Situational Awareness

If there is anything that dictates life on the water, it is the weather. For a boat our size and for its crew’s preference for comfort, this can mean leaving a harbor early or extending a stay. We have done both since starting the cruise with Nentoa, the North East Nordic Tug Association. We stayed a day longer at Block Island, skipped Cuttyhunk Island altogether, and left Provincetown after only one day.

On the 60 mile run from Block Island to Onset, MA, we passed across a stretch of the North Atlantic into Buzzards Bay. These are storied waters: Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard lie to the east, Wood’s Hole to the north, and the whaling capital and famed boat building town of New Bedford to the west. It was a shame to blow through it at 8 knots but we were on a mission.

Buzzards Bay begins miles wide and narrows into a few hundred feet at the beginning of the Cape Cod Canal. The destination for the night, Onset, is just passed the canal’s entrance. While motoring up the bay, Carrie Rose stayed north of the shipping channel but as the bay narrowed was drawn into it. A long earthen wall delineates the canal from the rest of the bay.

A mile or so before the above and now 6 hours into the cruise, though I did not think so, I was on cruise control. I had lost situational awareness. With my foot propped up near the throttle, I was scanning the gauges, chartplotters, and the radar but not analyzing the data. I take pride in my piloting skills but not this day.

Into my right peripheral vision (the side that has the right of way) came a large white object reminding me I was on the water, in a boat going 8 knots, in the vicinity of a large ship’s channel, and probably more recreational boats than most places in the world.

The captain of the sailboat which was quickly coming into full view would reasonably assume — or maybe not — that I would give way and passed about ½ block ahead. I snapped to attention, stood behind the wheel, and saw another object to the right. This one was black and orange and stood about five stories high. It was a Coast Guard Cutter, and it was in the channel that we would soon be entering, but still it gave me a start. I checked its speed on AIS and slowed just enough to let it pass by.

I pulled in far behind the cutter and began to make preparations for the 90 degree turn into the channel that lead to Onset. Cape Cod Canal is known for its swift current, and it was flowing across the entrance, which is marked by an incongruous two green markers. Waiting until just at the north buoy, I turned hard left, buried the throttle, plowed through the disturbed water, and passed the no wake sign into the skinny channel.

Minutes later Charlotte attached the mooring line to Carrie Rose's bollard and we were swinging in a beautiful little bay with the charming, well preserved village of Onset, MA beckoning us. We bought beer, had a slice of pizza at Marc Anthony’s and met up with our fellow cruisers for a drink and debriefing on the day’s journey . . . situational foibles and all.

NYC

The moon designated that Carrie Rose push off from the dock at Great Kills Yacht Club at 8:10 AM to cruise 32 nautical miles to Port Washington on Long Island Sound. To get there we would pass under the Verrazano Narrows bridge, hug the eastern shore of New York Harbor, and head north on the East River through Hell Gate into Long Island sound.

Since we are Great Lakes born and bred the concept of tides and currents is a foreign one. We have been on a crash course since being lowered into the Hudson River by the Federal lock north of Albany, NY. The Hudson is tidal, and waxes and wanes with the moon and sun even though the ocean is 200 miles away.

At several points along the way, it has been imperative that Carrie Rose’s movements sync with the current: transiting up and down the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, entering and leaving the inlets on the New Jersey coast, and crossing the lower tip of Manhattan and heading up the East River through Hell Gate.

NYC is multifaceted: arts, food, people, and history. There are the five boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Not to sound conceited (though I probably am), the fact that NYC is a major port and has a maritime heritage dating back to the 17th century is lost for most tourist.

The water south of the Statue of Liberty is teeming with car carriers, tankers, tows, and fuel and stone barges. Large tugs roam at will and ferries relentlessly plow the same fields. Small sturdy boats race to drop off or pick up the pilots that guide the ships to and from the Atlantic Ocean. The NYPD, Coast Guard, NY Conservation police, and I am sure other stealth federal and state agencies patrol every nook and cranny. The shoreline is a mixture of heavy industry and gentrification.

Two years ago coming down the Hudson, we stayed in a rough but homey marina in Jersey City, and then ventured east into the North Atlantic for Chesapeake Bay. This year we reversed our course and visited several new harbors. I wrote of our faithful encounter with Barnegat Bay previously, now I would like to mention Great Kills.

