Category: seamanship

Yo ho ho and a bottle of ….iPad

I once “taught” myself celestial navigation. I borrowed a sextant, studied the excellent and concise six-page how-to penned by the late William F. Buckley in his account of a trans-Atlantic passage, Airborne, and took it all aboard an aging 60-foot plywood catamaran I was silly enough to agree to skipper from Falmouth to Florida in the fall of 1980. What most navigators spend years learning I tried to master over the course of a weekend and on Loop Beach in Cotuit.

The crew on that voyage were all recruited from a classified ad in the Boston Globe and had no idea what was going on at any time, a situation which meant I had to pretty much steer and sail and navigate by myself bewcause the boat insisted on sailing WAY too fast for any one to be trusted on the wheel.

Somewhere south of Long Island, around the shipping lanes into New York City, I broke out the sextant, braced myself in the rigging, and took a noon shot to establish our position. This was 1980, way before Global Positioning Satellites. Oher than LORAN (which the evil catamaran lacked) or the notoriously flaky radio directional finder, there was no other way to accurately fix one’s position other than measuring the angle between the sun and the horizon the way Columbus and the Portugese did in the 14th century.

I took my shots — feeling all Melville and shit — gathered my numbers, and went down below to the nav station to work out the math. I got my cartesian solution, looked at the chart, and discovered my first attempt at navigation placed us somewhere in the vicinity of Troy, New York, about twenty miles north of Albany. Since the entire crew was watching — everyone more than a little terrified since we were way out of the sight of land and careening off of the top of immense winter Atlantic waves in a plywood boat creaking and groaning like a gut-shot moose — I realized that putting the point of the pencil down on Troy, New York was a very bad morale move. So I reached for my big plastic right triangle and pretend-extended the line southeast about 400 miles to a fictitious spot I figured was roughly in line with where we might be. With great conviction I made a little X, wrote down the data and time, and declared this was the spot.

An hour later I saw an outbound tanker on the horizon. I told the crew I was going to get a position check over the radio as that was standard maritime practice. I hailed the unknown boat by saying something relatively retarded as “Tanker heading east, Tanker heading east. This is the sailing vessel SinkaLot looking for a position check.”

The anonymous mariner on the bridge of that tanker responded and had a little fun with me.

“Where do you think you are Cap?” he asked over the VHF.

“Uh, about fifty miles south by southeast of Montauk Point Cap.” I replied.

“What’s your last fix Cap?” he asked. I thought I was the one asking the questions. But no, this Mass Maritime grad was going to have his amusement with the yachtsman in the silly sailboat.

All was well a day later when we sighted the beaches of Delaware and were able to grope our way into Chesapeake Bay. Two weeks later and I abandoned ship in Brunswick, Georgia, thoroughly cured of any desire to sail big cruising catamarans in the Atlantic in the late fall. I also sold my first magazine article because of that trip, receiving a massive $100 from Multihulls magazine for my trouble.

As I get ready to launch my sloop tomorrow, I’ve been elbow deep in everything from marine diesel water pump impellers to six coats of Epifanes varnish. The boat is 27 years old and has no navigational instruments to speak of. For the past two seasons I’ve owned the boat I’ve used the Navionics Android app on my smartphone to get the occasional fix on my position, using the phone’s GPS to zero in on whatever spot I happen to be sailing through on Nantucket Sound. But what I want is a big fancy chart plotter mounted on the binnacle. A nice electronic chart to steer my tall ship by.

Those things cost at least $1,000 and would be comparable to installing a $2000 stereo in a $50 car. In the grand scheme of things to throw money at aboard that hole in the water known as a boat, a fancy GPS chart plotter is low on the list. So, I have embarked on a mission to ruin my two-year old iPad in the service of DIY modern navigation.

Other than Navionics, who publishes excellent digital versions of the official NOAA charts for my Android (and the iPad) I am very fond of the iNavX app and have been busy plotting all sorts of waypoints and courses around my home waters …. from my armchair. The iPad has a faux GPS and internal compass, but to really enable it as a navigational aid I need to drop $100 on a little GPS dongle that plugs into the charging port. There’s the BadElf device, which looks perfect once I figure out whether or not my antique iPad is indeed a “66-channel, SBAS/WAAS, 10Hz” model.

Assuming that the GPS dongle will make the iPad plot my position, the next issue is how to protect it from the elements. I won’t ever submerge the tablet (unless I sink), but it will get splashed and rained on and saltwater is cancerous when it comes to anything electronic. I was conned out of my money by a clueless clerk at Radio Shack who sold me an Otterbox case — which I discovered won’t work with the original iPad and has since been bequeathed to my son who sports an iPad II. It looks like I’ll have to go with a plastic bag sort of solution (some online yachting and marine electronics forums say a big Zip-Loc is up to the task).

