Enchantress is home!

I am gazing out the window.  A gentle breeze stirs the waters of Woodland Pond.  The tree buds are emerging.  Waverly and Cupcake are on the bed and staring at me with large, forlorn eyes.  The piercing cold of the North Atlantic is a distant memory but my body is still rocking to its swells, my muscle ready to brace against the occasional dysrhythmic lurch.  A memory is being jelled and how it is framed will be determined by future history.

Noah and I left Liberty Landing Marina on a cold bright Thursday morning.  We had a delightful time in Manhattan the day before.  The launch took us to the World Financial District.  The chatter of the ferry pilots with the local dockhands was a reminder that people run machines and financial institutions.  The ferry landing is sterile, a huge dock built into the side of Manhattan.  The pilots gun their engines to keep the ferry in place.  We disembark to a concrete city with teeming people all bent on some task.  There is no loitering.

Our plans were to get long johns and visit the 911 Memorial and perhaps the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Our agenda was too ambitious, but this week we were thinking large.

We walked with the tourists to the 911 memorial with One World Tower looming.   Active construction was in progress.  The policeman directing traffic were real life caricatures of the Die Hard movies.  They seemed kind.  With the various school kids, Europeans, and Midwest high school students, we waited in divided queues to get tickets to see the 911 Memorial.  We looked up at the towers and felt a chill at the memories of 911.  The ground around the site is hallowed.   I looked at Noah and felt love.   He is young and innocent and vulnerable and his  world could change in an instant just as our collective sense of vulnerability changed on 911.    How can I protect him against jetliners flying into buildings?We had visited Shankesville almost 7 years ago.  There was not an official memorial yet but the local people had made a fitting homage.   Shankesville was people remembering people.

We walked through Tribeca and up into SoHo.  Our mission was the Patagonia store.  Alas, the Bohemian streets of Tribeca and SoHo was now big business. There were sleek shops and boutiques.  How could a struggling artist afford these places?

The nice people at Patagonia SoHo were more like models rather than real users of equipment.  Is Patagonia a fashion statement or functional clothing?  I looked at myself, clothed in rather well used, smelly and dirty Patagonia clothes in a Patagonia store and felt like an alien in a strange land.  I was surrounded by Manhantanites.

We did get a good lunch restaurant suggestion and headed next door to Icebreakers where we were able to get some warm gloves.  New York City was ready for Spring !  No discount long johns.

We ate lunch in an bar restaurant established in 1937 off Spring Street.   Our plans were for the Metropolitan Museum.   A subway ride later, we emerged in the Central Park district.  The Museum is marble and large and impressive.  All of the world was present.  As we climbed the steps, a fair like atmosphere with aromatic smells accosted us.  Noah was intent on finding two objects, a Kouros statue and some ancient cuneiform tablet.  I was intent on finding the men’s room.

We could spend days, weeks at the Metropolitan.  Noah was looking.  Most of the people were taking pictures.  We are experiencing life but modern technology is posting facebook events.  The cart is before the horse.  We are reminded of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.  We are transported to the ancient time.  We feel the agony and the ecstasy interpreted through art.  The particular view of the artist is informative.  I am not sure that our social media has the capacity to do the same.

The nice guards whose most favorite saying must be: “The museum is now closed!  Please exit quickly” help us back to the streets of New York.   We have missed the 911 memorial.  For another trip.

We are hungry and search for a grocery store.   People must live around here as there are fancy apartments and children in soccer gear going to Central Park.  We find a very busy grocery off Lexington.  There are elevators that you can take grocery carts up and down.  The produce is fresher than our local markets.  We get what I thought was cream cheese but it is tofu imitation with horseradish flavor.  I feel vegan violated.

We ride  the 6^th subway train back to our ferry landing.  Rush hour.  We are exposed to many breaths and odors.  I am thinking:  “this is communicable disease haven, these subways.”  A child coughs.  Ocean swells have prepared us for the subway train sways.  We have our ship legs.  A sea of humanity presses against us.  The waves come and go at each stops.  By the time we reach the City Hall exit, there is breathing space. 

Enchantress waits for us patiently.   Noah cooks chicken tacos without the tacos as I have forgotten them.  Captain Connelly joins us for a beer.  He is a gentle fascinating man.  He is happy.  He is at ease.    We are traveling down the New Jersey shore together.  He is en route to Annapolis to deliver a new Bavaria.  We feel akin to the ocean sailor but it is only our first trip.   When talking to Captain Connelly, I am talking to my heroes of sailing,  Fatty Goodlander  and Beth Leonard.

