Solstice 2007
Dear Ones:
I can’t complain. Does no good anyway. The good news is: I am not in constant, nor even in intermittent pain from last year’s ice skating/surgery/rehab disaster. No drugs, working full time, I hope at a competent and positive level. Sure, I am clumsy. I drop things, I write a pathetic scrawl, interpretable only to MI-5 codebreakers, but I can’t complain. Small inconveniences, compared to our wounded coming back from Iraq, compared to real disasters here and abroad. So our motto remains “NO WHINING!” Just don’t ask me to open a pickle jar.
We are braced here for the last year of the Bush presidency, countdown clock winding down, and thermometer rising. Should be a rollicking year of efforts at locking in the legacy, staying the course, defeating junk science wherever it should rear its ugly head, and packing the courts with young and studly enforcers of living in the 18th century, whether we like it or not. The follies have already begun, of course, totally aggravating to those of us who have given up on any chance of civil discourse and bipartisan public service. I wish for those things, but no longer believe in Santa.
We are now only a one blue-star family, with Nathanael out of the Army, we hope for good. They have a fine print clause in the enlistment contract, the Individual Ready Reserve, where they retain the right to call you back to duty, for three years after your enlistment is up. Lots of folks have been caught up by this, and find themselves right back in digital camo, totin’ a shootin’ iron, and knocking sand out of their boots. He is just hunkered down, waiting it out. Two years of that remain, and it is a bit nerve-wracking. He is in school at Salisbury University, now thinking of doing Social Work, and chafing at being the old guy (at 30), in a universe of mouth-breathing, gum-cracking clueless teenagers. I don’t envy him that…He is working hard to get back into the academic thing, after a long and ugly hiatus, but persevering, and was relieved to get his first report card containing all A’s and a B. Actually, he never did that before, and we were already way proud of him. But now maybe even he is starting to believe…
Hannah is 21, in her 3rd year at the Naval Academy, having signed on for a 2 plus 5 year commitment by beginning that 3rd year. She is still doing Oceanography, and just looking to the finish line. Speaking of which, she has had a great year of running distance races. She did the Shamrock Marathon, 26.2 miles, in Virginia Beach, in mid March, and completed it, in a freezing, blustery day, in just over 4 hours. She then ran the Marine Corps Marathon, in DC, at the end of October, and was 15 minutes faster, at 3:51 or so. That was just a tune-up run, because she did the JFK 50 miler three weeks later, in just under 10 hours. She said she felt great throughout, and her biggest thrill was that by finishing so well, she qualified for a hundred-miler. Her pictures from the race seem to bear that out—she is just smiling and running along, the finish never in doubt. I had planned to run the Marine Corps Marathon with her this year, as proof to myself of my successful rehab, but an unfortunate encounter during a training run with an unfettered specimen of Canis familiaris ssp. horribilis in July left me gimpy for the rest of the summer, nursing a sprained knee. So I cannot claim to be back to baseline. Maybe this year…
Michele has brought forth another grandbaby, little Lily, who is a beauty, natch. She is so happy and placid, but that will change. Two babies and full time mommyhood is a handful for anyone, and Michele is up to the challenge, though not without some gentle coaching (and gloating) from us. We oldsters can’t wait for their adolescence! Little Jack, our other grandchild, is now almost 3, a sweet and happy little boy, currently sporting a red cast on his cracked lower leg, from a little gravity lesson on the stairs. Michele will be quite buff from carrying two kids around for the next 3-4 weeks. No need for an expensive exercise club membership for her. Her husband Eric is home more, flying around less, and all is well enough. The whole gang came out this summer, with Eric’s son Kagan (age 11), for a boat trip and dinghy sailing on the Nanticoke River. Schweeet. We also had a marvelous Chesapeake summer boating adventure with Moms and Pops and their friends David and Kathy Landrey, navigating from Seaford to Tangier Island, and thence to Washington D.C., and the fabled Capitol Yacht Club, home of famous felons Larry Craig, and Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Moms and Pops are faring well, and remain jolly shipmates, with only an occasional lash of the Cat o’ Nine Tails required to keep them in line.