Once water-protected I have to mount the iPad to the stainless steel guard rail on the binnacle — the stanchion that supports the boat’s wheel, engine control and compass. That should be simple enough, as long as I stay away from the binnacle’s manufacturer — Edson of New Bedford — who is hideously overpriced and does its level best to uphold the nautical adage of ripping up twenties while taking a shower.

I’ve used RAM mounts in the past on the motorboat, so will probably go in that direction despite their proclivity to corrode and peel psoriasis-like over time.

I’m banking that this set up will get me fully chart-plotter capable for under $200. The advantages will be the relatively long battery life of the iPad versus the two-hour lifespan on my HTC Evo phone. The screen is big, but, as any beach reader knows, iPads are useless in sunlight. That means seeking out a glare screen — some matte finish film that will give me a hope of seeing the screen in bright light. I am concerned, on the flip side, of night brightness, as other sailors who have kludged together an iPad nav solution say the lack of a brightness control means they trash their night vision. The map software from iNavX does have a “red light” mode for night use, so I think I’ll be okay, indeed, given that 95% of my sailing is done within the sight of land, the only real need for the plotter other than amusement is for night sailing and in fog (no, I do not own a radar).

The entire effect of smartphones and iPads on the electronics industry is well understood by anyone who owns one. They manage to consolidate lots of dedicated devices into one handy package and in doing so completely kill the market for stuff like digital pocket cameras, music players, and dashboard navigation systems. These multifunction swiss army knives eat into any application they touch, hence I am amused when I read the discussion forums on the marine electronics sites and listen to the proud owners of $10,000 NMEA capable Raytheon or Datamarine navigation systems diss the iPad as a failed solution no one should consider.

They may not be advised to contemplate the solution, but the reality is they will, so I predict the market for dedicated marine electronics is going to rapidly erode over the next few years as Apple and the Android tablet makers address the daylight-screen issue and waterproof-ruggedness. I have my eye on the Panasonic Toughbook Android tablet, but the alleged price on the soon-to-be-introduced  device looks like more than $1000 which makes that a failure.

Once I figure out the iPad issue the next step is to install a WIFI station on the boat and look into integrating the depth, apparent wind, and knotmeters into the iPad display. I’m also fascinated by the AIS technology, which basically is a transponder system that overlays information about AIS equipped vessels onto the iNavX charts. Think of it as radar without the radar, giving me everything from vessel name and size, to distance, speed and bearing.

Oh, and I am still determined to get better at classic sextant based navigation as there is no doubt in my mind that when I need the electronics the most, they are sure to fail. And, when escaping the zombie apocalypse, one has to assume the GPS system will eventually fail and those with the knowledge of the ancients will survive.

 

Boating begins

I launched on a super low tide and before I could return to the boat after parking the trailer my son had the motor running without any issues. So off we bounced across the deserted harbor, spooking flocks of sea ducks before us, for a 5-minute eye watering spin through the inner harbor. Clams are in my future.

[flickrvideo]http://www.flickr.com/photos/churbuck/6847761842/[/flickrvideo]

Boating begins

Yesterday I pulled the tarp off the Tashmoo, charged up the battery, and started making lists of part numbers and necessities so I could launch and get on the water as soon as possible.  This in turned forced me to turn on the outside faucets so I could use some hull cleaner to chew off the harbor slime from last season, and within an hour I was in a car on my way to West Marine in Hyannis on a fool’s errand for fuel and oil filters they never have in stock. Still, I managed to part with $60 in painting supplies, and estimate I’ll be back in the store at least ten more times until the end of the 2012 boating season in early December. The big sailboat looms on its stands, begging for 20 hours of my time (at least), the Cotuit Skiff in the garage is going to need painting and launching (10 to 15 hours), my rowing shell needs to be spruced up and moved to the shore rack as soon as my arm heals up, the dinghy needs some fiberglas work done to the skeg where dragging it over the sand has worn it down … my ditty bag needs to be sorted out, launch service renewed, registrations, Coast Guard documentation, FCC mobile radio license, beach parking stickers ….

It never ends. But still I love it.

The Wreck on Horseshoe Shoal

Ten years ago, on a perfectly windless day when the water of Nantucket Sound was flat and mirror smooth, I ventured a few miles offshore from Cotuit to Horseshoe Shoals — a long curving sandbar that can be a great place to catch bluefish throughout the summer months. I had my son and daughter with me and after we caught a nice 12 lb. blue for dinner, I shut off the engine and enjoyed the strange experience of floating calmly over the shoal without the usual three to four feet of surf and chaos that usually cover the two-mile long crescent of glacial sand and pebbles during a brisk southwesterly breeze and a flood tide.  The Horseshoe is a fascinating place. Remnants of an ancient forest have been discovered out there. The controversial Wind Farm is proposed for the general vicinity (which I support). And, navigationally, it’s interesting because it is the location of both the shallowest water in Nantucket Sound and the deepest — the two extremes only less than half-a-mile apart — an indication of the massive hydrodynamics of the east-west current flows and infamous shoals that have long made the Sound a bad place for shipping.

