Jackhammered

by Ed Bethune

  We sailed Salute on the Chesapeake Bay as often as we could. This sail was on a nice day in early 1990.

  We took a few days to sail down the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, Virginia. Our goal was to start the first leg of our voyage as early in June as we could. We would sail the northern circle route to the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the North Atlantic about 900 miles from the mainland of Portugal. Our route would take advantage of the northeasterly current of the Gulf Stream, a force likened to a river in the sea.

  The great current starts in the South Atlantic Ocean and flows north until trade winds push it westerly into the Caribbean. It then heads toward the east coast of Mexico, spins its way through the Yucatan Channel, and turns back to the east. It gains speed as it squeezes its way through the Florida Straits, the narrow opening between the Florida Keys and Cuba. Then the current, now powerful, warm, and swift, rejoins the Atlantic and takes the name given it by Benjamin Franklin, the Gulf Stream. The mighty current then turns north, moving fast between Florida and the Bahamas where Ponce de Leon discovered it in 1513.

  For centuries mariners have taken advantage of the Gulf Stream. It serves as a moving sidewalk for boats headed north and thence east to Europe. We planned to enter the Gulf Stream north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina where the Chesapeake opens to the sea. We could ride the current from there to the Azores.

  There is a downside to riding the Gulf Stream. It can become treacherous and unforgiving if it meets a powerful wind moving in the opposite direction. The collision of southbound winds with a northbound Gulf Stream will cause huge seas with confused, unpredictable wave action. Many a sailor has lived to report the horror of being in the Gulf Stream when it is at its worst but no one knows how many have perished, overcome by enormous rogue waves.

  We arrived in Little Creek, on the north side of Norfolk, on June 1. Salute had performed well on the trip south. We sailed most of the way, but we did motor for a small part of the trip when the wind lay down. Our little boat had a correspondingly little engine, a fifteen-horsepower Lister diesel. It had never given us a bit of trouble in eight years, but on the way to Norfolk, we noticed it was overheating on occasion, so we had it checked by a diesel mechanic. When he examined the Lister, Murphy’s Law was in full force—the engine performed beautifully.

  We went to the government weather station in Norfolk and talked to a meteorologist who said the weather would be good on June 6. He reviewed all the data available to him and we discussed the pilot chart predictions that gale force winds are unlikely in June. We were most concerned that we might encounter an unseasonable Nor’easter, the term often used for any storm that occurs in the northeast part of the United States. The risk looked to be small.

  We rented a car and began filling our boat with provisions. We bought ten dozen eggs, rubbed each egg with Vaseline, and put them back in the cartons. They would stay fresh for a long time if we turned the cartons upside down at least once a week. We bought cans of tuna, corned beef, and chicken. We got fresh bread, crackers, muffin mixes, and citrus fruit that we hung up in nets. We filled other nets with onions, potatoes, and other vegetables that would be slow to spoil. Before we left Maryland, we had bought several tins of canned butter that came from Australia. We also found canned bacon, a product of Poland. It is packed in brine and quite salty, but if soaked overnight in water it is a good substitute for fresh bacon. We had a rainwater catchment system on Salute that would replenish our water supply, but to start our trip we emptied our water tanks and refilled them with fresh water.

  The entire provisioning exercise was actually a lot of fun as we had endless debates about the kinds of food that would keep well, and that we would eat on our trip to the Azores, a journey that would most likely take thirty days.

  After reaching the Azores, we would sail to the mainland of Portugal, rest for a few weeks and then sail into the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually we would work our way to Greece and Turkey where we would sail the routes sailed by the Apostle Paul—the coasts of Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, and Malta, the site of his famous shipwreck. Ultimately, we would return to the south coast of France, pass through the French canals to the English Channel and on to England and Scotland. We did not have a definite plan beyond that but figured, if we liked it, to be gone for as much as two or three years.

  46

  GETTING UNDERWAY

  The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest

  fruitfulness and the greatest engagement is—to live

  dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!

  Send your ships into uncharted seas.

  Freidrich Nietzsche

  Early in the morning on June 6, 1990, we dropped our lines to the dock in Little Creek, Virginia and headed east toward the Atlantic Ocean. There is something therapeutic about sailing away. It is a special feeling to head off into the sea without having to advise the government, explain it to the media, or to anyone in the whole world. You are on your own, liberated, as free and independent from worldly influences as one can be in this modern world. Even so, the forces of the sea are powerful, so strong that newfound freedoms can vanish in a wink. If the sea gets angry, you are at its mercy, no longer in control of your destiny. Thoughts of liberation disappear, replaced by a determination to stay afloat, react as best you can, and survive. Sailors can be free one minute and humbled the next, scrambling to stay alive. This dilemma is the essence of the spell ensnaring those who go to sea.

  The inlet to Little Creek faded behind us as we approached the missing section of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, an odd-looking vacant space where the bridge becomes a tunnel allowing big, tall vessels to pass over the tunnel as they go in and out of the Chesapeake. As we passed through the opening, close to the bridge pillars I thought of our sailing trip to Maine and our attempt to enter Salt Pond Harbor in fog so thick we could not see the inlet markers until we were directly between them. This opening was wide and easy to see, but for some reason it reminded me of how quickly things can go bad. The thought passed, washed away by the sight before us, the Chesapeake Bay giving way to the open sea. We were on our way into the blue water of the Atlantic Ocean.

