And like that, I was gone.

 

Growing up my dad always fixed and maintained his own equipment, this use to boggle my mind, why would he want to crawl under the car and change the oil when he could hit Jiffy lube for a 20 spot, or get your brakes done at Wal-Mart for short change. The problem wasnt that he maintained his own stuff the problem was I had to help and would have to sit there handing him tools when he needed it, point a flash light, and read his friggin mind. After all when your dad says hand me that thing and the other whatcha~ma~call~it or shine the light you have to know what and where. Lord forbid he would actually have to ask for a tool by name or be specific about where to shine the light. This drove my brother and I crazy as kids, and oddly enough today when I am wrenching on something with my brother Dan he will say to me, “grab me a socket wrench”, but not say the size or I will say “hand me a screw driver…..”I guess the apple never falls to far from the tree, proving once again that evolution does exist, well at least with my brother and I  “progressing” over our father and being able to ask for a tool by at least its phylum versus our dads categorization by genus or telepathy. I would always complain to my dad for waisting my Saturday and his answer was always the same, “James you need to know how to fix stuff because you never know”. That never meant much to me since I had developed the skill and yes would still take my car in most of the time to have work done. In  New Jersey it was obvious who knew how to fix stuff and who didn’t. In a catastrophe it’s up to you. I saw three guys plug two holes in a tire in the middle of the street (seriously when was the last time you saw someone plug a tire?), rig a HD antenna to a roof with a rake and some ducktape, get a cranky old diesel engine started that was flooded, keep generators running around the clock, fix all areas of the home that were damaged from plumbing to electrical, to carpentry to pure demolition. Without these skills things would have been tough and comfort would have been near impossible. When all fails it doesn’t matter how well you can work it, if you don’t know how it fix it you’re in trouble. Its amazing to me how many kids now days have never changed a tire, a sparkplug or even an air filter!   

When the water killed the Rover Dan Dunn knew his his generator was next.
In the middle of a hurricane, Dan jumped on the hood and pulled the genny up
on the hood to keep it from flooding. For that I would like to dedicate, to this
Virginian, Country folk will survive by Hank Williams Jr.

I have so much to say about NJ and I would write more about it but it’s still filtering through my mind; it was a lot to processes and I am having trouble starting to write again (so forgive me since this is a bit scattered). When I got to NJ it was like candy land along the shore and when I left it was like Gulliver had step all over the game board. Everything was wrecked.

Adams street. Crossing that line would be like a scab crossing a picket
in 1930.

Saturday I was finally able to leave. Pulling out on to the river I got ahead of my guide boat, which was full of new friends and some old who were seeing me off and helping me navigate the lost channel out to sea. We were just pulling out of Adam and Terry’s canal,  I was lazily  putting on my sea boots since I thought I was in the channel and I got stuck fast in the mud. Only half complete with putting on my boots I was running around getting lines ready to get pulled off and only had one boot on. This fearless man of the sea is far from perfect. I want to take a min and thank Melanie Dunn for photographing the moment. I am sure she will be debuting those photos on FB soon….and if she does there will be no Christmas card from me to the Dunn Family this year. Not that I was going to send one anyways, lets be real thanks to FB I don’t even send B-day cards anymore….why….when I can write on your wall “Have a good one, what a “special” day .  Thinking about it, it actually works so well I don’t even have to call anymore….something’s are said better over text anyway. ;)

Happy Birthday John Beverage. I hope you read my blog or you will have no idea that I even cared enough to say happy birthday.

Hitting the open sea gave me a feeling of a parakeet who cage was left open ( I know it’s a bad analogy; feathers would be everywhere and I would have kids trying desperately to save me and put me back into captivity) Let me try again. Hitting the open sea gave me a feeling of water flowing down a stream…nope sounds like John Denver wrote that. It gave me a feeling of soaring like an eagle..ahhh (to Disney or Bet Midler; take your pick)….how about it was a relief… it was time for me to go, get down the road and continue my journey. Within about an hour of hitting the open ocean it was dark and I settled in for a night on the water. Snug in the cabin I made dinner while listening to Latin music from New York. About every 15 min I would pop my head out of the hatch check that the auto pilot was keeping the correct course,  that everything was running smooth and most importantly there were no ships. When I got tired I would sleep for 20min then wake up, make adjustments and then go back to sleep for another 20 min…..Around day break I was happy that I was making such good time with the steady wind and flat sea. In 24 hrs. I would be on mark to cross the Gulf Stream and on to Bermuda. At around 9 am I came across the largest freighter I have ever seen, having spotted him early I made course adjustments to give a wide berth. Soon I was moving away from him. I went down below and started working on a pump that needed to be rebuilt. When you are at sea for a long period of time you develop a rhythm with the boat and the ocean that is so strong that if it goes out of sync you know it, even if you are asleep it will wake you up. While working on the pump I got this feeling and popped on deck to find I was headed right back at the freighter, glancing at the compass, which was spinning like roulette wheel, I found myself turning around….my auto pilot had broken.  

 

Peters Self steering system hooked up.

This was a hard hit, it’s like losing your only other crew member over board and would now require me to sit at the helm unable to leave it until I got to port which was 20 hrs away. It took me a solid hour to come up with a solution. Last summer a friend of mine Peter showed me an old world method of self-steering a boat that uses a series of lines, bungee and pulleys connected to the sails to steer the boat to a given wind angle. (I won’t bore you here with details).The problem was that I had only some of the stuff that Peter had given me, but not all of it and I was gray on how he actually did it. With a little trial and error I had it up and running in 20 min and set a course for Ocean City Maryland. Amazingly with only 1 adjustment to this system I sailed right to the Ocean City light in just under 20 hrs.  It was one of my finest sails ever.

Ocean City MD

Today I have my new auto pilot and am ready to leave. This morning when I hit the inlet it was breaking surf 4-6 (there isn’t supposed to be any surf at all) and is simply stupid to try to cross. So here I sit, the temperature dropping and friends waiting in Bermuda for me. The forecast says I will be able to get out in the early morning….cross your fingers. Nothing I have planned on this trip has happened….but I am finding out that life simply taking me where it wants and what has made this such an amazing adventure so far.

 

It’s hard to believe that I left a month ago.