In the day, we sailed under light blue skies over a dark blue Gulf Stream. At night, we sailed under a star-studded Milky Way over cradle rocking waves. Sea birds, turtles and flying fish were our companions as we lazily made our way north on temperate southerly breezes—any thoughts of a jinxed trip were forgotten.
Where fairytales often begin with “Once upon a time”, sailing adventures are more likely to begin with “So, there we were.” This one is no exception, but I start with the singular.
So, there I was at the West Marine store on Federal Boulevard, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, addressing the store employee to whom I had been directed. “Able sailor Bruce of the sailing vessel, Runaway Cat, Captain Kevin Kestler commanding. Captain Kestler sends his regards and requests that you exchange this piece of fudge autopilot controller for one that works.” Well, that is what I wanted to say anyway.
The autopilot controller had been installed only two days earlier before we departed Key West. Just north of Miami, it failed again. Faced with the unhappy prospect of hand steering a thousand miles our resourceful and dogged skipper, owner of a hardbound copy of the West Marine catalog, had spent the morning on his cell phone as we sailed north along the Florida coast tracking down a replacement. Fortuitously finding the one I was picking up; ducking in at Ft. Lauderdale was only a small detour. It was one of the few breaks we had seen on this still young but vexed voyage. An hour and a half later, we motored out the Ft. Lauderdale cut and turned north once again.
Where fairytales often begin with “Once upon a time”, sailing adventures are more likely to begin with “So, there we were.” This one is no exception, but I start with the singular.
So, there I was at the West Marine store on Federal Boulevard, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, addressing the store employee to whom I had been directed. “Able sailor Bruce of the sailing vessel, Runaway Cat, Captain Kevin Kestler commanding. Captain Kestler sends his regards and requests that you exchange this piece of fudge autopilot controller for one that works.” Well, that is what I wanted to say anyway.
The autopilot controller had been installed only two days earlier before we departed Key West. Just north of Miami, it failed again. Faced with the unhappy prospect of hand steering a thousand miles our resourceful and dogged skipper, owner of a hardbound copy of the West Marine catalog, had spent the morning on his cell phone as we sailed north along the Florida coast tracking down a replacement. Fortuitously finding the one I was picking up; ducking in at Ft. Lauderdale was only a small detour. It was one of the few breaks we had seen on this still young but vexed voyage. An hour and a half later, we motored out the Ft. Lauderdale cut and turned north once again.
My participation in the voyage had been facilitated by Offshore Passage Opportunities (OPO), an email matchmaking service that hooks up skippers needing a crew to move boats with sailors looking for offshore passage experience. Inherent in the undertaking is a commitment to an extended journey at sea on a small vessel with an uncertain timeline under potentially challenging conditions with complete strangers. A fair prescription for adventure calculated to plasticize a calcified life. My wife had asked how I knew I wasn’t going sailing with ax murderers.
For me, the potential of the trip was related to another type of risk, that of violating advice I received as a young lawyer from a wise country judge: not to get in the habit of doing too much thinking on grounds it would make me unhappy. Helpless to avoid the good judge’s affliction, passage making seemed to offer a constructive venue for such risky thinking, as well as to advance my saltwater sailing skills.
Having been passed over on my first two OPO applications, I had felt lucky to be accepted by Runaway Cat. Upon acceptance, I had inquired of the skipper/boat owner, by return email, regarding everyone’s experience and, as much as I dared, about the boat and its equipment. I got a fairly full response to my miscellaneous inquiries and the boat seemed adequately equipped for a coastal passage but “Call me about the rest”, was the closing line in the email.
When I did call, for coordination and scheduling purposes, as cover I made another inquiry about the skipper’s experience and that of the crew. The skipper said he had made the trip before and that there would be two other crew - another OPO member and the skipper’s cousin. I inquired no further, assuming at a minimum the other OPO member would be an experienced saltwater sailor and the skipper, not a novice at least. I confess, though, I remained a bit troubled by the line in the skipper’s email accepting my application that I, “certainly appeared qualified.” It had sent me back to re-read my resume, wondering if perhaps there was a bit too much puffery in it.
I was informed that one of the crew was coming into Key West out of Tampa about the same time as I was, described as “Chuck Longenecker, 5’10”, 200 lbs, graying brown hair.” I assumed this to be the other OPO member.
The planes flying from my gate were small twin Cessnas painted exotically, to set the tone for the adventuring traveler, mine in a Key West scene with Hemmingway’s likeness on the side. There were not a lot of people in the waiting area and the only guy fitting the description given was sitting with nothing but a guitar case. I quickly rejected him as a candidate, whereupon “Chuck Longenecker” was called out from the ticket counter, and the guitar owner rose in response.
When he returned, I broke the news that we were boatmates. Turned out he was the owner’s cousin. Anxious to know his sailing credentials I asked if he had been sailing before. “Oh yes, I sailed on the Chesapeake with Kevin one weekend.” One down, two to go, I thought to myself. “I see you play the guitar,” I said. “Yea, going to be gone for too long not to practice.” Yea and we are both going to be together too long for you TO practice, I thought to myself. Oh well, maybe the “practice” will go by the wayside—at least he is a friendly seeming guy.