Everett remains at St. John’s College, now a 20 year-old sophomore. He continues to row with the rowing team, the only interscholastic sport they offer there, besides croquet. I am not making that up. They play a croquet match with Navy yearly, and have a winning record. Anyway, he is more settled into academic life, having endured a bruising first year encounter with his professors’ expectations of something considerably better than anonymous mediocrity. And he has risen to the challenge. They (and he) now believe he belongs there. He spent his summer in Beijing, as slave labor for a translating group. They lured him with a free flight, (still waiting for that reimbursement check) and promises of great wages, but neglected to mention the slum housing, the 12-hour 7-day workweek, and the threats to pull his visa if he didn’t knuckle under. Fortunately, his old host family took him in, and he negotiated his situation to a more tolerable one, all part of the lessons one needs to learn. But his Chinese is at its best ever, and he plots a return next summer as a translator and tourguide for somebody rich and famous, for the Beijing Olympics.
Catherine continues to run her non-profit corporation from her sewing room, still organizing quilt-making and quilt-awarding on a grand scale. She has caused over 15,000 Quilts of Valor to be awarded, and the numbers are growing and growing. I will pause for a bald solicitation of support at this point—like the fund-raising segment at NPR. Please check out her website at www.qovf.org and please consider making a tax deductible donation, to help with postage, website expenses, and the like. It really is a barebones operation, and all funds go toward the goal, of covering every soldier, sailor marine and airman, wounded in any fashion by the War on Terror® (Now back to Some Things Considered.) She has been working hard on publicity, fundraising, and the website, and just had a tribute read into the Congressional Record by our Senator, Tom Carper. He came to the house last week to present a copy, and receive a quilt for display in his office. Nice fellow, especially for a politician. The house has never been cleaner, though we basically just raked all the clutter into rooms where NO ONE MAY GO, and gave the illusion, only briefly, that we are not just crazed magpies in human form. Thankfully, nobody in the Senator’s party had to use the necessarium, though Catherine had painted it in their honor the week prior. That is a scary thing…Catherine with a loaded paintbrush. But I digress.
As for me, (yes, it’s all about me, isn’t it?) I am pleased and surprised to report that I passed the California Bar Exam in February, and am now a licensed attorney in the State of California. That, $2.49, and a 15-minute wait in line will get me surly service and a Grande Latte at the new Starbucks in Seaford, but it is still amazing. So now I have a license to kill, and a license to steal. I have done a very little consulting, with hopes for more, but it will be a long time before I ever make back my tuition. I haven’t even earned enough to pay for my trip to Oakland to take the test. It was a three day meat-grinder of a test, with two days of essays and one day of multiple choice. Only 36.8% passed, but I am glad I was one of those lucky few, because there is no way in hell I would have gone back there to do it again. Catherine made me go in the first place, and I was cussin’ her hourly the whole time I was there. The Dean of Stanford Law School, and possible Supreme Court nominee in the next Democratic administration, Kathleen Sullivan, had previously failed it, but was in the crowd with me this time, and passed. Jerry Brown passed on his third attempt, and Pete Wilson, former governor of California, required a couple of tries. I had my swearin’-in day this month, to avoid an extra year of Bar Association fees, and immediate Continuing Legal Education requirements, but it is official—I am sworn to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and California, and to uphold the law to the best of my knowledge and ability.
My real job has had some twists and turns, just to keep me from ever feeling secure and complacent. We have been through two changes in CEO in two years at our little hospital, which always makes for a shiver in The Force. We ER Docs are a contract group, and serve only at the pleasure of the CEO, so it is always an “opportunity”, as we like to phrase it, when there is a change at the top. But at the same time there has been wholesale change at every exec position, so we have a whole new team to meet and greet, every two months, it seems. Meanwhile, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, (the Joint) is expected to sweep in unannounced in the first couple of months of 2008, and all attention is now turned to getting ourselves presentable. We really are a good little hospital, and I expect we will be OK, but the mood around the campfire is more like Bastogne ’44 than like “Mr. Rogers.” I get to meet a lot of really nice, well-dressed consultants, though, each a treasure-trove of networking potential, so it’s all good. I bought a couple of power suits, just to get ready.
