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.