Prepare to Be Boarded!
So, the other night, we finished the race. Of course, at this time of year, it’s dark by the time it happens – for everyone, not just for us. 🙂 We were about 100 yards from the channel marker for Wormley Creek when a tremendously bright light shines on us from starboard. We’re thinking it’s some goofy power boat trying to find the channel, and everyone comments on it. Next thing we hear is “This is the United States Coast Guard! Please bring your boat to a stop!”
You know how your brain can have a thousand thoughts in those few seconds? Well, at least mine does. First thought. “Um yeah, this is a sailboat. I’ll stop it right now.” But my response to them was “I’ll do my best!” As I put the boat in reverse to slow the forward motion, they came beside us.
The Coastie in charge asked if I’d ever been stopped before. I said no, and he explained that this was a safety stop. He first asked for a copy of my registration and my driver’s license. I handed them over. He handed them to one of his crew members, who started typing the information into a PDA. Palm Pilot, I’d guess (no pun intended!). Then he said that he wanted to see some of the safety equipment on board. First he asked to see life jackets for everyone on the boat. There were 5 of us that night, so I went to the Vee-Berth and pulled out 5 life jackets. As I started to struggle through the cabin door, he said I didn’t have to see that many. Um yeah, isn’t that what you asked for?
After looking at the jacket, he asked to see the fire extinguishers. I pulled the one down that was right beside the cabin door and explained that there was a second in the locker aft. He said that was ok. He then asked about what safety courses I’d taken and I started to list them.
There were a couple of other things he asked, which I don’t remember right now. He then said that his fellow Coastie was typing my info into a form, and, should I be stopped again within the next year, I just needed to show them that form and I wouldn’t need to go through the process again.
When the second Coast Guard finished typing, she pulled a thermal printer out and printed the form. Um yeah, right. A thermal form on a boat is not going to be readable after a week, let alone a year. So I decided I’d better make a copy and keep that aboard, too.
The whole thing took about 20 minutes. By now, we’ve drifted backwards, of course. During the races, the current tends to pull us towards that side of the river. Go figure! So, it takes us an extra 20 – 30 minutes to get back to our channel, plus the time to find the markers in the dark and make it through, made for a very long night.
Sad part of it all? I’ve lost my “Get out of inspection free” card. I took it in, printed it, and have no idea where I put it.
Oh well!
Maybe it was an Omen
… that I put the link in about the learn to sail in gusts link. That’s just what happened yesterday.
The weather was perfect for sailing! Breeze was nice. It was a little on the cool side, but not enough to be uncomfortable. We’d been out a couple of hours and were just about to turn back to the docks when BAM! A gust came and knocked us over about 35 degrees. Not much, if you’re a racer, I know – I’ve been at bigger tilts when racing. But this came out of nowhere! Everything inside the boat that wasn’t locked down went from port to starboard. The boat spun til it was facing a windward direction, then stayed pretty stationary. It was still rocking in the wind, but not quite that bad.
I first tried to pull down the mainsail. I got it partway down and it stuck. I couldn’t at the time figure out what was wrong. Debbie, my one passenger, I told to try to bring the jib in. It’s on a roller furler, so I showed her how to haul it in. But the wind was too strong and she couldn’t do it.
I finally got the mainsail reefed in (still couldn’t get it all the way down), and started the motor. I turned the boat slightly off the headwind, since directly in took us into a crabpot minefield. Debbie took over at the helm. I pulled in the jib, then took over the helm and headed back into port.
We were on a broad reach heading back in. With the main reefed, and the engine on minimal, we were still doing about 6.5 knots. The waves were coming in parallel to us, and growing.
Yeah, the waves. There were ripples on the water most of the time we were out. There were still ripples when this storm hit us. By the time we neared Wormley Creek (home), the waves were about 2 foot high.
Wormley Creek is sheltered. In fact, you really can’t tell what the weather will be like on the York River sitting there at the docks. In this case, it was a good thing. I knew, when I brought the boat in, I could take care of whatever I couldn’t in that weather.