And lest we forget what we really do, the patient care remains the thing. We have continued to be there for the chronically anxious, the depressed of the world, who seem more numerous, more anxious and more depressed. Seems reasonable. We accept all stories with a straight face, including the guy who dodged all but two shots of a 15-shot fusillade, by two unknown assailants, one carrying an AK-47 and the other a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson automatic. The victim was, by his own report, “minding his own business, and just trying to get a hamburger” at our local MacDonalds®, when these two sharpshooters opened up on him in his car. One bullet went across the street, entered a house, and severed the electric cord of a massage pad, then occupied by a little old lady. She couldn’t understand why the soothing Shiatsu massage action stopped, until she spied the plugless cord on the ground, and the bullet hole in the wall three inches to the left of her. Our patient also had $4,000 in cash in his jeans pocket, which is apparently just “carrying around money” in his neighborhood. And he had no idea who these guys might have been. Or why they might have wanted to kill him. Having met him and his family, I have an idea. I was thinking of joining the queue. I can wait my turn, no problem. His problem is, I am a good shot…
One guy came in by ambulance for an ankle sprain, and he was routed to the waiting room, after his initial evaluation. He called 911 from the payphone there, and asked to be taken in the back door by ambulance again, because he was outraged that he had to wait in the waiting room, when he had called an ambulance specifically to avoid that problem. The 911 dispatcher told him he was already at a hospital, and that they wouldn’t be coming out, so he demanded to be taken to another hospital. The dispatcher called us to advise, but needless to say, he didn’t send a crew.
Families come often, with elder members who were reportedly doing differential calculus in two variables until the previous day, but today are gabbling, perseveratively calling out the last name they have heard, responding to all questions in nonsensical gibberish, and urinating and defecating on themselves. The family brings a month’s worth of clothes, including Depends® with them on this emergent visit, and the loved ones, coincidentally, have non-refundable plane tickets to Cancun, booked 6 months ago. “Bon voyage,” we say fondly, as they lay rubber out of the parking lot.
Some of our old standbys have died or departed the area, but we get new ones, don’t you worry. We have a 30 year old, 450-pound guy who runs through his monthly welfare check in a delirious day of State-funded crack cocaine use, and then comes in for a bed, alleging chest pain. He walks in to the window in no apparent distress, drops into our “Hummer” wheelchair, and then never lifts a finger in his own maintenance again. We refuse to lift him, though he tries to insist he can’t possibly move himself. And he demands food within ten minutes of arrival, as you might expect, his hourly caloric needs being what they are. In talking with him, he has basically admitted he just says he has chest pain so we will give him a bed and feed him. And when we decided we could not continue this monthly pattern, he told us he would just go to a neighboring hospital to do the same. So he did. We didn’t see him for a while, until he wore out his welcome over there, too.
My favorite Crack-Ho, who goes by the skreet name Dilly, and who is, by now, pretty well spent by 40 years on the skreet, went to the police station to report that her crack had been stolen, and she knew who did it. She got arrested right then and there, so we didn’t see her for a while, either. I am not sure if they caught the bastard who stole her crack, either. Man, life is just not fair. But I am still the same old “Dr. Roberson”, everybody’s family doctor and work note provider. “How long you been here?” they ask. “Man, I remember you when you had brown hair.” Me, too--I remember brown, and I remember hair, but you didn’t have to bring it up. Now don’t move, I don’t want to hurt you with this needle.
I pause to note the passing of some notables from our midst. How can we possibly go on without Anna Nicole? Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and David Habersham are history, Kurt Vonnegut lived history, told us about it, and left us better for his life, Art Buchwald modeled the gentle sarcasm I could only aspire to, and Norman Mailer beat a new sensibility into us, but couldn’t beat the reaper. Marcel Marceau left quietly, and Luciano Pavarotti will hold that B-flat for eternity. Ingmar Bergman beat Death in The Seventh Seal, and Ike Turner mostly beat Tina, but they are gone now. Paul Tibbets, commander of the Enola Gay, has lifted off for the last time, but unarmed on this mission, and Dick Wilson, better known as Mr. Whipple, has squeezed his last roll of TP. Tropical breezes and farewell to Don Ho, and farewell also to Lady Bird Johnson. We mourn 3,891 killed thus far in Iraq including 3 from little Seaford, and several more from the surrounding communities, and 471 in Afghanistan. I mourn my sweet, beautiful two-year old brindle boxer, Tig’r, who ran out one night this month, and was struck and killed on the road. He never quite understood motor vehicles. Good-bye and basta, to Jerry Falwell, Michael Dever, Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, and Nazi SS trooper recycled into international diplomat Kurt Waldheim.
