CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHT: BE PREPARED!

CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHT: BE PREPARED!

It’s Friday, May 17, in the evening at Coinjock Marina in “Where the Hell is Coinjock”, North Carolina. Sated by my fried chicken dinner, I’m having a hard time trying to focus so that I can pull out all the high points of our last three days on the waterway. I look across the table at the Admiral and he’s preparing for the bridges tomorrow between Coinjock and Atlantic Yacht Basin. The man is tireless in his preparation. He must be as exhausted as I am. He woke up at 4 a.m., got up at 4:30 a.m., and we left the dock in Belhaven this morning at 5:07 a.m. We crossed some of the shallowest, windiest, most treacherous waters today, namely Albemarle Sound (yikes!). We saw one very new, very expensive yacht run aground ahead of us. It had roared up behind us, and the captain with the highest, squeakiest voice on the waterway asked for a “slow pass”. No problem, said the Admiral, and he said he would slow down as well. Squeaky Captain asked how slow he was going, and he said down to 7.2 miles per hour. Then Squeaky slowed to the same speed and it took about ten minutes for her to get past us. However, once she passed in her shiny new boat, Sea Cat, she roared off ahead, and we thought we wouldn’t be seeing Beaucoup Bucks again. However, shortly after the swing bridge at Alligator River swung open for us, and we headed into Albemarle Sound, we noticed a boat, still, just rocking back and forth in the same place in the water a little bit ahead of us and to our portside. As we approached the location, Squeaky radioed to tell us that she had missed the green marker, and could we point it out. The green marker, a buoy was just ahead and to our starboard. The Admiral transmitted this information to Squeaks, and she said: “Oh, thank you very much.”

We continued on our course, and kept looking back to see if Sea Cat was going to follow us. This particular part of the Sound involves zigging and zagging around a series of red and green markers, if you want to stay in the narrow channel and not run aground. It appeared that Sea Cat had neither zigged nor zagged, but plowed straight ahead – and landed on a shoal. This can do serious damage to your propellers. We expected to hear Sea Cat put out a call for help. But no squeaks came over the radio. We looked back from time to time and Sea Cat was still “sitting” in the same place, rather low in the water. No call for help. No movement. This area is extremely isolated. There is no Towboat US nearby, nor are there very many boaters or land people around. Ever hear of Columbia, North Carolina? It was sort of near there. But Coinjock was 34 miles away. And the Admiral did not know of any place where a large boat could be towed out of the water. Sea Cat never put out a distress signal, and we continued on our way.

Perhaps thirty minutes later, a familiar high-pitched squeaky voice came on the radio: “This is Sea Cat on your stern. I’d like to make a slow pass.” What the ___? Sure enough, we looked back, and Sea Cat was charging through the waters about 20 yards behind us and twenty yards to our portside. The Admiral said: “Sure, come ahead, but could you please move a little closer?” You see, the experienced captains know that a CLOSE slow pass means fewer waves from the wake. A more distant slow pass still creates a wake, and you have to deal with 6 or 7 waves, rather than 1 or 2. Squeaky moved Sea Cat a little closer to us, but seemed tentative about the move. As she passed us, she thanked the Admiral for pointing out the green marker. And then she said: “Can you tell I’m new at this and just learning what to do?” The Admiral chuckled and said it would be a good idea to learn at a somewhat slower speed, and perhaps Sea Cat’s novice captain would then have time to find the markers. Squeaky allowed as how slow might be better, as she roared off again at warp speed. We did not see Sea Cat again. God bless this tyro. She had another person on board, sitting next to her in the flying bridge. He was apparently the teacher. Who knows? Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing either. But imagine flying around at 25 miles an hour on a dangerous sound in a boat worth at least a quarter of a million dollars – a boat that must weigh about 20 tons – and not knowing what you’re doing!

