Re: good sailing stories.
Here is a sample of my own sailing story posted at the dingy dock.<br /><br />At anchor, Poquoson River VA. 19 July 2003 <br /><br />This is a superb spot! It's well protected, close enough by bicycle <br />to town with its library and grocery store. The nights are cool here <br />and only one mosquito has tried to bite me since my arrival several <br />days ago. I've been looking for a place to do maintenance on the boat <br />and this is it. The Chesapeake Bay turns out to be the ideal place <br />for it. <br /><br />Unlike most of Florida, the people here are exceedingly nice, <br />welcoming people. I've had 6 people come by the boat, welcome me to <br />the area, offers of rides into town and the like. In many places in <br />Florida there are restrictions on how long you can stay and some <br />places where live aboard boaters are not welcome at all. <br /><br />Treated like gypsies, we take up the gypsy's solution; keep moving. <br /><br />Speaking of moving
I put 12 miles on the bicycle today making a run <br />to walmart. It's not like Sebastian where I could simply walk three <br />blocks and be there, and usually lazily drive those! So the pounds of <br />springtime walmart midnight Ben and Jerry's ice cream runs are being <br />ridden off in long bike ride walmart runs this summer. I make about <br />13 miles per hour on flat terrain. Not bad when you think that it's <br />about half the speed of a bike racer sprinting hard. Nevertheless, <br />I'll not be wearing the yellow jersey anytime soon. <br /><br />About the maintenance and upgrades? I've been up the mizzenmast three <br />times yesterday, hoisting myself up hand over hand, to install a VHF <br />radio antenna. The wire is run at least, but today being Sunday, <br />there was just too much pleasure boat traffic (and attending wakes) <br />for me to risk the climb. On one trip up, the tale end of the line <br />fouled while I was working at the masthead, with no way to pay it <br />back out to descend (oh merde). This is the nautical equivalent of <br />painting yourself into a corner. It took me several nervous minutes <br />of whipping the line around, and even swaying back and forth to make <br />the boat rock a little, to get it free at last; free at last, I was <br />able to descend to the deck, and modify my game plan. <br /><br />I would also like to install the radar, which is brand new still from <br />Pensacola, never installed. Where I'm going there could be fog. I <br />will change the transmission over to the one with the right gear <br />ratio, install a salt water wash down pump, repair the stern light <br />that went out the night before I arrived here and try to get a grip <br />on the organization of all this stuff (the struggle of my life). <br /><br />A boat is a constant maintenance item friends. It's not all the life <br />of Riley out here. And if you wait until your boat is perfect before <br />you set sail
you will never set sail. <br /><br />I'll wait out a cold front that will move thru this week. Continue <br />work on the boat and just continue enjoying this area. Looks like <br />Debrae will bring me charts! J <br /><br />Out of reading material. I bought two jewels for .50 each from the <br />libraries sale rack (Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt and The Sea Came <br />in at Midnight by Steve Erickson). I had absolutely consumed Tom <br />Robbins' new novel, "Villa Incognito". I most relate to Major <br />Stubblefield, who goes on a tirade about the false advertising of so <br />called "Vine Ripe Tomatoes" (which should be "vine ripened tomatoes" <br />anyway -- a grammatical correction pointed out by the good major in <br />the book, and by my friend Bart in real life) and espouses american <br />blind consumerism as a signal of all that's gone wrong here. Well
<br />you have to read it in context I guess. It's a sentiment, which <br />resonates so well with me. Also I was very flattered to see this <br />particular example, since it is an example I've used my own self, on <br />a rant of the same subject in The Tale of the Creaky Cart. Great <br />minds, etc
I've also completed Thomas Pynchon's novel, "Gravities <br />Rainbow". Woof! That's a hard read for a guy with my attention span <br />(about the width of a gnat's *** ). I found out that the novel <br />actually won a Pulitzer prize which was overthrown by the overseeing <br />committee who deemed it "obscene and unreadable". Hmmm, obscene <br />maybe
heh heh. <br /><br />I'll also try to take in a movie. "Pirates of the Caribbean" <br />naturally, and with the theater located in Hampton, that's about a 20 <br />mile round trip on the bike. <br /><br />So where were we
oh yes