I stood on the bow of the skiff, fly fishing, casting in hopes of tempting a spanish mackerel or bonito, but nothing was biting. The current would sweep us across the shallow, the bottom rising pale green, then yellow up from the depths until the boat passed over the shoal itself, the bottom just a few feet below us.

I gave up the fly rod and just watched the bottom, at one point, as we crossed over a new section, I swore I saw a pipe or something man made sticking up from the sand. I turned on the engine, circled back and took another look. Gradually, as I opened up my field of vision, the perfect outline of a boat revealed itself… just the outline, no hull, as if someone had drawn the concept of a boat on the bottom.

It was a wreck. The first I had ever seen in the Sound.

But which wreck? What had happened out there and when? Had people died? Was it fifty years old, 100? It was both creepy and thrilling in a macabre way. It was definitely something to avoid as there were some portions of the superstructure that seemed to be close to the surface.

Once ashore I started researching the wreck lists for the area and found nothing. There had been a light ship at Cross Rip (a nearby shoal) in 1918, but that vanished during a winter blizzard, carried off station by ice and never found with all hands lost. Since that ship, the LV-6, was last seen adrift at the eastern end of Nantucket Sound, 15 miles away, I ruled it out.   I recalled old navigational charts of the Sound showing an icon for a half-submerged wreck south of the Horseshoe, yet I never saw any such boat out there as a kid.

Here’s a 1968 Coast Guard chart of the area.

And specifically, here’s a zoomed-in look at the spot where I saw the hulk that day ten years ago.

 

Once ashore, I started telling people about the wreck, asking if anyone knew what it was or if they had ever seen it.  “Ask Leonard Peck,” someone said. He’d been around for a long time and was one of the saltier people in Cotuit, but Leonard passed away before I could ask. Other old timers shrugged and said they didn’t have a clue. So I gave up but talked about it with my fishing and sailing friends, looking for some information about the hulk I had glimpsed lurking out there.

Then, this morning, in the Barnstable Patriot, the local weekly newspaper, the “Early Files” section that excerpts news from past editions of the paper had this entry under 1971:

“Three hundred pounds of explosives demolished the submerged Navy patrol boat off Horseshoe Shoals last Thursday after several weeks of delay caused by weather and tides. The Ad Lib II struck the wreck last month, resulting in the deaths of Dr. James L. Chute of Osterville and Harland L. Matthews of Cotuit. The explosion removed all the wreck’s superstructure and part of the submerged hull. Coast Guard expects the wreck buoy will remain at its present location.”

Mystery solved. Sort of.  A little knowledge makes one thirsty for more.

First I went looking for any information about the tragedy that occurred in the fall of 1971 when the Ad Lib II struck the wreck. I found this lawsuit filed by descendants of  the two dead local men against the Federal Government. Made sense since Horseshoe Shoe is outside of the state’s three mile territorial limit and officially in federal waters. Second, it was a US Navy ship. But why was it there? How had it come to be wrecked? What kind of ship was it?

The lawsuit, Chute v. The United State of America, dated February 17, 1979 has the details:

“…plaintiffs have brought this action to recover for the deaths of their respective fathers as a result of the sinking of the boat AD LIB II on September 30, 1971 in Nantucket Sound. Both decedents had been guests on the AD LIB II, which was owned and operated by Dr. Robert L. Baxter, a friend. Plaintiffs allege the AD LIB II sunk when it struck a submerged wreck on Horseshoe Shoals in Nantucket Sound, approximately seven to eight miles south-southwest of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The plaintiffs contend that the wreck was improperly marked by the defendant, the United States. The wreck consists of a Navy ship, PC1203, which had been deliberately grounded on Horseshoe Shoals in 1949 for use as a bombing target.”

The law suit tells the story of how the Ad Lib II sank:

“Between 7:00 a. m. and 8:00 a. m. on September 30, 1971, Dr. Robert L. Baxter (aged 69); his wife; John Ohrn (aged 34); and the decedents, Dr. James L. Chute (aged 75) and Harlan L. Matthews (aged 77), departed from Lewis Bay on the AD LIB II and proceeded to Nantucket Sound to fish. The AD LIB II had a length of 24 feet, a width of approximately 10 feet, a mean draft of 3 feet, and a fiberglass hull. Dr. Baxter was an experienced mariner in the Nantucket Sound area, having fished in the area for some 40 years. He had also taught local courses in navigation and therefore knew that a wreck buoy is not placed on top of a wreck.

