Perspectives on Leg 2: Hampton to St. John

I’m back. It’s Thanksgiving and I’m finally getting back to updating the blog. I was gone for only two weeks, but this transitional period gives me a nice shifted perspective on the familiar. There is a heavy frost on the grass and except for the oaks, the trees are amazingly bare and motionless. Winter gray and crisp 30F temperatures are a shocking contrast to the 85F and lush hilly surroundings I just left behind at Great Cruz Bay St. John. All the intersections are backed up with traffic here in the Boston suburbs. Cars and their drivers seem so fancy and "done up", and their driving seems so aggressive and hurried. Julia seems to have grown another inch. I'm hit with momentary nauseating waves of "land sickness" when I showered and sat in the dentist's chair. The shifted perspectives at the coming are as interesting as those at the going. They are within the personal scale of this adventure; Heron and any of the hundreds of other boats in the snowbird fleets ain't on no shtinkin’ Ernest Shackleton voyage. But Chris H., who last year did this trip for the first time on his boat last winter was wise to say that he learned a lot about himself from doing this trip --and that I should expect to as well. Time will tell. To me, it’s not about silly fiberglass vessels, or emulating eighteenth century caricatures pulling on lines, or adolescents drinking at beach bars or salty dogs puffing dock-talk bravado; it's definitely about being amazed with the present and nature—in the company of interesting friends. That’s pretty harsh, but the Jimmy Buffett icon never made my boat float. Geez Jay, just tell me about the trip! Sorry--I just had to put that context out there.

BTW my personal rule for the blog is that I will not deliberate or polish. It’s not a book. So you’ll have to suffer with colloquial stream-of-thought outbursts that can be written in under an hour without drafts or revisions. I force myself to not think ahead about what I’ll write. I try not to limit it to being a pure narrative. I’m trying on one hand to record and to share, and on the other hand to avoid dragging the actual physical experience back into the virtual intellectual notion from which it came.

It’s a vast ocean. That’s the first thing that hit me. I’ve sailed to or from Bermuda thirteen times, but this was two Bermuda trips. I knew that beforehand. Now I feel what that means. Day after day of sailing in the same wind on the same seas. Two gybes and one tack in seven days. Nothing to see except blue sky on blue water. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, and on and on. It forced a mental shift on our perspective of time and distance. We were tiny and insignificant flotsam on an ocean dessert.

It’s spectacularly gorgeous. That’s the second thing that hit me. I was sick of hearing myself say “wow”. When there is nothing to obscure all 360 degrees of horizon--the moonrises and sets, the sunrises and sets, the meteors, the satellites, the crests of big waves in the distance, the prominence of the Milky Way, the brightness of the planets, the lines of tropical clouds along the horizon, the blue and green colors of the mahi mahi and the seven foot black marlin—were all things that took my words away. We were immersed in grand majesty, experiencing an elemental beauty.

It’s stressful. The gods were gracious to allow our quick passage through a domain that is not our natural place to be. We were visiting aliens, surviving only by virtue of our strange craft. We huddle virtually through radio nets with the fleet. We look over our shoulder continually as we monitor weather forecasts and sea state. We watch the equipment for signs of problems, and jump to repair things like leaking engine vent loops, and chaffing reef lines. We monitor fuel, water, food and battery consumption. We stand 4-on, 6-off watches with military fervor. We deal with seasickness (me), constant motion, constant noise, constant 10-20 degree heeling, cold, steamy heat, constant drinking (water), loss of appetite (some of us), constant spray on closed hatches, periodic bangs of the bow dropping onto the back side of large waves, two showers in a week, the closeness of five adults living for two weeks within about thirty feet of each other, the boredom and exhaustion of standing watch, etc.

We had a great crew:  Peter Burch, Ray Cullum, Ron Gaudet, David Risch and Jay P-A.  Imagine putting five adults together for two weeks in stressful conditions in a small space... and not getting pissy to one-another.  Imagine that depth of experience (more details later)... and not having a "multiple captain" issue, and everyone contributing in many ways.  Imagine having total confidence in all watch combinations, and a totally positive experience as we  shared some crazy funny and some amazing moments.  That's what we were very fortunate to experience. 

It’s exciting. I really can’t describe the thrill I felt when Pete called “Land Ho”, and we saw the mountain peaks of St. Thomas and St. John above the horizon. It was really something. It was all new to me. Later, when we were safely in a slip in Crown Bay Marina, just seeing Heron sitting in this strange place was just amazing. I flew the Anderson plaid burgee from the mainsheet. It was torn during a full gale coming back from Nova Scotia in 1983 and is only flown on very special occasions. It infused the boat with the spirit of my dad (OBM), Angus Anderson, who surely got a huge kick out of our adventure.

Synopsis for Heron trip from Hampton to St. John... Strong NW winds on the west side of TS Sean provided a blistering fast day-one departure from the Chesapeake as Heron gybed down the rhumb line in large steep seas. Subsiding conditions as a large stationary high built across the rhumb line led to two days of motoring in glassy calm conditions. ENE, E, ESE, E14-24 winds filled in as we exited S of the high, allowing four days of idyllic reaching conditions at 40-60 apparent wind angle under double-reefed main and 100% jib (rolled in and out to change gears). Seven days, nine hours, from Old Point Comfort to Middle Passage, roughly 1300 nm. Never more than 20 nm from the rhumb line.  48 hours of motoring, using 75 gallons of fuel.  No hard driving—just cruising. No injuries. No damage. No shortages. More details  and lots of pictures to follow.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Jay