The Alligator River Pungo River Canal

October 30, 2015, 0730, beautiful day, no wind, sun peaking up over Winn Bay.

Seven boats spread out on this small bay. Entrance to the Alligator River Pungo River Canal in sight.

Some boat maintenance on the agenda for this morning – changing out the fuel filter, which involves emptying out the port lazaret (storage compartment) to get at the filter. Once the new filter in in place, one must ‘bled’ the fuel lines of any trapped air bubbles, which will stop the engine. Diesel engines are very reliable, as long as they have clean fuel and oil.

Once that bit of preventive maintenance was accomplished, we got under way and entered the canal, a twenty mile straight as an arrow, two hundred foot wide by twenty foot deep constructed ‘ditch’ joining the Alligator River and upper reaches of the Pungo River. On either side of the Canal is wonderful, uninhabited forested wetland, just the place for a red wolf family or two.  

The Alligator flows into Albemarle Sound and the Pungo joins the Pamlico River which empties into Pamlico Sound. These two sounds are connected by the lesser Croatan Sound with the Outer Banks just to the east of it. Listen carefully, geography is important.

We motored down the Canal and passed a barge and tug along with way, without a collision! At 1330 we crossed under the Wilkerson Bridge and into the Pungo, the name of which is derived from the name of a Native American tribe, the Machapunga, who used to live in these parts, but we took care of that problem sort of the way we dealt with those pesky red wolves.

Barge and Tug in the Alligator River Pungo River Canal

Down the Pungo we motored and finally turned in to Pantego Creek where we anchored for the night in ten foot of water with the quaint town of Belhaven just to the north.

Tomorrow Belhaven 

Sunset on Pantego Creek

Rogue Blimp

October 29, 2015 0630, clearing skies, 58 degrees F, winds diminishing, SSW 5.

A beautiful day to get underway early.

After the all-important Starbuck’s French Roast, French pressed, French fried caffeine fix, we left the dock at 0715. Gus was already on duty to lend a hand and administer one last corny joke. Other boats joined us to form a grand snowbird regatta headed south.

We motored down the Pasquotank, past Davis Bay and the USS Coast Guard Airbase and the air ship (blimp) hanger on Newbegun Creek. That hanger is one of the biggest buildings I have ever seen and a blimp has been parked outside of the hanger each time we have passed by, which reminds me of a story in the news lately. You may have seen it.

It’s the true story about an Army blimp (airship) that tore loose from its moorings at a base in Maryland in what can only be described as a ‘what the fuck just happened moment’?  The Army deployed two F16 fighter jets from New Jersey, piloted by twenty-seven year old, highly trained, testosterone (or estrogen) filled warriors, whose job it was monitor the journey of the blimp.

Can you imagine how much fun that was?

After taking out a bunch of power lines in Pennsylvania the air ship ran out of helium and crash landed in a rural part of the state. Apparently no one was hurt, but I bet someone’s butt got put in a sling.

This airship was part of an Army program known as LENS or the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. Two blimps, operating in tandem, flying at 10,000 feet, with sophisticated radar units on board, “are supposed to ‘see’ potential targets for 340 miles in any direction, far beyond the limits that Earth’s curvature imposes on land- or sea-based radar.”

This bloated blimp program has cost taxpayers over two point five billion dollars in recent years.

You can’t make this stuff up, which is why I don’t read novels anymore, because real life is just plain better.

We motored past Wade Point and finally passed into Albemarle Sound, a vast body of water one must cross from north to south to gain the Alligator River and eventually the Alligator River Pungo River Canal that connects, as you might guess, the Alligator and Pungo Rivers.

In the Sound proper the weather was a little more unsettled, remnant thunderstorms that paraded through the area last night left foreboding clouds and errant winds. Not being afraid of any little old errant wind, we deployed the jib and plodded along, motor sailing at six knots. Winds remained WSW and variable so mostly we were on a beam reach and sometimes headed up more on a close reach.

As a reminder, a ‘beam reach’ is the point of sail you are on when the wind is hitting the beam of the boat at a ninety degree angle. It is generally the point of sail on which one can achieve the fastest speed, relatively speaking.

As the wind comes more ‘forward’, that is to say, hits the boat somewhere between the beam and bow, at less that ninety degrees, assuming the bow is at zero degrees, then one is on a ‘close reach’. As one turns more and more ‘into the wind’ and brings it closer to the bow, then the boat is ‘close hauled’. A little more, just a little more, and suddenly you are pointing directly into the wind, which means you just screwed up and the boat’s forward progress halts.

Pushing merrily on, we plied the waters of this great Sound as the boats in our flotilla sorted themselves out, some bound for the Alligator, some on a more easterly course for Croatan and Pamlico Sounds.

Finally at 1300 we passed into the Alligator through a ‘narrows’ with Long Shore Point guarding the passage to the west and Middle Ground doing that duty to the east. We passed the entrance to the Little Alligator (where they have little alligators) and barreled along on a close reach, flying the jib and main.

We sailed on with the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on either side, a vast area of wetlands and coastal forests, home to bald eagles and many other birds and, yes, a few alligators, and many mammals, including the red wolf.

The red wolf, Canis lupis, one of the world’s most endangered wild wolves whose population declined precipitously in the decades just prior to the 1960s due to, as usual, ‘predator control’ and habitat loss.  I’ll leave it to your imagination what predator control actually means.

