Waiting for Weather

Posted: September 28, 4:04 pm | (permalink) | (3 comments)

We didn’t have a going-away party, so not our style, but all week friends have been dropping by, to share a beer or a joke or a little gift. Janet brought a jar of dried hot peppers from her garden, Dave gave us a crash course in a new navigation app, Mike - who started out as our canvas maker but then became a friend - dipped into his endless font of stories and had us in (excuse the pun) stitches one evening. Local artist and dock-neighbor Kristine Kowalski had us visit her studio at Maryland Hall and graced us with a painting to remember her by, all ocean blues and fresh greens inspired by her visit to the Virgin Islands.

But now, the goodbyes have all been said, the fuel and water topped up. The last load of laundry is done, the docklines are looped and ready for a quick departure. And here we sit, waiting for weather. We can’t control the weather along the journey, but we can pick the weather we start in. And these recent days have been anything but inspiring. Rain, and what wind there is, is from the wrong direction. So, we wait. Those who know me, know that I don’t do ‘patient’ very well. (Who am I kidding? Those who know me, know that I absolutely STINK at ‘patient.’)

I really fear becoming one of those people at the dock, the ones who are perennially just about to leave, but come up with one excuse after another, one more little thing to do first, and then, just never go. But the forecast calls for clear, cool, and good sailing winds out of the north to push us south. We really ARE just about to leave …

Stocking Up

Posted: September 26, 11:56 am | (permalink) | (1 comments)

[photo: "Now where am I gonna put all this stuff?"]

Seems like every departure has one of these “provisioning up” pictures, so here’s mine. I have to rein in my culinary tendencies, though; I can spend $200 in the grocery store and not buy any, you know, food. I will come home with mango chutney and panko bread crumbs and a new herb blend and five kinds of sauces. But basics? Pasta or salmon or bread or green beans or cheese ... or sometimes even ramen noodles? Maybe, maybe not!

When we headed for the Bahamas two years ago, we had to figure out what to buy since we were not planning on seeing a grocery store for 6 months. I saved grocery lists for months to establish our use patterns for pantry items. After that, it was relatively straightforward to plan that we generally have pasta about once a week and get three meals from a 1-pound box, and do the math for 24 weeks (8 boxes). Then there were the oddball items. How long does a tube of toothpaste last your family? (Write the date you opened it on the end in magic marker, and see!) But provisioning for this trip? Easy-peasy! We just loaded up on those things we perhaps couldn’t find in some funky little town, or on things that would be heavy or awkward to carry in backpack or dinghy. For the rest, they do have grocery stores in Florida, I’m told.

= = = =

Like Life Afloat on Facebook! (If all goes well, we leave this week. Yikes.)

-Jaye Lunsford

Goin’ Where the Weather Suits My Clothes

Goin’ Where the Weather Suits My Clothes

(Originally posted in the Annapolis Capital: September 24, 10:00 am | (permalink) | (2 comments)

They call them “sunflowers” because they turn their faces toward the sun, right? So why do they call us “snowbirds?” We don’t seek the snow, we try to get away from winter. So they should call us “sunbirds” don’t you think? A few weeks ago my friend RoseAnn posted her Facebook status: “We went away for the weekend and while we were gone it was like someone flipped the switch from summer to fall.” And that seasonal switch also activated something in our own minds – it’s time for these two sunbirds to start thinking about sailing to Florida for a few months.
I’m an engineer. I’m also the queen of checklists, and just now we’re overwhelmed with details. Repair the bilge pump and bring the spare anchor aboard. Forward our mail and turn off the land line phone. Figure out where to leave the car, and restitch the sail cover. Stock up on our favorite foods and spare parts for the diesel. And on and on and on. I don’t just have a do-list; I have a master list of all the do-lists! I built a list of boat-related things we had to get ready, and another one for the business of our lives. I once read somewhere that running an ordinary life in the 21st century took as much paperwork as running a small business in the 1960s, and after building list #2 I totally believe it. List #3 was the really tough one, though – that was the “social” list.
Annapolis really has got its hooks into me, and I feel a tearing away, even though I’m only leaving temporarily. Every place I go, I have this dialog in my head that says, “Appreciate this … it’ll be the last time you get to ___.” The blank could be filled in with anything from “drink one of those insane margaritas at Mexican Café;” or “work out at Fitness Forum;” or even something as mundane as “go to the grocery store and know which aisle the mustard is in.” Most of all, though, it’s about the people. I’ve written before about our incredible boat community and how wonderful it feels to be a part of it. We make boat friends fast – faster than we generally could on land. There’s the instant connection because you have a common interest and face common challenges. The friendships grow close fast too, because you both know that it’s likely that your paths will diverge as you continue on your travels. And by the time we expect to return next spring, one friend will have retired and moved to Texas, another will have sold their boat and gone off to grad school in California. There’s always email, but email friends can’t come over and haul you up the mast, bring a pot of soup when you’re feeling sick, or pick you up at the airport. At the same time, we head off to a watery horizon knowing its likely we’ll meet new folks to have adventures with and the childhood rhyme runs through my head “Make new friends but keep the old/One is silver and the other gold.”