  The weather could not have been better. An azure sky had not a single cloud or even a wisp of one, and a fair wind made for a synchronized parade of blue waves. We tasted and smelled the salt air as the seagulls screamed, diving into the sea to catch their breakfast or soaring in circles then skimming just above the wave-tops to get a better look. Beneath us, the water got deeper and deeper. Soon we were out of sight of land, and the murmur of the sea, our constant companion, settled in.

  Salute, at her best, could sail five nautical miles in an hour. Allowing for slack winds or adverse currents, we hoped to average ninety to a hundred knots a day. At that pace, we would reach land in thirty days or less. Our goal for the first day was to head in a northeasterly direction toward the Gulf Stream, which once entered would give us a one-to-two-knot boost every hour.

  We enjoyed every minute of our first day, and as the sun began to set, we prepared our little boat for nighttime. With each shade of darkness on the first night at sea, we feel an increasing sense of aloneness. Nighttime blue water sailing takes some getting used to. Things look and sound different. The noise of a boat slicing through the water is barely noticeable in daylight, but at night, the motion of the boat creates an eerie phosphorescent trail of disturbed ocean water and the docile daytime sound becomes a mysterious gurgle.

  We were adapting and thinking about the challenge of night-time shipping traffic or the risk of hitting a floating object when a thunderstorm came up out of the west, complete with an awesome display of lightning bolts and bursts of brightness that made it seem like day. It was spectacular, but our minds gave way to a moment of worry about lighting striking our boat. Salute was equipped with a grounding plate system that tied a chunk of metal on the bottom of the boat to a spider web of wires connected to important metal points throughout the interior of the bo
at. I installed the protective system especially for our trip, but no system is failsafe. Lana and I talked about the technical aspects of lightning strikes at sea for a few minutes, and then we lowered sail and settled down to enjoy the thunderstorm show. There is not much more you can do.

  Our second day at sea was another beautiful day with fair winds. We cooked our breakfast, checked Salute from stem to stern and continued our northeasterly track. As the sun rose higher, I prepared to take a noon-sight with the sextant. It is the oldest and easiest way to determine latitude. We had a satellite navigation system, the forerunner of GPS, but it is good practice to have a backup method for knowing where you are. I was pleased to see that my celestial navigation exercise squared with the electronic reading on our satellite navigation device. We were on course to join the Gulf Stream and to follow a bowed route that would take us over the smaller part of the globe to our destination. I also made temperature readings of the sea. The Gulf Stream—the river in the sea—is warmer than the water through which it travels thus a significant increase in water temperature indicates you are riding the great current. My temperature readings proved we had not yet found the Gulf Stream.

  We saw a few big ships as we began to cross the traffic lanes that feed into New York harbor, but none was close to us. The vessel sightings tapered off dramatically as we made our easting. The second night was uneventful, no lightning show. We took turns keeping watch, something at which Lana excels. She is not distracted, as I tend to be, with navigation, rigging, and mechanics. Her focus has the intensity of a laser and we have never gotten off course, not a single degree, when she is at the helm. We made a hundred knots, a good second day.

  As we started our third day, we were well off the coast of New Jersey, bending ever northeast. The electric autopilot I had rigged to operate the tiller failed, but we had an Aries Windvane, an ingenious device that reads the wind and keeps a boat on course. We saw no other boats during the day, but we did see the lights of one after dark. Our navigation system and charts told us we were now over very deep water and right on course. As the day wound down the wind died. We decided to run our engine to generate electricity for our batteries, power we needed for our electronic gear and for our navigation lights. After a quarter-hour the engine overheated, the same problem that had hid itself from the diesel mechanic in Little Creek. We hoped it was an isolated incident similar to the one we experienced coming down the Chesapeake Bay, so we shut the engine down.

  47

  GETTING INTO TROUBLE

  The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.

  James Joyce (Ulysses)

  On the fourth day, we determined by positioning and reading water temperature that we were in the Gulf Stream and riding the current that would carry us along our chosen course. The winds began to pipe up in mid-afternoon and the sea began to show her teeth. Whitecaps are a telltale sign that conditions are changing but it is no cause for alarm. Stronger wind meant we would get a better sail, but as the wind and waves continued to build, we turned on our single-side band radio to get a current weather forecast. We learned that an unexpected Nor’easter that began in Nova Scotia might affect us. We tried the engine again hoping to recharge our batteries, but it overheated just as it had before. That was not a good development, and the winds were getting stronger and stronger with every passing hour. The sea was changing, oddly, unpredictably.

  It was our first time to be in the Gulf Stream when the current was encountering a strong wind coming from the opposite direction, out of the northeast. We knew quite a bit about the Gulf Stream because we had dealt with it on our travels to the Bahamas and through the Florida Straits. We knew about Nor’easters because people in the northeast part of the United States call any strong rain or snowstorm a Nor’easter regardless of season, prevailing wind direction, where it began or how it is moving. The storms can be devastating, particularly to ships caught in the warmer ocean water of the Gulf Stream. The storm coming our way deserved its name—Nor’easter—because the wind was blowing strongly out of the northeast.

