by Kim Petersen
20
The boatyard had agreed to let us stay at their dock only for the weekend, as they had other boats to haul out of the water Monday morning. Like it or not, we were going to be flushed out into the open. Since we were amateurs, we hired a captain to take us north on the Intracoastal Waterway to the small marina at which we had reservations. Captain Preston showed up around 9 a.m. in Bermuda shorts and a red and white Hawaiian shirt. After we gave him the tour he commented, “Not too shabby,” which under the circumstances was very kind.
We shoved off the dock, with Captain Preston barking orders from the flybridge. Mike stood next to him at the helm. Lauren, Stefan, and I, looking much like the amateurs we were, attempted fender and line duty for the first time. Although unfamiliar with the jobs required and who should do them as they emerged, we managed to push off unscathed. After rolling up the lines, I joined Mike and Captain Preston on the flybridge.
It was a typically sunny day in South Florida. It was January so it was cool. Cooler, once underway, and thankfully calm. Lauren and Stefan sat at the bow, their chatter rose up in wafts to where I sat on the flybridge. They were cheerful. Lauren had told me earlier that it had all been “worth it.” Novelty had its rewards.
We cruised slowly along the Intracoastal Waterway. Past miles of mansions and through stretches of vacant sandy shoreline populated only with palm trees. For a mile or two, there was nothing but clumps of twisted mangroves. While motoring north, I kept track of our progress on a large paper chart. With the binoculars, I checked the numbered green and red buoys, anticipating our course. I noted out loud the shallow areas, but Captain Preston had traveled this stretch of waterway “too many times to count” and was well familiar with the obstacles. Many medium sized boats, mainly fishing craft, flew by us generating large wakes that caused Chrysalis to bob around. One time, my silverware drawer opened and its contents spilled out onto the floor. Captain Preston was not impressed with the fly-by culprit. He told us in disgust, shaking his head back and forth, “Jerks! This is a no wake zone! Most people going up and down the Waterway have absolutely no idea how to operate a boat or follow the rules.” I told him that sounded a lot like us, but he smiled and said, “That is why you have me. And anyway, you guys will learn in time.”
Two hours later we pulled into a small posh marina, the only one that could take us on short notice. As we floated by all of the immaculate, gleaming, white yachts, I thought how much we must look like the hillbilly Clampets when they pulled into Beverly Hills. Sheets of lumber and Mike's table saw sat behind us on the flybridge. A workhorse was set up close to that. The pilothouse door had yet to be painted. I was certain we were trailing a cloud of sawdust behind us similar to Pig Pen's cloud in the Peanuts cartoon.
As we pulled deeper into the marina, I spotted a dockhand waving us into what seemed an impossibly tight berth. I was nervous. I was at the bow with a line, Lauren was midship, and Stefan at the stern. I threw the line but missed the dockhand by about ten feet, and the line slipped into the water. I hauled it up as quickly as I could, gathering the line in large loops like I had practiced. I re-threw the bundle, this time with more accuracy. When the dockhand had secured the line, we began to pivot off the bow, and when we were close enough, Lauren threw the springline (the line midship), then Stefan threw the stern line. We scrambled to replace a few fenders and although we misjudged a couple, resulting in a few tense moments and a small scratch, we were finally secure and had successfully completed our first docking maneuver.
Lovely as it was, those first two weeks at the marina, our stay was brief. The marina needed the space for a previous reservation. Captain Preston came again for the last time and helped us move to a large, nearby bay, where we anchored and remained for over a month.
While at anchor, we began to get used to substitutes. Instead of a car we had a twelve foot inflatable RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) or dinghy, which had the unfortunate name of Crabcakes. In the morning I might say, “I'm heading in to get some groceries,” and instead of hopping in the car I would hop in Crabcakes. I had never started an outboard motor in my life and found the yanking annoying. After several pulls, I would get it humming and then I would bounce along over the waves feeling very nautical, to the small beach where several dinghies were pulled ashore and tied to low lying scrub brush. After purchasing my groceries, I would haul the bags out into the parking lot and down the street a few blocks. Inevitably, the tide would have shifted one way or the other during my absence. I would find the dingy either further up on the beach imbedded in the sand, requiring me to push with all my strength to get it back into the water, or I would have to wade in water up to my shins to load the groceries.
