Sovereign Nations

Hot!!! Man, is that an under-statement!

The past week has been in and out of the 100’s like a Pynchonian simile (here)…

Damn, it’s been hot!

…So I had this customer come in to my (evil empire) work place the other day asking me if I’d ever heard of an “ice-box A/C unit”. I had never heard of such a thing but we, the customer and I, got into a heated (ha-ha) discussion about how one would go about making such a contraption. Anyway, inspired by the above record breaking temp’s in the Chesapeake Bay I went home on my day off and made one $17.00, 12 volt (off the grid) Ice-Box Air Conditioning Unit.

Here’s how I did it…

…First, I got a cheap, ok, it was free, cooler from work, an in-line bilge blower (far-right), two vents (left), a length of flexi-duct hose, a push-pull on-off switch and a drain plug…

… I installed the blower motor, the electrical wiring and the switch in a small group in the upper right corner of the cooler then I ran the 14 gauge wire out of the box.

…After that I cut an input air vent the same size as the blower output on the opposite side of the cooler, once again, in the upper right hand corner.

…I put a 12 volt cigarette lighter male-plug on the end of the wire and ran it into the cockpit.

… Then all you have to do is fill it up with ice, run the ducting to your favorite place (in our case it’s the companion way entrance) and turn that sucker on!

We’ll see how it goes, so far it’s been pretty cool, a bit on the loud side, even though the fan motor is inside the cooler, but I think it’s brought the temperature down in the main saloon about 10 degrees and for now I think I’ll just go off and pat myself on the back for a project well done!

The squall is building overhead and my thoughts are leaning in the direction of, Wow, I’m glad we’re not out there now…”

Ok, I’ll start over…

Dena and I were eating sushi last last night contemplating a Monday morning sail. We’d get up… whenever, ready the boat…at the pace we feel is needed and go sailing. Destination, whatever…

It was incredible, the wind was a fresh 10 knots out of the North leaving the dock, meaning, to our broadsides but we slipped out between the pilings without even getting close and just like that we were out in the upper Middle River. As we rounded in to the confluence of Dark Head and Hopkins Creek we set sail and in less than a minute we were silently clipping away at five knots at a heel of about 15 degrees to starboard. It was perfect! We tacked twice before leaving Frog Mortar Creek aft and with it we payed out the sheets for a beautiful broad reach out towards the open Chesapeake Bay. Once again, Incredible, absolutely perfect sailing!

Before making the mouth of the Bay we rounded up to head back up river so Dena could make it to work on time. We had an out flowing tide on the way down river so we knew with the up wind beat and the ebbing tide we’d be in for a little bit longer trip going back home. On our second tack upwind we luffed up into a gust so as I tightened sail Dena fell off just a touch and at that very moment we got broad-sided by a massive rogue gust from the rivers’ confluence. In the next 8 seconds the boat would be knocked down, the forward lower shroud on the port-side would be ripped out of the deck and the rig would shudder with a terrifying groan. Within that aforementioned span of time I tossed off the sheets and Dena pointed our bow into the wind. In less than ten seconds we were sailing perfectly again and I was hauling in the genny with the roller furling. We were silent with adrenaline for a few long heartbeats afterwards.

I’ve heard it said by so many sailors I’d be hard pressed to find the original quote, that “Sailing is nothing more than a series of contemplative hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror”. Today I am indeed inclined to agree with that statement.

When the water flowed over the leeward bulwarks in the knock down it scooped up one of our fenders, tossing it overboard. Without saying much to each other we both thought it a good time to do an under-sail “MOB” drill and go back and save our fender from certain piracy from the local suburban Reevers of Hog Pen Creek, Maryland. It wasn’t until we had tacked twice and gibed 3 times that we both realized we were just a little too shaken-up to do a maneuver like that, but, according to the U.S.C.G that is the absolute best time to do a “Man-Over-Board” maneuver; when you’re freaked-the-fuck-out…

We saved our beloved fender…

…But as we were settling back in to sailing up-river again I noticed that the forward-lower shroud on the port-side was tossing around the foredeck like a drunk’n sailor. I alerted Dena to the issue and went forward to inspect the damage and strike our main sail. The half inch thick chain-plate that supports the lower part of the mast on the port side of the boat had snapped in half when the spreaders went in the water during the knock down.

…And that was the moment of sheer terror, the moment we realized we really had just barely escaped death.

The fact of the matter is, if we hadn’t rounded-up into the wind and tossed off the sheets at that very moment we would have been dismasted and the entire sailing rig would have come crashing down into the cockpit where we both were at the time.

Wow…

We made it back to the dock without incident and before I got back from the head at the top of the dock Dena was gearing up for her bicycle ride to work. We bantered back and forth a bit but as she took off we both gave in to that look that we give each other every single time we live through another one of our calamitous adventures, and together we said, I love you!

Hmmm, One of the valuable lessons we’ve learned over the years of being prudent sailors is knowing when to go out and when not to go out…

In early September of 2001 we were in the little town of Newport, Oregon waiting out the weather before heading South for the San Francisco Bay. On NOAA’s weather radio the forecast was for calming seas on the morning of the first so we decided to go into town, check our e-mails  and get one last hot meal before heading off shore once again. As we walked the four miles to the Newport Library for our half hour of free internet access we both were a little more than just quiet, a rare thing for the two of us for sure, we were down right scared that the weather was going to turn on us but neither one of us wanted to deture the other one from the excitement of continuing our adventures around the world! So, we walked on in silence…

…After doing our business at the library we set off for a local all you could eat buffet but before we got there we both came out of our terror closets.