May You Live In Interesting Times

Posted: September 13, 8:09 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the old Chinese curse. Of course, the times that are most interesting to historians may not be the most tranquil or pleasant to the ordinary people living through them. Similarly, the trips that make the best stories to tell in the bar are not the uneventful ones. So it was with our weekend least weekend. Plans were for dinner at the waterfront home of good friends Steve and Jane, followed by a raft-up next night on another part of the river with different friends, an easy three hour trip to the Magothy River from Annapolis. (Three-hour tour? Now I’ve got the Gilligan’s Island theme song running through my head.)

It was rainy and no wind when we left on Friday afternoon, and although the predictions were for clearing skies, we hadn’t seen the clearing yet. But the last several times we’d promised Steve and Jane that we’d come by boat, we’d gotten lazy at the last minute and come by car instead, and this time we were determined to follow through. So we donned our foul-weather gear and headed out – little knowing that the chance of rain was going to be the least of our concerns before the trip was through.

The trip passed without incident until we were north of the Bay Bridge, just the flat gray sky and the flat gray water. In fact, it was somewhat easier than normal because the water levels were up due to flood releases from the Conowingo Dam upstream. The rain was still holding off although it looked ominous up ahead. I picked up the phone to look at weather radar one more time and saw that we had gotten a phone call from friend Chris about the raft-up Saturday night. Unable to hear well over the sound of the engine, I asked Dan to take the helm while I took the phone below to return Chris’ call from the relative quiet of the v-berth, but when I went below … “Dan! We’ve got water!” The forward part of the cabin floor was awash, and the access plates at the base of the mast were floating gently back and forth.

We have three bilge pumps – the small electric “everyday” pump, a manual fallback pump that you can crank by hand even if all power fails, and a gigantic automatic “emergency” pump. Thought #1 – there’s got to be a BIG hole if the emergency pump can’t keep up with this! But we hadn’t hit anything, I was sure of that. We were later to learn that the big pump had never activated. That was both good news and bad news. The good news is we would never have noticed the problem if the big pump had worked. The bad news was, well, the big pump didn’t work when we needed it!

We traded places, me at the helm and Dan below trying to find the source of the leak. Me, I started steering for the shallows. If worse came to worst, I was going to find some water less than 5 feet deep. Hey, a boat that’s aground can’t sink, right? Meanwhile, Dan went through methodically shutting off seacocks to see if he could find the leak. N.b. for other boaters: You know, when you’re sitting in a public bathroom stall, your eye is drawn to any printed matter, whether its graffiti or advertising or [whatever?] We figured, if you’re going to read something, and read it over and over again until you’ve inadvertently memorized it, might as well memorize something useful. So, we posted in our bathroom (head) a floor plan of our boat showing where each of the seacocks is, the locations of the fire extinguishers, and other critical emergency info. This came in useful, when Dan reported that he had shut off all the seacocks he could remember and the water was still coming in. He checked the chart to make sure he hadn’t left anything out and indeed, he had not forgotten any of them. So we were left with an even greater mystery!

We determined that the bilge pumps were able to keep up with the leak, so we continued on, slowly. I had a lesson in the relativity of time: a few minutes is a very very long time when water’s coming into your boat! At least, I assume it was the relativity of time; the other alternative was that (a) the clock broke when the crisis started; and then (b) it magically fixed itself when Dan looked up at me from his position on the floor under the main salon table, big grin on his face and hands dripping black bilge gunk like the creature rising from the lagoon, and said, “Hey, I know where the water’s coming from!” Turned out that a check valve in the bilge pump was stuck in the open position, letting water flow in. The outlet from this pump is normally above water when we’re at rest. But underway, the bow wave is just enough to submerge it and, the broken valve allowed that water to flow in. Time started once again passing at its normal rate as soon as Dan said he understood the problem, and we continued on our route. An hour later we were tied up at Steve and Jane’s dock, the offending valve was removed and awaiting repair in the morning, and we walked up the hill to their house and an excellent dinner and lots of laughter and catching up. If we laughed a little more shrilly and drank a little more than we might otherwise have after our “interesting” afternoon (and didn’t need to drive anywhere), can you really blame us?

