What a Difference…

…a few inches makes. I can see women everywhere nod knowingly.

Okay, vulgarities aside, it’s true: just a few inches of water lifted me from being a resigned and nervous to happy and calm, all in the space of just a few minutes.

It started with Saturday’s mondo nor’easter. It blew through the Mid-Atlantic with not a whole lot of precipitation but a whole lot of wind. Storm-force winds: steady in the 30s and 40s, with gusts into the 60s out of the north. Knots, not miles per hour. It wasn’t too bad up in the cove where Further is tied up, but out on Chesapeake Bay it was blowing right down the bay. That meant the wind was pushing the water right out of the bay and into the ocean. Which meant that the water level dropped — even up in my little cove. And with a wind that fierce, the water level dropped a lot.

Tilting sideways Friday night. Made for an uneasy evening.

I knew based on the forecast on Thursday that Further would end up sitting in the mud. It happened before during the winter several times and is, according to the locals, a winter phenomenon. As I say: it happened earlier this winter, so when Further’s keel touched in early afternoon on Friday I wasn’t too worried. Earlier in the winter I wound up high-and-dry enough that my propellor was actually sticking out of the water, but Further drooped forward, toward her bow, and it was simply an inconvenience getting on and off the boat.

My fear Friday night was that my mast would tangle with my neighbor’s mast. That would have been bad.

On Friday, the water raced out of the cove. I went from floating to touching the keel to most of the rudder out of the water in just a couple of hours. And for whatever reason, Further not only sagged forward she sagged sideways, toward her port side.

Sitting in the mud isn’t a big deal. The keel and hull are strong and the mud in my cove is quite soft. What was nerve-wracking was that as Further sagged to port, her mast got closer and closer to the mast of the sailboat tied up beside me. I doubled up my lines on the starboard side hoping they, and a piling that stood between the two boats, would keep me vertical enough if the water continued to drop. And given the forecast — the winds were supposed to peak Friday night but continue blowing out of the north until Monday — I had every expectation that most of the water was leaving of the cove.

My neighbor helped me with my lines and thought I’d be fine. I wish I’d had her confidence. Our masts weren’t lined up as Further tilted more and more, so that gave me a little bit of room. There wasn’t much more I could do late on Friday I climbed into my bunk and went to sleep.

And when I say “climbed” I mean “climbed.” Further was heeled over probably 30 degrees to port so I slept more on the side of the hull than on the mattress. But I was warm and cozy, and I’m blessed that when I’m tired I can sleep damn near anywhere. I actually zonked out from midnight until 5 a.m., and then again from 5:30 till 7.

Saturday morning and Further was where she’d been when I went to sleep the night before.

I woke on Saturday to find the boat in basically the same position as it had been in when I went to sleep: tilting forward a bit and steeply to port. Another climb up and out of my berth, through the cabin, and then a long stretch and jump to get to the dock revealed that no, the boat hadn’t sunk any deeper. But I had. Assuming the forecast meant that, at best, Further would be in her predicament until at least Monday, I wondered from coffee shop to coffee shop in Annapolis, unable to bear looking at her as she sat like a beached whale. I worried about everything: how long the lines could hold up under the strain, if the piling could really bear Further’s weight, when the electrical work that was scheduled for the coming week could actually happen since there was no way the guy was going to be able to get his tools across the gap from dock to deck. And it was doubly a shame to sink into such a funk because Saturday had dawned gorgeous: brilliant blue sky; warm sunshine; yes, still breezy but not as bad. And I couldn’t enjoy it. All I could see was my foundering vessel as dark thoughts raced through my mind, most along the lines of: what the hell had I gotten myself into? Seriously. I was THAT bad.

And then something almost miraculous happened, and it happened at the most unexpected time.

All’s well that ends well.

I was sitting at the picnic table on shore near Further as the midday low tide approached. Jumping on board (I’m serious: literally JUMPING from the dock) to once again check the lines, I looked to a piling in the middle of the cove, the one with the depth gauge nailed to it. Friday night, as Further reached her nadir, the water was about an inch away from the base of that piling. But now, as the tide was bottoming out, the water was touching the wood where it entered the mud. The water was about an inch, maybe two, higher than it had been the night before. But the tide was still going out AND the wind was still blowing from the north. What the…?!