I told Dena that I thought it was a bad idea to be in a big hurry and if we both had bad feelings about leaving than we shouldn’t go, period!

And just like that, we both sighed a big sigh of relief and resigned to NEVER go sailing when either one of us even felt the least amount of reserve. It was like having a giant weight lifted off the conversation, not-to-mention liberating, we were both happy and even a little content by our decision to stay in a sheltered cove for a few extra days if for nothing else, piece of mind!

It’s a good thing we did too, that night Dena got food poisoning from the all-you-can-eat place and she wouldn’t be ready for another off shore adventure for another nine days…(*)

Somewhere in that long lost dinner conversation I’m sure were the seeds of another rule-of-thumb that Dena and I have applied to our general adventure behavior; and that was all the other “No Sailing” days in any given year while sailing in the waters of the United States of America…

…Never, and I mean NEVER! Go sailing on Memorial Day, the 4th of July or Labor day, the three days out of the year that the waters of the US are rife with idiocy! Every single ass-hole who has ever been on the water WILL be on the water on those three days, it’s a guarantee.
…Well, This year Dena and I haven’t seen each other that much over the last few months and of course that means we haven’t been sailing very much either, ok, we haven’t been sailing at all since we made land-fall in Middle River, MD!

WHAT?!

That’s totally unacceptable so, last weekend we decided to go sailing on the only day that we both had off together in at least another two months. At the time it sounded like a great idea, a bottle of wine after a day on the water… As I’ve said before, I work at (evil empire inc.) and Memorial Day is one of their biggest sales days of the year so rest-assured the build-up to such a big deal is in its self a big (fucking) deal and I spent all week worrying about going sailing on one of THOSE days… By Sunday night this past week I had fostered a very BAD feeling about Monday’s sailing adventure and felt compelled to change our plans just a little…

… Sunday night we scrapped the first idea of going out all day in the big boat in trade for a full day of sailing down Middle River in our 9 foot Cat-rigged dory, S/V Tinker. We sailed up-wind and down river with Dena at the helm past five or six ship-wrecks to the “River Watch” restaurant and bar for some rich food and a few strong rum-punches! After that we sailed with the tide and the wind at our backs back up Middle River with me at the helm all the way to the Eastern Rd. bridge then back to our home and global-circumnavigation vector, the S/V S.N. Nomad. We had an absolutely incredible all day adventure that was free, fun and relatively void of the holiday ass-hole factor and best of all neither one of us got food poisoning!
* (September 11th 2001)

The worst environmental disaster in the history of the human condition.

But there are other conditions…

I believe, as a species, we must concern ourselves with these other conditions.

…It’s true,

A none-stop parade of broken bodies in dignity carts scoot the white top of neo-rural  Maryland. As the Slanted faces with a post digestive grimace, times 8, brighten my morning return from “The Thing”, I realize that retired-Baltimorians dressed in ancient suburbs just aren’t very pretty.

It looks much better from the water…

Photography is my strange demon. The guilt of not having my camera in spectacular moments drives my artistic desire just under enough, damn.

Before I stepped off the boat tonight I looked at my rig and the age old argument took place just beyond rational thought.

(Take your camera with you!) whispered my ancient education.

(Naw, the sun just set so I won’t miss anything.) The thoughts inspired by my over worked back muscles seemed comfortably  rational  and strangely guilt riddled, but ultimately, final… Ahhhh, liberated from my sole-stealing, moment freezing, back wrenching need to freeze moments 1/250th of a second at a time. Idiot!

As I reached the top of my dock I noticed the sun hadn’t completely set and there was an orange dome of our local star that was perfectly bracketed buy two monolithic urban structures… It was ominous like a sci-fi novel cover! I quickly snapped my guilty attention away from the spectacle that would NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN and embraced my sloth as I increased my stride.

Never mind, it’s just a picture, NO One Will Ever Know (N.O.W.E.K), I didn’t shoot that picture.

(Except me of course…) Shut Up!!! N.O.W.E.K!

A block of red-orange light knifed between two condo columns and lit the white bloom of a row of apple blossoms up in a bright pink halo that was only missing a few dozen singing cherubs to complete the image.

No (fucking) Wek!!! Wishing my fantasy Rafaelian image would turn into a bunch of Steven Spielberg monsters that would chase me down and tare my eyes out! (Head down…)

I figured I go out to the barge at the end of the marina to check my e-mail, I see all that stuff every day, it’ll be no big deal…

When I came out of the condo complex heading out to the barge I look up and there is a giant Mississippi River-style show boat (that has never been there before, duh!) tied up on a starboard mooring with the very last sliver of sun illuminating her paddle wheels aft… The Baltimore Inner Harbor is roiling with a small fleet  of silent sailing vessels and just as the our local star dips into the west a stratus-cirrus cloud formation paints the perfect image of a rat across the rainbow sky …and No One Will Ever Know.

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!!!