Next morning Dan and Steve worked on the valve while Jane and I chatted and compared future plans (more on that in another post) and shortly the valve was declared serviceable again, although it would be replaced when we returned to Annapolis. We had a pleasant one-hour journey across the very protected waters to the other end of the Magothy where we’d meet the other boats for the Saturday raft-up. The first part of the trip, we took turns checking the bilge at three-minute intervals, each of us gleefully reporting to the other that it continued to be dry.

We arrived at the (gorgeous) raft-up spot at the same time as friend Dave was arriving on his boat and determined that although we were smaller, we were also heavier and with a bigger anchor, so we got the honor of being the anchor boat. We would be the only ones in the raft-up to set our anchor; the other boats would tie onto us. I think of this as an honor because by doing so, they are completely trusting to our anchoring skills and judgment to keep all of us safe from dragging overnight. It also put us in the center of the action for the evening’s socializing.

And socialize we did! There were a total of four boats, and the cockpit table barely had room for all the delicious food that appeared from the various galleys. The conversation was even better than the food! It covered the usual boating chatter, anchorages and storms we had known, nautical lore and gadgets we coveted; and it also covered some unique stories of travel and restaurants and congressmen and science and music and history and aviation – an amazing range.

The trip back was also cursed by being “interesting times.” Way upstream at Conowingo Dam, all the water from the floods in NY and PA was being allowed to pass down the Susquehanna to us here in the Chesapeake. The water was thick and brown with sediment, and with the water came flood debris. Dan stood on the bow to better see the flotsam, and directed me with hand signals to pick a zigzag path through the trash. We passed floating propane tanks, a portapotty, plastic trash and flowerpots and two-by-fours and five-gallon buckets, and an incredible number of logs and patches of grass. Sobering to realize that these are peoples’ homes and livelihoods that we were dodging. The three hours that it took us to return home were in their own way almost as harrowing as the outbound trip had been. Finally, though, we returned safely to our calm, sunny slip, hoping for a somewhat less “interesting” … or even downright boring … next few days.

[photos: (1) Birds finding a new resting spot on a large log in the debris. Note the unusual brown color of the water. (2) This is not the shallows, just a large patch of grass floating just south of the Bay Bridge. (3) Logs in the water near Baltimore Light. All photos by Chris Rizzo. (4) The U.S. Geological Survey measured the river discharge just below the dam (blue line). The vertical 'steps' show the opening of the flood gates, the small triangles at the bottom show the normal discharge for those days. The peak flow was almost 800,000 cubic feet per second, in a more normal year it would be around 10,000.]

Galley Musings

Posted: September 9, 12:24 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

[the galley aboard our boat]

Living on a boat inspired Ken and Nadia to a career change, as I wrote about in a previous post. Thinking a little more about their transformation made me reflect on our own. Living in a small space makes you really question, and explore, the difference between what you truly need to live a good life and what you think you need. Dan used to own a kitchen design/remodel business. In fact, that’s how he got into sailing. Not obvious, you say?

When we lived in Colorado and had the kitchen business, one of my colleagues asked if we could replace the laminate on the galley countertop of their boat, a small Catalina 24 that they sailed on summer weekends on a nearby lake. This was a small, easy job – the countertop was so small that instead of having to go to the jobsite, the colleague just took the countertop piece off and delivered it to the shop in the trunk of his car.

A few days later we returned the finished piece, and the colleague said, “Cool, thanks, what do I owe you?” Dan replied, “Well, it was such a small job, I’m almost embarrassed to bill you for it. Tell you what; this represented about 3 hours of my work. Why don’t you take me sailing on your boat for 3 hours one afternoon?”

He was totally, utterly hooked from that moment on. I like to call it the most expensive kitchen project we ever undertook.

