The way things worked out we could have slept for a couple of more hours. We stayed on the boat Sunday night, ready to leave at first light- just as soon as we could see to dodge the lobster pots. The first lobster boat went by at 4:10 AM. Jay was snoring away louder than a minimally muffled fisherman. I launched out of the bunk and realized it wasn’t morning yet. By 5 AM though I got things fired up, the boatyard’s inflatable tied off on the mooring, and we were headed out of Bass Harbor bound for Greenwich Conneticut in a very sweet Morris M42.
We could have slept in because the next morning we were tied to the fuel dock at the Cape Cod Canal an hour before they were open for business. And the morning after that we entered Greenwich Harbor in the dark and tied up in front of a hotel in sound and sight of I-95 at ten to 5 AM. Bass Harbor, Maine to Greenwich, Conneticut, approximately 300 nautical miles, in 48 hours. Hard to have a better trip.
Through the winters I think about delivering boats and wonder that it is one of my happy places. That gets quickly reconfirmed. Boat delivery is a sometimes strange but often wonderfull job. Nice work if you can get it we say. And of course sometimes it can suck. There can be lots of different reasons.
A few years ago we were bringing a 40 footer back to Bass Harbor from Newport, Rhode Island and things were sucking particularly badly when I had a break through moment. On that trip there was a chance the owner was coming with us and we were assured his wife had provisioned the boat. Beef cup-a-soup and granola bars was about it. I don’t eat beef soup and I forgot the honey for my tea. And the weather wasn’t very good, it was wet and strongly wrong winded. In Buzzards Bay we had an unexpected jibe which snapped an old preventer line which made the traveller, and so the mainsail, unusable.
So on a Sunday morning we were crossing the Gulf of Maine cold, wet and underfed, motorsailing with just the jib in 10-12 foot confused seas. Greg, the captain, was unusually sick and I was on watch waiting for the sun to rise and feeling somewhat sorry for myself . Along came a gull to check us out, first flying by but then circling back to swoop down the cushion of air on the jib. Very gracefully pirouetting, the bird landed in front of the charging boat and just before being run down jumped up and did it again. And again- swoop land fly- and again, maybe a dozen times. This bird was clearly playing while I was miserable. The sun rose and I started to notice that as unpleasant as the sea was, it was also wild and beautiful. Remembering that attitude makes the difference between an ordeal and an adventure, it came to me that miserable or not there was nowhere I would rather be, even when it sucks. Since that Sunday morning the Gulf of Maine has also been known for me as church. It makes me want to sing.
Oh people look amoung you
It’s there your hope must lie
There’s a seabird above you
Gliding in one place
Like Jesus in the sky
-from “Rock Me On the Water” by Jackson Browne
Whale ho! Not even wondering if Jay was asleep I made the traditional call. At about 3 in the afternoon we were motorsailing tight to the wind with just the mainsail up. On a rhumb line course from Frenchboro to the tip of Cape Cod we were about 40 nuatical miles outside Muscongus Bay. On watch, checking the horizon and reading some Huckleberry Finn, I was quite startled to glance up and see something big and close. Where’d that boat come from?! was my first thought with a good dose of shock to imagine how it had snuck up on me.
It was a humpback whale, three quarters out of the water, flying through the air off our port aft quarter. Twisting and splashing down, the show was repeated more than a dozen times as we pulled away from each other, and ended with a series of short hops. I had never seen one that close and it seemed not just spectacular but also joyfull. Whales like to play too. Why not? Very few animals repeat behavior that serves no purpose and there are multiple reasons for breaching whales. No matter the reason it seems that leaping and twisting and splashing, like any gracefull motion , must have some of its own reward. It sure was joyfull for me and like seeing an eagle we always consider it a good sign for the day. The next morning we went through a school of whales in Cape Cod Bay, blowing and showing their dorsal fins. Cape Cod Bay is often a whale soup. Whales always make me wonder about other things- there but unseen.
Last fall Captain Andy and I were bringing the same boat downeast. Again we thought we had the whole Gulf of Maine to ourselves when a Navy P-3 Orion, a propeller driven submarine hunting plane, showed up just before noon. It spent the next three or four hours flying search patterns out and back around us. What could be the reason ror that behavior? All we could figure was that they were looking for a submarine which was somehow playing with us, maybe even listening to our conversation. At the end of the exercise the big plane made two low flybys right up our wake. Remember- just because you don’t see it, don’t mean it ain’t going on, and maybe also- just because you think so don’t make it true.
The first delivery of the season was a good one. The first of May is early for yachting season, but it wasn’t that cold and the boat had a heater. It rained some and was foggy, but it wasn’t bad foggy. The M42 was so nice- very sexy- according to Captain Jay, and goes quickly. Without planning too hard we hit the flushing tide in the Cape Cod Canal, Buzzards Bay, and the Race. We got 10 knots over the ground in the canal and 8 and 9 knots of boatspeed other places. We joked about making a drogue from docklines and fenders to slow us down. The wind started on the nose, finished behind us and never blew more than the high teens with light seas. The motion of the boat was always sweet, most especially when the wind was aft and we surfed over the waves and mushed through the troughs running down Long Island Sound through the night. We had too much good stuff to eat.