I cannot sleep as I am excited about our voyage home.  We are facing bitter cold with the NorthEast wind to our quarter.  There is anticipation and concern.  I know that the night will be cold and we might suffer.

Morning dawns near.  Noah winches me up the mast so we can check our jib shackle.  We had seen on Song of the Wind, our jib shackle cleave off when we sailed in high winds.  The shackle is beautiful and so is the view from 75 feet high.  We do not have to go on top of the Empire State building to feel we have climbed a vista.    Enchantress s is our tall ship.

We leave New York Harbor with a promise to return.  The day is clear and cold.  The Coast Guard with machine guns mounted are patrolling the Verrazano Narrows.  When we turn down to South, the wind is East.  With 2 reefs in the main and one in the jib, Enchantress points  home.

Close hauling in the North Atlantic with Beaufort Fresh Breeze, with a port leeward shore, with rhythmic eight feet swells, Enchantress gallops at hull speed.  We are in sailors’ Nirvana.  A inner smile rises from our stomachs and washes over our countenance.  Noah and I do not speak but just look at each other.  I am stumbling around as we heel.   A South current of almost a knot adds to our passage.  Time is at a standstill.  Enchantress is on her chime and is riding the swells.   She is traveling her fastest speed over 10 knots SOG.  We are grateful for this special treat.   I am sad to see the Jersey shore recede. 

We close in on Captain Connelly and his Bavaria.  We exchange pleasantries and take pictures.  He is reefed prudently as it is his mission to deliver a new Boat intact.   I think of the Maritime rule to help a fellow mariner in peril.  In fact, this rule is not a suggestion but a command.   Why do we not enforce this rule on land?  In the oceans of life, is it not our obligation to help another person in peril?

Much too soon, the night falls.  The winds are clocking to the North East.  A damp piercing chill makes our bones ache.   We are sailing broach reach with triple reefed sails.  We are still traveling fast with Enchantress rising and falling more in a corkscrew motion rather than up and down.  It is a yaw and yee added to the up and down and forward progress.  The bottles and dishes rattle below.  Enchantress also has some new creaks and groans but shoulders the waves without a fuss.  There is no moan.

Noah is a trooper and takes the first watch.  I am an icicle.  We see Atlantic City lights as a beacon to warm climes.  When the wee hours of the morning arrive, we are nearing the Cape May and the Delaware Bay.   The winds are clocking directly North.  We have difficulty in maintaining our direction home.  We must gybe as we are going more in the North Atlantic.

Remembering our last nightime gybe, we use the autopilot to turn the boat.  Noah gives the command and my job is to punch the button 8 times.  I cannot feel the boat turn but feel a different rhythm to the up and down.  Soon, we are now heading to Lewes, DE more West than South.   We watch the radar for ships in the busy Delaware shipping lanes.  I am cold but happy.  Danse Russe lines sing in my brain.  We have passed Patterson, New Jersey and William CarlosWilliams has been my college inspiration.

If I when my wife is sleeping 
and the baby and Kathleen 
are sleeping 
and the sun is a flame-white disc 
in silken mists 
above shining trees,-- 
if I in my north room 
dance naked, grotesquely 
before my mirror 
waving my shirt round my head 
and singing softly to myself: 
"I am lonely, lonely. 
I was born to be lonely, 
I am best so!" 
If I admire my arms, my face, 
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks 
again the yellow drawn shades,--

Who shall say I am not 
the happy genius of my household?

Reality brings me back to the present, and I am clothed in five layers of mountaineering and sailing clothes.  I am tethered to Enchantress.  Noah is sleeping below and my wife is anxiously awaiting our return.  The morning sun brings a cloudy muted awakening and we are now approaching the Maryland shore.  It is Friday morning.  Almost home.

We did not take this trip up into the North Atlantic without folly.  I  did go on a perceived whim.  Noah had preplanned, I think, this adventure and his task was how to convince his old man to get braver and sail to New York rather than DELMARVA.   We had rented a satellite phone.  I had read several books on heavy weather sailing.  We had jacklines and tethers.  We have an EPIRB.  We did not have survival suits or a life raft.  A  West Marine Dinghy, inflated, was in our foredeck.