Upon my arrival in Key West, the boat and the people on it had the look of a party winding down. Cousin Chuck and I were to camp out on the “trampoline” the first night—a heavy plastic-like net structure that fills in the front of most cruising catamarans. The other crewman and fellow OPO member, David Cabot, had sailed down from Sarasota with the skipper and already had a cabin. The skipper, his significant other, and two other couples filled the other cabins. All of the latter were down for the sunshine, not adventure, and were flying out in the morning.
After introductions, the skipper indicated that he and David, who he pointed out was a gunsmith, had to replace the hydraulic steering pump in the AM, and then we would be on our way. Further inquiry revealed that David had been variously adventuring for a while, including an extended sojourn in Alaska that involved a lot of offshore fishing. His sailing experience was limited to a recent ten-day group charter in the Pacific. As with me, this was his first OPO outing. Two down, one to go, I thought, chauvinistically discounting his fishing experience.
The next morning, Chuck and I did the provisioning drill, while the skipper and David worked on the steering. Then Chuck and I stocked the boat while they worked on the steering. Then Chuck and I did the laundry, while they continued to work on the boat. Finally, around mid-afternoon, we were finally off.
Quickly in Hawk Sound, which runs outside the Keys all the way to Miami behind a long reef, we were making about six knots on a reach with an assist from one engine in a mid-teens breeze. Like many production cruising boats and particularly catamarans, Runaway Cat has more accommodation built into her than she can carry with grace if filled. Loaded with every conceivable convenience and appurtenance one might desire, in order to fulfill her essential mission as a party barge, and now loaded with fuel, water, and gear for a passage, Runaway Cat was pounding her bridgeworks in the chop, often noticeably flexing the floor beneath our feet and prompting the captain, as if reading my mind, to note the truism, that all boats are compromises. In this, boats and people are the same, which is to say our virtues are our vices and vice versa.
So there we were, the owner, who had “made the trip before,” his cousin, a presumed aspiring musician who sailed once on the Chesapeake, an adventuring gunsmith from Iowa via Alaska now exploring sailing, and myself, a graying inland sailor and sometimes charterer, all starting a twelve hundred mile passage up the Atlantic coast on a party barge of a catamaran more aptly named for her skipper’s intentions for her use than her current abilities.
Once underway, the skipper and Dave replaced the previously mentioned autopilot controller with a new one he had brought with him, the one destined to be again swapped out in Ft. Lauderdale.
Once this was done the voyage assumed a lazy tempo until lightning showed up inland. I advocated that the storm was fairly distant; the skipper was not so sure. He turned out to be right, as we were soon hit by a strong downdraft in advance of the oncoming cell that sent the rigging whistling and humming and the sails flapping.
The skipper knew his boat well, and we secured a reef in short order. As we tried to fall back off onto our course, however, the mainsheet would not run out. Investigation revealed that the now-loaded reefing line had been tied over the main sheet where it exited the boom and was binding it. The investigation also revealed that the clevis pin, which the mainsheet is normally secured to, was gone, and the only thing holding the sheet in place was the residual knot, bound in the upper block of the sheet system. Later in the night, we were hit by another little storm and had to reef again. This time, the reefing line came undone forcing resort to the next reefing point. Lines, clevis pins, autopilots, one wondered what would fowl next, it is was not long before the answer to that musing question was provided.
In the morning we emerged from Hawks Channel into Biscayne Bay just off Miami. It was a beautiful day, the water tropical blue and green and the conditions conducive for making good time under sail, when the boat suddenly acquired a mind of its own as if we had snagged something substantial. Finding nothing trailing in the water an inspection by the skipper and Dave revealed a broken weld on a steering arm, leaving one rudder doing its own thing. All we could do was head into Miami, taking turns manhandling the under-leveraged emergency tiller on the freed rudder.
Once on the hook, Dave and the skipper worked at removing the failed steering arm. Extraction of the offending part however resulted in the rudder falling from the boat. So Dave snorkeled for the rudder in the murky waters of our little bay while the skipper and Chuck were off to the welders in the dingy.
That night was our first night together in any real sense, and the potential for surprise alluded to above materialized. Dave, it turns out, is a fellow afflicted thinker, asking questions and getting some subjectively satisfactory answers. Among them, life for a human is too complicated to get right the first time around. (I never inquired as to whether he anticipated another shot at it.) The thought naturally prompted a self-inquiry as to how error-laden my life had been. I was surprised that I could only think of a few things I truly regretted and would do differently on a second try; the decision to make the trip not being among them—so far, anyway.
Working with Chuck had already revealed that he was a gentle man with a poet’s disposition, a pleasant contrast to the mechanically inclined personalities onboard. After dinner, Chuck broke out his guitar and it quickly became apparent that he “practiced” in the sense an accomplished artist practices. It is hard to convey the treat it was as he played several original pieces, folksy in character with lyrics for the heart and soul, delivered with a clear pleasant voice and a soothing guitar style. With the Miami skyline as a backdrop, I decided it was going to be hard to spoil the trip after that.
The skipper “is good people” as some would say and a man with many talents and interests—we ate lamb he had raised and drank cognac he had distilled. With a successful veterinarian practice, I sensed that the boat was a self-administered reward for years of nose-to-the-grindstone work and otherwise penury habits. It was remarkable how gracefully he endured the financial lickings it doled out. I was as a heartless woman taking advantage of a devoted lover.
