Sovereign Nations

Climbing out of the bunk at 0800h I feel the tingling of the ice as I lightly brush my toes against the hull on my way to the galley to make my morning brew. The chill chases away the sweet memory of our beloved electric blanket as the steam huffs from my lungs slowly dissipating through the main cabin of our boat. I kick on the propane cabin heater, start up the morning chemistry and wait patiently for Mr. Coffee to deliver his magic concoction. After the brew is brewed and the first sips of warmth ooze through my body I notice that the winds are howling so I look out the port hole to discover the snow has piled up in five foot drifts from our moorage out at the very end of the dock to the gate. As the first cup takes hold of my mind it also settles into the rest of my body, once again, inspiring a familiar need…
You see, we came to Baltimore under sail in the dead of winter for employment purposes (only) and with that decision came, as usual, an entirely new way of dealing with, well, our shit.

Along with the seemingly endless paradise of our on going voyage of discovery around the planet comes an issue that, while under “normal” circumstances, would be a non-issue for “normal” people is indeed a VERY big inconvenience when the snow is descending from the sky in sheets like a biblical plague.

Simply put, we are human and human beings have certain biological functions that just can’t be avoided; in other words, even global circumnavigators have to shit like everyone else, only we can’t just nip off into the lavatory in the next room, we have to (ummm, GET TO) walk more than a 1/4 mile to the closest restroom facility… That’s right, at this marina they don’t have restrooms at the top of the docks like almost every other marina we’ve live at over the last ten years they have only one central facility and when that inspiring familial need arises it’s a very long ways away.

…I don my foul weather gear with meticulous precision, knowing that my journey will be a long and somewhat treacherous one.
Now, over the last week we have been pounded by the most amazing weather in the history of Baltimore weather recording, or rather, every single previous snow fall record in the history of Baltimore, Maryland was shattered in the last five days and we STILL had to be human through those record breaking storms.

… When I try to push open the companion-way hatch it is jammed by a thick pile of heavy frozen precipitation and a distant panic wells from within.

In the past we have had many variations on the distances between our boat and the restroom facilities “at the top of the dock” and although it is a bit of a hassle to use the dock restrooms it is much better then the alternatives which are; either shit on the boat and live with a slight smell of human stuff until we can pump it out of the holding tank or pump the un-treated human matter directly in to the environment around our home. Neither one of those possibilities are real alternatives to people like ourselves, meaning, caring environmentally conscious and responsible boaters so the only real solution to dealing with this issue is to use the Head graciously provided by the marina that we are calling home at that time.

…The wind was blowing the snow in thick horizontal lines that covered my back within seconds of digging my way out of the companion-way and by the time I made it to the ice covered gang-plank at the head of the dock my vision was distorted with biological need! At that point I only had a quarter of a mile to go before my relief.

At the beginning, when we were still new to all this environmental boating stuff it was an order of pride to get up and “walk the walk”, as we used to say to the top of the dock. It was our responsibility to show, by example, how people should treat this wonderful way of life with great care so we walked our walk EVERY SINGLE TIME without exception with our environmental pride clearly displayed upon our grimacing faces and to this day the only thing that has changed is the newness has quite thoroughly warn off leaving only the self righteous expression of grim determination in it’s wake.

…By the time I reached my halfway point I was so stealthily covered by my frozen environs that you couldn’t actually see me slogging through the massive drifts that lead to my seated sighs.

And yet it is still, to this day, somehow worth it.

I have heard that active environmentalism (such as NOT shitting in the water around your boat) is in fact an act of selfishness nothing more, that the Earth will survive no matter what we do and if you are not protecting our world for future generations of humans (like I am not) then environmental living is nothing more then an extra expense or rather, a big hassle. And really, in theory, that makes a lot sense to me, but for some reason, call it aesthetics,  I still experience a great deal of pride when I walk my walk.

…When finally I reached the marina restroom facilities on that particular “walk” I found that my key card for the lock was still sitting in the galley table back on our boat a little over a 1/4 of a mile away and the look on my face had indeed changed.