When we got in, I saw that the main halyard had wrapped itself around the spreader. That’s why I couldn’t take it down. First lesson – follow the entire line when trying to figure out why it won’t move. That’s no saying that I could have gotten it unwrapped out there. That would have required holding the line tighter as I tried to bring down the sail. But at least I would have known why it wasn’t moving.
Second lesson? Well, I’m going to hope some more knowledgeable sailors can tell me how I could have predicted this, or was it a fluke?
Weather report – land: 5 – 10 mph winds; marine: 10 – 15 knots, with gusts of 20 late in the afternoon in the bay. Sky: partly cloudy when we headed out. Overcast most of the sail. But the sky was a light, even color, almost as if we were staring up at fog. No dark spots – no dark spots ever. That I would have known was a storm heading our way. And, as I mentioned, the waves didn’t pick up until after the winds had started getting strong.
The online buoy report doesn’t work for that part of the river. The only report I can get is from the buoy closer to the mouth of the bay. The weather report I get for that portion of the bay tends to be less favorable than I find conditions on the river, although I won’t venture out if the words small craft advisory appear.
And the whole time, I kept repeating my mantra: sailboats are stable, sailboats are stable. I have 4 tons under me and it will take alot to tip it over.
[Top]We Made the Front Page of the Paper
Photos: http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-womensailors,0,4858720.photogallery
The story is no longer available. But you can see the summary at: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/dailypress/access/1582692271.html?dids=1582692271:1582692271&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Oct+25%2C+2008&author=&pub=Daily+Press&edition=&startpage=A.1&desc=SAILING+ISN%27T+JUST+A+BOYS%27+CLUB+ANYMORE
[Top]Miscommunication
So I get a call from Petra a few weeks ago, and just for the heck of it, I ask her if she wants to help me move my boat to a marina nearer to work. Erik’s going to be out of town this week, and I’d been wanting to to do the ‘camping near work’ – bit with it for awhile now. Living a 30 minute drive away isn’t as much a killer as some of the drives I’d made to work in the past. But it’s nice to be able to listen to the traffic report and laugh because you don’t have to worry about all the problems they’re reporting.
Anyway, she said she’d love to, and to give her a call back the weekend before so we can arrange for transportation. She asks where we’re moving it to, and I tell her it’s a marina about 5 miles from work.
I called her on Sunday and told her I had a ride home from work so I could leave my car at the marina. That way, I could give her a ride back to hers at the other end.
This morning arrives and I find that I have both her and Dave along. Hooray! I would have loved having a day with Petra alone. But Dave is one of the three people who taught me most of what I know about sailing, so it’s always a pleasure to have him around.
So we start preparing the boat to take off and Petra asks where, specifically, we’re going. I show her on the charts and she’s a bit taken aback. She thought, when I said ‘about 5 miles’ that I meant we were taking the boat to a place 5 miles from where it was now. Nope. It’s actually about 40 miles away. Well, she laughed. Luckily, she’s retired and Dave is semi-retired, so taking the whole day to do this wasn’t a big problem.
I had checked the weather report the night before. Partly cloudy with scattered showers. Winds 10 – 15 mph. I didn’t check it that morning, but I looked at it again on my Blackberry. Same report.
Well, the sky was overcast that morning as we left. But usually a weather report like that means it will burn off by noon or so. But it wasn’t to happen today.
We took off around 9 a.m. There wasn’t any wind to speak of going down the York River. It picked up some by the time we reached the bay. But we were going straight downwind, and didn’t want to veer and add to the mileage. So no sails yet. We hoped, however, when we reached the James River we could put them up, since we’d be heading off at a different angle.
We could see a storm ahead of us towards Hampton. We hoped it would be gone by the time we got there. Well, it was gone from Hampton!
As we approached the Chamberlain Hotel, before crossing over the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, Petra called her daughter, who worked over at the local community college. She said there was a pretty bad storm over her way.
Partly cloudy. Scatter showers my @#$%.
