More Excerpts

I simply cannot tell you how much we enjoyed our trip across the Erie Canal, especially the western half. The canal towns, with their downtown terminal walls, and their grassy, park-like places to tie up for the night (often with electricity and water available), compete with one another to see which can be the most hospitable to transiting boaters. The townspeople and the bridge tenders take pride in the appearance of the canalside park areas. Volunteers maintain the grounds around the locks also, which are sometimes downtown but more usually between towns. The locks compete for prizes awarded for the most attractive flowerbeds and landscaping.

There is a strong sense of history in these towns, and their names resonate with their canal heritage—Lockport, Middleport, Spencerport, Brockport, Fairport.

The lock and bridge tenders were helpful and friendly. They would often get the name of our boat, and ask how far we were going that day so they could call ahead to let their colleagues know we were coming. One of them told us that the reason they got the boat name and kept track of us was so that if our children called they would know where we were. (Good grief! —here we were trying to get away to have a little adventure, and these guys were going to sic our kids on us!)

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Witch of Endor with mast secured on deck for crossing the Erie Canal

Tied up along the Erie Canal

At anchor in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Witch of Endor at far right.

Docked at Solomons Island in the Chesapeake

Witch of Endor Snuggled Down For the Night at Milford Haven in the Chesapeake

We are writing this on the laptop, sitting under the cockpit awning while swinging gently to our anchor behind an island on the Sassafras River in the upper Chesapeake. It is late in the day. The trees are black paper silhouettes against the yellow, red, and purple western sky. Waterfowl swim silently, fanning iridescent V-ripples across the still pond. Pukka joins us in the cockpit and watches them with feline intensity. Ice rustles in a glass of Schaeffer’s rotgut and water; Mozart gentles the air.

My friends, I must tell you . . . it just does not get any better than this. We will spend time in the Chesapeake. Tomorrow, after checking out Georgetown, up the Sassafras, we will head down Bay. Our plans for the coming weeks include visiting Baltimore’s inner harbor, stopping at various ports down the fabled Eastern Shore, and sailing up the Potomac River. We plan to anchor in the shadow of the Washington Monument for a week, visiting with our son and daughter-in-law who live in suburban DC.

For our animal loving friends, Pukka the sea kitty is doing well. She sometimes keeps Margaret awake at night by batting her toys around. She has yet to perform any useful work around the boat—a matter of growing concern for me.

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Our cruise up the Potomac to Washington, DC, was the highlight of our Chesapeake experience. The Potomac is wide and meandering with many tributaries and places to explore on both the Maryland and Virginia sides. The final day of the trip up the river was exciting as we passed Mt. Vernon and, rounding the last bend, sighted the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome in the distance.

There was, however, a significant obstacle lying between us and the delights of the Capitol City: the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, where I-495 (the Beltway) crosses the Potomac at Alexandria, VA. This bridge is supposed to have 50 feet of clearance between the surface of the water and its underside. The top of Witch of Endor’s mast (including antennae and wind direction indicator), is about 48 feet above the water’s surface.

Well, you say, there’s 50 feet of clearance and you only need 48 feet, so what’s the problem? Well, I say, whadduya mean, what’s the problem? —that’s too close! How do I know that the bridge is really 50 feet up? It looks more like 47 feet to me! It’s the skipper’s job to be paranoid about his $20,000 rig being wiped out by a damn bridge! Do you think Woodrow Wilson is going to pay for a new mast?

The bridge does open, but only between 12 midnight and five AM, and then only if you give them 12 hour’s notice by telephone. You have to call to make an appointment to get through the damn bridge in the middle of the night! And then, there you would be—in total darkness in an unfamiliar place surrounded by the lights of Alexandria, Washington National Airport, Bolling Air Force Base, and the District of Columbia, trying to follow a channel marked with unlighted buoys! When I said that I had the skills required for coastal cruising, this is not what I had in mind.