Thank God that people who care about such things correctly interpret the scriptures as charging humanity with caring for our kindred cohabitators of planet Earth.  From a remnant population found along the Gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana, in 1973, seventeen wolves were captured and became the nucleus of a group bred in captivity and employed to begin a restoration program in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

Predictably, when news of this reintroduction broke, there was a local uproar, howls of rage from people concerned that these vicious predators would steal children in the night, or worst yet, the chickens.

In recent years the reintroduction effort has expanded and to date approximately fifty to seventy-five red wolves roam their native habitats in five northeastern North Carolina counties. Fifty to seventy-five, children stealing, chicken eating denizens from hell.

These days one has a much better chance to die in a public place from a gunshot wound than to be carried off by a fiendish red wolf.

At 35.40 (that’s 35 degrees, 40 minutes) north latitude the Alligator dead ends, narrows down considerably and takes a hard westerly right turn which leads finally to the entrance of the Alligator Pungo Rivers Canal at Tuckahoe Point.

At this profoundly beautiful site, just before the entrance to the canal, we came to anchor at 1530 with seven other boats, in one of the quietist places in which I have ever been, except for today, right now, as we are being treated to an aerial show of five or six F16 fighter jets, doing some kind of repetitive looping formation which involves flying directly overhead, banking hard, breaking hard, applying the afterburners and streaking off in a thunderous roar, soon to return for another go, probably practicing to intercept rogue blimps.

The show lasted about an hour. It took a while for the ear ringing to subside but soon that wondrous deep silence was on us, just as the sinking sun decorated the clouds with all manner of shades of pink and purple. A screech owl began its plaintive soliloquy and Emily exclaimed, “I think it’s time for a glass of wine.” 

Sunrise off Tuckahoe Point

Good night to you.

Tomorrow, Belhaven, NC 

A Day in Elizabeth City

October 28, 2015 0900, Cloudy, rain showers, winds ENE 15-20.

Not a good day to venture out into the Pasquotank and Albemarle Sound so we will sit here today waiting for more favorable winds. Gus is on duty, the ‘monkey man’ is here, and other boaters are walking the pier visiting new friends.

If we left today, it’s likely that east northeast winds would pile water up on our nose in Albemarle Sound making for an unpleasant passage to the Alligator River and beyond to our anticipated anchorage off Tuckahoe Point just north of the entrance to the Alligator - River Pungo River Canal, aptly named since the canal connects those two rivers.

So today we passed a pleasant day doing pretty much nothing. That east wind kept the boat rather ‘busy’. I could just barely get off the boat and Emily could not for sure. Tomorrow the wind is supposed to moderate and swing around to the west.

So for now, I’ll just say adios.   

Rose Buddies

October 27th 0920, cloudy, winds slight, ENE, spitting rain.

We are underway from Goat Island, not having spotted ‘Minus One’. After a short run down the Pasquotank at 1030 we called in to Lambs Marina for diesel and breakfast. The dock master said, “eating here will make you lose your appetite”.  I’m still thinking about that one.

He also strongly advised us not to go further than Elizabeth City because the winds were predicted to be out of the east (which would be dead on our nose) at seventeen to twenty knots, which would at the very least be lots of work and at worst downright treacherous.

We have learned that these old geezers working the docks here and about know what they are talking about so we passed through the Elizabeth City Bridge and tied up at the free town dock with five or six other boats, to wait for fairer weather.

Elizabeth City bills itself as the most ‘boater friendly’ city on the ICW. And if you judge a town’s friendliness by the demeanor of its greeters then it wins my vote hands down.

Gus, a soft spoken, septuagenarian, volunteer boat greeter, full of corny jokes and half true stories, has been welcoming cruisers to Elizabeth City for over twenty-five years. He walks the docks enthusiastically and helps boaters tie up, I think just so he can get to the jokes as quickly as possible.

He is a member of the Elizabeth City ‘Rose Buddies’ and he continues a tradition that Joe Cramer and Fred Fearing started in 1983. Joe clipped fresh roses from his garden to give each boat when it came in and Fred gathered wine and cheese for a five o’clock party. Joe and Fred attracted national attention and NBC weatherman Willard Scott donate a golf cart to help them carry party supplies to the waterfront. 

Since that first year, every day a Rose Buddy is here at the dock, with Gus being the most active one at the moment. The visitor’s center still gives out roses and, if there are more than five boats that come in on a given day, they still have a wine and cheese reception. The mayor even comes down to give a speech about the virtues of (and investment potential in) Elizabeth City.

Joe Cramer died in 1987 and Fred, a retired mail carrier, continued the Rose Buddy tradition until he died in 2007, at the age of ninety-three.  

Gus’s pure of heart loyalty to boaters and gentle demeanor are inspiring things to behold. You won’t get political punditry, bombastic lectures or life advice from Gus – just a smile, a warm welcome and corny jokes.

So here we sit, while it gently rains outside. Emily’s rose is on companion way step, spaghetti sauce is on the make and I’m still trying to figure out what the Lambs Marina dock master meant about the marina’s food.

Emily's 'Rose Buddies' Rose

Namaste

Minus One

October 26, 2016, partly cloudy skies, winds ENE, moderate, temp 53

Left our dock headed south on ICW Dismal Swamp Canal bound for South Mills Lock. Passed Washington ditch at 0928. (There are a number of ditches leading outward from Lake Drummond, constructed through the years to help regulate water flow to and from the lake.) Passed into North Carolina at 1000 and proceeded through the South Mills Bridge to the South Mills Lock. Timed our arrival perfectly to enter the lock at the 1100 opening.