Anyway, back to my original thought. As a certified kitchen designer, there are guidelines he tried to follow when planning rooms for clients. These guidelines suggest how much space you need for each appliance, for adjacent workspaces, and for storage. Not to minimize the work of the NKBA (National Kitchen & Bath Association), their suggestions came out of extensive research into the way Americans live, into ergonomics, and into fire and building safety codes. I find it ironic just how much we had to turn those rules on their heads when we moved aboard, though. See that rule #3 that says that the distance for each leg of the work triangle in the ideal kitchen should be more than 4 feet to less than 9 feet? Hah! In our galley, each leg of the work triangle measures just two feet. And that rule #27 about storage? It says you should have a total of 360 inches of drawer fronts in a small kitchen? We have not 360 inches, not 300 inches, but just 30 inches – two small drawers. And the guideline also says you should have 300 inches of wall cabinet shelving? We have a single-shelf 35 inch dish cabinet above the sink, and another between the range and the fridge. That’s all. Oh, okay, I managed to sneak a few extra inches for chef’s knife storage in the back of the access panel for the navigation instruments, so that’s a bonus. But then again, where a normal kitchen would have a microwave, we have the VHF marine radio. Or rule #13 about dishwasher placement? (holds up both hands and wiggles fingers – this is my dishwasher!)

Of course, guidelines that make sense on land won’t work on a sailboat, nor should they. Sailboat kitchens (a.k.a. galleys) move; land kitchens don’t, last month’s earthquake notwithstanding. Those big roomy distances between appliances that make a land kitchen a spacious and comfortable workspace would be dangerous in a seaway. When I see open space I think, wow, nothing to break your fall as you’re hurled from one side of the boat to the other. In our little galley, by contrast, it’s very reassuring to snuggle into that little two-foot space and lean against the sink while cooking on the range.

The most profound way that the whole kitchen/galley design rumination has turned my perceptions on their head, though, is the relationship of people to their world. Everything in a well-designed land kitchen is done for maximum ease and efficiency of movement for the cook. The kitchen wraps around the user in an utterly comfortable ergonomic way. Is this, perhaps, a metaphor for modern times, that we create our environment, and control and modify the world for the comfort of the human? Do humans really need that much pampering? For the land kitchen, they talk about the most convenient storage and work zone, at a height between the knees and the shoulders. On our boat, we have to bend and twist and flex to get things. The world doesn’t revolve around the human, the humans have to adapt to it, not the other way ‘round. It’s a compromise and a partnership between comfort and (marine) functionality. Just another way that life afloat keeps you humble!

Small Home Living ... Afloat

Posted: September 6, 10:05 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

One Saturday afternoon last month found us at the Gangplank Tour of Boat Homes as I described in an earlier post along with 300 other people for the sold-out event. I was looking for inspiration in ideas that other liveaboards had incorporated into their boats that I could incorporate into our own; but mostly, I was looking at people. I thought the folks at Gangplank had an interesting idea in trying to educate others into their way of life, now I was curious about how it would be received. Of the people who attended, you could see some folks just got it, and were thinking yeah, I could live like this. You could see others just didn’t get it at all, and couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live in such a small and seemingly precarious space. David and Paulette Craig came from Bowie just out of curiosity and fell into the former group. I met them aboard the Sara K, a 1972 Trojan 34-foot houseboat owned by Kenneth Gill and Nadia Ezzelarab-Gill. The Craigs commented that they were surprised that the Sara K was so bright and airy, expecting boats to be cramped and dark. They joked that after the tour, they were ready to go home and start shopping. But although I had come with expectations of people-watching the other attendees, the most fascinating story I heard that day was that of the hostess, Nadia, herself. Ken was overseas during the tour, but we later had a wonderful email exchange.

[Nadia Ezzelarab-Gill at her desk aboard the Sara K]
One day Nadia, a lawyer, decided she had just spent far too many hours in windowless conference rooms full of other attorneys. She wanted to live somewhere with light and connection to the environment. She was perusing Craigslist when “something lit up in my heart and my head,” she said. She hadn’t really known what she was looking for, but she hadn’t expected to find a boat! She had never even been in a houseboat before, but it instantly felt right. That same evening, she introduced the idea of living on a houseboat to her husband Ken, and a week or so later she asked him, “Do you mind if I start selling and giving away the furniture?” The furniture they had was good quality, but wouldn’t be needed anymore – they were moving aboard. When Nadia came up with this crazy idea of living on a boat, Ken did not find it so crazy at all. “This would be an ideal chance for us to create ourliving space together,” he said. “It also satisfied my need to be a bit ‘alternative.’"