Hot and sweaty, the slightest bit of live-aboard romance having leaked away, I would climb aboard Crabcakes, yank the motor to life, and bob back over the waves. As I approached Chrysalis, someone aboard would hear me. A smiling face would greet me on the swim platform and help me secure Crabcakes, then assist me in carefully hauling the provisions on board while the breeze shifted the whole scene gently around our anchor.
For the first couple of weeks on board, we had a cell phone. It had followed us from Canada and held at least a hundred of our most important, can't do without, phone numbers. One day while attempting to leap from the dinghy to the swim platform, Mike misjudged the distance and fell into the water. When we were through laughing our heads off, we realized that along with his wallet, the cell phone had been in his pocket. The wallet was salvaged, but despite our best life saving efforts, the cell phone never regained consciousness. We purchased a new one and only gave the number out to family, close friends, and the nearest Chinese restaurant whose delivery guy, Lee, would actually come to the small dingy beach to deliver our take-out. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed life without a telephone. When the cell phone occasionally rang, I would stop what I was doing, look up, and ask, “What was that noise?”
We did have a VHF, or Very High Frequency radio. Attached to the receiver was a telephone cord that ended in a speaker or microphone. This is the main mode of communication between boaters. It is your telephone. With it you can hail the power Sportfish coming directly for you down the Intracoastal and inquire sweetly if his intent is to ram you. Or, if you happened to be sinking, you could use it to calmly relay a “Mayday” in hopes that someone close by would come to your aid. Under more pleasant circumstances, you could use it to hail friends anchored nearby and ask if they wanted to come over for drinks. If you are nosy, as I am, you can listen in on everyone else's conversations.
We had never used a VHF before and practiced communicating on working channels back and forth between the helm and our portable handheld unit. At first we were very official, but then it all seemed so cloak and dagger, so 007, that we began creating elaborate messages in code. The kids made up nicknames for us. For reasons we'll not discuss in detail, they gave Mike the name “Bald Eagle.” For myself, “Mother Bird.” After picking a friend up at the airport and loading her luggage into the dinghy, I hailed Mike on a working channel from Crabcakes and our transmission went something like:
“Bald Eagle, Bald Eagle, this is Mother Bird do you copy?”
“Mother Bird, this is Bald Eagle on Chrysalis, go ahead.”
“Bald Eagle, the tuna is in the bag. I repeat, the tuna is in the bag. Over.”
“Good news, Mother Bird. Return Crabcakes to base for the ceremonial roasting of the tuna. Over.”
“Roger that. Mother Bird heading to base with the tuna and Crabcakes. Over and out.”
Aside from the fact that my friend didn't necessarily like being the tuna or the sound of eminent roasting, I thought our communiqué was fairly clandestine and it went a long way toward amusing the crew.
21
Being at anchor, I discovered, was vastly different from being tied up at a marina. For one thing, you were far more exposed to the elements. Wind in particular could be a problem, especially if you were anchored, like we were, with many o
ther boats in tight quarters. A strong breeze could force an anchor from its holding and cause you to be rudely awakened to the sound of crunching fiberglass as you dashed into the sailboat off your stern, or into one of the many docks belonging to the multimillion dollar waterfront homes nearby. While sound asleep, your anchor could pop up and you might simply float, wraithlike, across the bay and get stuck on the rocks along the shoreline. Unable to remove yourself, the waves would bash your boat against a jagged rock creating a hole in the side of your hull. The little red bilge pump lights would come to life and you would wonder why-oh-why you had ever decided to live on a boat.
