Virginia Dare’s "Excellent Adventure"
or
On the Atlantic…at last

We took delivery of our fifth boat, Virginia Dare, an HR-39, in December of 2001. Well, OK, so a couple of those five boats got pulled behind my car, if fact, one you could put on top of the damn car. Still five is five and… well it sounds authoritative. Anyway, almost all of our sailing experience was West-Coast—mostly San Francisco Bay where a day-sail leaves you feeling like you’ve just fallen out of a NASA wind-tunnel and in need of triage of some sort!

Now Virginians, we sail the much more tranquil Chesapeake Bay out of Annapolis, MD—harrumph! No more wind tunnels for us, a half-day out there in 90 degree heat and 95 % humidity and you’re sweating like plow horses and dreaming of a long shower and maybe a saline solution IV afterward. Besides sweating though, our 1^st season with Virginia Dare on the Chesapeake did give us ample opportunity to learn how to sail this new Swedish beauty. Conditions ranged from dead calm to near gale that year and we were out there every week-end. Now at the 2^nd season, however, we were determined to get out on Atlantic, a first for us and the yacht.

She, Virginia Dare, was purposefully set-up for coastal cruising. We’ve never had the slightest desire to sail over anybody’s “horizon”. In fact, remember the movie Ground Hog Day? That’s how we see three weeks at sea: same stink’n thing over and over and over till you could scream, except you substitute Dramamine™ for popcorn.

Anyway, a hefty house battery set, air conditioning (for those steamy east-coast August days) GPS navigation interfaced to a sturdy autopilot, a large “aftermarket” holding tank and of course the large water and fuel tankage that is supplied by Hallberg-Rassy make tripping along the coast – downright civilized!

The Route Our three week sail plan was north on the Chesapeake, through the C&D Canal and down Delaware Bay to the Atlantic. From there we headed to NYC then through Long Island Sound to Newport. Our final leg was from Block Island home, 764-nm in all.

Our trip was planned during the cold winter of ‘02 and ’03. Route way-points were generated using PC Planner and a lap top computer and then written to a blank C-Map chip. Just as advertised - slip the chip in the chart plotter and upload the waypoints and now the electronics are at least as smart as the planner - faint praise, think the electronics!

The Chesapeake Rendezvous ends on Sunday and Monday morning we are sliding out of home port, Back Creek, Annapolis bound for the Atlantic. The first leg of the trip, north on Chesapeake Bay will be via diesel, no surprise for July around here! It addition to the normal a heat, and humidity, an annoying assortment of flying insects had apparently scheduled their vacation for the same day as mine.

First Night Chesapeake North marina inside the C&D Canal proved to be a place better suited to the draft of powerboats, despite the  advertised claim in the cruising guide. Oh, and what a surprise, barely a mast in sight. Be very careful about descriptions found in local cruising guides - particularly the advertising. We arrived just after low tide and drug the bulb of Virginia’s keel through the mud on the way to our "assigned" slip – only to find it occupied and the dock-master now long gone for the day. Instead we hung on a self assigned T-head pier with 30 Amps ac for our air conditioning, averting a damn severe annoyance. (Note: Next time skip Chesapeake North Marina.)

Cape May Next morning we "timed" our departure to the notorious tide of the Delaware Bay. You know - tide tables, current charts, time = distance/rate... all that kind of stuff? It turned out the trip down the Delaware was not as forbidding as the local lore  had led us to expect. Toward the lower end of the bay the wind piped up to Force 5 against the current and the bay developed its characteristic nasty chop. Thanks to our late start to “catch the tide just right” planning we entered Cape May harbor at 10:00 pm. A “brilliant” strategy for a first time entrance from seaward, but as the cruising guide said, the harbor was an easy entrance and forgave our “outsmarting” ourselves with the delayed start.