[Sara K interior - upper level - entry and home office. Photo provided by Nadia Ezzelarab-Gill.]

[Sara K interior - main level - kitchen and living. A lower level contains the sleeping area. Photo provided by Nadia Ezzelarab-Gill.]
They faced some initial challenges. They moved aboard in the middle of winter, February 15. Considering that Ken had spent 39 years in Copenhagen, and Nadia had lived in Sweden and Denmark, it seemed hard to imagine that they would complain about the cold in a Washington, DC winter. But Ken reminisced, “Our first night on the boat was one of the coldest I have ever spent! We'd spent the whole day moving and were totally whacked out so we just cleared a space in the saloon, piled all the mattresses and blankets we had on the floor and passed out fully dressed with our winter coats on and just our noses sticking out. We woke the next morning to the sight of a whole army of shivery looking seagulls marching past at eye level on the very solid looking ice! I must admit that I did have a second thought or two [about what they had gotten themselves into] then, but hey! I'd never experienced anything like this before in my life and it's amazing how a steaming cup of coffee can make even the stiffest seagull look welcoming.”
Living on a boat for a while can really make you reevaluate your perceptions of what you “need” to have a good life. After just 6 months aboard, they did more than just adapt to life afloat. The experience of living in this efficient but not cramped space inspired Nadia to consider a dramatic career change from law to designing / building very small houses. She and Ken are on the leading edge of a growing trend; almost every architectural magazine and website I’ve seen recently includes one or two very small dwellings along with the very large and elaborate ones. Reasons people give for their interest in very small houses range from spiritual/religious yearnings for simplicity, to concern for the environment and desire to minimize their environmental footprint, to finances.
Ken, a retired elementary school teacher, brings some construction skills to the planned venture – among other credentials, he’s a qualified woodwork/metalwork teacher in Denmark and says he has always loved doing things with his hands. He moved about 10 times and has lived in and owned both houses and apartments. Most of them he has renovated or improved – “not always in strict accordance to the building codes!” he admits. He has also worked as an instructor/demonstrator and volunteer at a historical/archeological research center at Lejre in Denmark, where he helped with some reconstructions of typical farm cottages from about 1850. But his involvement with the small house design idea is also philosophical. “It is very important for me to be able to physically form my living space with my own hands - to make it as I want it to be so that it becomes part of me and I of it,” he says.
Nadia loves interior decorating, designing rooms and dwellings, and creating gardens. She has found her legal career satisfying, but she realized that she was not willing to do it for another twenty or more years. “The reason we have decided to primarily design small homes is that we want to assist people in having satisfying lives, in homes that they can help design (perhaps even build), in ways that will make them love to be there, yet that are priced so that they can pay off their mortgages in 6-7 years. We want to assist people in getting out of the debt cycle, and in enjoying life at a more natural level.”

[kitchen table on the Sara K. Photo by Kenneth Gill.]
In addition to the boat, they have a place in the Appalachians a few hours’ drive west of DC, in a forest half way up a mountain ridge looking east towards the Blue Ridge. Ken has a workshop downstairs and Nadia is creating a garden with her bare hands up the mountain side Their need to be a little bit alternative shows up there too. “We sleep out on the screened balcony among the tree tops,” he says.
When asked about future plans, neither of them can imagine leaving the boat - having the water and the mountain is a perfect combination, they say, and a tremendous asset in developing their small-home visions. Nadia says they get plenty of practice at smaller living, and dual use of things on the boat. “We're going to try out some of our small house designs in the back yard [of the mountain home] and live out our small dwelling dreams on D dock [at Gangplank Marina],” adds Ken.

[The Sara K in her slip at Gangplank's D-dock, and a visitor aboard! Photos by Kenneth Gill.]

Irene. Wind Machine. Queen of Mean.

Posted: August 29, 1:17 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

[photo: satellite view of Irene on her way towards us; courtesy U.S. Navy]

Now, it’s calm and dry and sunny – as though Irene has used up our quota of wind and rain for the entire week (month?) in one single tantrum. Now, it’s laughing with neighbors and surveying the relative lack of damage to our boats. Now, it’s sitting in the cockpit with a cup of coffee. But only yesterday … Being on a boat in a hurricane has different worries of course than being on land for a hurricane. We’re not worried about power; we’re used to making our own – it’s not like you can run an extension cord out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Or water; we topped up before the storm and that supply generally lasts us 3 weeks, more if we’re in careful-conservation mode. Or flooding; hey, we’re a boat after all, we’ll just float above it. Or even falling tree limbs; no trees out here. But remember I just recently posted about how being on a boat lets you be more in touch with nature, with the feel of the wind and the waves? Sometimes, we’re rather more in touch than we want!