Late the next morning, reefing lines all redone, the main sheet reattached, the rudder reinstalled and the newly welded steering arm in place, we were underway again. It was as if we had taken a refit on some great voyage, except we were only two days out of our departure point. Not ten miles up the coast, however, the newly installed autopilot put in place as we were leaving Key West went out, necessitating the shore party that begins this story, and prompting a question from Chuck, “Is someone writing a novel on this boat?”
For sure, the elements were there for the beginning of a sailing story. However, for me it could only be a travel log, a series of events with no apparent climax, especially as the next two days turned to absolute perfection. In the day, we sailed under light blue skies over a dark blue Gulf Stream. At night, we sailed under a star-studded Milky Way over cradle rocking waves. Sea birds, turtles, and flying fish were our companions as we lazily made our way north on temperate southerly breezes—any thoughts of a jinxed trip were forgotten. Under such conditions, our little vessel, which at first seemed to shrink as we put to sea, grew to a whole world as each of us burrowed deep into our own thoughts and activities. This was what I had come for, where one’s role is as a passenger on a vessel swishing through gentle seas at leisurely six knots.
While a respectable sailing speed, at six knots our position would change about seven terrestrial miles in an hour’s time—about half a percent of our total intended trip distance. While the sounds and motion of the boat imply greater speed, there is no sense of changing position when traveling at sea. The sum effect is to create a conflict in one’s sense of time; an hour becomes nothing and forever. Doubtless, it was in such circumstances that sailors of old carved their art, drafted their scrimshaw, created artful knots, ditties, and songs. It is a perfect environment in which to release the mind to contemplative thought. The faster one travels, the shallower one thinks.
Everything was soon to change, however, as Runaway Cat would sail us into a sailing story, in which the other crew and I were characters, and could only wonder on its course as it unfolded for us moment by moment.
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We had put into Jekyll Island for the weather, but the squall line that had been predicted never materialized. We awoke only to some wind and rain on Sunday morning. With Internet at the marina, we could see that most of the precipitation in our area was passing over us as we were drinking our coffee. The forecast at goweatherbouy.com seemed to line up with what one would expect after a spring frontal passage – breezy, peaking shortly after passage at levels we could handle and all blowing our way.
The last band of showers, with an extra punch of wind in what was already a stout breeze, passed over us as we headed down the bay. By the time we were out of the channel, the wind was blowing in the mid-twenties and gusting into the thirties—not discordinate with the forecast, as we understood it. Half an hour later, as we left the last channel buoy behind, the seas had become significant and the wind was still building. Skipper said, “This is the peak; it will subside from here.”
However, the seas continued to build, and within a few hours, I found myself at the helm of a boat surfing down steep seas under a double-reefed main. “Yahoo, 17.4 knots; can someone beat that?” Says the skipper. I was wondering; am I just an old fuddy-duddy, should I be enjoying this? The wind was topping forty now with regularity and the rest of the crew is watching the waves, hoping to hit them right so as to surf the boat down the wavefronts, which we are now doing for sustained periods. However, if a boat races forward faster than the waves, it can dig in at the bottom with undesirable consequences. Sure enough, it is not long before the bow is rumbling in at the foot of a wave, water is flying through the trampoline mesh making hundreds of geysers, and the wavefront is so steep that it was as if we were was at the top of a black diamond ski run. “Skipper, I think we need to put another reef in (number 3) and reassess the weather.” He readily agreed.
Fortuitously, I was a little hesitant in swinging to weather to take in the reef. The skipper, assuming I was having trouble, suggested that I start the engines. I tried to start the starboard engine, as directed, only to find that it would not respond. I turned the boat into the wind without it, the sail was shortened without difficulty, and as he climbed back into the cockpit I told him about the engine. “I’ll get you a new course and then take a look-see at the engine,” he said. I turned north, anticipating the general direction for an early landfall, and someone switched on the radio.
This was not your typical spring front as we assumed but more like a winter storm. The front had stalled, and the low was deepening. Conditions may not materially improve for days and then only after the wind shifts to the north, presenting an uncomfortable situation for any boat at sea wanting to passage to the Northeast.
We are in sustained gale force winds now and on our new course, we are running nearly perpendicular to the waves, making for periodic cascades of seawater at the helm. Shortly the skipper reemerges and reports that he thinks the problem is water in the cylinders, then dives back down, mission in mind, he seemed to enjoy the challenge of fixing his very troublesome boat. Half an hour later, he is up again. “Try it now”. She banged right off and the world seemed a lot better.
We made it to the outer buoy of the nearest port after about three hours with plenty of daylight, and everyone was glad to be going in—the sea was a tempest, the air wet and cold. The birds, fish, and turtles had all disappeared, the water looked cold, it's color brown and white, no longer that lovely comfortable blue. I turned the helm over to the skipper and went below to change into dry clothes.
Once below, however, it felt like the boat was turning in a left-hand circle. I looked out, and there was no question about it. I got back on deck, and Dave and the skipper were perplexed, “We can’t keep her on course.” I hoped to myself that the steering system had not failed again. Assuming that it was the force of the wind that was slowing the boat below steerage speed, I urged the skipper to give it more power, and he nudged the already well-advanced throttles a bit more and studied the RPMs. “For some reason, the left engine will not take as much throttle as the starboard one,” he commented, as the boat once again lost its forward momentum and fell off to port, necessitating another left-hand circle in order to come back around to the desired course. “Let me try it.” I got up and pushed both throttles full forward as we turned to course. The port engine rpm gage went to four thousand rpm! “We have lost a prop!” someone said. “What do we do now?” someone else asked.