Atlantic City  Dragging 6-ft, 1-in of lead keeps us out of all but two ports on the New Jersey shore. Our plan therefore was to do a short day-sail to Absecon Inlet (Atlantic City) as a set-up for the following day’s long slog to New York. Hey, maybe we’re carrying this “coastal cruisers” thing too far with a mere 35 nm hop. In hindsight, a long motor sail from Cape May to NYC with an overnight at sea would have been a better choice. The day started off dead calm so we motored. By the time we got the Absecon Inlet we had Force-4 wind, but too late to do us any good. Absecon was an easy entrance—well marked and with substantial jetties. We had called ahead earlier in the day for a slip. The anchorage just inside the inlet and before the bridge looked to me like one best suited to a very well set anchor hanging on plenty of chain. There was lots of inbound wind and current as we came past the anchorage and nowhere to “tuck” a 57-ft mast if it swept you westward under that 35-ft bridge. Experienced sailors say it’s a perfectly good anchorage so I defer to their wisdom, but took a rather pricey slip at Trump’s marina that night anyway. Atlantic City—‘Ya’ like cigarette smoke everywhere; well bleached 50 year old women screeching in that hideous Jersey accent and their men who look like they’ve spent their days breaking arms with Tony Soprano—then Atlantic City is just what you’re looking for Skipper. And, at a mere $4 per foot per night, who could resist? “Hey Bruuuno, ‘paak’ the boat (a 1000 Hp petrol-sucking cigarette boat...what else?) I waanna’ grab a caaacktail at Trump’s”.

Next day what was left of poor old tropical storm Bill as he limped northward to oblivion had the Atlantic roiled up enough that we decided to stay an extra night at our $160 per night luxury slip and wait for things to settle down out on the sea. Remember, we’re “coastal cruisers” and at times like this the dry side of the coast is a great place to be!

New York Harbor Atlantic City to NYC is over 100 miles. We had slip reservations at Liberty Landing Marina for the 4^th of July holiday so we departed at 0300: pitch black, fogged in and through what must have been a sizeable standing wave at the entrance. Just as well that we couldn’t see the sea state in the channel: We’d have spent yet another night happily sucking-in second hand carcinogens in Atlantic City. At 0300 we exit with two other yachts. The standing wave put us in a “steep climb” attitude for a few seconds (I think pilots call it “rotation” on take off) then pushed us into a scrape with a navaid marking the channel. Poor helmsmanship to be sure, but under the circumstances all three boats and their crews were damn happy to be out of that channel and back on the sea, with or without all of their gelcoat. We had 2-3 hours of pitch black before the sun hit the horizon to reveal a nice thick fog bank. So visibility remained near zero, but changed from black-on-black to white-on-white. That day was spent under motor alone. There was little or no wind and we wanted to transit NY harbor in daylight so the RPMs we’re set to 2400 and held there all day. Diesels “love to work”, the experts say, if so, that Volvo had a happy day.

New York entrance all the way to the harbor lived up to its scenic billing. Virginia Dare was tracking her waypoints on autopilot to perfection. I don’t think the ship traffic was any more than we normally see passing Baltimore, but as “first timers” adrenaline was high and all four eyes on-board were on watch. Double checking the way points as we arrived at each freed up our wits considerably from normal “manual” navigation and allowed us to see some of what we were experiencing. Our plan was pretty simple: a) stay the hell out of the shipping channels (3) and b) keep lots of water under the keel, all focused on moving us northerly under the Verrazano Bridge and into New York harbor.

Sandy Hook to Ambrose Light had a few local sailors out challenging the current. The log shows “Force-5 winds from 200°”, virtually ideal, but we drove on under power anyway. What a half-wit, any fool can light up an engine and drive to a marina. It is, if anything, easier than driving a car. We should never have passed on the chance to sail under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and past the Statue of Liberty. You never get a “second” 1^st time.