Well once again we shudder to note the passage of another year, time moving faster and faster as we have more years to look back upon. I swear, it is free-fall after age forty. But the world continues to wobble on, with us or without us. The days grow shorter and shorter, and our primordial doubts that the sun will ever return haunt us in our fitful sleep, but we draw together against the forces of darkness and unreasoning madness, and prevail again over our nightmares. Pity our daymares are even worse…Be firm, my worthy friends, against untruths spoken with supposed good purpose, for lies will ever be but lies. Be stout in your belief that our better natures can overcome our hard-wired tendencies to fear differences, to shun foreign ideas and appearances. Your real friends may, in the end, look very different from yourselves, and your enemies like your brother or sister. Our tribal nature, never buried more than skin deep, may yet be the death of us all, but it is still possible to overcome, and we shall. I wish each of you a year of peace, of small goals set and realized, and progress toward the big goals. Keep in touch, by any of the many means. All sins, real or imagined, are forgiven, and all scores settled.
Love, and whatever else suits,
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Southern Passage
Dear all,
I am back on dry land, decompressing from the southern passage aboard Kathmandu. It was quite the experience. I closed out my last urgent visit Sunday at CHCP and was dropped off that night with my first crewmember, Chuck Voss, for the early start Monday. We arose before first light, cast off all lines, and were off, only to discover that the speedometer and distance log was not working. No big deal, but it is useful to have that info available in the cockpit, so I went below to check it out. I poked at the through-hull fitting deep in the bilge, to see if an electrical connection was loose, and to my horror, it came apart in my hand, and a horrendous gush of water came up through the floor. I couldn’t stop it completely, so we turned right back around and headed back to Branford from three miles out. The pumps were keeping up, but not getting ahead any, so I’m glad that we were no further away. We motored directly to Dutch Wharf, where they were waiting for us, and the boat was up in slings in fifteen minutes. The through-hull fitting had come unscrewed, and was hanging by less than a turn of the threads. If that had come apart, a one and a half inch hole three feet below the waterline would have resulted, and a leak amounting to two hundred gallons a minute. Not good. Anyway, Dutch had us up and out, the fitting pulled, reassembled and glued, and back in the water in two hours flat. The bill comes later… The rest of the first day was pretty uneventful, apart from a wind that insisted on coming directly out of our intended direction, and never let us turn the motor off. We motored in to New Rochelle at dusk, and anchored in a peaceful cove with views of the Throg’s Neck and Whitestone Bridges, and directly under the final approach path of La Guardia. We had a quick dinghy ride in, and a passable meal at a waterfront restaurant, and putted back to our lonely masthead light, and a well deserved sleep. Up again at dawn, we navigated the narrow channel into the municipal basin, and picked up my father, serving as cook, and Tom Baker, the real sailor of our lot. One more stop for diesel fuel, and we were off to NY harbor. The wind remained directly “on the nose”, so we burned more fuel. Rain and fog prevailed throughout the day, making NYC mysterious and mostly invisible. We entered Hell’s Gate, in the East River, where the current was dead against us, and quite swift, leaving our net speed at about one knot. Joggers on the East Side Highway outpaced us easily. The U.N. and the various beautiful bridges wound slowly by, and finally the river broadened, and the current slowed. We swung out into the harbor around the Battery, and past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge wheeled overhead at about 2:30, and we were off to the open sea. The swells were four or five feet, but well spaced, so that the motion wasn’t too unpleasant. The cook went below to prepare our first hot meal, but emerged seasick shortly after. Dinty Moore Stew was the best we could manage, but it hit the spot. We rolled along into the darkness, still under power, but with the mainsail up to steady the motion of the boat. Our way was lit by the lurid light of honky-tonk beach development on the Jersey Shore, two miles or so away on our right. There were swells, but the surface was undisturbed, so that the green light reflected made the water look like thick rolling chocolate. We took two-hour watches overnight, and motored steadily along at 6.5 knots. Finally, at 1:00 am, the wind piped up off our starboard, so we put up the sails and actually sailed for the first time. What a relief. By now it was inky black, and the shore had receded to dull glimmers, as we had to bear offshore to miss shoals at Barnegat and Atlantic City. We spend the bulk of the night about 5 miles off. A.C. loomed up suddenly out of the fog at 3 am or so, a brightly lighted monument to greed. What a colossal waste of electricity.