The first delivery of the season was the kind where the end of your watch could be a bad thing, and we messed up the routine by staying on just because it was so nice. My last watch I thought I would give Jay some rest before arrival and get us by Stafford Shoal and Crown and Anchor Reef. I ended up doing five hours but time flew by, even in downpour rain. It’s nice work and a great office, even when it sucks. I would like to think of it as a reward for decent living, good seamanship, and proper repect for the church. Why not? It could be. They are all good trips. The first delivery of the season was a very good one.
Rock me on the water
Sister will you soothe my fevered brow
Oh rock me on the water
And I’ll get down to the sea somehow
Rock me on the water
The wind is with me now
So rock me on the water
And maybe I’ll remember, maybe I’ll remember how.
-Jackson Browne
Mike Joyce / May 2009
The boattalk guys and WERU-fm invite you to join us on the Second Annual Boattalk Semi-dinner Cruise. It is happening on Saturday June 27, leaving the Northeast Harbor town dock at 6pm and returning about 9pm. Many thanks to Andrew and James Allen, operators of the Sea Princess, which is the mothership of the Boattalk Cruise. The boat was designed by our own Giffy Full and she slips through the water with great ease and comfort.
The cruise starts out by checking out boats of interest in Northeast Harbor, then we head out and turn East to Seal Harbor for more boat&homes. Next it’s back around past the 90+ year old osprey nest for a tour through the Hinckley mooring field to a toodle up the length of Somes Sound. All the while Captain Andy will skillfully avoid the Gulf of Aden with a safe return to Northeast Harbor, docking about 9-9:30.
It is called a semi-dinner cruise because we ask any of those inclined to bring some pot-luck finger food to share. And since we are going past Martha Stewart’s house, we are having a challenge that persons bringing something from one of her cookbooks will be put into a drawing for a free ticket to the 2010 Boattalk Cruise. Please bring a card telling your and the recipie name and which cookbook it came from to put with your creation. Bribes may be accepted. It is byob.
Tickets are $15 per person with lap kids going free. This cruise filled up quickly last year and there are only 60 seats available. We will put you on the boarding list with payment by calling WERU during business hours at 207 469-6600 to charge to a credit card, or stop by the station with cash, or snailing to WERU P.O. box 170 East Orland, Me 04431. Any unfilled seats left by departure time will be sold at the dock, but chances are slim.
To see more about the Sea Princess visit www.barharborcruises.com Since James and Andy donate the use of the vessel and their time to WERU, we put a tip jar on the table to help pay for fuel. It will be a fun and interesting time, so don’t forget your camera and dress warmly. Hope to see you there, Alan.
The guest of the March 09 show and noted author, James L Nelson talks about the difference between soldiers and sailors, and other revolutionary ideas with WERU listeners. Visit his website www.jameslnelson.com and rethink history.
One of the items we missed talking about on boattalk a few months back, was an interesting project done at a Connecticut high school. Over the period of four years the shop class built a replica of the “Turtle,” the first real submarine. Thinking the Civil war and the “Huntley?” Nope, this was the American Revolutionary War. Google “The Turtle” and see what you sink. But anyway, I came across these three contemporary sub interesting sites in an article in Popular Mechanics magazine by chance. No pictures here, but lots of good pix there. Just bring money. Maybe boattalk will test-drive these. Maybe not.
Interested in racing your submarine? Check out www.isrsubrace.org
Always willing to go to new depths of unfathonable reporting to keep you underinformed, thanks for listening to boattalk. A.S.
Taken January 04 on Somes pond on MDI, these pictures are of Mike Young’s new two-seater looking good and moving well. The ice was fine and with good winds they were hitting 50 mph by best estimate, a hundred if you were on the boat. Iceboat poetry is a topic of the January Boattalk on Tuesday the 13th. a.s.
www.epaint.com environmentally friendly bottom paint was one of the subjects discussed on the may 08 show. it seems to be the tops for bottoms if you care about not polluting. listen to the show for details.
Local marine archeology will be one topic we dive into in our February 12 show. These three relics were brought up by a scallop dragger off Mount Desert Island. Archeologists say they are about 8,000 years old. The sea level was much lower then and several now sunken site are being studied. Local fishermen are an important source for clues and information used by marine archeologists. With luck, Diver Ed (Boattalk friend) will be diving on the site where these came from and recording the dive on dvd. We will do more than play the audio portion of that on boattalk. Stay tuned.
This photo was taken about twenty years ago while crossing the gulf stream delivering a boat from Bermuda to Connecticut. This is one of nine funnel clouds we saw that day. Best guess at the time was the tornado was inside of a mile away. This photo was the last on the roll of film that I had. Shortly after this picture was taken it started to rain heavily and visability dropped to less than a hundred yards. Not having a clue where the waterspout was, we dogged down all the hatches and I couldn’t help wondering about the wisdom of the heavily lashed liferaft to the backside of the companionway ladder. A sharp knife is a good thing to have. Obviously everything was ok except for not havung any film left to shoot the Russian listening ship drifting with antennae bristling as we passed buy the next day on our way north. A.S.
A drug runner boat that ran (flew) across the English Channel. The British coast guard had to use a special heliocopter to catch it. What I want to know is who got to drive it back to custody after it was seized. More to come on this subject on the April 10 boattalk, weru.org 10 am.