At approximately noon, the boating party decided to head toward home. The weather was “hazy; not foggy.” Tr. Vol. 1 at 4 (Dec. 17, 1976). The vessel was in the vicinity of Horseshoe Shoals somewhat south of the location of the wreck. Dr. Baxter was at the helm and headed the vessel in a north-northeast course on a heading of 30° magnetic at a speed of 14 knots. At this speed the boat was semi-planing. Dr. Baxter observed the tower on the hill at Hyannis Port and decided that his course would take him back to Hyannis. Shortly after choosing his course, Dr. Baxter expressed surprise at the shallow depth of the water. Moments later, a sound was heard indicating the vessel had struck something. One of the party went below to check the hull and discovered a break in the fiberglass skin on the starboard side which was then stuffed with rags.
No one on the AD LIB II saw precisely what the boat struck. The plaintiffs claim the boat hit the wreck of the PC1203 which could not be seen since it was under the water. The defendant contends that the AD LIB II did not hit the wreck, but hit Horseshoe Shoals themselves. After careful consideration of all the evidence presented at trial, the court finds that the AD LIB II sunk as a result of hitting the wreck, and not the shoals.” 

According to the lawsuit, a few days immediately following the Ad Lib II tragedy, Chester Crosby, chairman of the Town of Barnstable Waterways Commission (and owner of the Crosby Boat Yard in Osterville) asked the Coast Guard to mark the wreck.

“The plaintiffs had sought to introduce two letters of correspondence between Chester Crosby and Lieutenant Commander Ransom K. Boyce, then the Assistant Chief, Aids to Navigation Branch of the U. S. First Coast Guard District. Crosby was Chairman of the Waterways Committee, an advisory committee to the Board of Selectmen of the Town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, with regard to problems around the harbors and waterways. Writing to the Coast Guard in his capacity as Chairman, under date of October 4, 1971, Crosby expressed concern as to the adequacy of the marking of the wreck of the PC1203. As will be discussed in this court’s Findings of Fact, the buoy set up to mark the PC1203 was not placed directly on the wreck, but at some distance from it. The letter from Crosby, Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 15, refers to a previous request to have the Coast Guard attach a day beacon to the wreck and the fact that that request had been refused. It further acknowledges the problem of placing buoys close to submerged wrecks, but suggests that “since the United States Navy placed the wreck on the shoal, couldn’t an eventual solution be to have them dynamite the remains [of the wreck] during the late fall after the fishing season and remove the debris.” Boyce’s response, dated October 13, 1971, Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 16, states that the Coast Guard had decided “to blow up the remains of the wreck and wire drag the area to the depth of five feet below the reference plane,” and concludes that “[i]t is felt that this is a satisfactory solution to the problem.””

There are no online archives of the Cape Cod Standard Times or the Barnstable Patriot available for 1971 — so I need to get in the car and drive to the Sturgis Libraryif I want to read the contemporary accounts of the wreck of the Ad Lib II.

As for the PC1203 — she was a 175-foot patrol boat with a crew of 59 men, of the PC463 class, built in 1943 by the Consolidated Shipbuilding Corporation of Morris Heights, New York. I have no information where she was assigned or if she ever saw action. Apparently the 1203 was decommissioned, towed out to the middle of the Sound, and scuttled on a sandbar to serve as a target for pilots flying out of Otis Air Force base. The Cape and Island were very active with military training activities during and after World War II, with landing craft operations practiced out of Cape Candoit in Cotuit’s North Bay and Mashpee’s Popponnesset and Waquoit Bays.  Another famous target practice ship, the Longstreet, was a Cape Cod Bay landmark for years off of Wellfleet off of the shore of the Cape’s northside, and Noman’s Land, the island south of Martha’s Vineyard, was pummeled for years by strafing fighters and practicing bombers.

According to the lawsuit:

“…little, if any, of the remains of the PC1203 wreck was above the water’s surface except at low tide when small portions of the vessel broke the water’s surface. The depth of the water in the vicinity of the wreck varies according to the tides from approximately 2 feet to 4.8 feet. From 1949 to 1961, the area where the PC1203 was grounded was designated as a danger area. In 1961, the danger designation of the area was removed. During this period, the PC1203’s location was unmarked except for a pipe affixed to it by persons unknown. This pipe, however, was destroyed during a hurricane in the mid-1950’s.

In July, 1963, as a result of requests from local maritime interests, a can buoy with a visual range of one and a quarter miles was established 275 yards, 270° True (west) from the wreck. This buoy was black and red with a reflector, but had no light or gong. It was designed for a semiexposed area, having a water depth of 15 to 540 feet. The draft of the buoy was 6 feet 8 inches. The height of the buoy above water was 6 feet 10 inches. It had a 5000-pound sinker to moor it.”