With the wind howling around 3 a.m., I sat alone in the cockpit with a blanket wrapped around me and tried to gage our position from lights on a dark shore. With each gust, Chrysalis would swing wildly around her anchor, the rode straining and groaning. I cringed. I thought the stress on the line would be too much and it would snap. As I studied the shore, it appeared that we were dragging, and I would experience bouts of gripping panic.
After a week of particularly windy weather resulting in several sleepless nights on my part, Mike was poking around our GPS computer program and exclaimed, “Hey! I think we have an anchor alarm here!” On the screen, I could see where the computer had recorded our path to the anchorage in the form of a red line. I could tell where we had dropped the anchor because the red line suddenly shifted directions and went in a straight line back to where Chrysalis was resting at anchor in the form of a flashing red ball. Circling us was a dotted line, the perimeter Mike had set up. With the aid of GPS, an alarm was set to go off if we moved outside a set perimeter.
That night I slept in the pilothouse, where I could see our GPS location on the computer screen. Not long after that, the windy conditions subsided, and I was able to move back to my berth. Knowing the alarm would go off, I slept a bit better.
Being at anchor required that we consider our power usage. While most yachts opt for an AC generator, we had installed a DC generator designed by a former NASA engineer. It was smaller, quieter, and more fuel efficient than a typical AC generator. We also liked the idea that we only had to run it a few hours a day. It charged our batteries, and we then ran our power directly off of our battery bank. We programmed it to run an hour and a half in the morning and the same at night before we went to bed. As long as we remembered to conserve our usage, it supplied our batteries with more than enough power to run our freezer and air conditioners. We reminded each other to turn off lights and computers.
We installed a watermaker that took sea water and, through reverse osmosis, created up to 400 gallons a day of clean drinking water. When you consider that there were four of us wanting to shower, do laundry, and dishes, it went rather quickly. We spread out our showers and made them quick. Lauren and I turned off the water while shaving our legs. We made a conscious effort to use smaller amounts of water for dish duty.
In the mornings, I would sit in the cockpit and watch the sunrise over the water between the masts of two sailboats. While sipping hot coffee, I considered the difference between living on land and living on the water. When I was a kid, I was a swinger. My mother would take me to the park down the street and I would head for the nearest swing-set.
I remembered it. The rush as I sped down toward the ground, then the weightless feeling when the horizon disappeared and all I could see was sky and the tops of trees. A few times I couldn't help myself. Just when my progress was at its highest point, I let go of the chains and flew gloriously through the air for a few seconds, before experiencing land's selfish desire to keep me to herself in the form of gravity. I could never decide if the harsh and often painful landing was worth the few seconds of soaring.
From the roof of the flybridge, Lauren and Stefan paused to look down at the water some fifteen feet below. There were dares and “C'mons!” and finally one of them would hurtle themselves off the edge, tuck their knees to their chest, and fall through air howling “whoo hooo!” Unlike land, water was merciful. From that height, it received them, cushioned the blow, swallowing them in a single gulp, only to spew them up again, laughing. Unlike the hard-packed grassy earth, water was forgiving. Here in the harbor there was room for mistakes. Belly flops, similar to the painful one I performed off a swing when I was eight, were accommodated. I appreciated this.
As on land, there were chores, work, and school to accomplish during the day. I had initially thought that living in smaller quarters would mean less “house” work, but there seemed just as much to do on a boat. The white hull of Chrysalis was a magnet for whatever dust or grime might be floating in the air. When I finished scrubbing down her huge carcass, I would notice that there were small circles of rust forming on our stainless rails. Just about the time I was done shining the stainless, the hull would need washing again. While attempting routine upkeep on our systems, watermaker, engines, generator, Mike juggled the installation of doors on all cupboards and fabric wall covering.
In the afternoon we swam or fished off the stern. Stefan took up crabbing. He laid several traps with raw chicken and set them in our vicinity. Every morning he would go off in the dinghy to see what might have crawled in overnight. Almost always he brought in a couple of stone and blue crabs. By law, you could take one claw from a stone crab that had two as one would eventually grow back. If you took both claws the poor crab would have no way of defending or feeding itself. Over the course of a week, we collected several claws and had ourselves a small, but tasty, feast.