The lock master, who shall remained unnamed, was the same gentleman running the show last year. Dismal Swamp Canal locks are operated by U. S. Facilities, a private company contracted by the U. S. Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that has jurisdiction and responsibility for the canal. So the unnamed lock master is an employee of U. S. Facilities, as was the ever jovial and entertaining Robert at the Deep Creek Lock.

We remembered the South Mills guy from last year when we came through in April, headed north back to the Chesapeake. He was pleasant enough then, however during that visit, after explaining some aspect of the operation of the canal, he launched into a speech about the inefficiency of the Corps of Engineers vis-à-vis the canal, then went further afield to complain about the general inefficiency of government, which led to complaints about other societal problems and a strong declaration of blame for all this mess on “that nigger in the White House.”

That comment could not have more impact than if he had smacked us directly in the face. Mind you, this is a guy talking to two people he had never met – a guy representing the Corps of Engineers in a roundabout way.

We found a way to make a dignified retreat, not wishing to address such a bigoted comment. Past experience has taught me that directly confronting that kind of vile speech is not particularly useful. And you never know who is packing heat these days.

Fast forward to today. Same guy, same pleasant demeanor. He happily shared information about the nature of the water in Lake Drummond and the Dismal Swamp and Canal, water that is colored brown due to a high content of tannic acid, derived from the decay of many wetland plants including baldy cypress and black gum trees. The water will stain stuff, like the hull of a boat, and a few swims in it will color your skin a rich brown. Interestingly enough, although the water looks suspiciously like something that has passed through a mismanaged sewage plant, it is actually quite clean and, in the early days of exploration of this area, was prized as drinking water, water that would keep for long periods in wooden barrels.

So lock master II purred on about the canal water, and damn it, he could not help himself. He somehow was able to deftly transition into instructions about how one could stain one’s skin to that rich dark brown ‘Mexican color’ then get yourself down to the nearest “relief office” to apply for free health care, welfare and child support, “Because they always give free stuff to Mexicans.”

I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us in April when we come back through.

So, after that nonsense we made our way through the lock and into Turners Cut, a short canal connecting the Dismal Swamp Canal to the Pasquotank River, which will lead us to Elizabeth City and beyond.

We anchored in the Pasquotank River at Goat Island, famous for a feral, three legged goat named ‘Minus One’, who lives there.  

Good night.

Robert

October 25, 2015 0830 Temperature 52 degrees. Partially sunny skies. Wind moderate easterly.

After coffee and oatmeal we left the country club still feeling all fuzzy from our very gratifying visit with Taz and Catherine.

We preceded out the Lafayette River to the main Elizabeth River Channel, being super careful not to run into any barges. Fortunately it is Sunday and so not much commercial traffic on the water. In fact we were pretty much by ourselves as we ghosted south along the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River, with Norfolk to port and Portsmouth to starboard.

We passed Hospital Point where lots of “snow birds” anchor for the night, then under three fixed bridges and finally the Gilmerton Lift Bridge that you have to call and request permission to pass by. There is a specific and required protocol for this activity and most bridge masters are perfectly cordial and helpful. But don’t piss them off because if you do, well, I just don’t know.

Scenes Along the Elizabeth River

Just after the Gilmerton Bridge, we turned into the Great Dismal Swamp Canal portion of the ICW and proceeded forward to approach the Deep Creek Lock which was scheduled to open at 1330. We were forced to wait for the lock opening for about a half an hour, just long enough for Captain Emily to run us aground in the narrow channel. I got to laugh this time but that is not always the case. Not to worry, because with a little gentle coaxing (and rough profanity) we were able to get her off easily.    

The Deep Creek Lock is one of two such locks on the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, the other being the South Mills Lock approximately twenty-three miles south. These two locks are instrumental in regulating the water level in Lake Drummond, smackdab in the middle of the Dismal Swamp, an important consideration because Drummond water levels pretty much define the water table level in the Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Suffolk areas, thus water levels in wells and springs in that same area, where about two million people live.

Going through a lock is very cool indeed. First you call ahead just like bridges to get permission and instructions. Robert, our Lock Master, was very clear and organized. “Plan for a starboard tie up. Provide two lines at least twenty-five feet in length and I highly recommend fenders. Wait until the lock gates are fully open and proceed only when you see the green light,” he said professionally.

Flicka in the Deep Creek Lock

With Captain EM Providing Ballast

Robert has worked at the Deep Creek lock for twenty-five years so do the math. Assuming he works forty-eight weeks a year at five days a week with an average of thirty boats a day coming through his lock, he has repeated those words at least seventy-two hundred times. No telling how many times he has said then in his sleep.   

We drove Flicka in and Robert reached down twelve feet with a boat hook to grab a line and tied us off to the side of the lock. He closed the gate behind us, flipped a few switches and then the lock was flooded with incoming water from the canal ahead. As a million and a half gallons of water poured in, we rose steadily for about twenty minutes, which gave Robert just time to start his performance, which was to recite a history of the canal and locks, and once we had risen to his level so to speak, with a flourish he picked up a conch shell from a pile of many to demonstrate the proper technique for trumpeting a conch shell tune, which he did with great zeal and enthusiasm, even throwing in a little dance step at the end.

I suppose twenty-five years on the same job makes one a little wacky. I know it did me.

When Robert found out we were bound for the Bahamas and Cuba he requested that we bring him some Romeo and Juliet cigars from Cuba, some “Fire in De Hole” hot sauce from the Bahamas and a new conch shell.  

I’m not making this stuff up!