The day Saturday started with mild winds generally building as people completed their last-minute preparations. Winds circle the eye of a hurricane counterclockwise, and the eye was predicted to pass east of us. That meant the winds would come from the northeast, then north, then northwest – pushing water out of the Bay rather than into the Bay as Isabel did in 2003. So the early, and strongest winds were on our beam. As each gust hit the boat tilted to port. Dishes shifted in lockers, and items fell from the shelf above the v-berth. We don’t heel any more than that when we’re underway sailing. And of course the wind. We have no anemometer (wind speed indicator) but we could get a pretty good feel by the sound and the feel -- the stronger the gust, the higher the volume and pitch. I began to distinguish between the sounds of moderate gusts, 30s and 40s, that made the rigging whistle, and the stronger ones, 50s and 60s, that were more of a scream. Large drops of rain were driven sideways, rattling on our windows and deck. Irene was being one noisy storm! The larger gusts set the mast to vibrating, and I kept waiting for the sickening sound of a dockline breaking. Luckily didn’t happen – of course it helped that we had 12 of them, and many were a bigger, stronger size than we use for everyday tie-up. The northeast winds continued for a long time, a bit longer than I had expected, and I began to worry. This could indicate that the eye of the storm was going to pass closer to the west – and closer to us (hence stronger winds) than expected. But finally, as the night wore on, and we wore out, the wind shifted more north. This put it on our bow, so even though it was just about as strong – and noisy – it was a bit more comfortable because we didn’t heel over as much.

We periodically left our little bubble of light and warmth and relative calm to go topside and check on the condition of dock lines that were working overtime, checking for chafe (rubbing and wear) and adjusting accordingly. It only took about 10 seconds out in the weather to be completely drenched. The wind and pelting rain were strong enough that it was almost hard to breathe when facing into it; in a worse storm than this one, we even wore a snorkel and mask to be able to see and breathe.

I’m intrigued by the various ways my liveaboard friends spent their time during the storm. Cindy scrubbed and cleaned. Dave cooked elegant gourmet meals for one. I obsessively checked storm tracks, and organized recipes. Dan polished off a 700+ page Tom Clancy novel. Here’s my theory: when it’s dark and every screaming wind gust tips the boat sideways and reminds you that there’s only a fiberglass eggshell between you and the storm’s fury, you do anything you can to create a feeling of control, of normalcy, in your little floating world.

Help me test my theory: go to Life Afloat on Facebook, or the comments section here, and post how you spent the storm. BTW, what’s with hurricanes starting with the ninth letter of the alphabet and Annapolis? We had Isabel in 2003, and the remnants of Ivan in 2004, and now Irene?

Here She Comes!

Posted: August 27, 10:18 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

[photo: satellite view of a typical hurricane. Irene is bigger!]

Our very good friend and sailing mentor in the Caribbean, David Kummerle, once told us that it takes 4 days to have a hurricane on a boat if all goes well – a day to get ready, a day to have the storm, a day to rest, and then a day to put the boat back together. And that’s if there’s no boat damage. We learned the truth of that in two previous hurricanes, Lenny in the Virgin Islands, and Isabel here in Annapolis. We’re about to test that advice again. Earlier this week we started our pre-prep. That’s my self-justifying description of spending lots of time in internet chats with my sailing buddies, and checking multiple weather sites as soon as they were updated. In addition to the biggies like Weather Underground andAccuweather and NOAA, we like the graphics on Stormpulse.

We ran through our standard list of preparations: take off the sails, dodger and bimini; double up all docklines; secure everything above deck; tie halyards away from the mast. Fuel and water tanks topped up. Then the special tricks that David taught us after surviving half a dozen big hurricanes in the tropics: making sure that our mast wasn’t directly in line with the boat next to us, so that if we started really rocking the masts wouldn’t get tangled with each other. An anchor out in case we had to get off a disintegrating dock. A ditch bag packed with our passports, medications, some cash, and other emergency stuff. Cars moved to high ground and parked away from tree limbs. Most importantly, we laid in a supply of bad movies and good wine, and then declared ourselves as ready as we can get.