…Living the dream baby, LIVING THE DREAM!

Hon, if you lived here…

…You’d be drunk already!”

Oh yeah, Day 1…

We cast off at 0730h and reached the mouth of the Salt Ponds by 0800h. Clipping hard on a NNE heading, with a single reef in the main and the “Iron Jib” at 2500rpm, we pounded into the 4 to 5 foot chop with the lee-boards in the water for most of the day. This ride was wet, the winds ripping the tops of the waves fabric as though it had been weakened by battery acid.  These white sprays traveled horizontally, and we strove hard into them.  We made great time moving between 5.5 and 7 knots and lay fast in the snug little harbor of Cape Charles 4 hours after exiting the Salt Ponds jetties. I slept in a tight fetal ball for the rest of that day.

On Day 2 the winds and seas were perfect for an 8 hour beat due north from Cape Charles to Reedville, VA. The single-reefed main and full jib served us well for hours.  The need to make good speed rode us as we watched the wind ease, slowing us from 5.5 to 6 knots to an average just under 4 knots.  Then it died still more.  This wouldn’t do, so after 4 hours of lovely sailing, we pulled in the jib and started up ol’ Iron.  The main picked up the bits of breeze to add power and grace to our motion through the water.  A winding route from big bay to little bay to river brought us past the menhaden ships and processor, around a tenacious, crumbling tower and to the Reedville Marina, where the marina and restaurant both are closed for the season. Just as I snapped the last button on the main sail cover I noticed the first sprinkles of snow… With that northeastern wind always comes a firece cold around these parts and this time she was carring about 4 inches of snow along. We made fast just in time to beat the weather at a nice secure dock where we are now waiting out this vile honker that’s trying to tear us away from the dock (AS I Write This).

The new heater works great!

The wind generator runs all of the on-board systems while underway, beautifully! It’s incredible, it runs the auto helm, the GPS chart-plotter and the depth sounder with 2.6 amps back to the batteries. And that’s with cloudy skies. Day one went by without me even grabbing my camera so doing data calculation in my head was my focus.
…And the bad news, the stove-feeding propane tank’s “Tighten By Hand Only” valve broke off so we can’t cook and the only place to eat in the whole town (I use that word loosely) is a REALLY (to us) expensive steak house.

And still, we’re snug and happy, watching the lines for chafe and keeping warm with both electric and propane heaters going.  It would be nice to have the wind die down, but that’s out of our control.  As long as we can keep lines on the pier, we’ll stick around.  Of course, if the mooring lines part, we’ll be out to sea (or river, I guess).

Rig for sailing, start the Yanmar 3GM, throw off the moorings, S/V Sovereign Nation is sailing away, AGAIN…

…Not off into the Sunrise, but rather, for another sunrise altogether, one “Down North” as they say in these latitudes.

For months now we’ve been vacillating on whether we should move over to the Salt Ponds Marina to call that little spot on the chart home for a spell (Lat, 37 03′ 16. 35″ Lon, 76 17′ 11. 68″).

You see, I work there and it really is only about 25 minutes North of the Rebel Marina by infernalcumbustionvehicle, BUT, I work there! Meaning, I don’t really want to be at work all the time and the Rebel Marina really is about the best marina experience that either one of us has ever lived through, besides the woman that runs the Salt Ponds marina is a real nut case. BUT, there is a marina just across the “Pond”, so to speak, I mean literally, called South Haul Landings (Lat 37 03′ 30. 95″ Lon 76 17′ 07. 00″) that has been calling us like a Siren as of late.

It all started with a long hot summer ending with a left hook to the jaw…

I am the Dock Master/Sailing instructor for the Care Free Boat Club at the Salt Ponds Marina location in Hampton, VA. and I have been since April of this year (2009) and over the past 6 months I have gone through Asst. Dock Masters like it wasn’t a great job or something!!! I mean really, all you have to do is make five beautiful boats look new every day, that’s not so hard… If you know how to go about doing that. The first guy I hired (Dude #1) really did know how to do “the job” he just didn’t do it when I wasn’t around and then left me hanging on the fourth of July weekend with a no-call-no-show… Dude#1 Is so Fired!!!