After Robert’s unmatchable performance we left the lock and proceeded south along the canal, essentially a ditch, but a beautiful ditch just the same, for about eight miles, to a very nice dock where we tied up and spent a pleasant evening and night alone.

Tomorrow the South Mills Lock, Turners Cut and the Pasquotank River. Yippee!

Namaste  

A Close Call

October 24, 2015, 08:30. Temperature 48 degrees. Sunny skies, Wind east at 12.

Another blustery day in the making.

After coffee at 0930 we headed east down the Poquoson, rounded Poquoson Flats (a broad expanse of shallow water) to head south and motored back into the Bay. We ran down the Plum Tree Island Bombing Range (no bombs today) and the Plum Tree Island National Wildlife Refuge, past the entrance to Back River and Langley Airforce Base and Hampton to the west.

We made Fort Monroe which guards the entrance to Hampton Roads, site of the famous ‘Hampton Roads Battle’ a shooting match fought on March 8 and 9, 1862 between early ironclad war ships, the Union USS Monitor and the Confederate CCS Virginia (The Virginia was actually the hastily ‘repurposed’ USS Merrimack, a steam frigate.)  Who won is an open question to this day, which is pretty much the way it goes in war.

Later that year, the Monitor foundered and sank off Cape Hattaras. The wreck was discovered in 1973 and has been partially salvaged. Her guns, gun-turret, engine and other relics are on display at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News.

Fort Monroe was built starting in 1609 and completed in 1839. It was decommissioned in 2011 when President Obama, our Kenyan born, Muslim un-president, who has attempted to enslave black people with the Affordable Care Act, signed a proclamation to designate portions of it as a National Monument.

Interestingly enough, throughout the Civil War, Fort Monroe, surrounded by a then Confederate Virginia, remained in Union hands. Because of that, over time it became known as a symbol of early freedom for former slaves. Good thing too, because just to the north in Alexandria, Virginia, starting in 1828, the private firm of Franklin and Armfield ran one of America’s largest and most successful slave trading markets until 1861; a ‘farmers market’ where black people were bought and sold for the greater good of the Republic.

I get my history pearls from Wikipedia for this blog.  It’s assessable and, I think, generally accurate. I am not a professional historian and this blog is not a scholarly work. I add historical notes to my entries because, in the first place, they are fascinating. You can’t make this stuff up. In the second place I am amazed at how little I know about anything, really how truly ignorant I am and Wikipedia helps reduce that a little. And finally, I am beginning to realize how true the old adage is that unless we know and understand our history we are doomed to repeat it. That’s one reason why I oppose Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump and that other guy for president.  

Traveling about in a little boat and seeing the places about which I am writing spurs me on to find out a little something about those places and the people who made them famous. I find that in my ‘advanced’ years the history of stuff in really fun and interesting, so I will continue to add it in historical notes, but hopefully just enough.

At noon, we passed over the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and into Hampton Roads, an area of confluence of the Elizabeth, Nasemond and the mighty James Rivers, where so much of Virginia’s history was and still is being played out – a major commerce route – with aircraft carriers, battle ships, container ships, tankers and pleasure craft constantly coming and going. A ‘roads” or “roadstead” is a sheltered body of water usually associated with an estuary. Hampton Roads is one of the world’s largest natural harbors.  

Aircraft Carrier in Hampton Roads

Tanker in the Roads

We made our way past Willoughby Spit to the south and into the Norfolk Harbor Reach and the Elizabeth River, which leads into the throat of Norfolk. We dodged barge and tug traffic in the Reach on our way to the navigational buoy that marks the entrance into the Lafayette River, our destination for the night. In our zeal and extreme agitation to get that turn right we broke the first rule of boating which is, emphatically and always firstly, to maintain an adequate watch. Because we had broken that rule - not paying attention - we missed the probably useful information that we had turned into the path of a north bound tugboat pushing a barge.

The barge and tug combo outweighed us by a whole lot. I mean a whole lot. They were moving along at probably six knots and, believe me, they were not about to turn. In a grand game of chicken we were bound to be the loser. Captain Emily happened to look up at just the right moment and, in her usual laid back way, asked, “Is that a barge bearing down on us?” Not having enough time to go below and change my pants, I could only exclaim, “Why, I believe you are right.”

With little time to spare we turned away at the last moment. The gravity of the situation was made obvious to us as the captain of the tug came out of his pilot house with arms a flapping and I believe he shouted something like, “Don’t you idiots know how to use a fucking radio?” That was a pretty good clue that we had made a navigational error.

Seriously, that kind of error could have cost us our boat and maybe our lives. It was a deeply humiliating moment, but, as it goes, a valuable lesson.

As they say, “no harm no foul”. We were able to turn away in time but I bet that captain is still talking about those damned stupid as hell Californians in that damned stupid as hell sailboat. For you see our port of call is displayed prominently on Flick’s side as San Francisco, CA. So the captain never found out that we were just a couple of damn stupid as hell Virginians.

We know how to cover our asses.

On we charged, into the Lafayette River, bound for the Norfolk Yacht and Country Club, where, thanks to my good friend and VMI Brother Rat, Tazewell Taylor, we had dockage and a dinner date with him and his lovely wife Catherine. We pulled into the dock at 3:30PM, to be met by Dino, the Dock Master. I’m not making that up.