The reader might ask why the loss of a prop would cause the boat to turn in a circle. The boat's profile to the wind on the course we needed to head it was such as to turn the boat into a weathervane. If we had lost the right engine it would balance out, but as it was the heavily loaded craft's rudders would just stall out against the combined torque of wind and engine. We will return to this in more detail below. If I had given it more thought at the time, the story might have been different.
As it was, there seemed nothing else we can do but turn downwind and continue to head up the coast. We fell off under partial jib, setting a course to parallel the coast at a safe distance but staying in as much as seemed safe, as the waves would presumably be larger further out. As it was, the boat would run under her autopilot, and that meant that all the crew could comfortably take turns at the helm performing mostly a lookout function. The sea was a furious jumble; spray was constantly in the air, the wind, now a full gale, was howling in the rigging with a haunting whistle, wildly oscillating in pitch. The rigging itself was humming a deeper note in accompaniment, and Poseidon was playing the drums - pounding the bottom of our boat with waves as if trying to get in or break her open. This pounding was such that if you set a cup on the table, it would fly up into the air from the force of the sea hitting the cabin floor between the hulls, catapulting the contents into the air. “It is going to be a long cold night.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when the wind issued verification with a fresh gust that seemed to set the very hull of the boat humming in sympathy with the rigging but in a deeper note and bringing with it a deeper chill, not all of it necessarily in the air, I will confess.
So there we were, literally on a runaway cat caught in an unseasonable winter-like Atlantic storm. Without a prop on one engine, we have tried and failed to extricate ourselves before it got dark, and the storm is still building. To port, shore and destruction, to starboard the open sea and tumultuous waves that would make a bad situation worse and more demanding of the crew. Sailing to windward seemed out of the question under the circumstances. Only one course was available, and while it was toward our destination, it also was toward worsening weather. Starting at Cape Fear and extending to the notorious Cape Hatteras, everything we were in was kicked up a notch and seasoned with thunderstorms and driving rain; it was as if the storm was sucking us into itself. Eventually, the winds would clock around to the northwest, making it difficult to maintain our coastwise course and then to the north, which would drive us further out to sea. This was not the kind of sailing I had been looking for, and it produced a different sort of contemplation than I had originally in mind.
The skipper, trying to lift the tone, “The only woman on board this boat is named Gale”. My response: “She is a bitch. We can’t just sail forever down this coast. Perhaps we can find an entrance where we don’t have to steer so far west of north to get in.” We quickly spotted a fair prospect just about three hours up the coast near Hilton Head, Georgia. It had a broad mouth, and it looked like we could approach on a North Easterly course and then continue across the bay to the inner coastal waterway, without having to power to windward. The one fly in the whole thing was a “submerged breakwater” that just cut across our desired course in the middle of the bay. If the depth readings around it on the chart were the depth of the breakwater, we could sail over it. But neither the skipper nor I was sufficiently sure of that to try it.
It is no coincidence that most boat and shipwrecks are found in and around port entrances. People desperate to end a difficult or uncomfortable trip at sea sometimes take chances. While the sea may often be challenging, even frightening, boats rarely succumb to wind and water alone. Hard things mixed in though, can precipitously make a shortened story of any sea voyage. Poseidon could pound his waves on our hull all he wanted; he would not likely get in if we stayed off the ground. We concluded that we would attempt a jog to a more northerly course to clear the breakwater, and if we failed in the attempt, we would spin out to port, something we clearly could do, and head back out to our relative safe captivity at sea.
It was pitch dark as we made our approach. I was at the helm, and the skipper had a Vulcan mind-meld with the GPS screen. This whole effort would not have been possible without a “nuts-on GPS” as the skipper called it. Our course was not the normal approach and took us between a bit of a shoal on the left and a charted “wreck” on the right. Once through them, we gingerly started our turn north toward buoy “G14” to jog around the breakwater. At first, I thought it was working, but the skipper said we would not clear the breakwater due to our set. I turned a bit more to correct, but it was too much. Nothing for it but to surrender to its will, throwing the helm hard over to port so as to come around and try again - the same result. “One more try, and then back to sea,” I said, half question, half statement. The outcome was not in doubt, but we would not have felt right without three tries.
We headed straight out to sea in order to gain clearance. In altering course, to avoid some anchored ships, I noted that the boat would occasionally want to start another turn to port. It was controllable but it prevented using the autopilot. The skipper told Dave to ease the traveler on the furled main and put some jib out. Of course, I thought to myself, how obvious, but why that should be required on this point of sail, a port broad reach was alien to me. I did not spend the mental energy to examine it further at the time.
With the jib out and power pulled back, the boat was once again back on course in relative safety. “Skipper, I hate to say this, but I think it is time to call for some help; otherwise, I can see no clear end to this. How about contacting a towboat company?” “You’re right.” He was off in a flash; what he could do with a cell phone from this boat was as amazing to me as his talents with a toolbox. He must have had two hundred pounds of tools on the boat and fifty pounds of catalogs, directories, and resource guides.