There were days when Stefan caught several small blue crabs, too small to eat, so we set up a small raceway using our teak deck chairs and a few unused school binders. Each of us would look over the crabs inspecting the length of their legs, their apparent liveliness, and choose one. We would line them up in the cockpit and someone would say “GO!” Of course the crabs didn't get it at first and we had to shove them along. But eventually one would get going in the right direction and a couple others would follow and then things got very exciting. As the winning crab crossed the finish line there would be shouts and groans, and Monopoly money would exchange hands.
22
The ancient Phoenicians would have loved GPS. If they had it, they would have ruled the seas for much longer than they did. They were master sailors and making charts for ocean navigation as early as 1200 BC. Included in these often sophisticated maps were the locations of rocks, shallows, and suitable channels through narrow straits. These handmade charts were highly valued, and information on them was passed down to fellow Phoenician sailors but never to strangers. In times of war, charts with misinformation were circulated among the enemy in hopes that they would run aground or get lost.
Much later on, in the Great Age of Discovery, Spain kept her maps under lock and key in the royal vaults. In those days, the breadth of a country's cartography often indicated its success and wealth as a nation and their secrets were tightly guarded. Charts and maps were given only to captains making official journeys on a ruler's behalf. In addition to geography and aids to navigation, these charts could hold specific information on hard-to-find treasures, like spices. During the course of a journey, if a ship was threatened by an enemy, the captain would order the charts to be gathered and bound with a lead weight and thrown overboard rather than risk them falling into enemy hands. Many ancient charts were lost in this way.
Today, if you live on a boat, you use charts, not maps. Maps describe certain topographical and geographical information pertaining to land, including roads and elevations. Charts display information applicable on water, like depth, buoys, currents, where to anchor and what holding you might expect there, right of way, and aiding landmarks. All this is laid out in minutes and seconds according to longitude and latitude.
I discovered during the first month of living on a boat that I had an affinity for GPS, and I loved charts. Especially paper ones, with their crisp, tactile edges. In my chaotic world, their organized lines laid out before me on the chart table gave me a feeling of secu
rity. For a woman who likes being in control, or at least the illusion of it, there is nothing so reassuring as finding your exact coordinates, down to the second, on a chart.
“Look,” I would say while pointing to a coordinate, “there I am and all is well.”
~Part Three~
Splice: the joining of lines by tucking strands or otherwise interweaving parts of each rope inside the other.
23
When I was in university, I read Thoughts in Solitude, by Thomas Merton, and mistakenly interpreted silence, solitude, and simplicity as life lived on my terms in peace and quiet with little or no interruptions. Not long after I got married, I discovered that all three were interrupted by a significant other who had the quaint idea that our lives were meant to be shared.
We shared a bed, which he hogged, leaving me with about six inches of sleeping room. Not only that, he stole the covers. I would wake up, late for work, and make my way to the one bathroom we shared and find he was already in there and that it would be quite some time before the bathroom would be in usable condition. He depleted the last of the milk for his Cheerios leaving me a stale loaf of bread for breakfast. His wet towel lay on the floor. Instead of bringing home supreme pizza like I asked, he would “forget” and bring home meat lovers. After a long day at work, I would go to bed and there he was, asleep on my side again. “For the next fifty years, this is how it will be,” I thought.
Just about the time I had made some wriggle room in my soul for marriage, I got pregnant, and life has been one continual adventure in how many ways I can be interrupted in a single day. In a single hour. Early on, it was crying in the middle of the night and exploding diapers in the nice restaurant where we were having brunch. Just when I was doing something important like reading the evening paper, some tiny version of humanity would go and topple down the stairs and require a run to the emergency room. I would happen upon my potted fern, overturned, the soil all over the newly vacuumed carpet. The small culprit, covered in potting soil, would deny all responsibility. Later, it was incessant “whys?” or “can I have's?” interspersed by calls from the school nurse who told me that my kid had thrown up all over another and could I come and pick them up?