This is one of the things about this cruising thing that is so great. You get to meet the most interesting people. Dino, a spry and fit septuagenarian, is from Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the Bosnian War in the mid-nineties, characterized by ethnic cleansing and the usual senseless carnage and murder of innocents in war, he and his family fled Sarajevo, where he was somewhat of a celebrity. He had his own TV show and was a well-known and accomplished singer, dancer and artist. In fact, in the main mezzanine of the country club two of his paintings hang in prominent places. And they are very good. We heard enough of his story directly from his mouth to sense the anger and loss he still feels vis-à-vis that experience. And here he is in America, having built a new life as a Dock Master at a very fine country club. Very admirable indeed!

Dino's Picture in the Main Lobby of the

Norfolk Marina and Country Club

After getting settled in, we met Taz and Catherine for an evening of good food and drink and three hours of delightful conversation and laughter. A walk on the dock and a visit to Flicka for Taz and Catherine, our newest ‘best friends’, capped off a gratifying evening, made even better by a late evening phone call from our son Henry.

Sweet dreams.

Tomorrow more of Norfolk and the start of the Dismal Swamp Canal. 

Stray Currents

October 23, 2015, 7:45 AM. Temperature 46 degrees, sunlit partly cloudy, day. Wind north, 5 -10 knots. 

Last night we anchored in Fishing Bay on the Piankatank River 500 yards from the slip where Flicka spent the last few months.  Pretty lousy first day mileage. The usual delays built into this cruising business thwarted our objective of leaving on October 19. So here are on the 23^rd anchored in site of our marina.

Last night we spent a lovely evening watching spectacular schools of Atlantic menhaden feed all around Flicka. It was mesmerizing. Each school probably contained upwards to a thousand fish. The schools swam in unison in a very tight circular motion just below the water’s surface, with their mouths open to filter out small planktonic plants and animals. Sometimes a school would split into two and those smaller schools would work the water separately then come back together in a grand, highly coordinated flourish, only to split again just as elegantly at some mysterious cue.

Feeding Atlantic Menhaden 

What I want to know is who the hell is directing all this highly coordinated activity? How does one know the ‘head fish’ and who does he or she have to pay to be the head fish?

Atlantic menhaden, a fish that you have probably never heard of, is described by some as “the most important fish in the sea.” It is a key stone marine species, critical to the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. It serves as a food resource for many marine and aerial predators.

The Atlantic menhaden has a long, and in some ways tragic, history with human kind. It has been fished out of much of its original range which was from Nova Scotia to Florida. Populations remain in the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia coastal waters.

I refer you to a brilliant book, The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America, by H. Bruce Franklin, a Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University. In this well researched and written book, Professor Franklin details menhaden’s ecological importance, and our over exploitation of it. I highly recommend it to those interested in such things.

I could go on about menhaden but will not for now. Maybe in a later post.

Yesterday we hauled Flicka at Chesapeake Boat Works. That is to say the able staff at the Boat Works used a thing called a travel lift, a thing that looks like something out of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. This contraption uses a big sling and hydraulics to actually lift boats vertically out of the water.  She is motorized and sports big tires enabling one to drive her about and place boats where ever they need to be for repairs and storage. We were doing a ‘quick haul and splash’, which is to say she got lifted and remained in the sling long enough for us to clean her bottom so to speak.

Flicka in the Sling

All manner of sessile marine organisms (those that attach themselves to hard surfaces to live out their lives) glum onto a boat’s hull below the waterline, including various algal species, barnacles, sea squirts, polychaete worms and mussels. Over time this community of organisms creates a living carpet, a beautiful thing really, but a carpet that significantly slows a boat down. And we certainly can’t have that. So yesterday we used a power washer to murder hundreds of marine organisms squatting on Flicka’s bottom.

While we were at it we installed new zincs.  

What are zincs you may ask? Zincs are funny looking chunks of metal made of, well, zinc. They are installed at various locations on a boat and are connected to the boat’s electrical system. What is their function you may ask?

A boat has lots of electrical devices on board (radios, inverters, refrigerators, GPS units, depth finders, wind indicators, spot lights, pumps, windlasses) powered by various kings of marine grade battery banks. Lots of opportunities for stray electric currents to fly about. In the marine environment, with all that water floating around, with all that salt in it, basically what you have is one big electrical conductor. A big battery if you will. There are also all kinds of metals and metal alloys on a boat which act as positive and negative battery terminals in that big happy battery.

Add all that up and what you have is lots of opportunity for galvanic or electrochemical corrosion on a boat, especially when two dissimilar metals are in contact, like aluminum and stainless steel. Corrosion is your enemy. If stray currents are not controlled it won’t be long before metal things on a boat corrode away or weld fast to other metal things.

Metals have a greater or lesser affinity for attracting electricity and when two metals occur together in the same medium (the boat environment) the metal with the greater affinity for electrons will ‘gather up’ stray currents and corrode faster that those with less affinity. Metals are ranked as to this property in the ‘galvanic series’, with zinc having a very high affinity for capturing those stray currents, and thus it is used as a ‘sacrificial’. Zinc corrodes its life away while protecting the more noble metals on board. And since they do corrode, and often quickly, they have to be replaced often.

In the words of Forest Gump, “just one more thang”!

So after replacing our sacrificial zincs and cleaning Flicka’s bottom, back in the water she went for one final maintenance procedure; changing the transmission fluid. While I attended to that task Captain Emily took our car to Deltaville Auto for storage and inspection.

While residing at the Boat Works we met a couple from Florida ( Ron and Jonna) who bought a pretty, thirty-two foot Bristol sloop in Maine and are now bringing it down the intracoastal waterway to their home,  which is Pine Island, on Florida’s west coast. They had never sailed before, but on this trip so far they had to complete a twenty-seven hour ocean crossing around Nantucket and then sail down Block Island Sound into the East River then right through the heart of New York City. And here they are in Virginia, right next to us at the Boat Works.