leaving Rum Cay, AKA lobster town. <br /><br />We left early in the morning for Long Island again, but this time the <br />east coast of Long Island and into Clarence Town. This time it was a <br />solid days sail. Having scouted a really good path out of our little <br />hole in the wall anchorage we managed to escape without hitting any <br />coral heads. <br /><br />Beginning from the north side of the island as we were, we had a nice <br />reach around the east end of the island, which gave us a just barely <br />sailable close-hulled run down to Clarence Town. Once again we had as <br />many approaches to the harbor as we had guidebooks on board, serving <br />to confuse us worse than if we had just been left to find our own way <br />in. <br /><br />Let me say here that Debrae and I have different ways of looking at <br />things and tackling problems also, which leads to some interesting <br />dynamics at times of stress. Fortunately this almost never leads to <br />bad feelings. Even when it does, they are not long lived, and our <br />friendship has survived. In our community of cruisers there is a <br />tendency to attribute a great deal of mojo to passage making -- the <br />longer the passage the greater the mojo, right up to <br />circumnavigation. However
in my opinion, making landfalls is where <br />the real danger and adventure lies in cruising. Many are the boats <br />that successfully navigate the thousand plus miles between Hawaii and <br />Palmyra only to make an all too literal "landfall" on the reef in <br />Palmyra. Having made dozens of successful landfalls together (many of <br />them with no auxiliary motor), I think it's a strong testimonial to <br />our partnership aboard. <br /><br />A good bit of the situational friction arises from our different ways <br />of dealing with visual information. For instance, having read the <br />guidebooks and charts for the entrance to Clarence Town, I arranged <br />the couple of sketch charts I thought most useful to me, had the <br />binoculars close by and was ready for Debrae with her superior water <br />reading abilities, to take up "rock patrol" on the bow. <br /><br />Before leaving for the bow Debrae reached down and flipped one of the <br />sketch charts right side up. I had had it upside down, thus orienting <br />it to the direction we were going (mostly south). What she couldn't <br />fathom is that I had the other chart book right side up. To me, this <br />was the most useful arrangement and it served me well. To her sense <br />of orderliness it was an affront. When I compared my course, as <br />recorded on the GPS, with the course I had intended, I found that I <br />had steered it exactly. When we returned here on our way to the <br />Abacos, Debrae was at the helm, and when I looked at her course <br />steered afterwards, I found that it was equally good, but with <br />rounded off corners. Where I had zig zagged, she had dispensed with <br />that, and just steered a soft, safe course into the harbor. <br /><br />Clarence Town is one of those post card places that are almost too <br />picturesque to exist. It's also one of the few places where, some old <br />Europe influence in architecture can be seen in the Bahamas, two big <br />churches; one Anglican and one Catholic, built by the same man. I <br />should say that they were built under the guidance of the same man
<br />one Father Jerome, the second church built after his conversion. <br /><br />The architecture that interested me most was the grocery store and <br />the gas station. We availed ourselves of those the next day. <br />Unfortunately there was no coffee ("soon come mon") and I was <br />beginning to get nervous, in a way that the addict will when supplies <br />begin to run low. We also bought some water from the marina that was <br />not good to drink but ok for washing. For drinking water we bought 10 <br />gallons for 8 dollars from the grocery store, transferring from big <br />clear water-cooler jugs, to our battered jerry jugs. <br /><br />A walk thru the village was pleasant. There was a heard of goats <br />roaming around free on the hilly roads leading up to the two <br />churches. There was a tidal lake, with a stream leading to the bay, <br />populated by tropical fish; hermit crabs patrolled the shores. I sat <br />on a coral stone bridge, watching these fish and crabs and sipping a <br />cold goombay punch. It was a pleasant place for thinking, but frankly <br />I was missing the wild trails and cliffs of Conception, where we <br />didn't (thank goodness). <br /><br />The reef there was nice at slack tide but had a real rip to it when <br />the current was running. I shot us a nice little schoolmaster snapper <br />for dinner that was just big enough for the two of us. Nice break <br />from all that lobster. Debrae followed a sea turtle around for a long <br />time while I was hunting and we kept crossing paths. There was this <br />incredible wall of elk horn coral as well as huge patches of fire <br />coral. <br /><br />The locally grown cabbage and the bananas that Debrae bought for me <br />(she hates bananas) at the coop market were so fine. <br /><br />I called Debrae up on deck to watch the big orange sun going down <br />over the town of the two churches. Sipping tea in the cockpit, how <br />civilized. <br /><br />You thought I was making these shorter with that last one
ha! <br /><br />Love <br /><br />George