Enchantress is a stout vessel and made for coastal passages.  Noah is a sailor.  I am a middle aged father who is a doctor who wants to be sailor.  In the waxing and waning moments of sleep and wakefulness, in my mind, I often  reach out to my wife and children.  I wish and hope that they are well and happy and healthy and striving for new horizons.  We must have faith and strong beliefs but also love.  We are everyone and everyone is in each of us.  Our capacity of empathic understanding is our best attribute.  These thoughts ramble in my cold sleep deprived consciousness off of the Maryland coast.

We reach the Virginia shore and we are still sailing.  After a while, the cold gets the better of us and we start to motor.  We are now yawing and yeeing with the following winds.  We do not have a Code Zero.  Enchantress settle in nicely at 2200 rpm at eight knots.  We have a South current.  With the wind directly behind us, the air temperature rises.  I remove my hood but my lucky hat still stays on.  We do have to make our luck but it is fun to have lucky objects.

I read about Hog island as we travel along the Virginia Eastern Shore.  Apparently there were Wreckers who shone lights to make ships wreck.  The three mile line is shallowest near the tip of the Eastern Shore.   There are bird like mosquitos that inhabit these islands.  Now the Wreckers are gone and  folklore keeps people away.  Nature Conservancy has bought a lot of these islands for the future.  I am thankful for their stewardship and I hope that businesses do not find anything of value to exploit.  This is the shore as Captain John Smith have found it centuries ago.  I hope that this is the shore that Noah’s grandkids will find when they sail the Atlantic someday.

Night arrives for the last time for us.  I want to reach home.  I imagine the comfort of our bed and of Joanie’s embrace.  I also do not want this trip to end.  Noah and I are simpatico but he is also texting his friends a lot when we have cell service.  I had difficult teenage years, and I hope that his time is easier.  The lights of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge approach.  He heats up Chicken Noodle Soup.  We enjoy our last meal on board like Kings. 

The Chesapeake Bay is guarded by an imposing bridge tunnel.  The lights string across the whole Bay like an impossible fence.  There are only two open water passages and one bridge.  We are just too tall for the Fisherman island bridge and so we go back to the Baltimore channel.  There are fisherman about in small boats.  Their lights blend with the bridge.  They are often too low for radar.  We talk to Cape Henry Tower for advice about large ships traveling the Yorktown Spit Channel.  They are professional and courteous.

Enchantress is motoring fast up the Bay,  North.  We have a flood tide of 1 knot and we are traveling at 9 knots at 2500 rpm.  Too soon we cross our original track near the Piankatank River entrance.   It is 2:15 am.  A hour later of careful motoring, staying now in the shipping channels to avoid crab pots, we are at the entrance of Broad Creek.

Broad Creek has scars of wrecks and sinking’s and boats hitting markers.  At night, the distances are fiction.  There are too many shore lights mimicking buoys.  The Broad Creek green one is lighted.  There is, unfortunately, another red six floating buoy that is near shore that is lighted but deceptive.  The red Broach Creek two and four triangular markers need new fluorescent paint.  We cannot light them with our head lamp torches.

We have lost our night vision, and so Noah goes to the bow.  We talk in code on channel 69.   We are at 2 knots, steerage speed.  I watch the depth, and Noah guides us in.  The inner Broad Creek channel looks different.  It is waning high tide.  We pass Norton’s and find Timberneck again.  Enchantress presents her rear and makes the inner dock.  We shut engines at 3:30 am.

Less than 48 hours ago, we were in New York Harbor.  Now we are deliriously happy, exhausted and also a little sad.  Our voyage is over.  We have our thought memories to share.  A few moments in life I will always remember.  The birth of our children, first realization of love, my first touches with Joan.  Noah and I will remember the shared accomplishment of a journey up the North Atlantic in April.  We have a common bond with the old explorers.  They suffered.  We have Enchantress who did shelter us and gave us just enough hardship to make the memories vivid.

Today is Easter.  It is rebirth and renewal.  We are celebrating Passover dinner a week later.  We are missing Miju and Gideon in San Francisco.  Reuben and Ann will be coming home today.  Ben and Megan arrived yesterday.  Mark and Noah are sleeping a few rooms away.  Waverly is sleeping on our bed.  Cupcake is chasing some squirrels in her sleep.  Joan is making breakfast.  I see the shirring water beyond our dock, and feel blessed.  I am a FortunateMan.   We are home.