First things being first things in the cruising world we had our coffee then at 9:30 AM, with winds freshening to 15 knots out of the north, we headed out. Flicka is leaving on her next adventure. This is day one.

We headed south, rounded Stave Point, hobby horsed into the Piankatank River, gained the Bay and ran past Gwynns Island on a blustery beam reach under partly cloudy skies. We passed Wolf Trap, a fifty-two foot tall light house marking a shallow ledge, crossed the entrance to Mobjack Bay and then the entrance to the York River. We ran down to the Poquoson Flats, still racing on a beam reach under jib alone and then into the Poquoson River where we anchored for the night, just north of Langley Airforce Base, the home of Seal Team Six.

Sweet Dreams.

Tomorrow, Norfolk, VA.  

Flicka Voyages 2.0 Defining Moments

Flicka Voyages 2.0

My last blog entry to flickavoyages.blogspot.com was on May 29, 2015, the day we docked Flicka, our 32 foot Allied Seawind ketch, into in the very same marina in Deltaville, VA from which we left on November 7, 2014 on our first trip down the Intracoastal Waterway. After our return, we lived on her for six weeks, attending to the myriad projects necessary to maintain a safe and serviceable boat. For the last half of August and all of September we were in Staunton for a dose of genteel southern living. We are preparing for another journey down the ICW, hopefully to include a run to the Bahamas and Cuba. Now that we have a rational leader in the white house, albeit a Kenyan born, and Muslim un-president, visiting Cuba is possible.

I am writing in a hotel in Bellingham, Washington where Emily and I are visiting our son Henry, who is working on a graduate degree in geology at Western Washington University. We visit him there occasionally, where the views to the west (Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands) and the east (Mount Baker and the Cascades) are stunning, the geology interesting and complicated, the coffee excellent and the weather spectacular.

Henry and his mom at the HomeSkillet in Belllingham

The average age in the state of Washington is 43, in Bellingham it’s 31. Young, creative, fit, energetic, progressive, latte laced thirty somethings bike to work, dance in the parks, walk the Pacific Crest Trail in the latest REI gear, make art, love, and somehow a living in the new ‘sharing economy’. Henry bikes around town as he has for the past three years, works on his bike fleet at a non-profit bike ‘hub’, shops at a cooperative food store, downs an occasional craft beer, exercises almost every day and works on his master’s thesis. A very admirable lifestyle indeed.

Flicka is on her own back on the East coast at the moment, tied to our dock in Deltaville, having been recently buffeted by thirty-five to forty knot winds, super high tides and heavy rains, compliments of Hurricane Joaquin.

Originally intended to serve as ship’s log, to record basic maritime information: weather, position, maintenance and daily occurrences, the blog morphed into descriptions of people we met and places we visited. Telling stories about those people and places became a rather enjoyable experience.  I plan to continue that and maybe do a little editorializing on subjects of interest to me as well. Blog entries will start on or about October 19.  I hope you will enjoy them and also hope you will comment on some of my editorializing. I do not presume that you will agree with my opinions, but the world would be so much better off if you did.

Living and traveling from place to place on a small boat really is about the journey, not just the destination, to employ an old cliché. It requires constant attention to detail, boat condition and upkeep, weather and water conditions, aids to navigation and other boats big and small traveling the same waters. On a trip like this the landscape, flora and fauna, coastal ecology, climate, weather and human culture change gradually from place to place. Traveling at four or five knots gives one time to notice and appreciate those changes. The people we meet along the way are independent, eccentric and iconoclastic, all with interesting stories, very worth telling.

We began the journey back from Florida in April 2015, retracing our original path except for a side trip across Pamlico Sound to Ocracoke Island and then northward, crossing into Croatan Sound at Manteo, NC, into Albemarle Sound and eventually rejoining the ICW at Elizabeth City, NC.

On the day we left Deltaville last November the temperature was 38 degrees F. By the time we got into the main stem of the Chesapeake the wind was gusting to 30 knots, making for a rather invigorating start. The weather was cold and wet all the way to north Florida. Notwithstanding that a good time was had by all. Adventure followed adventure. This year we have set our departure for October 19, three weeks earlier than last year, hoping that will give us time to make our way south into warmer weather.

October 19 just happens to be the anniversary of the surrender of British troops to the Americans after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, a battle that essentially marked the end of the Revolutionary War for American Independence. Yorktown is on the south side of the York River across from Gloucester Point, about twenty-five miles northeast of Williamsburg. Today modern battleships and submarines pass by there on their way to and from the US Naval Weapons Station further up the river. But in October 1781 it was ships of the line from France’s West Indies fleet commanded by François-Joseph Paul, comte de Grasse (Count de Grasse). 

De Grasse had sailed from the West Indies and arrived at the Chesapeake Bay at the end of August to establish a naval blockade, to cut off any escape attempt by British Lord and Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, commander of the British Army in the American theater. When he got here, De Grasse delivered 500,000 silver pesos, freely donated by Cuban citizens, to General George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, monies intended to fund supplies and payroll for the American army. Good on those cheerful Cubans, what with their cigars, salsa music, cool guayaberas, rum, old cars and all!

On a broad, flat coastal plain high above the York River cliffs and what today is known as Fossil Beach, American and British forces gathered to settle their disagreements once and for all. Washington was joined by French troops under the command of Jean-Baptiste Donatien, Comte de Rochambeau. Cornwallis’ men endured withering artillery bombardment and frontal attacks from the Americans and French during the battle.