I went below after a watch for a bit of sleep, and was awakened by the sound of Salsa music. That seemed a bit out of place, so I got up and peered out of the cabin port on the downwind side. A huge green wall of metal was going by at 20 knots in the opposite direction, lit up by multiple spotlights, with music blaring from speakers on the superstructure. We passed each other on reciprocal courses just 200 yards apart. I popped up on deck to check out the watchstanders, and mentioned about the ship. “What ship?” was the reply. The sails were doing an excellent job of hiding a 250-foot cargo vessel, lit up like the city of Miami. I reminded the now wide-awake watchstanders to check under the sails every few minutes, to be sure the downwind side is free of traffic. And to listen for Salsa music. Dawn came, and we got to Cape May pretty much on schedule. Just as we started to turn up to round the Cape, I heard a clunk and the normal windmilling of the propeller under sail stopped suddenly. We were snagged. We were dragging a large lobster pot by its buoy. Our speed dropped to one knot, and there was no getting us undone with a boathook. I put on my wetsuit, which had mysteriously shrunk in the closet over the last few years. In mask, fins, and snorkel, and tied to the boat, I went underneath and untangled the propeller in about sixty seconds, once I could see what I was doing.
“Quien es macho? Robert Stack, o Lloyd Bridges?”
“Si, Lloyd Brides es mas macho!”
So we were again underway, to the toughest part of the journey, the passage around the Cape May. Sounds like a quiet, pleasant place, Cape May… NOT!! It was blowing twenty knots against the current, throwing up a fierce chop, and there were breaking waves we had to sail straight into, wondering if there would be sand instead of water under our keel. The current pushed us strongly towards the beach, where two rusting hulks of large ships lay to remind following ships of the consequence of screwing up. Luckily the engine never missed a beat, and we passed through the breakers unscathed. In the Delaware Bay at last, we naturally found the wind in our teeth, and motored up the channel in the company of huge merchant ships cruising by at two or three times our speed. The cook had by now recovered, and produced a sumptuous bean and cous-cous feast that warmed all the weary mariners, and more than redeemed his reputation.
We turned into the Delaware-Chesapeake canal toward the end of the day and motored into the calm of the canal. Our only hope for an anchorage before dark was Chesapeake City, near the end of the Canal. It is guarded by a notorious sandbar, whose acquaintance we shortly made. Acting on local advice we kept hard to the right, and came hard aground in mud, directly in front of a waterfront restaurant. Efforts at rocking, backing, swearing like sailors, and pulling us off with the dinghy were all for naught, but provided excellent entertainment for the diners. An anchor dropped at angles off the bow finally gave us enough leverage to winch ourselves free. The proprietor came to thank us for the show, and suggested that the left side was the easier passage. We tried that, and found ourselves gliding effortlessly into a peaceful cove. A change from stinking foul weather gear, and even worse undergarments made us semi presentable, and we soon found ourselves sitting to dine at the same restaurant we had been performing for. No discount was afforded us, but the meal was excellent.