The first “gift” from the storm was another reminder of how much the people are the reason I love being part of the boating community. “Can I give you a hand with that?” was the phrase heard most often on the dock, even more often than “What’s the latest forecast?” Helping each other prepare, trading tips, watching after the boats of friends who were trapped out of town … nothing like feeling very small against a common enemy to enhance our sense of togetherness.

[More later, as time in connectivity allow. Stay safe, all]

We interrupt this hurricane prep to bring you … an earthquake???

Posted: August 24, 1:56 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

It had been a day of checking online weather forecasts and email and chatting with friends about how to prepare our boats for the predicted arrival of Hurricane Irene – taking down canvas and doubling up docklines and looking after the boats of friends who were out of town.

I wish I could give you a unique firsthand boaters-eye-view of what it felt like to be aboard when the ground shook, but I wasn’t aboard. I was at Fitness Forum doing my regular Tuesday afternoon physical therapy session with awesome physical therapist and trainer Jen when the building started swaying. At first I assumed it was a heavy truck driving past in the elevated part of the parking lot, but as the shaking continued and got worse, we all clustered in doorframes and room corners until we were told to evacuate (I did get out of doing the last 10 minutes of my workout, though) And, all being the products of 21st century technology, we then all stood around checking our smartphones and telling each other the news: my cousin Cheryl in New York reported an earthquake, as did friends Margo in Massachusetts and Penny in North Carolina – this thing must have been HUGE! It was actually a relief to learn from USGS that it was “only” 5.8 with an epicenter near Richmond. There was a bit of confusion as our car was in the basement garage, but in a short time we were back home aboard the boat at the marina, where all looked just as it had before.

What was it like to be aboard in the marina during the earthquake? I asked Dave German, who lives aboard his CSY 37 “Equinox” a few slips away from us. “I was in the boat, at the nav station when I felt a sharp bump,” he said. “I thought someone may have run into me so I went to the cockpit, looked around and didn't see anything. Boatswain [the dog who lives aboard a neighboring boat along with his owner Ed Menegaux] barked a few times but stopped when he saw me. I waited maybe another minute and saw masts further up back creek rocking back and forth followed by masts closer to Port Annapolis. Next the pilings began to shake maybe 2-3 feet at the top and a series of waves came towards me. It lasted for about 30-40 seconds and then all was quiet again. Except for Boatswain.”

I kinda wish I could have seen that, docks and pilings swaying like palm trees … or then again, maybe not. If I’d seen it I’d probably never again be able to trust my boat to those docks and pilings in a storm – like the one coming, for example. After all the excitement, we topped up our water tanks and took the boat over to fuel up in anticipation of the hurricane, and went to a previously-planned anchor-out overnight in Whitehall Creek. Late in the evening we were rocked by a series of waves like a boat wake, but that had no discernible source, that may have been the aftershock. An invigorating sail back home this morning, and now, back to our regularly-scheduled hurricane prep.

Back Where We Belong

Posted: August 20, 7:22 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

Splash! By Thursday everything that had to be done on land had been done. Thursday evening, the boatyard picked up our boat in the big travelift and we “hung in the slings” overnight. Supporting our boat at different points than the jackstands held us allowed us to paint the sections that were blocked before so that every spot on the hull was protected. It also gave us a tiny taste of motion again, and a different vantage.

Several folks asked about what it was like up there in the slings and whether it was safe? Well, actually, yes. First off, we were only inches above the ground; it’s not like we risked falling from a great height. Secondly, our support was more assured. One way that boats on jackstands can fall during hurricanes is not the wind, it’s that the rain turns the ground soft and mushy and one stand can slide out making the whole thing unbalanced. (Not that it happens often!) But in the slings, as the lift operator Gary pointed out, we had this giant structural frame around us, four steel posts. But the most telling argument to me is that during hurricanes, most of the marina owners we know – who obviously have the choice of anywhere in their marinas to put their own boats – use the slings.

Anyway, after a pleasant night we were back in the water Friday morning, and went for our test ride with mechanic Billy. The bay was pretty and conditions were perfect for sailing <*sigh*> but sailing was not what we were after that time. We motored at various speeds with Billy checking the new installation each time, and each time he pronounced it rock steady.

Later that afternoon we were happily back in our slip and one of our marina friends, who had seen us on the hard working several times during the past week, came sailing past in their boat. “She looks better in the water!” they called out encouragingly. “She feels better in the water, too!” we shot back.