The next loser I hired (ur, Dude#2) had us all fooled, and here’s where the left hook comes in… He was an ex-Marine, right? I mean just out of Afghanistan and he took a bullet in the knee and one in the shoulder for “his country” (or whatever), and wanted to have to a job where he “wasn’t getting shot at or yelled at all the time”! Well that’s all fine and good but once again, just like the other dumb shit from earlier in the summer, he didn’t do his job while I wasn’t around on top of that fact, he wrecked one of my boats last Sunday and then went AWOL, AND STILL to this day, hasn’t even call or come by! Semper Fi Dude#2! Well… That Dude’s new name is also !!!FIRED!!!

…After the soreness from getting sucker punched by Dude#2 wore off I realized that the only person that I could really rely on to do this very laid-back (self motivated) job was the only person in the world that I could trust with my life to! My partner and lover/co-author of these pages, Dena M. Hankins, the sailor.

…And it just so happened that Ms. Hankins was being treated like shit by her current wage slave-driver the day I came to the aforementioned conclussion! Ah, serendipity!

After much ado… (ug, a boring blog post in itself)

!!!I hired Dena!!!

So, we’re moving to South Haul Landings from the Rebel Marina at the top of November and Dena and I will spend the winter rowing to work and, um, living CARE FREE!!!

So, on 09/09/1999 Dena and James signed the papers for the sailing vessel Sovereign Nation and effectively sailed off into the sunset…

Wow!

…Now here we sit at the top of the food chain, at the top of the second decade of the 21st century exactly ten years after we set sail on our first boat together 10,000 nautical miles later and still loving each other, our lives and the decisions we’ve made together. I know, I know not exactly a world record but a record non-the-less for the two of us that’s for sure!

Whenever we (as humans) reach these land marks in time we tend to get all sentimental and shit and recap those adventures in our heads and for us the word “adventures” really does fit the bill. So for all of you out there that have just recently joined our program let me just give you the “Sports Center” style recap of…

!!!The Amazing Adventures Of Dena and James- A Decade at Sea!!!

(the sound-bite version)

9/9/99- bought our first boat together a wooden fifty foot, William Garden Sea Wolf ketch rigged sailboat that we named S/V Sovereign Nation and upon boarding her for the first time Dena slipped and broke her left arm…

10/25/99- Our first big adventure aboard SVSN… We’d planned to go to Doe-Bay on Orcas Island (were we’d been married the year before) but got stuck in Oak Harbor, WA after getting hit by a terrible storm in the Saratoga Passage between Whidbey Island and Camano Island. The storm lasted for four days and was the worst storm in 25 years with winds reaching 65 knots with fallowing seas from 10 to 13 feet. We had a wet boat, a ton of bruises and a dreadfully sick cat. BUT, as we rounded the last channel marker a local T.V. crew caught us on camera and interviewed us after we made landfall. After describing our adventure to the interviewer She asked me if I’d ever do anything like that again, my reply; “Are you kidding me, we live for this shit!”

11/15/1999 to 12/31/1999- Our first haul-out of SVSN. After replacing the deck with a drunken fuck-up as our “ship-wrong” we splashed our Sovereign Nation and headed for Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island, WA.

01/01/2000-07/01/2000 We lived aboard SVSN as “sneak-aboards” for the next six months… (high lights include; rowing across Eagle Harbor every morning to the Ferry terminal and taking the ferry into Seattle every day and sailing our ship in Elliot Bay with friends and family.)

07/01/2000-09/09/2000- Gunkholing in the San Jaun Islands! A beautiful sailing adventure all throughout the Islands of the Northern Washington coast that ended with the two of us at anchor on an island looking at a bright spot on the horizon saying to each other “That is our next home!”