Unfortunately, success was not to be had in this instance. After ten minutes or so, “towboat company says to call the Coast Guard.” I could hear one half the conversation on the helm radio. “What’s your position Captain?” “Are you able to maintain a course, and if so, what is it, Captain?” “What is the condition of the boat, Captain?” “How many people on board, Captain?” “Anyone injured, Captain?” “What is your destination, Captain?” etc. and so forth, and then, I come to realize later, the main question, “What are your intentions, Captain?” He told them that we expect to reach Charleston in the morning but would require a tow to get in the harbor.
The Coast Guard response that the seas were expected to subside after midnight and that Charleston Harbor’s entrance was ugly but negotiable. I urged the skipper to make sure they understood that it was not the waves but the wind that was the problem and that we would not be able to get in without a tow. While the weather forecast was calling for seas to subside after midnight, there was nothing about the wind slackening, incongruous to me but the forecast as we had it nonetheless. They would take the situation “upstairs and get back to us.”
The skipper was at the helm and I in the cabin with Dave when the Coast Guard called back on the cell phone. Dave took the call. He took down a phone number, “Yea, yea, thanks, okay.” “They say to call in the morning; they can’t commit to providing a tow.”
The night drug on, with everyone taking turns at the helm. It was actually better there despite the cold, the wet, and the wind, as the time went faster. People would stay on watch until the cold became too deep to bear. Chuck, who was wearing the boat’s spare foul weather gear, which looked as if bought from a Circle K, more resembling a pair of yellow prophylactics with suspenders than proper foul weather gear, amazed me with his endurance. Dave, being used to cold and wet and better equipped, hardly seemed to be phased by the weather or anything else for that matter. No one, thank goodness, was in the least seasick.
The skipper came in from a tour at the helm shivering. Off duty, he and I were sleeping or resting, as the case may be, on the clothes and gear piled up on the settee in the main cabin. He crawled under a thick blanket and actually seemed to go to sleep; I could not. From time to time a wave would break over the windward side of the boat in a solid mass, and water would rush in a solar power vent in the port side hull. Some have defined a boat as a hole in the water into which you pour money. Obviously, if it fills with water, you can no longer pour money into it. It is amazing how disconcerting it is to hear sounds that threaten to deprive your vessel of its essential definition.
For periods, I would close my eyes with no expectation of sleep, hoping only to get into that state where one’s sense of time is partially suspended, though consciousness remains. Then I would get up and study the charts again, looking for a better approach. I did not see anything that looked any better than our last approach at Hilton Head, including Charleston. I decided to call the Coast Guard one more time and make sure they understood the situation. If we drifted by Charleston, I was not sure how we would be extricated, and I was not clear how detailed the Skipper had been in describing our prior attempts. Also, I was sensing a certain legalism in the situation—that perhaps certain magic words had not been spoken.
I reiterated the situation and stated in certain terms that unless the wind dropped appreciably, we would NOT be able to get in the harbor, having made several failed attempts already. “Conditions are supposed to improve after midnight, Captain,” I explained that our forecast said nothing about the wind dropping. “Perhaps you should call a tow company, Captain.” “We did, and they said call you.” “Under the circumstances, we cannot do anything more at this time, Captain.” “Do you have any suggestions as to which entrance to the harbor would be more advantageous?” “We are not allowed to make suggestions about the operation of your vessel, Captain.”
Now I was studying the situation as a lawyer. These were not casual conversations we were having with the Coast Guard—“under the circumstance” and this “Captain” at the end of every single statement. The takeaway, I concluded, is that there are inherent risks involved in going to sea and it is the seamen’s choice to do so, presumably after satisfying himself that he, his boat, and his crew are competent to the task. The Coast Guard is not there to rescue pleasure boaters from every discomfort or difficult situation they might find themselves in. Our boat was sound, it was a sailboat with mast intact, it had an operating engine, no one was hurt, and we could maintain a course. It was the Captain’s job, with the help of his crew, to use his own resources to deal with the situation as it now stood. In short, the Coast Guard may fish you out when you are ready to abandon the boat, but they aren’t offering towing service, travel guide, or navigation advice; the Coast Guard’s response was an invitation to self-initiative.
I returned to the charts of the Charleston area and began a more analytical analysis, looking at the sailing directions involved more closely and thinking about what course we could manage, based on our prior experience. Racing a small boat on a lake builds a different set of skills than required in this situation. Someone with extensive coastal cruising experience or with lots of experience on different boats in demanding conditions would have been way ahead of me, probably have known from the first failed try to make harbor, but it was only then that I realized that we are not actually being stopped by the wind in our prior efforts, not directly anyway.
The wind had been out of the southwest; our desired courses had not been beyond north-northwest. It was simple and should have been obvious; indeed, the skipper had effectively pointed right at it when he suggested putting the jib out and easing the traveler on the furled main earlier in the evening. This cat is like a floating square, the driving engine on the right rear corner an obvious source of imbalance. In addition, however, the entire aft end is covered with a big bimini, which, along with the large flaked mainsail which extends from the mast amidships to the very stern of the boat, forms a big windvane. Once the stern turns past the eye of the wind, all of this surface area joined the engine in setting up a port turning bias. As the rudders were turned to counter it, drag was being created, slowing the boat. Ultimately, the rudders would stall, turning them effectively into water brakes, and ineffective for steering the boat. As the boat rotated into the wind, under the influence of the starboard engine and wind vane effect, it finally would come to a stop, in part due to the headwind, but by that time the boat had rotated well past the original intended course.