Liberty Landing Marina – another must see destination! This one at $200 per night and you have to bring your own bed. We could have stayed in Manhattan for less (in fact the prior fall –we did!). “But wait there’s more” (as they say in the Ginsu knife ad) they also charge $8.85 per night additional for electricity. Think about that, it comes to $3,230.25 per year — I have a pretty decent sized house that doesn’t suck-up those kinds of kilo Watt hours in a full year of Virginia heat and cold! OK – OK it’s not about money you’re saying and your right of course. Despite my pointed “recollections” so far, we are having a great time (Later described by me as, “The best vacation of my life”, but more on that later.)

The polished “professionals” at Liberty Landing hadn’t a clue what to do with us on first VHF hail. After some harbor orbiting they route us to H-15. Looking for dock-boys on approach? Get real, the only thing moving on that dock was heat waves. We arrive, tie down Virginia Dare properly and prepare to tap into some of that “premium grade” $8.85 per day alternating current. Uh, the outlet for our slip has “his” line plugged in and “his” outlet is dead to the world. Him? Ah yeah, maybe 60-65 year old European-guy in one of those “Speedo” bathing suits pulled up real tight around his, well…you know. He’s busy scraping something from the bulwarks of his 50 foot motor beast. You think I’m gonna’ confront Gerhard? Uh huh, sure, I don’t even want to make eye-contact with a 65 year old man dressed like that. Fortunately, a friend cleans the electro-crud from our ($8.85 per day) receptacle and loans us the correct 50A to 30A splitter. We’re in business – it’s the 4^th of July, the air conditioning is working and we’re in (or rather, right across the Hudson from) the “Big Apple.”

That night we watch the 4^th of July fireworks and are treated to fillet mignon and wine by our friends on their 49-ft Defever trawler. Next day we watch the BoSox pound the Yanks 10 to 2 in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium. We have a great dinner at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, then to a Broadway Play. Yeah – now that’s why we’re “coastal cruisers”! It’s rough along that damn coast, but we’re proving that we’re made of the “right stuff” for it!

Oyster Bay Long Island  To get from NY Harbor to the Long Island Sound you transit the East River and pass through Hell Gate where the East and Harlem Rivers do a four times a day knock-down, drag-out battle with the current from the Sound. It awaited our arrival bright and early Monday morning—terrible-terrible Hell Gate. But, we couldn’t have timed this arrival any better. The gates of hell were closed that morning and we passed over without even seeing an eddy. That put us at Throgs Neck by noon and the log says; “40°52.52’ N by 73°45.05’ W, 92-ft depth. Under sail, wind force-5, NNE, making 5.7-kts SOG”.

We sailed like that, hard on the wind for hours, a perfect introduction to the Long Island Sound. At about 1800 the wind had dropped and the sky showed a thunder storm building to the west. We headed into Oyster Bay and hailed a yacht paralleling our course about a mooring. They recommended the Sagamore Yacht Club. Oyster Bay is a sea of moorings surrounded by mansions-real mansions, the kind that bumpkins like us at first mistake for hotels or resorts. We hailed Sagamore YC on VHF 78 and they assigned us mooring AB-19. Great, now try and find it out there. We did at last and lashed the yacht to the mooring with our own line, expecting the worst from the impending thunder storm. It never appeared. We dropped the storm watch at 2200 and turned in.

The Thimbles  Next day was windless and flat on the Sound. We motored to the Thimble Islands, our planned anchorage for the night. We used that windless passage to get some radar practice. Every ferry within a 16-nm range got MARPA’d* that day and there were plenty out there.

The Thimbles are described by the cruising guides as, “a little piece of Maine scraped off and transported to the Connecticut shore”. We entered “the pond” between High and Money Islands at 1615. Well… actually we entered “the pond” with jaws set and teeth on edge. The current has its way with you as you move between rather sizable chunks of rock that make up the Thimbles. The log says “mean voices used on entry”. That’s “log-speak” for when the helmsperson and navigator communicate in threatening hisses through clinched teeth. “Get over, get over, 10 degrees to starboard, you dumb ass!” It doesn’t seem fair, she gets down there with radar, a chart-plotter with WAAS DGPS and instruments telling her everything from depth, to water temperature, to the local lobster count. I get a wheel cabled to a rudder and let me bump one of those stinkin’ rocks poetically “scraped from the coast of Maine” and the dumb ass gets coronated.