09/10/2000-07/15/2001- Blaine, WA. This was our first official Port-of Call… After making land-fall we quickly got jobs with the local newspaper, me as the photographer and Dena as one of the features writers. I also got a job at the Inn at Semiahmoo as the woodworker for the Inn. We made some great friends, shot some great pictures and started building our first website… “sovereignnation.com”

07/15/2001-09/16/2001- We sailed from Blaine, WA. to Eureka, CA. Our first off shore adventure together!!! Highlights include; Sunfish, dolphins, Orca’s and two airplanes smashing into two buildings in New York City…

09/16/2001-04/20/2002- Wet, tired and broke we made land-fall in Eureka, CA. and got work at the only place in that crappy little town that we could find… Dena sold glasses at the mall and worked the graveyard shift at a local breakfast joint and I worked at SEARS as a stock-boy… (After we’d had enough of that horrible little bum-fuck town Dena got a job in Oakland, CA. working for Toys in Babeland and we left SVSN in Eureka and moved our bodies to downtown San Fransisco…)

06/17/2002-09/17/2006- San Fransisco, Emeryville, Richmond, Berkeley and Oakland, CA… On the 17th of May in 2002 I got a phone call from the Eureka public marina saying that SVSN had been hit by a plastic-destroyer at the dock and the taft-rail, mizen boom-gallows and mizzen boom had been torn off the boat!!! Dena and I took the weekend off and went down to Eureka to sail SVSN down to the San Fransisco Bay… We Jerry-rigged the boat and sailed her down to SF.

On the 21st of May in the year 2002 we sailed our broken boat out of the Humbolt Bay into the Pacific Ocean once again… As we rounded Cape Mendocino we had 40 foot seas for ten hours!!! “WAVES the SIZE of WALMARTS” We watched our beautiful 6ft wooden lapstrake dory get destroyed by one of the biggest of those aforementioned monster-waves and made land-fall in Emeryville, CA. at 0201h on the 23rd of May 2002, just 55 hours after setting sail in Eureka… 55 hours that are as real to me today as if I had just lived through them yesterday!!! 55 hours that we will NEVER FORGET!

…We lived in the San Fransisco Bay for four years on two boats. After repairing SVSN we sold our Sovereign Nation to three sailors from the Czech Republic and they sailed her to the Mediterranean Sea from Richmond, CA. in the spring of 2004. We bought our next boat, S/V Sapien, a 1989 Gulf-32 pilothouse sloop, from Dena’s dad and put over 5000 nautical miles under her full keel over the next two years as we made her ready for our next big adventure, (highlights include, a two week sailing adventure up the California Delta and an incredible off shore sail down the coast of California to Monterray, CA.),  San Fransisco to Hawaii!!!

9/17/2006- 10/06/2006- San Fransisco, CA to Hilo, Hawaii!!! Yes we sailed a 32 foot sailboat 2040 nautical miles from the San Fransisco Bay to the Big Island of Hawaii, it took us 20 days and once again confirmed that, not only were we invincible but sailing around the world was the way we wanted to spend the rest of our lives!

10/06/2006-10/18/2007- After living on the hook in Hilo for four months and NOT finding work there we circumnavigated the Big Island of Hawaii to Kona where we lived for another four months before sailing to Honolulu, Hawaii on the Island of Oahu. We were able to find pretty good jobs there and a permanent slip for S/V Sapien but found that living under the shadow of debt-culture and across from an airport in “paradise” wasn’t the life that we had planned so we sold that boat, paid off all of our debts and briefly moved back to mainland just long enough to fall in and out of love with a fucked-up alcoholic hairdresser… Anyway, that is another story all together!

…Then we moved to Moses Lake, WA. saved up enough money to move to India (see India blog entries)…

12/25/2008-Present- So there we were in Trivandrum, Kerala, India looking at boats on E-Bay when I stumbled upon a beautiful 1961 Phillip Rhodes Chesapeake sloop rigged 32 foot sail boat. Dena and I had spent the last 6 months exploring the Indian subcontinent and writing our separate works of fiction and we both knew, at that moment, it was time to go back to sea. It took us a little over a month to sell off all of our furniture and our Bullet (our Royal Enfield, Bullet motorcycle) but we did and thus moved back to the USA to Norfolk, Virginia to take possession of our new boat.