The British were overwhelmed, Cornwallis surrendered and the Treaty of Paris was signed a year later.  Just before he surrendered, Cornwallis is said to have asked, “What the heck just happened?” To which General Washington is said to have replied, “You just got your royal British butt stomped by a bunch of rag tag American colonists and their French comrades.” Cornwallis did not attend the October 19 surrender ceremony, claiming to be sick. I suspect he was!

The battle of Yorktown was a defining moment in the history of America. But for a nineteen year old soon to be graduate of the Virginia Military Institute in the spring of 1970, which I was then, defining moments are a matter of perspective. The sight of any young, pretty woman was a defining moment for me then.

In May of that year a few senior VMI biology majors visited the Yorktown area and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at Gloucester Point just across the river. It was to be a time for us budding biologists to explore opportunities for careers and graduate training.  However, from the moment we arrived young, beautiful women were more on our minds. In those days women did not attend VMI and we rarely saw any except for those working in the mess hall or clutching onto Washington and Lee University students on weekends. But we had heard that some had been sighted in the vicinity of Yorktown. So in that spring we went there to begin to chart the course of our lives and, most importantly, to see as many members of the opposite sex as possible.

Our guide was a VIMS graduate student. He led us through research labs where really smart people were studying all kinds of neat stuff. From considerations of economically important Chesapeake Bay species like menhaden, oysters and blue crabs to in-depth studies of the most obscure blue green algae. More on those important animals in later blogs.

Today VIMS scientists conduct interdisciplinary research in coastal, ocean and estuarine science and, when asked, give expert advice to policy makers, industry, and the public. Providing expert science advice must be difficult and frustrating in today’s world where denying the conclusions of scientific inquiry and cherry picking scientific facts to support a particular ideology is common practice for many of our decision makers.

VIMS was a magic place to a young biology student from VMI in the spring of 1970, but an even more magical place to a bunch of young men attending a military school was Nick’s Seafood Pavilion in Yorktown. Our group went there to have lunch after tramping around on Fossil Beach one morning.

We piled into Nick’s; happy, sweaty, hungry and immediately spellbound by our particularly attractive waitress who was herself spellbound by one of our faculty chaperones, Colonel Oscar Gupton, one time concert pianist, former Army airborne ranger and, during our tenue at VMI, Professor of Botany and wrestling coach. Coach Gupton used to run a couple of miles barefooted around a cinder track before wrestling practice each day. I myself avoided such dangerous physical activity. After that he would convene practice, take on all comers and, as the story goes, had never been beaten. The stuff of legends.

Dr. Gupton was a ruggedly attractive man, not much older than our waitress. After some flirtatious banter, he exclaimed to her, “I bet you can’t guess my first name.” Without a moment’s hesitation she pronounced definitively, “it’s probably something like Oscar.” After a jaw-dropping pause, we brayed in unison like donkeys.

We came to believe we had been had, but never found out for sure. If it was a setup, Dr. Gupton wasn’t owning up.  Once the pretty waitress realized that Oscar was in fact an Oscar she was even more taken with him. Lunch went well, with pretty waitress seeing to Gupton’s every need and us cadets standing by in awe.

Tragically many years later, in his retirement, Oscar Gupton was killed instantly by a fast moving car as he walked across a busy Las Vegas street. Some years before that his son had been killed in a motor cycle accident. It is said by some that Dr. Gupton never got over that. So it goes.

That astonishing name guess was for me the most memorable thing about our field trip to Yorktown, except of course for Fossil Beach, a window in time that shows just how far nature had to go to prepare the battlefield for those poor American, French and British soldiers, VIMS and Nick’s Seafood Pavilion. The story begins when a very large meteor hit the Earth in either the late Eocene or early Oligocene epoch in the vicinity of what today is the lower eastern shore of Virginia. That would put it at about thirty to thirty-five million years ago.

Epochs (along with eons, eras, periods and ages) are geologic descriptions of long, really long, segments of time. Each segment has a beginning and end, each more or less defined by natural phenomena like land mass movement, mountain building and destruction, earth quakes, meteor strikes and other weird stuff.

Scientists describe these natural phenomena, so many of which have happened in the very distant past and that today for the most part continue so very slowly, by observing all kinds of evidence preserved in the landscape and the very rock itself. They combine physical data, fossil observations and sophisticated chemical and radiological dating methods to paint a grand picture of Earth as being very old and very dynamic. Continents move around and bump into one another in response to internal convective forces and the Earth’s rotation, sea floor spreading creates more crust, volcanoes, meteors and tsunamis impose instantaneous change, ice ages come and go, and the Grateful Dead plays on.

Scientists look at how rock has been broken, smashed, twisted, stretched, bowed, uplifted, thrust, faulted, cracked, melted, solidified, re-melted, re-solidified, oriented and reoriented, pushed, shoved, uplifted and subducted in response to this dynamism. They collect, debate, interpret and reinterpret data from experiments and repeated experiments. They use that data to state, restate, test, retest, evaluate and reevaluate hypotheses (guesses) about how this all happens.

They publish papers in respected journals which are critically reviewed by their peers. They repeat experiments and design and conduct new ones to further clarify observations and conclusions. These new efforts are peer reviewed in a continuing, dynamic process. This is called science, the most organized, systematic, rational thought process ever, so to speak, thought of, for getting at the nature of nature. Science is what will save us from ourselves. Embracing it will move humanity forward. Denying it will create a new “dark age”.