As it was, there seemed nothing else we can do but turn downwind and continue to head up the coast. We fell off under partial jib, setting a course to parallel the coast at a safe distance but staying in as much as seemed safe, as the waves would presumably be larger further out. As it was, the boat would run under her autopilot, and that meant that all the crew could comfortably take turns at the helm performing mostly a lookout function. The sea was a furious jumble; spray was constantly in the air, the wind, now a full gale, was howling in the rigging with a haunting whistle, wildly oscillating in pitch. The rigging itself was humming a deeper note in accompaniment, and Poseidon was playing the drums - pounding the bottom of our boat with waves as if trying to get in or break her open. This pounding was such that if you set a cup on the table, it would fly up into the air from the force of the sea hitting the cabin floor between the hulls, catapulting the contents into the air. “It is going to be a long cold night.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when the wind issued verification with a fresh gust that seemed to set the very hull of the boat humming in sympathy with the rigging but in a deeper note and bringing with it a deeper chill, not all of it necessarily in the air, I will confess.
So there we were, literally on a runaway cat caught in an unseasonable winter-like Atlantic storm. Without a prop on one engine, we have tried and failed to extricate ourselves before it got dark, and the storm is still building. To port, shore and destruction, to starboard the open sea and tumultuous waves that would make a bad situation worse and more demanding of the crew. Sailing to windward seemed out of the question under the circumstances. Only one course was available, and while it was toward our destination, it also was toward worsening weather. Starting at Cape Fear and extending to the notorious Cape Hatteras, everything we were in was kicked up a notch and seasoned with thunderstorms and driving rain; it was as if the storm was sucking us into itself. Eventually, the winds would clock around to the northwest, making it difficult to maintain our coastwise course and then to the north, which would drive us further out to sea. This was not the kind of sailing I had been looking for, and it produced a different sort of contemplation than I had originally in mind.
The skipper, trying to lift the tone, “The only woman on board this boat is named Gale”. My response: “She is a bitch. We can’t just sail forever down this coast. Perhaps we can find an entrance where we don’t have to steer so far west of north to get in.” We quickly spotted a fair prospect just about three hours up the coast near Hilton Head, Georgia. It had a broad mouth, and it looked like we could approach on a North Easterly course and then continue across the bay to the inner coastal waterway, without having to power to windward. The one fly in the whole thing was a “submerged breakwater” that just cut across our desired course in the middle of the bay. If the depth readings around it on the chart were the depth of the breakwater, we could sail over it. But neither the skipper nor I was sufficiently sure of that to try it.
It is no coincidence that most boat and shipwrecks are found in and around port entrances. People desperate to end a difficult or uncomfortable trip at sea sometimes take chances. While the sea may often be challenging, even frightening, boats rarely succumb to wind and water alone. Hard things mixed in though, can precipitously make a shortened story of any sea voyage. Poseidon could pound his waves on our hull all he wanted; he would not likely get in if we stayed off the ground. We concluded that we would attempt a jog to a more northerly course to clear the breakwater, and if we failed in the attempt, we would spin out to port, something we clearly could do, and head back out to our relative safe captivity at sea.
It was pitch dark as we made our approach. I was at the helm, and the skipper had a Vulcan mind-meld with the GPS screen. This whole effort would not have been possible without a “nuts-on GPS” as the skipper called it. Our course was not the normal approach and took us between a bit of a shoal on the left and a charted “wreck” on the right. Once through them, we gingerly started our turn north toward buoy “G14” to jog around the breakwater. At first, I thought it was working, but the skipper said we would not clear the breakwater due to our set. I turned a bit more to correct, but it was too much. Nothing for it but to surrender to its will, throwing the helm hard over to port so as to come around and try again - the same result. “One more try, and then back to sea,” I said, half question, half statement. The outcome was not in doubt, but we would not have felt right without three tries.
We headed straight out to sea in order to gain clearance. In altering course, to avoid some anchored ships, I noted that the boat would occasionally want to start another turn to port. It was controllable but it prevented using the autopilot. The skipper told Dave to ease the traveler on the furled main and put some jib out. Of course, I thought to myself, how obvious, but why that should be required on this point of sail, a port broad reach was alien to me. I did not spend the mental energy to examine it further at the time.
With the jib out and power pulled back, the boat was once again back on course in relative safety. “Skipper, I hate to say this, but I think it is time to call for some help; otherwise, I can see no clear end to this. How about contacting a towboat company?” “You’re right.” He was off in a flash; what he could do with a cell phone from this boat was as amazing to me as his talents with a toolbox. He must have had two hundred pounds of tools on the boat and fifty pounds of catalogs, directories, and resource guides.
Unfortunately, success was not to be had in this instance. After ten minutes or so, “towboat company says to call the Coast Guard.” I could hear one half the conversation on the helm radio. “What’s your position Captain?” “Are you able to maintain a course, and if so, what is it, Captain?” “What is the condition of the boat, Captain?” “How many people on board, Captain?” “Anyone injured, Captain?” “What is your destination, Captain?” etc. and so forth, and then, I come to realize later, the main question, “What are your intentions, Captain?” He told them that we expect to reach Charleston in the morning but would require a tow to get in the harbor.