Hope Springs Eternal

Enchantress is in New York Harbor!  

Noah and I went to sample the North Atlantic waters and circle DELMARVA.  This is the logical next rite of passage for sailors of the Chesapeake.  It involves an overnight passage and sailing the North Atlantic.  I did not realize that he had another agenda

Enchantress has been reliable, fast, and faithful.  She is truly kind to us and makes up for our amateur mistakes.  The following seas rise and she takes them with a little sigh and rides down, surfing to the next groove.  She does not race down waves but settles and gently coasts up to the next crest.  She floats instead of plows.  We are not aware of her pace as the sounds of her surfing are like the rollers heard at the beach.  It is soothing.

I could not start another blog after http://sailingsongofthewind.blogspot.com  It was weird inertia.  

A lot has changed in the last two years.  My children have new jobs, some have graduated from college and others are on new tacks.  Noah is 17.  A delicate age, childhood interfaced with adolescence and now manhood taking shape.  

We left Deltaville on Saturday.  We received excellent advice from Greg, Pete and Carolyn.  The hardy men and woman of Norton's Yachts made sure Enchantress was ready.  The day was warm and the sailors from Fishing Bay were already racing!  We broad reached towards the Baltimore channel of the Chesapeake Bay.  The air was warm and we saw Sea Dog coming back home after her week journey.  A sense of camaraderie was sent telepathically towards John and Margaret and we received their good tidings in return.

A nearly full moon awaited us off the Virginia Eastern Shore.  We had exhilarating sailing with Southeast winds moving us briskly along.  When the sunset and the moon rose, our world view changed.  We are creatures of light.  When the lights go out, a primordial part of our brains awaken.  We are back in the night arboreal forests.  We must have been creatures of the dusk and dawn because our hormones peak at these hours.  We become limbic.  Our thoughts turn outward and our senses sharpen.  Our adrenaline peaks.

We had a watch plan but I was too excited to sleep.  At dawn’s light, we were motoring in light winds.   A following swell rose and we were courted by the Delaware Bay entrance.  Noah wanted to move on the NYC.   His girlfriend was there visiting colleges and museums.  I thought that this was the most irrational reason to go to NYC on our first Atlantic foray!  Sleep deprived, we pulled into Cape May.  As we approached the inlet, 25 knots of wind,  gusting to 30, was behind us.   We had never been to Cape May before.   We had never run an ocean inlet. 

We pulled behind a fishing commercial boat similar to ones seen in the Perfect Storm.  We called the fishing vessel, and they guided us.  After a while, I was thinking, we should have headed to New York harbor rather than running this inlet in these waves. 

Enchantress slogged her way upwind before we ran the Inlet downwind.  She shouldered the tight waves in good form, made allowances for our oversteering.  We looked at the rocky green buoy lateral edge, now underwater in high tide.  We went into the inlet at over 8 knots,  surrendering to the calm just behind reach.  It is a hope and prayer and desire to reach the safe shore that makes men in boats run inlets.   This temptation should be avoided in some circumstances, but the dining table of the C-View Inn was beckoning.  We were hungry.

We were safely harbored in charming Cape May.  The Southern Jersey Marina folks are wonderful and also discrete.  They would not give restaurant recommendation over VHS so as not to offend.  

Overnight, I looked at the weather maps and reevaluated Noah’s desire of reaching NewYork harbor.  I wanted to balance his youthful enthusiasm with prudence.  I was happy to stay in Cape May and return home a few days later.  I do think that the adolescent mind is different, and perhaps this difference is what makes humans advance. 

We went forth the next day making New York harbor our target.   Girlfriend or no girlfriend, the Statue of Liberty beckoned.  It seemed reasonable at the time and we had Enchantress to guide us.  I did not want to have a sullen teenager with me for two days in a Victorian village.  We were in New Jersey.  Why not New York?

The Jersey shore is marked by water towers and increasing height of buildings. Atlantic City loomed ghost-like in the mist.  We are like people visiting an aquarium as we passed cities along the beach and boardwalk.  They were living in the day to day grind as we floated just outside their peripheral vision.

Night fell, and we are coasting fast toward Sandy Hook.  Enchantress is still with following seas.  I want to reef for the night, but Noah convinces me to push on.  “Dad we need power to go up the waves…besides, it is more balanced.”  How can I argue with a sailor who is noting balance?