We set the anchor in 14-ft of water amidst three other yachts, who’s crews were all looking anxious about their ability to remain stationary over the course of the next 10-minutes much less all night. It is said that ignorance is bliss. We don’t have to deal with 3-4-kt currents ripping through a bucolic atoll of granite on the placid Chesapeake. So, like Alfred E. Neumann asks, “What, Me worry?” We dropped 45-Lbs of CQR and followed that with 4:1 scope of fine Scandinavian chain, then set the GPS anchor alarm for 1/100^th of a nautical mile which translates to 1½ boat lengths in, “useful units of measure”. It stayed put; at first for minutes, then hours, pretty soon all night! Well, yeah about 0300 the RayMarine instruments start chirping like an aviary because the tide has turned, and now the anchor swing diameter is larger than that 1½ boat length margin. But I like to look out at least once a night anyway to see that my bed is still in the same general location that I left it.

Mystic Seaport  in many ways the highlight of our trip. You snake for miles up the Mystic River, past marinas, mooring fields and picturesque cottages. Near the northern end a railroad swing bridge awaits, but it has been “defanged” by defaulting to the open position. So unless you are unlucky enough to time your passage to the trains, it’s a non-event. A more interesting adventure awaits just above the railroad bridge. The Mystic River Bascule Bridge opens “every hour at the quarter hour from 0815 to 1915, if boats are waiting.” We arrived below the bridge just after the hour. The drill is to “orbit” in the small turning basin while the clock labors toward the “quarter hour”. That too is an easy task even in the tidal current. We found ourselves in a (Flock? Herd? Pod? Yeah probably a…) “Pod” of four sail and one motor vessel. After a loop or two through the turning basin the process becomes second nature.

We’re behind a Hinckley and all of a sudden its owner, captain Reginald I. Gotbucks, decides he now has the audience needed for his “Look Ma – no hands” display. Turns out that Reggie has a bow thruster and we’re all gonna’ have a look at it in action today, like it or not! The damn thing lets off an audio blast in that frantic, vibrating, wimpy electrical whine that only further reassures the power boat crowd they’ve been right all along about low testosterone in sail-boaters. Water flies, bubbles gush, onlookers gasp and sure enough Reggie’s Hinckley now sets bow-to the bridge and dead still. What Reggie forgets is that the rest of the “pod” is shark-like. We have to stay in motion or die! There is that quaint nautical application of the word “way” as in; a boat must keep “way” on in order to maintain steerage. The “pod” members, now confused and disoriented, all curl off to port and begin a new orbit pattern – just aft of Reggie who has now thoughtfully truncated our turning basin by a third of its former length. No harm done. A mini-orbit or two later, the bascule lifts and we move through, in line, following Reginald now beaming proudly over his recently completed display of electrical seamanship.

Mystic Seaport turns out to be the happy opposite of Liberty Landing Marina. These people know that we’re coming, they know where they’re going to put us and they send their summer help to assist. Our lines are taken, a fender board and Seaport overview provided and electrical connection made. And yeah, there were electrons flowing out of the service box at no additional charge!

We walked to town and had a quick tour. Some places, even though popular and attractive have a contrived quality about them. Not so Mystic. It is completely genuine and all the more attractive for it. We stayed three nights – a sizable portion of a three week trip, hundreds of miles from home port. That night we had a great diner at the Seaport’s “Lobsta fest”. Over the next couple of days we had a chance to explore a pretty good portion of Mystic thanks to its handy tourist bus system. Oh, and yes we did have pizza at Mystic Pizza: it’s pretty darned good. Order a Greek Pizza.