Next morning we were off at 04:30 to catch the tide out of the cove, and motored again down the Elk River into the Upper Chesapeake at last. The wind cooperated for a while, and we sailed, but we were beset by a sudden squall with winds up to 40 knots and a sharp nasty chop bringing spray and occasionally green water over the bow. A gust broke a jib-sheet (rope to the corner of the front sail), and we had to scurry to furl the sail before it tore itself to shreds. No big deal, as I keep a spare, and had it rigged in no time, but we were back to motoring again. The weather cleared by midday, and we were sailing again, though in long tacks against the contrary wind, and sailed under the two spans of the Bay Bridge. The weather was finally perfect, and the sailing brisk, but we had a long way to go against the wind, and so turned back to diesel power for the last leg to Maryland. We got to the harbor channel just at dark, and docked to find our anxious wives and nonchalant children. The deed was done.
So, it wasn’t so hard, and it wasn’t so easy, and my preparations were adequate, more or less. I look forward to calmer passages on the Chesapeake, and maybe a trans-Atlantic journey someday. Maybe. Hope all you land-lubbers are well, and didn’t worry too much. See you sometime, and keep in touch.
Love, regards, your friend,
(Select as appropriate)
I am back on dry land, decompressing from the southern passage aboard Kathmandu. It was quite the experience. I closed out my last urgent visit Sunday at CHCP and was dropped off that night with my first crewmember, Chuck Voss, for the early start Monday. We arose before first light, cast off all lines, and were off, only to discover that the speedometer and distance log was not working. No big deal, but it is useful to have that info available in the cockpit, so I went below to check it out. I poked at the through-hull fitting deep in the bilge, to see if an electrical connection was loose, and to my horror, it came apart in my hand, and a horrendous gush of water came up through the floor. I couldn’t stop it completely, so we turned right back around and headed back to Branford from three miles out. The pumps were keeping up, but not getting ahead any, so I’m glad that we were no further away. We motored directly to Dutch Wharf, where they were waiting for us, and the boat was up in slings in fifteen minutes. The through-hull fitting had come unscrewed, and was hanging by less than a turn of the threads. If that had come apart, a one and a half inch hole three feet below the waterline would have resulted, and a leak amounting to two hundred gallons a minute. Not good. Anyway, Dutch had us up and out, the fitting pulled, reassembled and glued, and back in the water in two hours flat. The bill comes later… The rest of the first day was pretty uneventful, apart from a wind that insisted on coming directly out of our intended direction, and never let us turn the motor off. We motored in to New Rochelle at dusk, and anchored in a peaceful cove with views of the Throg’s Neck and Whitestone Bridges, and directly under the final approach path of La Guardia. We had a quick dinghy ride in, and a passable meal at a waterfront restaurant, and putted back to our lonely masthead light, and a well deserved sleep. Up again at dawn, we navigated the narrow channel into the municipal basin, and picked up my father, serving as cook, and Tom Baker, the real sailor of our lot. One more stop for diesel fuel, and we were off to NY harbor. The wind remained directly “on the nose”, so we burned more fuel. Rain and fog prevailed throughout the day, making NYC mysterious and mostly invisible. We entered Hell’s Gate, in the East River, where the current was dead against us, and quite swift, leaving our net speed at about one knot. Joggers on the East Side Highway outpaced us easily. The U.N. and the various beautiful bridges wound slowly by, and finally the river broadened, and the current slowed. We swung out into the harbor around the Battery, and past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge wheeled overhead at about 2:30, and we were off to the open sea. The swells were four or five feet, but well spaced, so that the motion wasn’t too unpleasant. The cook went below to prepare our first hot meal, but emerged seasick shortly after. Dinty Moore Stew was the best we could manage, but it hit the spot. We rolled along into the darkness, still under power, but with the mainsail up to steady the motion of the boat. Our way was lit by the lurid light of honky-tonk beach development on the Jersey Shore, two miles or so away on our right. There were swells, but the surface was undisturbed, so that the green light reflected made the water look like thick rolling chocolate. We took two-hour watches overnight, and motored steadily along at 6.5 knots. Finally, at 1:00 am, the wind piped up off our starboard, so we put up the sails and actually sailed for the first time. What a relief. By now it was inky black, and the shore had receded to dull glimmers, as we had to bear offshore to miss shoals at Barnegat and Atlantic City. We spend the bulk of the night about 5 miles off. A.C. loomed up suddenly out of the fog at 3 am or so, a brightly lighted monument to greed. What a colossal waste of electricity.