…Well, yesterday was the 9th of September 2009, our tenth anniversary of living our dreams and once again we made two profound decisions that will forever change our lives…

1) I will spend the next 6 months finishing and preparing my manuscript “!RADIO! Vol-1″ for publication and…

2) We will name our new boat, S/V Sovereign Nation as well…

…So from this point on, we will start preparing ourselves for our next big adventure, Norfolk, VA. across another pond to circumnavigate The Mediterranean Sea in our new SOVEREIGN NATION!!!

So,
Saturday July 25th 2009 was the 35th annual Rebel Marina’s Crab Regatta!
It was a spectacular sailing adventure and the Willoughby Bay in Norfolk, VA was riddled with hundreds of sails with almost as many different kinds of sailing vessels!!!

We’re in the process of re-powering S/V Itinerant with a larger prop for our Yanmar 3GM-30 so unfortunately we had to (got to) sail both out of and back in to our slip for the “race” (note quotation marks). When we “sailed” out we got hit by a few variable gusts that spun us in circles three or four times, got us caught up in the rigging of S/V Norfolk Rebel, bumped us into the tide wall and really set Dena and I off on a bad foot but of course once we got out of the marina entrance the sailing was amazing!

The “Race” is one of the most interesting and hilarious experiences that one could have on the water! Each year they change the rules and the course to fit their needs and the only real rule is that you !!!MUST NOT!!! take the race or the rules seriously!

The flag ship for the regatta is, of course, The S/V Norfolk Rebel, the worlds only “Tugantine”, a 68 foot steel gaff rigged schooner/tugboat that carried the first marker on her starboard aft quarter for most of the race, meaning, all the racers had to (got to) follow the Rebel in pretty much single file until she dropped the anchor for the marker (affectionately known as PHRED, a recovered aircraft carrier fender).

Each of the boats in the “race” is given a “handicap” prior to the race and you are disqualified if you don’t follow through with your handicap as described and implemented by a panel of judges that are hell-bent on applying their rules, unless of course you bribe them with pretty much anything BUT MONEY.

Our handicap was a relatively easy one being as though we were “Virgins to the Crab”, we had to (got to) make our own “Crab Hats” and ware them for not only the race but the after party as well. Unfortunately, my crab hat was blown off my head and into the water as we exited the marina so we were disqualified before the race even started.

Some of the more interesting handicaps were; one boat had to have it’s entire crew (even the men) ware coconut bikinis and hula-skirts and every time they passed a marker the crew had to give a hula dance for the judges on the comity boat. Another boat had to splash any passing boat with a bucket of sea water and I got hit by them with a full 2 gallon bucket of warm Willoughby Bay water. At one point I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to pass out!!!

After the “race” was “completed”, a mind boggling event in itself, a party did ensue! 400 pounds of Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab, about a ton of side dishes and as much rum as any of us could consume, was indeed consumed and the docks rang with the sounds of sea shanies well into the night.
The Crab Regatta is by far the best sailboat racing experience the crew of the S/V Itinerant has EVER had so if you’re in the Southern Chesapeake Bay in July I highly recommend Rebel Marina’s annual Crab Regatta!

The hangover was glorious…

I wrote the story below  yesterday to my friend Dean moments after coming back to my home on the Rebel Marina aboard the Sailing Vessel Itinerant… I mutated the story a bit (like I do) but believe me, the facts are all there! Anyway here it is…

I delivered a boat to a marina today for a haul out and got deeply humbled by the weather AGAIN!!!
She’s  a little S2, 24 foot racing sailboat with no memorable name, “South Wind” or “Weekend Wife” or some shit  and we, meaning, me and the guy I’m replacing at my new job, got our asses handed to us on a paper plate!