A short while later, right at dead low tide, and the water had surrounded the base. A little more time and it was now an inch on the OTHER side of the piling. The water was coming back into the cove.

By mid-afternoon enough water had come back into the cove that Further was no longer resting on that piling. I placed a second fender on the boat’s rail, just in case, and tightened up her lines. A short while later, I had to tighten her lines again. A bit later, while tightening the lines again, my neighbor walked into the marina and exclaimed that our masts were almost parallel once again.

Saturday afternoon and the masts are parallel again.

Further wasn’t floating yet, but wow! What a transition. And still the water came flowing into the cove. I could savor the sunshine pouring down out of the blue sky and welcome the ducks that swam around my bow. I returned everything in the cabin that had fallen from its place the night before and enjoyed being able to sit on a horizontal seat.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose. I removed the secondary lines this morning (Sunday) and reset all the primary lines such that Further is a tiny bit farther out into the cove and a tiny bit closer to the starboard side of her slip. And in hindsight, I can be happy about a few things.

For one, the boat was comfortable when heeled over. That’s important because that’s how she’ll be when we’re out at sea. Yes, I’ve lived life at an angle before and it’s fine. But it’s a drag when you’re doing it at the dock. Second, some friends (both in Annapolis and farther flung) were very helpful throughout the stressful parts of this event. Third, this was a record low water level (eclipsing the record set earlier in the winter) and spring is fast returning so a repeat episode seems unlikely, knock on wood. (If I see a similar forecast in the coming weeks, I’m motoring out of my marina and staying at some other marina with deeper slips for a couple of nights.) Combined with another recent hair-raising episode (I’ll recap that one later) that let me know my bilge pumps and alarm systems work properly, and the takeaways are that Further, despite all her scrapes and bruises and other signs of age, is a well-found vessel. I look forward to getting her out into bluewater where she can let down her hair a bit and be in her element. That day is coming…

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A Death Foretold

All things pass. That dictum is as true and irrefutable as death, taxes and the fact that the Earth is round (sorry, flat-Earthers).

And so it was that on September 20, 1977, the great Arthur Fonzarelli donned a pair of water skis and vaulted his way skyward, however briefly on television but eternally into the American idiom, jumping over a shark. Fonzie, Henry Winkler, and Happy Days were passing, as all things indeed must, and American culture would never be the same.

Fast-forward to the mid-2010s. There are roughly 17 million TV channels, and an almost-equal number of streaming websites, for the viewing public to choose from in this day of the 24-hour news-and-entertainment cycle. Even sports, that last bastion of it-has-to-be-live viewing, has fallen prey to the need to be constantly buzzing, constantly generating controversy — constantly garnering viewers/clicks/likes/whatever that media companies can somehow monetize.

As a result, sports channels don’t show a whole lot of sports anymore. Games — you know, what sports IS?! — are interspersed a steady stream of talking heads screaming at each other. And they’re not shrieking out facts. No, they’re yelling opinions at one another. Because that’s what sports in 2018 has become: opinion. Or rather, I should say: that’s what sports MEDIA has become in 2018.

I love sports. I’ve been playing sports since before I can remember and I still play regularly in this, my sixth decade on the planet. The whole point of sports is that it is the very definition of drama: there’s a contest between two or more forces and no one knows what the outcome is going to be beforehand. That’s why the games are played; that’s why we tune in.

Now, the games are an afterthought and today’s sports media has even me souring on its raison d’être. I was having lunch out today and the place had the idiot box on to a show featuring a whole table of people yelling at each other about what they think is going to happen to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Never mind that none of them KNOW anything definitively. Never mind that it’s only January. And to be even more blunt: I could not possibly care less what Stephen A. thinks about this, or Max says about that. Who cares what a former NFL player thinks about developments in the NBA? And there has never been anyone whose opinion means less to me on any topic, least of all sports, than Skip. They’re never right and yet they have no accountability. They provoke, that’s all. Throw in all the people bloviating online and it’s a dizzying waste of electrons bouncing around the atmosphere, making us all dumber and less civil.