Newport, RI  Sunday morning we took a pump-out at the Seaport (free!) then queued up for the 0915 bridge lift. No Reggie G. and his Hinckley today. The passage under the bascule went without incident. We followed the Seaport’s whaling ship down the Mystic River then headed east for Newport, RI as our next anchorage.

From the 1100 log, “41° 18.20´ N by 71° 48.47´ W, under sail, force-2 wind from the SW. Only making 2.8-kts SOG, 3-4-ft swells. Clear, sunny 70° s, greeted HR-46 ‘Jam Jar’ also on easterly course.” We summoned the power of the Volvo after a while and entered Newport harbor about 1500. We worked our course to not foul any of the dozens of boats engaged in the regatta just offshore as we moved toward the harbor. Once inside, mansions line the shore of as fine a harbor as you could wish for. My recollection is of hundreds of boats, maybe thousands. I remember recalling Annapolis’ claim as “The sailing capital of the U.S” and wondering if that particular Annapolis publicist had ever even  seen Newport.

Even by late afternoon on a Sunday the moorings were all taken and the anchorage packed. After only two drops of the CQR we got ourselves positioned for a stay. On our starboard beam “Thong-Man” a very pleasant fellow decked out in a thong and a pink tank-top! He seemed to be hard at work on what looked to be an old Folkboat. Nothing drives you from yacht to water taxi to town more quickly than watching Thong-Man bending-over to retrieve tools or materials.

A grand old town, Newport. I’m old enough to have spent some years watching 12 Meter yachts compete for the cup as the venerable old NY Yacht Club stacked the deck against all comers. The 12’s are still there, still sailing – very elegantly.

Great Salt Pond   I learned coastal piloting years ago from the USCG Auxiliary using charts of the NE US. Navigating from I-don’t-remember-where, to the “Great Salt Pond” in Block Island was an exercise that forever set Block Island in my sights. It needed to be done for real. As it turns out thousands of others enter Great Salt Pond every summer, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying. We left Newport at a civilized hour bound for Block Island. No wind out there, so we fire up the Volvo again and head SSW from Newport to Block Island.

An hour or two out of Newport, the air turned white. You couldn’t see anymore. Well, it wasn’t quite blindness, you could still see inside the cockpit, but not as far as the bow. I remember sailing into this kind of thing going out of the Golden Gate years and years ago. I really had no plan then hell I’m on a 23-ft Ranger who’s entire “navigation suite” consisted of a compass. Yeah a compass – not a LCD display batting out the latest digital data stream from a hot-shot fluxgate tucked away down below. This was a stinkin’ magnet floating in oil! No solution then - no solution now either, unless you call staring at a radar LCD and honking a stupid horn every two minutes a solution.

At 1220 a sailing vessel broadcasts a Pan Pan on VHF 16. A 45-ft motor vessel has T-boned him in the fog. He’s now taking on water and the perpetrator has vamoosed, vanished, hit-and-run. Another vessel renders assistance and they stop the flood. We now watch the radar transfixed, and honk that stupid horn, probably far more often than necessary.

A mile from Block Island the fog bank ends and we are treated to a perfect entrance through the jetties. We’re still a little “Chesapeake-timid” about hitting the bottom so we watch the depth sounder like its half time at the Super Bowl (did ‘ya see it?), but it’s deep enough for even the most timid. We slide through the entrance and enter The Pond as thousands do every summer. But, this is a bigger deal than it probably is for most – I’m closing the loop on a few decades since my last “entrance” via dividers and straight edge on a government chart in a high school classroom.

The Great Salt Pond was everything it needed to be. Not a bit of disappointment. I can easily see why the yachts and motor vessels of the southern New England Coast consider it prime cruising destination. We hung on the anchor Monday evening then moved to a mooring in front of Champlain’s Tuesday afternoon. We rented a Jeep and explored as much of Block Island as there is road to explore it.