Well, we made it. Actually, there was plenty of clearance. The problem is that when you are approaching a bridge, and looking up at the bridge and up at the top of your mast, the bridge can be 80 feet and your mast 40 feet, and it still looks as if you are going to hit. It is a well-known phenomenon of perspective known as “Sailor’s Paranoia”. What we did was to time ourselves to arrive at the bridge at low tide, which on that day was 3:30 in the afternoon. (Margaret was in charge of tides. She was equipped with a marvelous hand-held device called Tidetracker®, which enabled her to predict the time of high, low or slack tide just about anyplace on the Eastern seaboard). I will never forget this. We inched our way under, and I mean inched, with less than a half knot showing on the knotmeter. My heart was thumping and my hand was on the backstay to feel that first touch, which I knew would come, while the mate offered quiet words of comfort like, “. . . it’ll only take off the top few inches . . .”

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A gaff-rigged sloop passing West Point on the Hudson River

Passing a northbound tow under the George Washington Bridge on the Hudson River

At anchor in Washington DC. Picture taken from top of Washington Monument

Sailboats transiting the Dismal Swamp Canal on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Photo ICW.NET courtesy of US Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk

View from an anchorage along the Intracoastal Waterway in South Carolina

The shrimp fleet at Georgetown, South Carolina

The true low country begins south of Charleston, where deep forests give away to broad, flat marshland crisscrossed by the wide rivers and narrow creeks that wander through the great Sea Islands of southern South Carolina and Georgia. Between Charleston and Fernandina Beach on the Florida line, the world is a different and beautiful place. The Waterway winds through oceans of brilliant yellow marsh grass, tracing sinuous paths as it snakes its way among the green, wooded islands. It also runs through broad rivers and crosses wide sounds that are open to the Atlantic. The shrimp fleets ply their trade on these sounds. With net booms and outriggers extended off each side, and enveloped by canopies of fluttering scavenger gulls, the boats sweep slowly back and forth across the sparkling waters. It is amazing that there are any shrimp left.

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W hile anchored in the wonderful anchorage at Wrightsville Beach, three Coasties visited all the boats in one of their rigid inflatables, warning of a very severe storm headed our way, and advising that a second anchor be set. One of the kids noticed our hailing port (Bay Village, OH) on our stern . . . it turned out that his aunt and uncle live not far from us, and keep their boat in Sandusky!

The storm was a humdinger, with 35 to 40 MPH winds and higher gusts . . . it was good that we put out that second anchor. We held our ground OK, but we had a real problem getting that anchor up in the morning. To this day I’m not sure what happened. Somehow, that second anchor line got wrapped around the keel, and in the still-strong wind, we couldn’t budge the line. I had set it by letting out a lot of line on the first anchor, then walking the second anchor (cleated at the bow) to the stern to drop it, and then taking back on the first line. It will snow in hell before I try that again. Because it was still very windy, we needed the help of a towboat to get us unwound and unanchored before we could get out of there.

A couple of days later, at Swansboro North Carolina, we had bad weather again. We were nailed down at Dudley’s Marina for a couple of days, giving me the chance to work on the newsletter and do some engine maintenance. After leaving Dudley’s, we had a good day’s run up Bogue Sound, past Beaufort, and up the Adams Creek Canal and Adams Creek to a pretty anchorage in Cedar Creek, about three miles south of where Adams Creek joins the Neuse River.

Spending weather days in a snug anchorage is not an unpleasant experience. One works hard turning one’s boat into a self-sufficient capsule with water, electricity, heat, radios, tapes, books, comfortable lighting, beer, wine, liquor, food (and a cook!)—everything that might be wanted in such a circumstance. Sometimes it is pleasant to just relax in the small world that you have created and can control, and let the outside world take care of itself.

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Coast Guard cutters at Cape May

Pukka the sea kitty salutes the skipper

Under Sail

Photo courtesy of Scott Schaefer