The sad part is that between the pervasiveness of this obnoxious so-called “journalism” and the insufferable game broadcasts with their 8 million commercials and hokey promotions and sideline interviews and pre- and post-game shows and blah, blah blah, is that it is, as I say, souring fans on the sports themselves. It reminds me of back when the NHL was experiencing its first work stoppage and Wayne Gretzky responded to a question by saying he hoped the game would survive. My immediate response was, “Hey, Wayne? The game will ALWAYS survive. The NHL might not. And would that be such a loss?” It’s getting to the point where I don’t even want to tune into pro sports anymore. The sports themselves, they’ll survive. The media and the leagues? Hard sayin’, not knowin’. I’ll always be playing pond hockey. But watching the NHL? Meh.

Remember when MTV actually played some of the M part of its name: music? The day is not far off when we’ll remember back to the days when ESPN actually played some of the S part of its name.

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Life Aboard…Three Weeks In

Check out how Further slopes forward on her keel, and how much of the light blue of the hull (below the red waterline) is visible.

There are a lot of reasons to dig where I’m currently living aboard a tied-up Further in Annapolis. I’m in a quiet neighborhood yet within walking distance of all the city’s amenities. Further is tied up in a small marina with another liveaboard who’s a great neighbor and a good friend. There are tons of ducks and herons and other critters here in the upper reaches of this stretch of Back Creek.

But all these have come at a price. And I’m not talking about money.

The first night Further spent at her new home a sharp cold front blew through that brought with it a strong northwest wind. I woke up the next morning to learn that such a wind blows the water out of Chesapeake Bay, taking with it the already thin water up here in June’s Cove. As a result, Further’s keel sat a few inches into the (thankfully) soft mud. No big deal other than my nervousness, but any thought of taking the boat out was on hold until the fierce winds took a break and let the water come back in with the high tide.

Last night’s cold front was sharper and the northwest winds even stronger. And Further is hard on the bottom by well over a foot.

The far side of the cove, where yesterday I watched half a dozen mallards — four drakes and two hens — swim and chase each other around for a good quarter-hour is now exposed and dry. Also yesterday, at the head of the cove where the stream enters the larger Back Creek, I startled a great blue heron who’d been fishing for lunch; the only fish that area can host today better have feet.

It’s also cold. Cold enough that I’m also having to be nervous about things on board freezing. I have a couple of heaters on board but it’s still nerve-wracking. The electric, oil-filled heater radiates only a low heat for such a space, and I can’t leave the propane-fired Mr. Heater (used one of these in my basement in Alaska and it worked great, so I bought one to use on board during these cold days) going when I’m not on board. I’ll be replacing the missing diesel forced-air heater when it gets delivered in the next few days and that will take a lot of worry off my brow.

All that mud was covered by water 24 hours ago. And see the depth gauge on the piling? Yeah…

I’m more than a bit freaked out by all of this. I’m not TOO worried about Further — the mud is quite soft in there so she should be all right. And the cold doesn’t bother me but it could bother some of the systems on board that involve water. Even last week’s snow was kinda nice, to be honest. But still…argh!

I’m worrying way more than I usually do, which is not like me. About all sorts of boat-related things. I’ve told friends who’ve asked that the definition of a boat is very true: it’s a hole in the water into which one pours money. To be honest, things I feared based on the pre-purchase survey have turned out better than expected. But there are still substantial outlays of cash going on. The diesel heater, for one, turned out to be way spendier than expected. On the other hand, the electrical system got a bigger thumbs up from the electrician universally regarded around here as a boat whisperer, so that was nice.

One of my dearest friends counseled me to “enjoy the shit out of it all,” calling even the seemingly negative aspects like spending lots of money, “part and parcel.” He’s right, and I’ve been trying to remember his words when the temperature drops and things break and Chesapeake Bay disappears.

I’m not much for astrology (okay, not at all), but there’s a weekly horoscope I peruse online mostly because it’s usually very upbeat and encouraging. And the past couple of weeks have counseled staying positive and trusting because the big change I’m going through is the right one. That’s been comforting. It’s really seemed to fit the exact questions I’ve been wrestling with concerning Further. So to paraphrase Ronald Reagan: I’ll trust…but continue to check the dock lines.

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