The night passage  This is the part I’d been looking forward to – 205-nm of nothing but ocean. From the Great Salt Pond to Cape May Harbor, the full moon and bioluminescence in the wake, maybe force-4 wind and nice well-behaved rolling seas to surf down. Weather report – benign! “Winds 5—10-kts from the SW, seas 2-3-ft”, droned that automated voice over the VHF Wx channel. Even so, we thought we’ll probably end up motor sailing because the summer wind predictions are almost always overstated.

At 0500 we roust ourselves from the aft cabin bunks and “make all preparations to get underway”. (I don’t know whether or not the Navy actually uses that Hollywood phrase, but as a former Army guy, I’ve always loved it, so there it is.) By 0600 we are exiting the Pond. The way-points are entered into the chart-plotter and the day is perfect. (You know this isn’t going to last, don’t you?)

The 0800 log entry: “41° 03.47´N x 71° 47.16´W, raycon RWMP off port beam, Montauc off starboard quarter. Making 6.2-kts SOG”.

A low mist covers the ocean and the tall bluffs of the south side of Block Island are beginning to recede. We were right, the wind is a timid force-2 and not unexpectedly, on-the-nose. We’ve got this thing timed so we spend only one night on the sea, not two. By sometime around 1600 day-after-next, I want to see Cape May out there on the starboard bow not just more salt water. That said — its time to light the fire and motor sail. Motor sailing is really just motoring with the main hoisted. There are those that swear you gain something from it and actually gain a few bucks for themselves writing magazine articles about it. Near as I can tell you gain stability – the boat doesn’t roll as badly. Two identical HRs spend hours in company droning down the Delaware Bay with force-3 winds on the nose. One of them (me) raises the main and trims it to a T. Hours later the distance between the boats is unchanged – no RPM changes either. Not scientific enough for you? OK then, we raised the main and gained a full NOT [sic].

I’m starting to feel a little queasy, yeah queasy. That’s the word that usually precedes nauseous.  What follows that is perhaps too vulgar for the gentler of readers, so pretend YAK is a word (no, not the wild shaggy haired ox of mountainous central Asia) and pretend that word is what follows in the following sequence: 1) queasy, 2) nauseous, 3) YAK. More on that later!

My stomach is first to notice that the sea swell is running from the SE and the wind waves are from the SW. Oh, and by the way, the wind is piping up – it’s force-6 now. It’s pretty evident that a squall line is about to cross our path and it’s not likely to be a trivial event. The navigator directs my attention to a gaudy color radar display that shows what looks like a swarm of locust of truly Biblical proportions heading our way. That mainsail is gonna’ be a problem pretty soon! I’m at stage two in that sequence we covered in the last paragraph – I don’t want to go “up there”.  But somebody’s gotta’ go: the “swarm” is still coming and the navigator has made her intentions damn plain. The mainsail slab reefs and does so with merciful ease. In a matter of a few minutes the sail was at the 2^nd reef (Yeah, 2^nd reef – I have no plan to come back up here!) then I was back in the cockpit making nice progress toward step 3 in “the sequence”.

Squall’s not here yet but the wind is now up to a very full force-7. The wind waves have now built to 6-8 feet and there still crossing the 3-4-ft sea swells at maybe a 90-degree angle of convergence. The way this is now working is a series of perfectly repeating steps that go like this: a) port rail-down, b) now bow up, c) then side-slip to port, d) upright attitude, e) now bow down and accelerate, f) twist slightly clockwise and decelerate, g) shudder & scoop 100 gallons of green over the bow, back to port rail-down and repeat this all over again. YAK!

One thing about those 100 gallons of green, Virginia Dare was cleaning her decks as fast as I could soil them, YAK. The squall now hits us and it pours, absolutely pours, but there is no great increase in the wind speed, now nudging into force-8. And within minutes the squall is gone, or rather moving vengefully seaward to clobber the next half-wit easterly of us. The wind, however, continues at force 7-8 for what will be most of this night.