  We reefed the sails, making them smaller, and pressed on into the dark but by midnight the wind forced us to reef the mainsail to its smallest size and we completely furled the foresail. We put our boat in the heave-to position and lay down to get some rest.

  Edgar Allen Poe, in his Narrative of A. Gordon Pym of Nantucket, explained the purpose of “heaving-to,” sometimes called “layingto.” Poe said it is a measure resorted to “for when it is too violent to admit of carrying sail without danger of capsizing … or … the sea is too heavy for the vessel … [and] much damage is usually done her by the shipping of water over her stern and sometimes by the violent plunges she makes forward.”

  Every boat has its unique way of heaving-to; ours on Salute was to set a reefed mainsail so that the wind would backfill it. Then we tied the tiller over so that if the boat began to inch forward the rudder would steer her back into the wind, thus causing the boat to lose forward motion and stay in the same position. It is a classic way to ride out a storm, but this storm was about to test us as we had never been tested.

  It was a rough night, but Salute performed well.

  When daylight came on the fifth day we knew we were in a precarious situation. I looked at the charts and saw that we were closer to Newport, Rhode Island than any other port, and it was a harbor familiar to us. I raised the issue of diverting to Newport to fix our engine and wait for better weather.

  Lana asked the important questions, “How long will it take to get there, and can we avoid the worst part of the storm?” For the best part of an hour we discussed the idea of diverting, the direction of the winds and currents, and the trouble we were having with our diesel engine. Lana then said, “Let’s press on! We have made a good start and our chance of weathering the storm is just as good as our chance of reaching Newport.” It was another good example of why she has been such a good companion for me. She was gutsy enough to make the trip, and tough enough to stay the course—a rare woman. She would have been a good Marine.

  We pressed on. Our reasoning was that we could—if we had to—run the engine enough to keep the batteries charged and that would allow us to operate our lights at night and sparingly use the radio for weather reports and essential communications. Most of all, we did not want to give up the good start we had made and we were convinced we could ride out the coming storm. We let out sail and forged ahead. It was rough and bouncy and we did not make much headway, but at least we were fighting back and that strengthened our resolve. In mid-afternoon, the winds picked up and we had no choice but to reduce sail and heave-to. It was going to be a long night, but we were satisfied we were doing what any other sailor would have done: Rig for heavy weather, wait for the storm to clear, and proceed on course.

  When dark came Salute was riding fairly well, up then down, up then down. We were down below in the cabin riding it out as best we could.

  Suddenly, about 10:00 p.m., Lana said, “Something has changed, I can tell by the sound of it. Listen.” I could not hear or feel any difference, but Lana has the best set of ears in the Western Hemisphere. She can distinguish the walk of a big cat from that of a small cat. She has always been that way. House noises, car noises, equipment noises, all noises must stay the same or Lana will immediately notice the change. She said again, “Be still, listen.” I still did not hear what she was hearing, but I could sense a different motion, a wilder motion. I said, “You’re right, I’ll go topside and have a look.”

  I threw open the hatch and climbed the ladder into the cockpit, holding on for dear life. The wind was shrieking, hammering the boat and forcing the waves to enormous heights. The noise of breaking waves and wind whistling through the rigging of Salute was like nothing I had ever heard. It did not take long to see why Salute was behaving strangely. The strong winds had blown the triple-reefed mainsail completely out of its track. The sail, now flapping uselessly over the side, left Salute defenseless. We were now lying-ahu
ll, a controversial method for weathering a storm, whereby a sailor takes down all sails, battens the hatches and locks the tiller to leeward. Unlike heaving to, the boat will bob around—much like a cork—and drift freely, completely at the mercy of the storm.

  It was too rough and dangerous to jury-rig the mainsail, so I just took a seat in the cockpit and told Lana we had a problem. She said, “If you can’t do anything about it, then come below, it’s safer.”

  She was right, so I went below and started kicking myself for not getting a storm tri-sail before I left port. A storm tri-sail is a small sail that fits securely in a separate track on the mainmast. It would not have blown out; it would still be working.

  I spent a little too much time whining about not getting a tri-sail. Lana, a fierce opponent of negative talk, brought my self-flagellation to a halt. She said, “Hindsight is 20-20. We’re where we are and we have to make the best of it.” Wise woman—she should have been a federal judge.

  It was going to be a long night, seven more hours to sunrise. Our little ship tossed about, left to right and up and down. She turned first one way and then another. Every five minutes or so an enormous wave would lift us skyward, and when we reached the top, perched on the crest of the wave, our boat would fall sideways off the crest of the wave and crash, and shudder, against the trough of the wave. The fall of twenty-five feet felt like a thousand. All the while, the rigging—even with the mainsail out of its track and the foresail furled—strained and creaked as if it were about to be torn away. Once Salute bobbed back to the upright position, we had only a minute or two to collect ourselves before we started rising up, up again to the dropping off spot. There was an unholy rhythm to our dance with the ocean, and it lasted all night.