Obviously for Mr. Chute and Mr. Matthews, that wasn’t enough to prevent their deaths by drowning after the Ad Lib II succumbed to the gash in her hull and sank.

I can only imagine the chaos out there that foggy afternoon as the water gushed through the rip in the Fiberglas hull. Despite an experienced skipper, life jackets, and relatively warm water. Two men died.

From the law suit:

“After the AD LIB II struck the wreck, the decision was made to “try to make it” back to shore. However, the boat was taking on a lot of water and subsequently Dr. Baxter turned the AD LIB II toward the shoal, hoping to be in shallow waters. While in the turn, however, the boat sank and the parties were forced into the water.

To stay afloat, all persons put on life jackets. Additionally, Dr. Baxter had constructed an ice chest which was capable of floating. A rope was tied to the ice chest and then to each of the passengers except Mr. Ohrn who decided to try to swim to the wreck buoy, some two to three hundred yards away from where the AD LIB II sank. Dr. Baxter was closest to the ice chest; Mrs. Baxter was next; Mr. Matthews next to her; and then Dr. Chute. Some time later, Mr. Matthews swallowed some water and regurgitated, and shortly thereafter the others heard him “snoring.” Dr. Chute checked Mr. Matthews’ pulse and found he had none. The cause of death subsequently stated on the death certificate was drowning.
At approximately 4:30 p. m., after drifting for some four hours, the group, including Mr. Matthews, was picked up by the C/C JOHNNY B IV. The owner of that boat called the Coast Guard which dispatched its own boat, the POINT TURNER, and a helicopter. The group was then taken aboard the Coast Guard vessel. Dr. Chute was considered injured and the helicopter was to airlift him to a hospital. However, Dr. Chute was reluctant to go and the captain of the POINT TURNER did not force him to go. Dr. Chute was taken ashore by the POINT TURNER where he was met by an ambulance which drove him to Falmouth Hospital. He died the next morning at the hospital—cause of death, according to the death certificate, being “coronary insufficiency following immersion and exhaustion after boat accident at sea.””

In the end, the court ruled for the plaintiff, and found the government liable for not adequately marking the wreck with a buoy, light, rip-rap or structure directly on the wreck itself.

I can’t find much about Harlan Matthews, the Cotuit man who drowned. His daughter Helen Dottridge,  one of the plaintiffs in the 1978 lawsuit, passed away in 2007 at 86,and was a well known figure in the village historical society and Federated Church: the Dottridges being one of Cotuit’s oldest families. The owner and skipper of the Ad Lib II, Dr. Robert L. Baxter, was a former commodore of the Hyannis Yacht Club and navigation instructor.

If you pick the right day and tide and have a good pair of polarized sunglasses, the remnants of the wreck of the PC1203 are still out there, perfectly outlined in the rocky sands of Horseshoe Shoal.  The modern edition of the chart may not show the half-exposed icon any longer, but some versions do show the simple word “pipe.”

 

 

 

 

The Day of Nailbiting: Irene Blows Through

John Steinbeck opens his memoir, Travels With Charley with an account of rescuing his 22-foot motorboat from Hurricane Donna in 1960. I remember reading that story before ever experiencing a hurricane myself, and I was impressed by Steinbeck’s willingness to risk his life for his beloved boat, wading into the waters of a harbor on Long Island Sound to free her from the clutches of some other boats and then power her up and steam safely to a safer anchorage. Since then I’ve repeatedly suffered the peculiar paternal anxiety of a boat owner confronted with the possibility of losing a boat, especially during those terrible storms where there just isn’t enough time to pull it safely from the water. When that happens it’s just wait and watch.

I own a 26-year old 33-foot Endeavour sloop — the Bald Eagle Too — a gift from some good friends who were going to consign her to a charity auction after her last owner passed away (I’ve retained her name out of the superstition that a renamed boat is bad luck). The boat is a total joy — who can argue with a gift? — and it has become the center of summer life for me and my family these past three years.  The first  twinges of boat anxiety began to build when Irene started to threaten early last week. I phoned the local boatyard on other business — to organize the pullout of the yacht club’s motorboats — and the owner answered his cell phone with an abrupt: “If this is about your big boat, tough titty…..” I never expect to be on anyone’s priority list for boat hauling as I maintain the boat myself to save money. Big spenders get pulled first so they can continue to spend.