The Labrador current is cold.  I am not sure if we are seeing the Labrador off the coast of New Jersey but it is a romantic vision.  We do not see icebergs but I am like an iceberg.  I put on all the warm clothing I have. 

Fog rolls in despite 25 knots of South wind.  We are traveling fast into the NY harbor, in the dark, in the fog, listening to foghorns.  We cannot hear above the roar of the water passing by Enchantress’s slippery hull.  The autopilot wind vane keeps us at 135 true with not much flap in the sails.

The New Jersey coasts fall us away from us.  We must go deeper East into the North Atlantic to make the Harbor West.  We must gybe to port in large swell with 25 to 30 apparent wind with Enchantress charging along at 8 to 9 knots.  It is 3 am. 

Gybing is difficult.  In the dark and with large swells and following seas, gybing is simply dangerous.  We reef before we gybe.  The main is centered.  We cannot see the sail and over rotate.  We are close hauling at fast speed into the waves that are now like mountains.  Broad reaching and close hauling are like the transformations of a lovely bride after the honeymoon.  We are now circling and trying to remember that we were supposed to go Northwest.  The sails flap and the sheets snap like rife shots.  Bile rises in my throat as the sleepy brain tries to remember what is most important.  There is really no fear but a desire to quell the noise and restore order.

Enchantress is more than tolerant and we only have a tanged jib line to show for our folly.  Noah is calm.  I am in “holy Marconi” state inside.  I decide to pull in all the sails and motor the rest of the 30 nautical miles to Sandy Hook.  We need radar continuously and we are cold.  Enchantress also motors well, but she is a sailboat.  I pat her sides and express our thanks that she is reliable and forgiving.

Morning breaks and it is a faith in each other, in Enchantress that keeps us in comfort.  I call the Coast Guard.  He calls us sailboat Intrepid but I do not correct him.  He tells us dense Fog until the afternoon and there is a small craft advisory.  There is Gale warning behind us and storms to roll in Tuesday night.   We say thanks and switch off.  We talk to Captain Bob fishing vessel.  We pass port to port.  We watch the AIS signatures of large commercial tankers going off to exotic ports.  We are a squirrel on the road to them.  We do not call but stay clear.

The morning brings us to Ambrose channel and the Verrazano Narrow Bridge.  I never understood the geography of New York harbor.  I hear the names, Bronx and Brooklyn, Staten Island as vague entities with bridges.  Coming from the water, we see how powerful Brooklyn stands.  The New Jersey shore is inviting but too commercially developed.   In fact, Manhattan is a fragile island more to starboard.  A quirk of geology allowed the skyscrapers to be built.  The bedrock comes close to the surface in Manhattan island and there are no marshes.

The Statue of Liberty is dead ahead.  She is the first landmark we see, rising from the fog.  To those who went to the New World by boat, it would be lady Liberty they would see first.  She seems smaller but also more majestic.  She is in perfect alignment to those who are hoping for refuge.  We are refugees of a sort.

We avoid the ferries and marvel at the expanse of the Harbor.  From the water, New York City is logical.  There is a sense of where and why the boroughs and bridges came to be.   We pull into Liberty Landing Marina.  They are also kind and helpful.  It is now April but the New York boaters are out in full force.

We meet Captain Connell who has sailed to New Zealand and now is delivering a Bavaria to Annapolis.  He is an old salt and a nice man.  Noah and I venture to Liberty House for dinner.  It is romantic.  His girlfriend and her mom do not join us but stay in Manhattan.  A North wind blows.  Lady Liberty is enough for us…

We are ready to go into the World Trade Center Memorial today.   There are ice and hail remnants on Enchantress.  I write a letter to my dad.  He had a lot of expectations for me but we did not share a lot of experiences.  I want to change that with my children. Enchantress is making memories with us as did Song of the Wind.

We are heading home tomorrow.   The winds will come from the North and East.  It will be cold.  I do not know what the next few days will bring but I have faith and a sense of wonderment.  This last year has been particularly difficult with my family's turmoil and my mother's illness.  The discontent of my father and his disapproval is like a fog over my life.  Noah and I  are heading to Deltaville and to our warmer climes.  We will be buying long-johns today.  Enchantress will take us home.   Hope Springs Eternal.