< "Here, here's your ass, now go over to that corner for a spell and think about how you'd do it differently">

With about 14 long tacks through the bay we flew a 150% Genoa off the fore-deck with the main all the way up, clipping along at a little over 6 knots  for most of the day. Although it was really intense looking in the sky the wind and weather were lined up for perfect sailing from Long Bay Point in Virginia Beach Virginia (N 38 degrees 54′.15 W76 degrees 04′25.47)  for the first 6 hours. After all that time of what seemed liked no more then a few moments of absolute perfect sailing we approached land  and our speed increased to 8 knots on a highly stretched broad reach.

At that point I decided to start the “‘Ol Iron Jib” and round her up into the wind to down sails. Out of no where, and I do mean right (the fuck) now, we got hit by a squall packing about 35 knots of wind with stinging raindrops the size of quarters! As we rounded up into the waves the seas were instantly 4 to 6 feet with a howling misty chop. I climbed up on the fore deck to down the genny as my shipmate took the helm and after about 45 (bone-pounding) seconds I noticed that the “kid” couldn’t quite keep her into the wind and that was why I was getting my ass beat by that big-ass flapping sail. When I looked back to see why I noticed my shipmate hanging over the side of the transom ass-first looking limp!!! I ran back to the cock pit to catch him before he went completely over, lower the main and get us under control when I saw what it was he was doing, he had hit a crap pot as we headed up and the damn thing was fouled up in the prop… Then the big jib that I had left (not quite) secure forward went in the water and we started to heal over with all the weight from the water filled 150% genny, I thought for sure we would be dismasted in the next second!!! After much rodeo style fore-deck highjinx I got the waterlogged sail back up on deck with the weather (of course) getting steadily worse every second of the way. But, just in the nick of time (!What AGAIN!) the “kid” got the engine running and I got the main sail down and we were out of danger just as fast as we got into it.

About45 minutes later we motored into the Dandy Haven Marina in Hampton, VA (N37degrees 05′ 37.79 W76degrees 17′ 51.66) on glass water and soaked to the bone.
…We lived

Once again I gave it my all and once again I could not make it happen with the tools at hand.

And really that’s all’s to be said about my Virginia art debacle!

…When ever I come back to the docks to clear my head of a bad art-exsperience I get paid back ten fold in return!

Spending a few days on S/V Itinerant’s main saloon put my head in the right place to interview with what seems to be a very cool company that says their “about” customer service… I remember Dan Milman saying something like, (in “Way of the Peaceful Worior”), there is nothing more gratifying to a human then the service to ones own species, perhaps he’s right. I am the new “Sailing instructor” for the “Carefree Boat Club” in the Salt Ponds Marina and Resort in Hampton Virginia.

(Ok so, it’s still a little weird to say Virginia as opposed to Trivandrum, Kerala, India…)

…I like being on the docks, I like the people, the dogs, the million dollar view, it works for me.

I mean really, getting paid to sail and take pictures of it is about as successful as it gets for me.

So, once again, Dena and I sail into a port and score some great stories and some spectacular images to pass on, here’s the best part, it’s all so… Itinerant!

It’s amazing how the time flies when one sets his mind to “the long haul”.

We started the re-build project on the port side saloon and just like that it’s been two weeks and now we have a great big hole where there used to be a port side saloon…

My birthday has come and gone.

The winter seems to never want to give way to spring but the inevitable longer days are forcing the old man to give a wide birth to the beautiful sailing weather ahead.

We are seeing India pass from the now to the safety of our distance memories and I can’t help but hold on with all my remaining strength to that beautiful place that taught me so much about reality, life, myself and the mass of humanity that invades my dreams.

The future…

…Is coming soon!!!

We have entered a contest to photograph the entire planet Earth under sail!

http://www.nameyourdreamassignment.com/the-ideas/popeye/the-circumnavigation-of-every-land-mass-on-the-planet-earth

Please go to the above link and vote for us!

It’s a way for us to win $50.000.00 bucks for the adventure and a bunch of photo/video equipment!

Please help!