On Friday my son and I stripped off the sails, took down the dodger and spent an hour attending to the mooring lines, insuring the chafing gear was in the bow chocks and running a third backup line from around the mast, down the bow roller for the anchor line and then down to the splice in a bowline where the mooring pennant met the chain in a blob of sea squirts and barnacles. Somewhere down there in the black muck was a fairly new 500-pound mushroom anchor. Hefty, but still, past hurricanes have ripped moorings that size out of the mud before. When we finished pumping the bilges dry, switched off the electrical system, and made one last paranoid check we motored up the harbor to check out a hurricane mooring I was given last year during the threat of Hurricane Earl. Alas, it had a little swim float tethered to it — 2,000 pounds of serious yacht insurance for a little wooden float — but hey, not my mooring, not my place to bitch and moan, and the Bald Eagle was just going to have to tough it out on her own.

All around us, out on the edge of the mooring field, the other owners of the big sailboats were making the same preparations we had. You can instantly gauge the saltiness of a boat owner from how thoroughly they approach their storm preparations. My good friend the Judge, who has been through hurricanes dating back to the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944, was doing the same thing I was — get all the canvas off the spars and spend a lot of time on the mooring pennants and chafing gear. Less experienced owners were leaving their roller reefed jibs on — a fatal mistake as the gusts will pick them open until the boat is literally sailing unattended at the mooring, wildly tacking back and forth until the mushroom is dislodged.

The danger in a mooring field isn’t necessarily what happens to one’s own boat, it’s what the 0ther boats that break free will do to you. In fact, late during yesterday’s storm a very new and hot looking racing sloop just to windward of me broke free late in the storm — probably due to the lines rubbing through, and blew down wind, just missing me but hanging up stern to bow on a small sloop that had stoutly made it through the worst of the blow, only to get dragged off by the combined weight of its own hull and the runaway. If I were the owner of the second boat I would be irate this morning, as he’s totally high and dry on the northern beach next to the boat that took him out.

I first went down to the water at 6 am on Saturday, just when the first storm bands were blowing in, and things looked fine. A party barge had broken free, but otherwise it was a good eight hours before the peak gusts were scheduled to arrive around 2 pm. I took the family out to breakfast at a seaside restaurant, but the windows were moaning so loudly in the gusts we lost our appetites. We returned home and for me, the worst was just starting.

The helplessness one feels during a storm is overwhelming.  You stand at the shore, pick a good angle to view the boat, and with every hard gust that blows the tops of the waves into the air, every blast of green water that goes over the bow, the boat hobby-horsing on its tether at a 45 degree angle up and down into the air and troughs ….. Yes, I could have spent the storm out on the boat. The thought occurred to me. One tactic is to keep the diesel running and then feather the throttle during the gusts to relieve some of the tons of pressure from the mooring. But, as I learned in my younger days as a surfcaster when a wave nearly flooded my waders and drowned me while I was fighting a striper –no fish, and no boat, is worth drowning for.

The crowd at the foot of Old Shore Road was mostly gawking at a motorboat thrown into the middle of the street and the occasional sailboat dragging down onto the sands. A gorgeous Tartan sloop from Annapolis came in right at my feet, the mooring float still tied to the cleat on the deck, the boat a victim of bad chafing gear. The fact the sails were still on the spars and a big inflatable dinghy was still hanging from the stern davits was an indication the owner hadn’t prepared for the worst, yet I heard him on his cell phone being very angry with the boat yard that rented him the mooring.

I’d watch for an hour then walk back up the hill to the house for a drink of water, some food, and a few minutes of pacing around telling myself que sera, sera — no need to go back down, what will happen will happen and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. That blithe rationalization lasted about a half hour until I pulled the orange Grunden back on and made my way down the shore road, nervously watching the tree limbs over my head, convinced I would get crushed by a falling maple branch on the next puff.

At noon the police arrived and kicked everyone off of the landing, putting up crime scene tape at the top of the hill to keep gawkers from driving down. High tide followed 30 minutes later at 12:30 — the storm surge coinciding with the new moon extreme tide — and Old Shore Road flooded, carrying a sportsfisherman right onto the road and blocking it closed. A big cruising catamaran, the Split Ticket, dragged ashore — the wind catching under the cabin sole between the two hulls and just muscling it slowly down the harbor into the beach grass. Blocked by the police from the beach and losing my mind at the house, I called a friend who lives on the water and has a view of my boat to see if I could come pace and fret on his lawn.

“I’ve got bad news,” he said. “She’s gone.”

That sucked. She had broken loose. “Do you see her on the beach?” I asked.

“I don’t see it. It might be up in Inner Harbor near the Oyster Company.”

As soon as I dropped the F-bomb my wife and son knew the worst had happened. We piled into the car and starting driving to the section of the bay where she would likely come ashore. As I turned the car past the cemetery the phone rang again.

“Never mind. I see her now. I guess I couldn’t get a good angle from my kitchen.”

I said another bad word. This was like the punchline of a bad doctor joke. “I’ve got good news and bad news ….”

