The Trip So Far

I'm sitting in Boston, tied alongside a dock in Constitution Marina. There are thunderstorms in the area, and Suzan is stuck in Baltimore, unable to get out on her flight due to the weather tonight. The weather tomorrow is also in question.

My crew, Josh, left the boat this morning, for a train ride back to Virginia, and he's probably getting home about now.

In the mean time, I'll be spending some quality alone-time here in Beantown. So, it seems like a good moment to write a bit more about how things have gone so far.

If you just look at the pictures, you might think everything went perfectly well, but of course that is not how sailing works. I've heard people say that in sailing and cruising, the highs are higher, and the lows are lower. If you want to do this, you need to accept a larger range of emotions than you might expect. Not that I'm complaining. I chose this trip because I want the good stuff, so I have to expect some of the difficult times too.

But, to keep things realistic, let me list some of the things that have gone wrong on this trip. First up, was Tropical Storm Elsa, which was scheduled to intersect our position somewhere halfway between Cape May and Block Island. If that had happened, it would have been more than just uncomfortable. It would have been dangerous to be caught in 50 knot winds on the ocean, with big seas. So, we stopped in Cape May for a couple of days to wait it out, and while it wasn't unpleasant, we were all anxious to get on with our trip, and we felt like we were just killing the time.

Once in Block Island, while I was checking the sea water strainer for the engine, to make sure that it was flowing freely, I broke the hold down bolt on the cap of the strainer. As it snapped in my hands as I tightened it, I had a sinking feeling. Without that bolt, it would be impossible to secure the cap, and we could not run the engine. 

In Block Island, there is no boat hardware store, so there was no way to replace the broken part locally. We found a household hardware store, and did an Apollo 13 style assessment of what parts we could cobble together to get the engine operable again. We tried different kinds of screws, and we tried a very large hose clamp strapped around the whole strainer to hold down the strainer cap. Those approaches didn't work and the cap still leaked, so that was a no-go. We had one additional solution available, since we were able to find a 3/4 inch hose to hose bib adapter. With this we bypassed the strainer, and we could run the engine again, leak free, albeit, with some risk of sucking something up further into the system than we would like. But we were operational again. This whole episode in the harbor was an example of a low point, followed by the high of realizing that we had "McGyvered" our way out of the problem.

The other frustrating thing about "sailing" trips, is that if you are on a schedule, you often don't get to actually sail. From Annapolis to Boston, we sailed perhaps 14 hours total, versus probably 60 hours of motoring. This is pretty typical, and it's just something you have to accept on trips like this. 

And so, the low point today is that Suzan won't be able to get here today, and we'll have to see about tomorrow. It's a hardship, and it delays our plans, but fortunately, everyone is safe, and we'll recover whenever she gets here.

And despite some of the negative things I've listed here, don't worry, we'll be fine. We'll be looking for that next high, when we're sailing in a beautiful spot, somewhere off the coast of Maine.