It’s now maybe midnight plus or minus a few hours. You don’t have a head for precision when you feel like this – YAK. Full moon is ablaze somewhere above the clouds. But, down here below the clouds it’s black, really black. If you look forward, three to four times every minute you see a great red flash. That’s a wave breaking into the port navigation light. A few seconds later much of that wave gushes past the cockpit on a mad rush to the stern where most of it cascades over the transom, the rest gurgles down the scuppers with a threatening hiss of “I’ll be back”.

I’m now pretty useless, YAK. Sally has the watch and Virginia Dare knows just where she’s going and dammed if she doesn’t seem to be actually enjoying this – Virginia not Sally. Every 2-3 hours we make another way-point and the RayMarine instruments begin chirping over their latest accomplishment. Sally acknowledges their bluster with a push of a button and sets up the next way point. This goes on for hours and hours.

Sometime during the night or early morning we do a radio check on VHF 09. Sure enough there’s another loon out there probably less than 20-nm away. We exchange weather observations and regrets about being out here at all tonight, and then wish each other “good night” (how’s that gonna’ happen?). After midnight Sally watches “something out there” on the radar display, shadowing us off the stern for a half hour. It has to be close, 100-200-yards at most but there are no navigation lights. I’m no help, YAK. Eventually it disappears never to be seen. Moby? Maybe!

Just before dawn I make my way back up the vulgar sequence. Now just “queasy” I take over and the navigator collapses into a brief sleep in the cockpit. Our first sight of land is ironically Atlantic City – not a favorite port of call but given the angle between Block Island and Cape May, Atlantic City is the correct first sight. We’ll just keep on shuffling along, thank you Bruuuno - Cape May has gotta' be down there somewhere!

Cape May (again)  The hook is dropped by the USCG station in Cape May at 1616. It feels good. We have dinner on-board and look forward to a restful sleep in a stable horizontal position, not giving a damn what’s on the radar – out there.

Next morning we apply what we’ve learned to traversing the homely Delaware Bay. We start early and don’t let ourselves get caught up trying to outsmart the tide and current. If you can make 7-kts – go make it! Even if you have to give 3 back to the Bay, you still get to Chesapeake City sooner than hanging on an anchor, going nowhere. We flew up the Delaware. Toward Reedy Point we were making 9.3-kts SOG. From the log, “39° 33.26´N by 75° 36.69´W, in C&D Canal—ran Delaware Bay in 8-Hr, 14-min! 8.6-kt SOGs with a high of 9.3-kts SOG recorded.”

Almost Home  That evening we poked our bow cautiously into the shallow water of the Bohemia River. We dropped the anchor in 9½ feet of water just off the SW point of the mouth of the River. Summer was planning an electrical storm for evening entertainment so we let out extra chain and used a firm reverse to set the hook. Still hours from Annapolis, but the trip is over as far as excitement is concerned. The storm never developed, or rather developed on a front from Philadelphia to Dover leaving us out of the action.

Force-3 winds lured us into setting sail next morning in hope of a sail home. Within an hour the wind was a slight force-2. By now we are ready for “home”-the diesel fires up and pretty soon 2400 RPM is getting 6.4 SOG. From the log, “1707, docked.” Three weeks and 764.5-nm and now it’s over.

Home  At work Monday I recount a shorter version of this saga to a group of coworkers– focusing perhaps too keenly on the “night passage” and too many YAKs. I end characterizing the trip as, “...the best vacation of my life.” Afterward, we’re back to work except for one who lingers just long enough to observe, sympathetically, “My God, you must have had some horrible vacations!”

YAKing isn’t for everyone, I suppose.

Wayne & Sally Wilson
s/v Virginia Dare
HR-39 #192

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