a midnight arrival in the fog.

As the hours passed, I made educated guesses every 15 minutes as to where I thought we were. At around 4PM, visibility temporarily improved to about 2 ½ miles and I was sure I should be able to see either Big Duck or Little Duck Island off our starboard side. Instead, Colin spotted a red and green bell buoy. That was totally unexpected; according to my charts, there were no such buoys for miles in any direction of my assumed position. I asked him to sail closer so we could read its identifying numbers. Disbelief soon followed, as we realized we were at the approaches of Shag Harbor. We hadn’t even made it to Peggy’s Cove yet (a sight unmistakable to every Nova Scotian, unless your name is Laura!). Then what was that vision of the lighthouse on the rocks that had fooled all of us? (sorry, in all fairness, Katie and Wyatt weren’t fooled, they were too seasick and hiding out down below out of the cold wind and rain to notice much of the scenery). Turns out we had spotted Betty’s Island. I won’t make that mistake again, was all I could tell myself. The fog closed in around us once more. The southeasterly swells were increasing and the ride was becoming less comfortable. We were many many miles from where I wanted to be, and darkness wouldn’t be long coming.

I took a deep breath, tried not to let my confidence take too hard of a knock, and I recalculated the rest of our course based on our new position, hoping that this time it was right! I came to a decision, and told Colin the plan. We would sail a northwesterly course for ‘X’ amount of time, then we would have to gybe, and sail a southwesterly course for another hour, and if visibility remained what it was, Cross Island, at the mouth of Lunenburg Bay, would magically appear out of the fog. I couldn’t believe my luck when, plus or minus 15 minutes, Cross Island lay before us. It was 10pm, and our final course change to aim for the inner harbor had us on a beautifully calm run dead down wind. The remainder of the fog lifted in time with our sighs of relief. We were going to make last call at the Knot Pub!

We got an early start Saturday, under blue skies and gentle breezes, and backtracked to Second Peninsula, approached the beach and anchored amongst the multitude of other wooden boats. The launching was a moving sight to behold, a classic boat with a renewed soul, being given a second chance at life. That day, I hoped Sjan would be reminded of good memories of Terry and the time they spent together on Rissa, and take comfort in the fact that, in a sense, a very big part of him still lived on.