The Coast Guard response that the seas were expected to subside after midnight and that Charleston Harbor’s entrance was ugly but negotiable. I urged the skipper to make sure they understood that it was not the waves but the wind that was the problem and that we would not be able to get in without a tow. While the weather forecast was calling for seas to subside after midnight, there was nothing about the wind slackening, incongruous to me but the forecast as we had it nonetheless. They would take the situation “upstairs and get back to us.”
The skipper was at the helm and I in the cabin with Dave when the Coast Guard called back on the cell phone. Dave took the call. He took down a phone number, “Yea, yea, thanks, okay.” “They say to call in the morning; they can’t commit to providing a tow.”
The night drug on, with everyone taking turns at the helm. It was actually better there despite the cold, the wet, and the wind, as the time went faster. People would stay on watch until the cold became too deep to bear. Chuck, who was wearing the boat’s spare foul weather gear, which looked as if bought from a Circle K, more resembling a pair of yellow prophylactics with suspenders than proper foul weather gear, amazed me with his endurance. Dave, being used to cold and wet and better equipped, hardly seemed to be phased by the weather or anything else for that matter. No one, thank goodness, was in the least seasick.
The skipper came in from a tour at the helm shivering. Off duty, he and I were sleeping or resting, as the case may be, on the clothes and gear piled up on the settee in the main cabin. He crawled under a thick blanket and actually seemed to go to sleep; I could not. From time to time a wave would break over the windward side of the boat in a solid mass, and water would rush in a solar power vent in the port side hull. Some have defined a boat as a hole in the water into which you pour money. Obviously, if it fills with water, you can no longer pour money into it. It is amazing how disconcerting it is to hear sounds that threaten to deprive your vessel of its essential definition.
For periods, I would close my eyes with no expectation of sleep, hoping only to get into that state where one’s sense of time is partially suspended, though consciousness remains. Then I would get up and study the charts again, looking for a better approach. I did not see anything that looked any better than our last approach at Hilton Head, including Charleston. I decided to call the Coast Guard one more time and make sure they understood the situation. If we drifted by Charleston, I was not sure how we would be extricated, and I was not clear how detailed the Skipper had been in describing our prior attempts. Also, I was sensing a certain legalism in the situation—that perhaps certain magic words had not been spoken.
I reiterated the situation and stated in certain terms that unless the wind dropped appreciably, we would NOT be able to get in the harbor, having made several failed attempts already. “Conditions are supposed to improve after midnight, Captain,” I explained that our forecast said nothing about the wind dropping. “Perhaps you should call a tow company, Captain.” “We did, and they said call you.” “Under the circumstances, we cannot do anything more at this time, Captain.” “Do you have any suggestions as to which entrance to the harbor would be more advantageous?” “We are not allowed to make suggestions about the operation of your vessel, Captain.”
Now I was studying the situation as a lawyer. These were not casual conversations we were having with the Coast Guard—“under the circumstance” and this “Captain” at the end of every single statement. The takeaway, I concluded, is that there are inherent risks involved in going to sea and it is the seamen’s choice to do so, presumably after satisfying himself that he, his boat, and his crew are competent to the task. The Coast Guard is not there to rescue pleasure boaters from every discomfort or difficult situation they might find themselves in. Our boat was sound, it was a sailboat with mast intact, it had an operating engine, no one was hurt, and we could maintain a course. It was the Captain’s job, with the help of his crew, to use his own resources to deal with the situation as it now stood. In short, the Coast Guard may fish you out when you are ready to abandon the boat, but they aren’t offering towing service, travel guide, or navigation advice; the Coast Guard’s response was an invitation to self-initiative.
I returned to the charts of the Charleston area and began a more analytical analysis, looking at the sailing directions involved more closely and thinking about what course we could manage, based on our prior experience. Racing a small boat on a lake builds a different set of skills than required in this situation. Someone with extensive coastal cruising experience or with lots of experience on different boats in demanding conditions would have been way ahead of me, probably have known from the first failed try to make harbor, but it was only then that I realized that we are not actually being stopped by the wind in our prior efforts, not directly anyway.
The wind had been out of the southwest; our desired courses had not been beyond north-northwest. It was simple and should have been obvious; indeed, the skipper had effectively pointed right at it when he suggested putting the jib out and easing the traveler on the furled main earlier in the evening. This cat is like a floating square, the driving engine on the right rear corner an obvious source of imbalance. In addition, however, the entire aft end is covered with a big bimini, which, along with the large flaked mainsail which extends from the mast amidships to the very stern of the boat, forms a big windvane. Once the stern turns past the eye of the wind, all of this surface area joined the engine in setting up a port turning bias. As the rudders were turned to counter it, drag was being created, slowing the boat. Ultimately, the rudders would stall, turning them effectively into water brakes, and ineffective for steering the boat. As the boat rotated into the wind, under the influence of the starboard engine and wind vane effect, it finally would come to a stop, in part due to the headwind, but by that time the boat had rotated well past the original intended course.
If we could counter the wind vane effect we would be able to maintain a more neutral rudder, and perhaps the boat could maintain way in a reach across or somewhat onto the wind. In our last attempt to make harbor, the jib had begun flogging at some point, and in the dark we had simply taken it in. It was clear now that the flogging had been due to too much twist. We had been using a barber haul arraignment to take twist out of the jib when sailing on a reach. We had never had occasion, since I had been on the boat, to sail anywhere close to weather.
