A Bit of Wind

They say that cruising is 95% boredom interspersed with 5% intervals of terror. Well, last Saturday evening, we were tested by a little bit of terror. A frontal weather system swung through Cape May around 9 PM where we were comfortably anchored with about 10 other sail and power boats. Wind speeds continued to steadily rise from 15 to 20 to 25 to 30 knots…and I watched the live satellite radar image on my computer as the line of pretty yellows and reds (severe weather) marched towards our position.

I had marked our boats position on the chart plotter and set it up to draw a nice red dot on my chart every 20 seconds reflecting our current position as determined by GPS. As the boat swings back and forth on our anchor, it draws a nice red smiley face on the chart plotter as the boat swings about the anchor on the bottom. I could also watch the current position of the other boats anchored around me with my radar. Remember, it’s now pitch black and Kim and Emily are already in bed down below.

I started to see other boats dragging their anchors in the brief flashes of lightning and watching their positions on the radar. I quickly glanced over at my chart plotter and noticed a few red dots drooling down from the smiley face marking my boat too. I called Kim to come up as I started the engine. I could slowly run the motor in forward to take some tension off the anchor. It was working fine and I might have kept that up until the front passed by, except by now there were more than 6 boats dragging and I was terrified of having one drag into me and, even worse, get our anchor chains tangled. We quickly raised our anchor and I motored out into the harbor channel well away from the other boats who were now madly racing engines back and forth trying not to hit one another.

The front passed by within 30 minutes and we safely re-anchored in lighter winds using the chart plotter and the radar to find a safe spot in the harbor. There was considerably more room now since one sailboat landed on the rocks, one sailboat was forced into some abandoned pilings, and two other boats with tangled anchors were driven aground in the shallows. Kim and I were thankful that Emily slept through the entire ordeal.

It was calmer the next morning and we motored out of the Cape May canal and had a calm passage up Delaware Bay that has a reputation for being rough. I guess that we were tested enough for a few days… I really hope so. The entire crew wants warm weather and some more of that boredom we all signed up for.

Tom

Currently anchored in Chesapeake City waiting for another front to pass through…tonight!

The Big Apple

The trip to New York City was uneventful as expected since we had previously made this trip in July 2003 (just before the twin towers came down). We planned the trip through an area called “Hell’s Gate” for slack tide so that our boat would not be swirled around in currents. Large swirling eddies are caused as the Harlem River and Long Island sound both dump together into the East River that moves at more than 4 knots toward Manhattan.

We also anchored (for free) in Liberty State Park and had Lady Liberty watching over our boat during our stay. We toured Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty on one day and took a series of busses, and two trains to attend Sunday Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. After the nice Mass complete with full organ and coral singers, we took the subway (yes, we are fearless) down to Little Italy and had a nice lunch before working our way back to the boat. On this day, we also toured the “Ground Zero” memorial and site and could not believe how it still looks like the initial stages of construction more than 5 years after the tragedy.

We are traveling in company with another Nordhavn 46 (same model as Emily Grace) that came all the way to New England from California (via the Panama Canal). John and Mary are down to earth and it nice being able to have a friendly face in every harbor and to confer with them on weather and passage issues. They have voyaged to the Galapagos Islands on this boat and are a wealth of knowledge on what really works when cruising.

We are now moving through New Jersey and finally truly heading south though waters that are new to us. Unfortunately, someone has turned on the wind machine and we are comfortably sitting in Barnegat harbor with 30 knots of wind whistling through the rigging while waiting for more benign conditions for our next passage.

Tom

Pushing South with the Butterflies

We had a nice stay in Connecticut and got most of the items on “the list” all taken care of. The washer/dryer was fixed by the captain and his assistant who could get both hands and one set of eyes on a few parts that eluded a normal sized worker. Kim was happy to be able to do laundry again on board and Emily was feeling pretty important helping Daddy.

The Bon Voyage party was enjoyed by all and it was good seeing old friends and co-workers. We also said goodbye to our trusty truck as we pushed away from Connecticut soil.

But we are not alone in our trip south. Over the past few weeks we have noticed Monarch butterflies flying overhead, landing nearby or sometimes even far out at sea. Sometimes it is one or two, and other times it is more of a steady stream of 10 or twenty. Like many observations with a seven year old aboard, such a curiosity becomes an opportunity for a home schooling lesson.

We found that Monarch butterflies have one of the world's most fascinating migration paths. Every fall, thousands of the black-and-orange butterflies fly west to their wintering grounds in California and Mexico, covering the trees there with their bright shimmering wings. For centuries, people puzzled over exactly where the millions of Monarchs that spend their winters in Mexico and California came from. But in 1937, a researcher began putting wing tags on the butterflies, allowing him to track some of the travelers. In the 1950s, he expanded the project, enlisting more than 3,000 volunteers across the country in his Insect Migration Association. For more than 20 years, the volunteers helped track the marked insects, contacting him whenever they found or saw a marked Monarch.

Many of our friends have been having problems visualizing the speed of our trawler and how we can go so far on so little fuel. In all this research I found that many butterflies travel more than 2000 miles and average more than 5 mph in this arduous migration. There you have it. Everyone knows that butterflies do not travel in a straight line. They flutter back and forth and up and down and they get caught up in storms. Therefore they must travel faster than that to average 5 mph on this 3 month journey. Based on this data and the fact that they will beat me south this year, I have concluded that even butterflys go faster than our trawler.

So next time you see a butterfly flitting past, Dear reader, you can think to yourself, the Emily Grace goes slower than that!

Tom

Home Waters Again

It’s nice to be back home at our slip at the yacht club in Connecticut. Even though we have a lengthy list of items to fix and buy while we are here, it really has a good feel to it. We were hailed as we entered Fisher’s Island Sound by a fellow trawlering couple from our club, who just happened to be out enjoying the fresh 22 knot breeze too. Several old faces said hi and Emily reacquainted herself with all the sea life hanging from the pier around our slip. We pirouetted around in the 20+ knot breeze and backed into the slip with a confidence that had been lacking just 12 short weeks ago.

Despite my dread of having to disassemble the washer (again) and troubleshoot a problem that had eluded the factory representative on Cape Cod despite the $500 I threw his way, we do have a few pleasant tasks ahead. We ordered a few goodies that await us here, like a new digital SLR camera, and we will have the Bon Voyage party that got postponed in the Spring and visit with many dear friends.

Emily survived her first series of tests and the 100 she received on her math test reflected more on her natural aptitude for the subject rather than the proficiency of her teacher. We skip a day now and again, and learned the term “wave days” from a fellow cruising homeschooler. Those are like snow days, but represent those days when the seas are just too rough to study without getting queasy or worse. We heard that Rhode Island had the wettest September EVER RECORDED and the Lego’s and Play Dough really got a workout.

We did manage to get 3 people and 3 full-size bikes ashore in one trip in the dingy at Block Island, but it was not pretty. Emily rode all the way to town and back and was in her glory. It was her first trip on roads, made possible by the light post-season traffic, and she kept up with Mom and Dad even on the hills. We celebrated with a dinner out at the Oar Restaurant and the Captain and Crew were all happy.

But the leaves here are just starting to turn and we expect to follow the Autumn color south. No pink antifreeze for this boat for a while. I’m pointing the boat south and will keep going until the butter on the counter melts.

Tom