Courageous?
Aboard our boat, Möbius, we always stick out whether it is in an anchorage or a marina. We are the weird-looking boat. Folks come by in their dinghies and ask us if the boat is military or a research boat or a government surplus vessel rebuilt. Sometimes, they look at us with an odd expression when we tell them it’s just a pleasure boat that we had custom built, and it’s our home. Other times, the folks, men more often, say she is a beaut, a go-anywhere-bad-ass-machine, and they want to know what exotic locations we are headed for.
And I don’t know if it’s the boat or the sailing we do, but often when chatting with friends, family, or new acquaintances, someone will say to me, “You must be so brave.” I never quite know how to respond. It’s embarrassing because I know the truth.
Me? Really? Look at that photo. That’s someone putting on a brave face, maybe. But brave? No way, no how.
Like when we are going through narrow cuts like this one into Royal Island Harbor at the north end of Eleuthera, my heart is pounding, and I’m catastrophizing, imagining every possible, horrible thing that could happen if we were to crash into the rocks and bend our prop. That pic actually shows us leaving the Exumas earlier than we had planned because I saw this weather window that meant we could make that open ocean crossing from the north end of Eluthera across to Little Harbor Cut on a calm day.
I was so happy when we finally made it to the Abacos. It was a favorite cruising grounds of mine in the years before I met Wayne when I sailed solo on my little boat Talespinner. Visiting this island group allows for sailing in very protected waters called the Sea of Abaco. There are two larger islands on one side and a string of smaller islands on the other, which means inside there is excellent protection from wind and swell.
To tell the truth, it wasn’t just the weather windows that were pushing us to head to a place where we could slow down. By this time it was April, and we had been moving fast, covering miles since October. But it was more than that.
When we first arrived in the Bahamas, Wayne had told me more about the frequent bouts of vertigo he was experiencing that had caused him to fall and hurt himself on more than one occasion. This was really bad news both because he has several cracked disks in his back from an earlier motorcycle accident, but also it fired up my greatest sailing fear.
I’ve been blue water sailing since I made my first delivery from Cabo San Lucas to Long Beach (about 1000 miles) just after my 20th birthday. I sailed from Hawaii to New Zealand and back and couple of years later. But always, on every single ocean passage, especially when there are only two people on board, my biggest fear is not storms or hurricanes; it’s that I will get up for my watch, and I will find myself alone on the boat.
Wayne and I do 6-hour watches. If he were to go overboard, I would wake up and have no idea how long he had been gone. That terrifies me. Courageous? Nah, no way.
Our other issue was our sweet 15-year-old dog Ruby, a Cocker Spaniel-Poodle mix we called a Spoodle (much nicer than Cockapoo, right?) We called her Ruby the Wonder Dog because she was so smart and sure-footed - she could even climb up the swim ladder on her own to get back aboard our sailboat in the South Pacific. But lately, Ruby had gone stone deaf and started falling overboard -for the first time back in Algiers, Morocco, but several times again in the Caribbean and the Bahamas. Thankfully, she either swam back to the boat or we had had the tender in the water and had been able to chase her each time. But we knew our luck wasn’t going to last.
So there I was feeling not so brave at all as I felt that I just had to get my family safely across the last 1000 miles of water from the Bahamas to the US East Coast and up to the Chesapeake Bay where we intended to spend the hurricane season.
I insisted that we hang out anchored off Cooper’s Town on Little Abaco for almost a week as we waited for a series of fronts to pass through before we attempted to cross to Florida. The Gulf Stream current flows north and with the passing of a frontal system, the winds switch around and blow out of the north creating the situation of current against wind and that makes for nasty conditions.
While we were there, we got to see a Space X rocket launch that left from Cape Canaveral and traveled right over our Bahamian anchorage. A couple of days later, we got the weather window I had hoped for and we crossed the Gulf Stream.
Arriving with Möbius in the USA marked an accomplishment for us. We had crossed the Mediterranean, Atlantic, the Caribbean and arrived on the continent of the New World. There is certainly something to be said for the rush of pushing through your fears and accomplishing you set out to do. Certainly that thrill is part of what has kept me coming back to sailing.
While we were in the Palm Beach area, we got to have our grandson Liam and family aboard, and we visited friends in Florida in Jensen Beach and Cocoa Beach along the Intracoastal Waterway. However, the bridges in Florida can be exhausting going on the inside, and it looked like we could have a good weather window to make the jump from Cape Canaveral to Charleston by going outside for the 300 mile trip. I hoped this would be our last overnight passage in a while.
Our passage started out with flat seas and once we found the Gulf Stream, the current helped our speed so that we were doing over 11 knots at times.
However, we were racing a front and we got caught when the winds arrived earlier than forecast and things got a little spicy there at the end. We decided, even though the boat was very light due to us having only a fraction of our fuel and water on board, we decided not to put the paravanes in to slow us down, and to just grit our teeth and get into Charleston faster.
We made it inside by noon, and we had already decided that we were not going to stop in the city, but rather continue on to a more protected anchorage where we could find quiet and some lovely nature. Even though we were now in very protected waterways, I mostly worried about Ruby going overboard as the currents often flow very strong, and as you can see in the first photo below, there were sometimes alligators visiting our anchorages.
My fear of losing somebody overboard had decreased on those days on the ICW, but driving the boat on the twisty, turning waterway is exhausting. You can’t just put the boat on autopilot like you can when you are out at sea. There are positives and negatives about both Bluewater sailing and inland waters.
We arrived at our summer home port at Tidewater Yacht Marina in Portsmouth, Virginia in time for me to go watch the real small town Memorial Day parade.
Since we have been here, we got a medical confirmation that Wayne has Ménière’s Disease, which is the cause of his sudden onset vertigo. The vertigo doesn’t make him nauseous, but it can make him fall and injure himself. As we have come to say, it’s not life threatening, just lifestyle threatening.
As I said in the beginning, I am not a brave person. I have enjoyed sailing all my life, but I have done so by overcoming my fears, by learning how to do it safely, and often times just pushing through the fear. But when it becomes really dangerous for someone you love, the decision is clear. Our blue water sailing days are over.
Just as we had come to this conclusion, our dear girl Ruby started to really crash. She stopped eating, and she could barely balance to relieve herself. Our Yorkie, Barney, started licking her incessantly. Barney knew before we did that she was dying. So we took our girl on her final trip to the vet, and we said our good-byes. Okay, that really did take some courage.
So, our lives are changing fast, and we don’t know what will come next. But it will certainly be a new adventure, and we’re still trying to figure out what that will look like.
Meanwhile, I’m back to writing full time. The upside of being tied to a dock.
Fair winds!
Christine
Beautiful writing, Sis, as usual. And Ruby, the Wonder Dog, lived up to her name by helping to bring you and Wayne together among her many other accomplishments. As far as that bravery thing goes, having known you longer than anyone and lost more than a few childhood battles with you, I’ll personally attest to your courage. Only the fiercest don’t realize how brave they really are!
Sorry to hear about the diagnosis and about Ruby. 💚