In the event, my revelations proved irrelevant, as the wind had swung west by the time we reached Charleston, and I mention them only because it is part of the takeaway from the experience for me. It is the same with any art—the student studies the theory of the parts and eventually acquires a jumble of information piled in the floor of his mind that he can expound upon by picking up a concept at a time and recalling what he has learned about it. Only experience begins to order the parts into functional information—each piece understood in its context with the others. The next time I step on a strange, to me, boat I will see a lot more than I have in the past.
As we approached the Charleston harbor entrance, the wind was gusting to get above thirty knots, and I had convinced myself that it being on our nose was actually advantageous for the reasons explained. We had reduced windage at first light and freed the big main so it could line up freely with the wind, not vane the boat. As we turned up the channel entrance, the boat remained under control, and we were still making over three knots. There was a bit of adverse current, and when the wind would gust, as if trying to defeat us one more time but tiring of the effort, we slowed but we never stopped.
Charleston is a beautiful place to approach from the sea—Fort Sumter, the old city with its two big church steeples and the stately Custom’s House. For us, however, the city marina was the most attractive part. Once tied in, a Bloody Mary and a big hamburger and fries were in order. Then, sort out the jumbled mess on the boat (four monkeys could not have made a bigger mess in a day), then laundry, and finally to my bunk.
As I was trying to dose off, Dave and Chuck were on deck still straightening things up when a neighbor boater came by, “I hear you guys were out in that storm last night.” “Yea, we left out of Jekyll Island yesterday,” Dave responded in his alien to these parts accent. “So what was it like out there?” “Well, the wind and sea kept building, and we tried to make harbor before dark, only to discover that we had dropped a prop, and we could not steer the boat on a straight course. So there we were….”.
In the event, my revelations proved irrelevant, as the wind had swung west by the time we reached Charleston, and I mention them only because it is part of the takeaway from the experience for me. It is the same with any art—the student studies the theory of the parts and eventually acquires a jumble of information piled in the floor of his mind that he can expound upon by picking up a concept at a time and recalling what he has learned about it. Only experience begins to order the parts into functional information—each piece understood in its context with the others. The next time I step on a strange, to me, boat I will see a lot more than I have in the past.
As we approached the Charleston harbor entrance, the wind was gusting to get above thirty knots, and I had convinced myself that it being on our nose was actually advantageous for the reasons explained. We had reduced windage at first light and freed the big main so it could line up freely with the wind, not vane the boat. As we turned up the channel entrance, the boat remained under control, and we were still making over three knots. There was a bit of adverse current, and when the wind would gust, as if trying to defeat us one more time but tiring of the effort, we slowed but we never stopped.
Charleston is a beautiful place to approach from the sea—Fort Sumter, the old city with its two big church steeples and the stately Custom’s House. For us, however, the city marina was the most attractive part. Once tied in, a Bloody Mary and a big hamburger and fries were in order. Then, sort out the jumbled mess on the boat (four monkeys could not have made a bigger mess in a day), then laundry, and finally to my bunk.
As I was trying to dose off, Dave and Chuck were on deck still straightening things up when a neighbor boater came by, “I hear you guys were out in that storm last night.” “Yea, we left out of Jekyll Island yesterday,” Dave responded in his alien to these parts accent. “So what was it like out there?” “Well, the wind and sea kept building, and we tried to make harbor before dark, only to discover that we had dropped a prop, and we could not steer the boat on a straight course. So there we were….”.
Four guys with a storm at sea story to tell, over and over, for the rest of their lives. One wonders if on some level that is not why we sailed in the first place? I suppose that is something else to think about.
That night we were sailors on the town. We surveyed all the restaurants while hitting all the bars in old town Charleston. We picked out a white tablecloth seafood restaurant where the Skipper picked out a very nice bottle of wine, and we ordered three saucy dishes and four plates to divide them among. Then we closed a bar we had spotted earlier in the evening which had live music, where Chuck joined the small ensemble, while the other three Runaway Cats regaled a couple at the bar with our adventure.
The next day, the skipper installed the new prop with scuba, and by early afternoon, we were underway again up the intercoastal waterway. Day and night, through incredibly varying landscapes, often essentially flying on instruments (radar and GPS), as the nights were both starless and moonless.
That night we were sailors on the town. We surveyed all the restaurants while hitting all the bars in old town Charleston. We picked out a white tablecloth seafood restaurant where the Skipper picked out a very nice bottle of wine, and we ordered three saucy dishes and four plates to divide them among. Then we closed a bar we had spotted earlier in the evening which had live music, where Chuck joined the small ensemble, while the other three Runaway Cats regaled a couple at the bar with our adventure.
The next day, the skipper installed the new prop with scuba, and by early afternoon, we were underway again up the intercoastal waterway. Day and night, through incredibly varying landscapes, often essentially flying on instruments (radar and GPS), as the nights were both starless and moonless.
My carriage having turned to a pumpkin, my duffle bags and I were dropped off at the municipal marina in Norfolk, Virginia. Hailing a cab, the awareness settled in that my brief respite from the ordinary had come to an end. Two days later, the skipper called to report that Runaway Cat had made Rock Hall without further adventure and already had four charters lined up. I was back in the office with many days of work lined up; maybe next fall?