When mountains of data collected over time and tons of experiments point to an apparent universal truth   scientists’ state that apparent truth as a theory or universal law. These are well substantiated statements about some aspect of the natural world: like the universal law of gravitation or the laws of thermodynamics or plate tectonic theory or the theory of evolution or the theory of ice cream is good anytime or that Donald Trump is an alien from Pluto. A theory is not simply a hunch or an opinion, as the word is used commonly and improperly.

Theories are modified or ‘overturned’ as new data reveals more revelations. They either become stronger or weaker over time. They are never final, never definitively complete and always potentially falsifiable. They are truly works in progress, kind of like us human beings. Scientific theories taken together are the grand pinnacle of our knowledge about the universe. Along with art, literature, music and religion they define our humanity.

The place that meteor hit the Earth at that time was covered for the most part by shallow coastal seas teaming with a rich with a variety of marine organisms. The impact, needless to say, kind of ruined their day. This meteor was a special kind of meteor, a “fireball” that some scientists say was probably as bright as a full moon, and it was traveling fast, very fast when it exploded, filling the air with steam and burning rock. Was this fireball, bursting over the future battlefield of the final battle of the Revolutionary War, God’s way of telling us that bursting and burning fireballs and light displays was how we should celebrate our independence 30 million years later?

The impact region was instantaneously changed. A fifty mile wide crater was not there and then it was there. An enormous tsunami formed and pushed outward. The returning tsunami carrying unimaginable quantities of rubble washed back in.

After that one catastrophic event, unseen by human eyes, that one instantaneous, apocalyptic explosion that altered the Eocene landscape of the proto Chesapeake Bay in unimaginable ways, an event that happened in the course of less than the time it takes to say, “OK Google”, after that, the slow work of grooming the Yorktown field of battle for those 17^th century American French and British warriors began. During the next thirty million years the crater filled in with sedimentary material containing remains of all manner of organisms living in those times in that place and other materials transported from as far away as the Blue Ridge Mountains. Don’t ask me how one discovers a fifty mile wide lost crater buried under hundreds of feet of sediment. Go ask a geologist.

Rivers and tidal currents shaped the shores of the Chesapeake Bay during those 30 million years including those of Fossil Beach where one can see remains of sponges, corals, bryozoans, gastropods, clams, scallops, oysters, barnacles, fish, rays, sharks, porpoises and whales. The fossils are there, right now, for anyone to see, feel and touch and wonder about.

They date from about five to fifteen million years ago. Concurrent with the laying down of all this fossiliferous rock, plants moved in as soils developed and before you know it a climax coastal forest appeared, with trees and shrubs to hide behind, the makings of a fine battlefield, the Yorktown battlefield.

In time that battlefield, along with what humans have built on the east coast, will disappear, or at least be transformed, maybe by sea level rise and land subsidence, maybe by a mountain building event, maybe by another tsunami or errant meteor, or earthquake, or volcanic eruption, or thermonuclear explosion or random Mily Cyrus twerks. So it goes.

The trip to Fossil Beach was a most memorable part of my visit to Yorktown in 1970 because it helped open my young eyes to the scope of the Earth’s physical and biological history and for me it was a defining moment. I have always remembered it and since then have tried in my amateurish way to learn more about the natural history of this mysterious and amazing planet on which we live. Funny how simple things can sometimes chart the course of one’s life. And of course I will always remember the pretty waitress who correctly guessed Oscar Gupton’s name, not so much because of the guess, but more she was so darn pretty.

Soon we will board Flicka and head south for more fun and adventure and we will sail right by the entrance to Yorktown, maybe even anchor in sight of Fossil Beach and VIMS, and I will be thinking about Cornwallis, fossils, meteors and a very pretty woman who is now my wife, love of my life and constant companion.

Right now, South Carolina is being ravished by a thousand year flood, a blip on the screen compared to the vast sweep of geological time but certainly catastrophic by our standards today. It could be that the ICW is filled with trees, cars, commodes, batteries, lawn chairs, coolers, fence posts, tires, old army ordnance, i-phones, tablets, laptops, notebooks, old Roy Orbison records, fifty-five gallon drums, big mac wrappers, plastic bags, raw sewage and every other imaginable thing discarded and left unattended by millions of people. (Why would anyone leave Roy Orbison unattended?)

It could be that the ICW doesn’t even exist now, as a navigable channel. We shall soon see. I am looking forward to finding out and I’ll keep you posted. So, look out for flickavoyages.blogspot.com. I hope you enjoy it. When you visit the link you can enter your e-mail address to get automatic notifications of new entries.

For now I’ll just say,

Hoy’kwche si’am langnexw-sen se, which is

Native American Salish for

“Goodbye I will see you again.”

Salish is the language once spoken by a number of indigenous Pacific Northwest tribes including the Lummi Nation. About 2,500 tribal members reside on the 20 square mile Lummi Reservation, northwest of Bellingham and a little south of the Canadian border. Some still speak the language. The reservation is a very small space compared to the much larger region where these people once roamed, which included much of the lowlands and islands in Puget Sound. We were very happy to have visited the reservation during our recent stay in Washington.

A particularly interesting and beautiful place was the Lummi Nation cemetery where the graves of the ancestors of these proud people are marked by colorful wooden totems and engraved stones. Each grave is covered with all manner of common everyday items that, taken together, seemed to tell a story about the deceased. 

 Scenes from the Lummi Nation Graveyard

Lummi totems