November, And Another Delivery

I sat in Newport on a dentist’s boat for four days after we discussed at length the veracity of weather forecasting, the prudence of avoiding divergent models, and the insanity of insurance companies whose actuarial tables mandate November in the North Atlantic in the name of named storms.

For four days, staving off cabin fever meant walking the same small square of old streets. We lived here for a winter, last winter, the bitter end of one part of life coming to an end. Not as in acrid, but in the nautical sense: bitts were paired posts around which the end of a rope is looped, friction serving the function that a hitch on a cleat might on a modern vessel. To bitt, then: to take a turn and slow down the motion of the boat.

Slow, slow. It’s becoming a mantra, one I mentally repeat when the work list overwhelms, when the idea of going offshore without a more experienced captain feels daunting, when the enormity of the transition gets to me. And for a few days, here at the tip of Rhode Island…slow, slow. I walked past the shipyards, a few rich men’s toys and many working fishing boats lying next to each other, but most of the former on the hard and waiting to be wrapped for the winter. I went to bookstores to kill some time. I bought a signed copy of Liz Clark’s Swell, which I knew nothing about, and which would turn out to be unexpectedly motivating when on passage. I had a beer at the Fastnet, my favorite Irish pub on the east coast. I bought the owner lunch. I napped, and read.

Autumn colors.

Newport Harbor.

I ate an early al fresco lunch here, despite the cold.

We threw the lines off at first light on a Monday, the air just above freezing, the sea the indifferent grey that I’ve only seen in the North Atlantic this time of year. We set out in a gale, knowingly, no option seeming better: discomfort at first, and then days of moderate wind and sea to follow. Everyone gets seasick, except the skipper, who admits later that he was, in his words, fragile. A jib sheet parts, and he’s the only one of us in good enough shape to go to the bow in a harness and lifejacket and wrangle the flapping headsail into submission.

We catch a lot of fish. Tuna, mahi-mahi, and then more mahi than we want. Sushi, poke, pan-seared, and then no taste left for it. The provisioning is mostly practical frozen dinners and peanut butter and jelly. It keeps us fed. I devour apples and oranges until they’re gone, and make mental notes on what to do and not do on future passages of our own. Two hours on, four hours off, the captain, two crew including me. The owner sleeps in the cockpit and the salon, his centerline aft bunk too noisy with the propellor beneath it.

Dawn at sea, before the Gulf Stream.

We find a capsized catamaran floating north of Bermuda. We approach as close as seems safe, and listen. No tapping, no shouting. Someone thinks it’s perhaps Magic Carpet, which went over a few weeks prior off of Hatteras. We call it into the coast guard, who will do nothing.

Better by day than at night.

We talk, but mostly we don’t. Nine days at sea in a fast boat, but the motor takes us through a third of them - no time to be becalmed. The drone of the diesel bothers me. What would we do on Blue Turtle? Slow, slow.

The furling main clew blows out, the pad eye metal fatigued and split. The other crew scrambles onto the fiberglass arch in the cockpit, a modern design feature to accommodate lights and speakers. I feel guilty. I take the wheel and try to hold us into the wind, but I struggle, the boat large and unfamiliar. I had taken us out of Newport, but this is harder, with the compass too far to see and nothing on the horizon to steer by. Another mental note. More to practice.

We fetch Sint Maarten at some point just after midnight on the final day. The anchor has no remote, only foot switches buried beneath the dingy on the foredeck. It’s too dark to feel safe anchoring, anyways. We tack back and forth, the worst part of the trip, worse than standing watch with a garbage bag in hand, worse than the delirium that scopolamine seemed to cause. Cruise ships pour into the harbor at dawn. Charter catamarans, too, speeding under motor, throwing huge wakes, guests piled up on their trampolines and cockpits. We are guided in at 0930 under the sole drawbridge on the island, into a largely empty marina. The staff say in their Caribbean lilt that we all know why, but they don’t wink as they say it. Later, someone whispers, “wait, why?”

Sint Maarten, dawn.

Down a side street, a bit of the old Carribean.

We have breakfast, a cup of coffee and a cappuccino, please. I walk for ten minutes up and down the crowded and very commercial main road. We hire a taxi, I haul my giant sea bag into the airport. It’s too big for the carry-on sizing bin, but just by a little. The young woman working the counter looks at it, and at me, and calls over a manager. The manager is also a young woman, but maybe a little bit older. She looks at the bag, and at me. They speak too quietly for me to hear, then put a luggage tag on it and don’t charge me the extra $75 for an oversized bag.

I have lunch, a burger at the bar. A single cook asks me, “Medium well?” “Medium rare, please.” She smiles and shakes her head, “medium well”. I agree. Don’t argue with the cook.

Flights, so fast as to be unbelievable. Nine days on a fast boat. Four hours on an airplane. Customs eyes me, asks warily, “what does HH mean?” “Helly Hansen. I’m a sailor. It’s a sailing hat.” I wince. I hate when I say too much. He cuts me off, clearly not caring, just waving me through. Strange times. Strange questioner.

Back home, I rest, and we eat our first Thanksgiving meal aboard, and I am deeply grateful. I rest more. Am I sick, or just exhausted? No matter, now - until Christmas, we have no obligations. I sleep, I read, I work on the list of tasks to complete before we take Blue offshore. The list is long, but we have some time, and every day she gets closer, slowly.