We drove to his house and with a beaming smile (Har, har, April Fool’s!) he handed me a set of binoculars. The Bald Eagle was still out there, getting pounded as hard as I’ve ever seen any boat get hit at anchor. I handed the binocs to my wife. She stared for a few seconds, handed them back, and turned away.

“I wish I hadn’t seen that,” she said.

I snuck back down to the landing and remained there all afternoon. Pacing. Staring. Wincing. You could tell who the boat owners were. We all stood silently, arms crossed, staring. The gawkers and spectators were snapping pictures of the boats canted over the road, laughing, socializing, caught up in hurricane fever; but we owners were together but lost in our thoughts.

The Bald Eagle late on Sunday afternoon

Then more bad news as the gusts started to hit even harder. The Polaris, a gorgeous blue ketch, perhaps one of the prettiest boats in the harbor, was ashore just north of Lowell Point. I felt for the owner and his sons as they slogged through the surf and eel grass towards the spot just out of sight where she was rolling in the shallows. Then the C-Team, a grey sloop went on the beach at Handy’s Point. A sportsfisherman went into the trees under the bluff. The Lowell’s finger pier vanished in a tangle of planks. As I stood and spectated I felt a sharp twinge in my neck, and for the rest of the day couldn’t turn my head without wincing. I dug my finger into the spot — the kind of pain one gets from sleeping wrong — but nothing would make it go away.

My boat continued to plunge. And plunge. And careen under the impact of the williwaws and gusts. The hull heeled at a crazy angle under the force of the wind. At one point I thought I heard a jet engine out over the harbor — perhaps a stormhunter or Coast Guard Falcon jet from Otis Air Force Base? No, it was the sound of the wind honking through the spars and rigging of the 30 boats in the bay, an eerie mechanical, unnatural wail. I started to lose it. Just make it stop now. Throw a switch. Enough is enough. The boat had been riding hard for eight hours. I visualized the mooring lines where they came through the bow chocks and ran back to the cleats: a cartoon image of frayed dacron line, down to one Coyote-and-Roadrunner thread, waiting to snap with a little “plink” …..

I walked through the flotsam and wrack to Lowell’s Point to see if I could help with the Polaris. The owner and his sons were wading big anchors out into the surf and then using the jib winches to kedge the stern off of the beach. Coming ashore at half-tide was a good thing if they could keep her from being pushed any higher up on the sands. The next high tide might float her enough to be tugged free; otherwise, as in Hurricane Bob, a big Sikorsky SkyCrane helicopter with slings might be needed to get her off.

The Polaris ashore

And so it went through the late afternoon. At 7 pm I made my last trek down to the harbor. The wind had veered to the southwest, sustained at 40 knots with an occasional gust up to 60. They had said Irene was not so much a high impact storm as a big, long duration one and they were right. It blew for 12 solid hours. The longer it blew the more chafing I had to fret about, and as boats continued to break free and drift down on her right up until darkness there was no celebration on my part that the worst had passed. Coming home for the last time before nightfall I saw the boat’s mooring ball on the deck. A friend had found it on the beach. Ironic the float made it ashore while the boat didn’t.

I must have knocked on wood a dozen times yesterday, looking for a tree every time I said, “She’s still out there.”

By the twilight's last gleaming ....

At ten I went to bed, mentally exhausted. My wife and son were both exhausted and enervated by the long day of worry and helplessness. We all crashed.

….At so, at six today I woke to bluebird skies and the ringing of the first chainsaws. I pulled on fresh pair of shorts and walked down the lane, stepping over the downed limbs and pushing through piles of green leaves. More boats had come ashore during the night. One had a white hull with a blue stripe …. was it my boat? I thought for a moment my luck had run out.

In the blazing twinkling sun, too bright to see through with sun glasses and a hand visor, I looked out to that space in the harbor where she should have been and with immense relieve saw her hull, placid and bobbing safely on her mooring. She made it. I could safely celebrate without knocking on wood.

And the pain in my neck is completely gone.

 

How to sink and be saved

Mark Cahill posted this on his blog this morning. Having gone through the same experience himself I can only imagine how he felt watching this. Moral of the story … there are many. But first and foremost is how fortunate these guys were that their handheld VHF radio popped to the surface after their boat sank.  While I’m generally not a lifejacket guy, I am seriously considering a set of survival suspenders after nearly buying the farm on Sunday jumping from my sloop to my motorboat in a big swell during the squalls. I came this close to doing the big swim.

Insanity sailing

A buddy at a cocktail party told me he wanted to buy an “International Moth” but thought he wasn’t up to the physical challenge. “What’s a Moth?” asked I? I fired up the smartphone and searched this out on YouTube. Now I want one.

We got on the subject of weird hydrofoils because another friend raffled off a ride on his Rave Windrider. This I need to try.