We did put the sails up as we crossed the Bridge-Tunnel. But before we reached the Monitor Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel, the rain started. And it was coming down hard! I thought we were getting hail! Luckily, Petra and Dave had brought along rain jackets. I, of course, had my foul weather gear aboard. I also have a ton of extra stuff that was left by the previous owner (well, some of the stuff the left is useful!), and I loaned Petra a pair of rain pants.
So we were set. We took down the sails. Then the lightning started. And that’s when I was very glad that Dave was along. He knew about a pullout near the Monitor Merrimac Bridge where we could wait out the storm, which is just what we did. We parked and I pulled out some butternut squash soup I had aboard and we had lunch while the storm passed.
Bad thing about this whole experience was that our timing was then pretty far off. We hit the Nansemond river just as the sun was beginning to set. By the time we got to Bennett’s Creek, our final destination, it was dark. Cloudy skies. Last quarter moon. Luckily, there was enough light from the surrounding houses that we could at least see a little bit.
And, of course, there were shallow spots. But (pat, pat), I didn’t hit bottom once! Came close though. The James River current is pretty strong. Trying to stay the course when entering the Nansemond River was nigh to impossible.
We had one more white knuckle moment. We had to pass under some high voltage power lines. And, in the dark, it was hard to see if we were going to make it or not. As you can tell, since I’m writing this, we did.
I offered to take Dave and Petra to dinner, then renigged on the offer. I was plum tuckered out. But I did give them a rain check!
[Top]Sail to Cock Island
The best laid plans……
I had stuff packed pretty well the night before. The only things I wanted to get on the way over were bagels (so they’d at least start out fresh!) and ice (never can have too much of that!). I told Steve N., Lee and Nelson that I wanted to leave the docs by 9:00. So they all planned on arriving between 8 and 8:30. I arrived first, a bit after 8. Lee and Nelson arrived next, not much after I did. Steve arrived about 8:30 and we started packing stuff on the boat. That was the long part, and first lesson learned: try to do all that the night before if you want to leave early in the morning!
My marker, when heading back to Wormley Creek, is a large barber pole colored stack at the refinery near the docks. Great thing is that you can see it forever. Bad thing is you can see it forever. You feel like you’re not getting anywhere when you leave, because you can still see the tower. You feel like it’s taking forever getting back because you can see the tower. With the heat, and no wind, it was a very slow journey out of the York River.
And I got burned.
I’ve had a great farmer’s tan this summer, since I wear a t-shirt and shorts most of the time I hang around the boat. I wanted to get a bit more color, though, to look better in my daily work dress. So I wore a swimsuit under my clothes. I took off my t-shirt, put on some SPF 30 sunscreen, and hoped for a bit of color. The results was that I did get some color, and the color was red. Second lesson: spend a bit less time getting full sun exposure. Might look into one of those sunscreen shirts.
Hmmm…. need to see if there’s a way to include my tracks from the GPS on here.
When we got down to GrandView, in the Chesapeake Bay, we finally had a bit of wind. Nelson took over steering at that point.
As those who’ve read my other posts understand, I’m a bit nervous about hitting bottom with this boat, since I seem to do it so often. My rule of thumb is to try to stick to water that’s at the least 10′ deep.
The waters from the York River down to Hampton Roads contain alot of shallows quite a ways from the short, so I try to stick close to the channel where I know it’s deep. Well, Nelson grew up in this area; he knows the waters well. So I guess I should have trusted him. But he wanted to take the boat closer to shore than I did, to avoid making the trip longer than it needed to be. I was still concerned about the shallowness. We finally reached a compromise on the distance from shore to stay.
We lost the wind still several times until we reached the Elizabeth River. I wasn’t concerned for me – I like just spending time on the boat. But I was worried for Lee and Nelson, who had activities for the evening planned. Next lesson: let your passengers know that it’s a bit harder to predict your arrival time when you’re dependent on the weather to get where you want to go.
Coming into the Elizabeth River, we finally got a good breeze. Blowing about 10 knots, it was finally some nice sailing. It was only 1 hour of what ended up being a 9 hour trip. But at least we did get to sail in a sailboat.
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