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.
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