I went below after a watch for a bit of sleep, and was awakened by the sound of Salsa music. That seemed a bit out of place, so I got up and peered out of the cabin port on the downwind side. A huge green wall of metal was going by at 20 knots in the opposite direction, lit up by multiple spotlights, with music blaring from speakers on the superstructure. We passed each other on reciprocal courses just 200 yards apart. I popped up on deck to check out the watchstanders, and mentioned about the ship. “What ship?” was the reply. The sails were doing an excellent job of hiding a 250-foot cargo vessel, lit up like the city of Miami. I reminded the now wide-awake watchstanders to check under the sails every few minutes, to be sure the downwind side is free of traffic. And to listen for Salsa music. Dawn came, and we got to Cape May pretty much on schedule. Just as we started to turn up to round the Cape, I heard a clunk and the normal windmilling of the propeller under sail stopped suddenly. We were snagged. We were dragging a large lobster pot by its buoy. Our speed dropped to one knot, and there was no getting us undone with a boathook. I put on my wetsuit, which had mysteriously shrunk in the closet over the last few years. In mask, fins, and snorkel, and tied to the boat, I went underneath and untangled the propeller in about sixty seconds, once I could see what I was doing.
“Quien es macho? Robert Stack, o Lloyd Bridges?”
“Si, Lloyd Brides es mas macho!”
So we were again underway, to the toughest part of the journey, the passage around the Cape May. Sounds like a quiet, pleasant place, Cape May… NOT!! It was blowing twenty knots against the current, throwing up a fierce chop, and there were breaking waves we had to sail straight into, wondering if there would be sand instead of water under our keel. The current pushed us strongly towards the beach, where two rusting hulks of large ships lay to remind following ships of the consequence of screwing up. Luckily the engine never missed a beat, and we passed through the breakers unscathed. In the Delaware Bay at last, we naturally found the wind in our teeth, and motored up the channel in the company of huge merchant ships cruising by at two or three times our speed. The cook had by now recovered, and produced a sumptuous bean and cous-cous feast that warmed all the weary mariners, and more than redeemed his reputation.
We turned into the Delaware-Chesapeake canal toward the end of the day and motored into the calm of the canal. Our only hope for an anchorage before dark was Chesapeake City, near the end of the Canal. It is guarded by a notorious sandbar, whose acquaintance we shortly made. Acting on local advice we kept hard to the right, and came hard aground in mud, directly in front of a waterfront restaurant. Efforts at rocking, backing, swearing like sailors, and pulling us off with the dinghy were all for naught, but provided excellent entertainment for the diners. An anchor dropped at angles off the bow finally gave us enough leverage to winch ourselves free. The proprietor came to thank us for the show, and suggested that the left side was the easier passage. We tried that, and found ourselves gliding effortlessly into a peaceful cove. A change from stinking foul weather gear, and even worse undergarments made us semi presentable, and we soon found ourselves sitting to dine at the same restaurant we had been performing for. No discount was afforded us, but the meal was excellent.
Next morning we were off at 04:30 to catch the tide out of the cove, and motored again down the Elk River into the Upper Chesapeake at last. The wind cooperated for a while, and we sailed, but we were beset by a sudden squall with winds up to 40 knots and a sharp nasty chop bringing spray and occasionally green water over the bow. A gust broke a jib-sheet (rope to the corner of the front sail), and we had to scurry to furl the sail before it tore itself to shreds. No big deal, as I keep a spare, and had it rigged in no time, but we were back to motoring again. The weather cleared by midday, and we were sailing again, though in long tacks against the contrary wind, and sailed under the two spans of the Bay Bridge. The weather was finally perfect, and the sailing brisk, but we had a long way to go against the wind, and so turned back to diesel power for the last leg to Maryland. We got to the harbor channel just at dark, and docked to find our anxious wives and nonchalant children. The deed was done.
So, it wasn’t so hard, and it wasn’t so easy, and my preparations were adequate, more or less. I look forward to calmer passages on the Chesapeake, and maybe a trans-Atlantic journey someday. Maybe. Hope all you land-lubbers are well, and didn’t worry too much. See you sometime, and keep in touch.
Love, regards, your friend,
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