When we started out last June on our own sea adventure, I certainly did not know what I was doing, and the Admiral had experience with smaller boats on known waterways. That’s why we do everything in “Slow Motion.” The Admiral is super careful about studying the charts and putting waypoints into our Garmin navigation system every night before our next leg of the trip. We don’t travel when there is a likelihood of thunder and lightning or when high winds are in the forecast. Every moment that we are traveling the Admiral “has his head in the game”. He’s scanning the horizon, both with binoculars and unaided sight. He’s checking the charts. He’s watching the waterway directly in front, to the sides and behind us. He asks me to report on any boats coming up behind us, their size and their distance from us, as well as their speed. He listens to the radio for communications from the Coast Guard, Towboat US and other boaters around us. Piloting a boat is a constant challenge to all the senses and it requires total concentration. There are crab traps everywhere that you have to avoid with quick action. In areas with trees along the shore, there are loose logs and lumber floating in the water. There is constant shoaling so that the depths on the charts are not reliable and you have to look for changes in color in the waters, watching for sandy areas just beneath the surface. You can’t even rely on the markers or buoys all the time, because they get moved or broken off. And when you have a depth finder like ours, which freaks out every time we go over a “hole” in the water that is much deeper or shallower than where it has just been, sometimes you have to be even more vigilant, because you have no working gauge of the depth of the water you are crossing.

All the preparation makes for a far more enjoyable experience. Even though you have to concentrate fully on the waterway and what challenges a particular body of water presents, if you are prepared and know the course you are taking on a particular day, then you can take the time to notice the deer munching on some grass at water’s edge as you glide by, or turtles sunning on logs near the shore, or pelicans and seagulls dive bombing full speed into the water to spear their next meal, or bears swimming across a channel in front of your boat. That last thing – the swimming bears – we have not seen yet. But our guide told us that bears have been known to swim across some of the channels where we are traveling, so we are ready to be thrilled by that phenomenon. Let me not forget the amazing dawns that have graced our paths. This morning, starting in the dark at 5:07 a.m., the earth was slowly rotating within view of the sun. And we got a spectacular light show between 5:07 a.m. and 7 a.m., as the colors went from pale mauve, to pale pink and gold, fringed by shades of blue and charcoal, then to the bright red rubber ball bouncing up into the eastern sky and rising through one series of clouds after another, spreading reds, golds, pinks, and lavenders everywhere. Okay, these words don’t convey the true beauty of the dawn this morning. You had to be there.

While in Beaufort, South Carolina last century (or was it last week?), I found a Pat Conroy piece of nonfiction, My Losing Season. I have enjoyed his Beach Music and South of Broad, and I watched with amazement “The Great Santini” movie with Robert Duvall, Blythe Danner and Michael O’Keefe. My Losing Season is about Conroy’s real life growing up as a teenager with his extremely abusive Marine father, who beat his wife and all seven children in the Conroy family regularly, from a very young age until they were able to get away. Mostly, the book is about basketball, and Conroy’s love of it. The “Losing Season” in the books is the Citadel’s basketball season in 1966-67, when Conroy was the point guard for the Citadel, alternating between being a starter and a member of the “Green Weenies”, the second team which regularly beat the starters in practice. I recommend this book, whether you love basketball or not, but especially if you love basketball. What I’m learning from Conroy, again, is how rich the English language can be. I get lost in some of his sentences. Sure, he’s a bit flowery and occasionally super-sentimental (okay, maudlin), but he turns words into emotions better than any author I have recently read.

I stopped writing this blog nearly a week ago. It is now Thursday, May 23, and it’s been a week filled with lots of adventures on land, as the Admiral and I headed to Hershey Pennsylvania from the Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake Virginia. We’ve been without the Internet most of this week, and today I’m catching up on emails in the marina’s parts store, as my neck and back ache from bending over the laptop. So no more for now. Tune in to Chapter 79 for the events of this past week. We’ll be in Solomons, with any luck – and weather permitting – on Monday, Memorial Day. Just a hint of what is to come: Aquaculture! Millions of baby clams! Rehoboth Beach! Nic-O-Boli! The Amish! Choo choo train! Joan Kettering! The Art of Fielding! Tempting, isn’t it? Check back in a few days.