Leave it to the French to build the fastest sailboat in the world, the Hydroptere

Goodbye Old Paint

In 1999, flush with a Forbes.com bonus (those were the days, when IPOs were in everyone’s future and even Tightpants.com had a shot at millions) I bought a brand new 40 horsepower, four-stroke Honda outboard engine. This was a good purchase, one of the best I’ve made, living up to all the pre-purchase expectations of owning a precision piece of machinery that was dependable, clean, and ran with the elan of a sewing machine.

It replaced a POS Johnson outboard, purchased when the skiff was new in the thinking that if Johnson was good enough for my grandfather, it was good enough for me. Alas, American manufacturing had already shit the bed as far as two-stroke outboards were concerned and the Japanese in the form of Honda and Yamaha were kicking their ass. I went on a poisonous-letter writing campaign, demanding satisfaction from OMC, the parent of Johnson, but alas, they weren’t going to replace it, so I showed them and spent $5,000 of ill-gotten dot.com riches on the Honda.

I babied it. I learned how to change its oil, the filters, the spark plugs. It never let me down, carrying me south of Martha’s Vineyard and all over Nantucket Sound in search of squid, stripers, bluefish and fluke.

Last year, Andy at The Boat Guy, my trusty mechanic, told me I had better start thinking of a new one. “This one doesn’t owe you anything, ” he said, but I squeezed one more season out of it, becoming, by October, the only person on the planet who knew the exact combination of throttle, choke, and cranking to get it start. The time had come.

But, hope springs eternal in the spring, and this March I was in the driveway changing plugs and filters and to my surprise, the old trusty silver engine turned over and bubbled away happily with a garden hose connected to the water inlets. I re-registered the old trailer, painted the bottom a spiffy new coat of copper antifouling paint with a jaunty red boottop — and launched on a bright spring day.

As I motored out to the mooring, happy to be afloat in April, I decided to run up the RPMs and give it a little shakedown cruise. Everything was copacetic until the warning horn went off.

Uh-oh.

Limping back to the launch ramp I popped off the lid and was met with a cloud of steam and a blast of heat. Something was very wrong.

So back on the trailer she went, and off to The Boat Guy with feelings of profound pessimism.

Andy called late last week. “She’s toast Cap’n,” he said. “But don’t despair, another customer is selling his old 40 hp for $2,500 if he can clear the financing for a new one.”

So it goes, tearing up dollar bills while standing in the shower. But the squid are out there, the bluefish and stripers have arrived, and I am itchy to get waterborne as soon as possible.

 

The Electric Eldridge – Currents, an Android App for sailors

I’ve blogged in the past about maritime Android apps I find useful on my HTC EVO. I can definitely see a future where a marine-version of an Android Honeycomb tablet is fixed to the binnacle of my sloop and offers me a multi-function nav device for GPS enabled chart plotting and a wealth of navigation data from tide tables to an anchor-drag alert. A new app will definitely be on that device.

Vernon Grabel, who founded Cape.com (my ISP) and is a personal baseball/sailing friend, has released a free app into the Android Marketplace called Currents. The premise is drop-dead simple but very convenient as it acknowledges that for most sailors the most important tidal information is not necessarily the time of high and low tide at a specific point, but the velocity and direction of the current caused by the ebb and flood of the tide.  A boat’s track from point A to point B is affected by “set” — the lateral movement of the hull due to leeward drift (which is why sailboats have keels or centerboards) and general current direction. which can accelerate speed if coming from astern, slow down if coming head on, or push the boat downwind or upwind.  Currents in constricted areas, such as canals, guts, and harbor entrances, can mean the difference between successfully transiting an area or meeting with disaster.

For more than a century, Cape Cod mariners have relied on the familiar yellow covered annual edition of the Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book to determine the current’s velocity and direction for any given point and time. The process of calculating current based on the time of the tide in the major observation points listed by Eldridge and then off-setting that time for the specific spot being transited (e.g. if one is entering Cotuit Bay, one needs to find the time of the tide in Boston and add one hour and seven seconds for high tide, and subtract 45 minutes for low) … it’s time consuming, a serious pain in the ass under sail, and a distraction as one pops below for the book, brings it up to the cockpit, and starts flipping pages back and forth.

Grabel nails the problem with Currents for not only New England but most of the coastal United States. By using the public data published by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration  (NOAA), mashing into Google Maps, and overlaying arrows of varying thickness and length and direction, Currents gives a perfect, zoomable, and accurate current and tide reading for the hundreds of coastal stations tracked by NOAA.

So, this may be the year I save $14,00 on yet another copy of Eldridge and rely on my phone for yet another essential piece of navigational information.  Currents is listed in the Google Marketplace under “currents” or “yoyana” or you can scan this: