11. may 2023 Luxury

 

Not Buoy No. 2

Cruising on the Columbia: Part 1 April 28, 2023 by Chairman Joe. https://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2023/04/cruising-on-columbia.html

Comment by Wannaskawriter:

"You know, you're an inspiration. As I read your travel memoir I'm reminded of another one of your luxurious boats-on-water trips I accompanied you on in 2015 off the east coast of the US -- which amazingly coincides with this story and begs to be retold (to some degree) in this ideal format of over a hundred thousand readers.

And Chairman Joe replied:

"I know which luxury cruise you refer to. That was a working cruise under the guidance of the late and truly lamented Captain Jerry (Solom).
We were expected to stand watches, swab the deck and assist with repairs.
Mrs. Jerry provided nutritious meals. Our cots were below deck on either side of the engine. Diesel fumes from a tiny leak on your side impregnated your jeans. Despite laundering, your jeans set off the alarm at Boston’s Logan Airport as we attempted to return to Minnesota. Gaston, a TSA agent in training, saw this as an opportunity to try out his full analytics kit. “Excusez-moi, I you touch içi.” Gaston was politeness itself even as we almost missed our flight. That was a valuable experience and I stayed far away from the engine room during this more recent cruise."

Herein, as promised above is an excerpt from THE RAVEN: Volume 14, Issue 3, 2016: "A Reluctant First-Timer’s Epic Adventure" PART 2  by Steven Reynolds.

Stonington, Maine 2010

 "Joe and I visited the dry-docked Indian Summer in Stonington, Maine, in 2010, as requested, and cleaned out some of the debris left inside that was untouched since Jerry and his son Terry's rapid departure from it, after their crossing of the Atlantic in 2008. In early 2012, after regaining most of his strength (from the life-threatening onset of leukemia), Jerry and his friend John Carstens from Roseau, worked several weeks painting and refitting the home-built steel sailboat to get it sea-worthy again. A few months later, Jerry and Marion relaunched Indian Summer for a cruise along the eastern seaboard. Although Terry, their son, had said after their  tempestuous Atlantic crossing that he’d never sail again, he rejoined his folks without reservation.

Back in Stonington for this high seas adventure in 2015, there were showers to be taken, lunch to be eaten, and a long nap to savor our last day on-shore for several days; toward evening, Bill McDonnell cooked supper. Joe begged Marion to allow us one more night at Bill’s, but she wouldn’t relent, saying “Jer knows best.” And that was that. Soon thereafter, in the dark hours after eight o’clock, we were trucked to the wharf near where the Indian Summer was moored.

After eight o’clock, we were trucked to the wharf near where the Indian Summer was moored.

Ominous feelings about the whole trip still lingered for me. The walk from Bill’s car, to where we would meet Jerry in the dinghy for the ride to Indian Summer was a long one into oblivion. Everything in me was putting on the brakes--it was like I had been there before sometime and my trepidation warning system was on high alert, sounding like the robot voice in the 1960s-era sitcom, “Lost In Space” https://mentalitch.com/the-history-of-that-classic-show-lost-in-space/

“WARNING! WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!"

As Marion prepared to board the dinghy in the dark alongside the wharf, my headlamp illuminated the darkness of the harbor like headlights of a car, highlighting buildings and boats on their moorings lines. Open-sided lobster boats with their traps aboard undulated on ocean swells, their tall whip antennas swaying. Outboards, tied to piers, bobbed about. All seemed anxious to get tomorrow started. 

Shrugging off help, Marion confidently stepped into the dinghy and settled onto it as though it was a comfortable living room chair at home. Pushing off from the pier, they motored out of sight toward their boat.

Leaving the pier cautiously, and staying low, I stepped amidship, moving to sit nearer the bow. I perched there precariously on the bulging little boat; my duffle bag clinched against my chest, my knees lightly against the three wobbly water jugs when Joe climbed in. He knelt onto the rigid floor in the center of the dinghy with his duffle against the starboard tube. I watched as Jerry tried to start the outboard motor, pull after pull, to no avail.

 “This is Jerry’s Johnson!” I nodded affirmatively. Because he was the nearest to Jerry, Joe took over. “And now he has Joe pulling it! The rascal!” Hooyah! Too funny. (Only a toy factory/dock worker would understand this joke.)

Joe started pulling the recoil rope and very nearly wore himself out before the motor finally popped to life. As we pushed off from the pier at last, I thought to myself, “And so it ... begins.”

Arriving at Indian Summer, we slowly got aboard, me first, climbing the short ladder that hung over the side of the rising and falling boat. We lifted our duffle bags, and all the water jugs onto the deck with Marion’s help. Then, once Joe and Jerry were aboard, we followed the Soloms down the steep companionway stairs into the cabin below.

View of helm from companionway with fuel jugs on either side.

 

Actual view of helm when we were underway.

We were shown our low narrow berths either side of the diesel engine. The immediate odor of diesel fuel inside the cabin made the proposed three days aboard now seem interminable, if only because of my asthma heightens my sensitivity to some fumes and odors. I wished I had more youthful enthusiasm for this adventure as it was, but it had been so long since I had to rough it, it had lost its romanticism.

Jerry had given each of us half a bench cushion for the upper part of our bodies, then he said we could use the extra life preservers for cushion for our legs. Joe’s sister, Mary Jo, had loaned us pillows to round out our bedding arrangements. “All this is just something to get used to doing.” I thought to myself semi-confidently. “Our part of the trip is the shakedown cruise after Indian Summer has been in drydock for about a year. I’m sure, the odor of fuel is temporary until things get aired out.”

 If I was claustrophobic, I would have been in bad shape. The bunks were about 30-inches wide and 30-inches high and about 70 inches long, narrowing towards the stern maybe resembling torpedo tubes, I imagined. There was no possibility of standing up in them. So it was a matter of either going in feet first, holding onto the top of the arched doorway, or going in head first. If the latter, the problem became trying to turn around in them so that your head was in the doorway. Getting out, if you’re a kid of 20, is no big deal, but when you’re a kid of 64, it is. 

By trip’s end I was sleeping half-in and half-out of the doorway, on my back, with my legs atop my dufflebag outside the berth, partway into the galley risking scalding from all the pots of coffee Joe boiled there between watches. Joe said his berth was more elegantly appointed as he had a reading light from the Nav station above it.
 

August 31st, Monday (first day aboard) 

I didn’t sleep much that first night. I must have slept hard early on, but laid awake later thinking it had to be almost morning. I dozed fitfully as the boat gently swayed, wishing I could just go to the toilet to pee. 

Lobster boats, heading out early in the morning, passed by us causing modest swells. With my earplugs in, I couldn’t hear their engines nor water lapping against the 3/16ths inch thick hull (thank goodness), and because it was dark in the cabin, I couldn’t see the lantern nor the strings of Mardigras beads and various souvenirs swing to and fro with the motion of the boat. 

Relief came when I could finally see enough to arise, turn around, and stick my feet out--then grope around for that little red plastic pee jug, and fill it almost to overfull. God, did that ever feel great!

Joe woke up and searched blindly for the pee jug.
“It’s full,” I said from the shadows on my side of the cabin.
“Where can we empty it?” Joe asked, from his.
“Over the side,” I guessed.“ I didn’t want to do anything in the dark. My luck I’d trip and fall overboard before we’re even out of the harbor.”

 Joe ascended the stairs, opened the hatch, and disappeared for a couple minutes, then returned to fill the jug thankful he didn’t overfill it either. Going topside once more, he emptied it over the rail again--just as Jerry came out of the vee-bunk looking for the pee jug. (This, obviously, was one very important piece of equipment that wasn’t on Jerry’s ‘Things To Bring List’ that he gave each of us prior to the start of the trip.)

It was about nine o’clock when Jerry started making a pot of coffee. We could hear a boat approach with a toot of its horn, so Jerry went on deck. It was Joe’s brother, Bill, dropping by Indian Summer to deliver coffee and donuts and to wish us well. Loaded with men and materials, Bill was in his boat, Nanatoo, heading to a construction site somewhere. He said he and his brother, Mark, down in Hull, would  follow our progress on their GPS monitors. 

Bill dropped by Indian Summer to deliver coffee and donuts and to wish us well. Joe, an able-bodied seaman himself, appears anxious to get under sail -- and back to Hull asap.

People like Jerry are good teachers; patience with all sorts of people pays off for him. An inexperienced volunteer crew can help him make port, and well-satisfied customers at his welding shop in Wannaska help support his sailing habit.

The course out of Stonington that Jerry set for Joe seemed wrong to me if just for the fact I had been on Bill’s boat in 2010, the day the McDonnell family all went to Kimball’s Island. It seemed to me, we headed more southerly, than easterly, as we were doing. But not knowing the course Jerry had set, I didn’t say anything, until Joe asked me if I thought were headed the wrong way. For me to know anything about where we were going, in that exact space of time--and then to be asked for confirmation from another doubting crewman, was important to me. I agreed. Joe called to Jerry to recalculate his course, and so we changed direction. A good call.

Leaving Stonington Harbor with all the boats and mooring lines around us seemed like a minefield.

 Not to my great surprise, a harbor seal surfaced on the port side for just a moment. I didn’t grab my camera to take a photo because I saw several seals and sea lions from Bill’s boat in 2010. In fact, I took few images at all the two weeks we were gone and only those that would help my wife, Jackie, better understand the trip. (I think all the McDonnells were relieved by my self-restraint after the several hundred images and lengthy videos I took of them in 2010.)

A seal surfaced just for a moment.

Undersail on Indian Summer

Two hours into the trip, I replaced Joe at the helm, nervous at first, thinking that if anyone was going to snag a lobster pot line it was going to be me. It was difficult to see, except to the sides of the boat. The view forward of the bow was obscured somewhat by the boom and its over-sized main sail that hung below it in a huge fold. Jerry was used to it, but Joe and I found it annoying to a great extent.

I enjoyed steering. It was a challenge attempting to keep the 39-foot boat on course. Even so, I was glad to hand the responsibility over to Joe when it was his time at the wheel. I knew avoiding a few pots is nothing to what real seamen face day to day working on their boats, but it was new to me and I felt the full responsibility of it.

View from the cockpit

  Engine fuel problems plagued us the first two days forestalling our progress toward Hull. These were combined with windless conditions we encountered not too far out of Stonington, the first day, but through Jerry’s efforts (and later, the wind’s) we managed our destination.

I steered at night off the coast of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. I was dressed warmly against the chill of the night with my tight-fitting vest collar up to my bearded chin to stave off a chill. The moon, so prominent in the sky, was in its waning stages and its brilliance across the ever-changing surface of the ocean was strangely comforting even as no man-made light, nor craft, nor sight of land could I see. But there I was on the Gulf of Maine, alone on deck. Wow.

There I was alone on deck. WOW! I couldn’t see where I was going despite the light from the moon.

 

The bow, rose up on one wave, then sunk out of sight on another. I couldn’t see where I was going, despite the light from the moon. I could see 270-degrees around me from where I was sitting, but could only see moonlit waves. Ahead, there might be a gigantic brick wall in our path, but unless the bow descended just before we got there to allow me enough time to veer to port or starboard, we were going to collide with it.
I worried about this, but Jerry said, “I knew where we were on the chart, and there were no brick walls in our path; also I knew that any vessel’s light would give you plenty of warning as lights stand out vividly against a black sea and sky. I would never let just anyone steer the boat, but I knew you could handle it just fine in these conditions. 

"I remember watching you steer at first and felt you had the hang of it. Now if the weather was not nice, that is a totally different story. Then the helmsman needs to be aware of broaching when a sea can knock you sideways. It would be like getting caught with your pants down, you can’t run. So until you get her straightened out, the sea basically tries roll you over. That situation takes a feel for the boat that takes practice to avoid. We didn't have that type of sea while you steered.” (Thank God.)

Chairman Joe in 2023: "I know which luxury cruise you refer to. That was a working cruise under the guidance of the late and truly lamented Captain Jerry (Solom)."