Great Kills is an oval harbor that on the chart looks like it was scooped out of Staten Island. Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of NYC, has residences that seem reluctant to admit that they are part of the whole. Carrie Rose was docked at the Great Kills Yacht Club for a week and it was an incongruous mix of dense city and country.

The X1 bus connected us to ($6.50, the non senior fare) Manhattan, 20 miles distance across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and under the East River via the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel. Of course, there is the not-to-be-missed Staten Island Ferry: miraculously free and a miraculous tour of New York’s watery world. But after the first ferry ride the rattling bus proved more convenient.

The usual frantic Manhattan pace was kept despite the commute: jazz clubs, visiting friends, shopping, and dealing with electronic foibles. The dock master commented that he never talked with us since we were always gone.

We even managed a scare while walking back to the yacht club after seeing the Heath Brothers (minus one brother) at the Village Vanguard. The Great Kills Yacht Club is down a dark dead end road. It was 11:30pm when three young men deliberately turned around after we passed them. Suddenly, no longer weary from the day’s activity, our pace quickened and so it seemed did theirs. Without looking back, I punched the code into the club’s door . . . maybe we were just tried and paranoid but we promised to get home earlier next time.

At times, while wandering around New York I wish I were a Russian oligarch with a condo overlooking Central Park or a small get away in the Village. And then I think would it be worth the world’s contempt — absolutely!

Three Long Days

Great Kills to Port Washington
Port Washington to Port Jefferson
Port Jefferson to Orient Harbor, NY

Sometimes it pays to hustle. A combination of weather, geography, and scheduling demands it. Often it is not evident when it is happening until the final destination is reached and a collective sigh of relief goes out. Carrie Rose has done this twice this year . . . so far.

The first was from Cape May, NJ to Great Kills on Staten Island. It was done by two legs: 71.2 nm and 60 nm respectively. I have written about Barnegat Bay earlier, and of the leg from the bay to Great Kills, the most that can be said is the NYC skyline overwhelmed other concerns. The NYC environs while heavily trafficked are occupied by professional mariners and though this does not make me any less diligent, for all their bulk and horsepower, they do their best to keep pleasure boaters out of harms way.

The currents through NYC harbor and the East River are a concern. There is much written about when to make a favorable transit and we followed the recommendations almost to the minute. Carrie Rose pulled along with the current from Battery Park through the East River, Hells Gate (13.8knots) and into Long Island Sound. Talk about a bridge over trouble waters, the bridge over Hells Gate has seen a lot. We were thankful we picked the correct time to pass through.

Long Island is justly named. Great Kills, NY to Orient Harbor on the east end of Long Island took 3 days and 123 nm. The stretch from Port Jefferson to Plum Gut, the passage into Gardiner Bay on the North Fork of Long Island, is 50 miles of under inhabited beach.

Port Washington, the first stop out of NYC, offered free moorings. This is a busy recreational harbor and a noisy one with a nonstop stream of helicopters flying the moneyed class to idyllic summer retreats. After extended stays at Cape May and Great Kills we did not bother to explore the town, preferring Carrie Rose’s wood lined interior to gather strength for the trek north.

Port Jefferson is an industrial harbor with an oil fired power plant and a repository of crushed stone being pushed around by large yellow machines. Impressive tug and barge combinations restocked both while we swung on a mooring across the canal from the action. A succession of three towering car ferries overwhelmed us into the night. Town provided wine, used books (Khrushchev Remembers), pastries, bread, and ice cream — all staples of our cruising lifestyle.

The morning departure was delayed waiting for the fuel dock to open at 8AM. 120 gallons of diesel via a high speed pump designed for the insatiable mega yachts scattered around the marina filled our puny tank. Seven hours later, delaying our passage through Plum Gut to avoid two ferries, Carrie Rose raced through the understated “tide rip” written in numerous places on the chart.

We backtracked four miles, cut around a sandy spit with a beautiful old lighthouse perched on stilts, passed the skinny poles of a fishing weir, and anchored in boisterous Orient Harbor. A stabilizer was deployed over the side (pulling it out the next day would give me the wrenched back that I had thus far avoided) and a sound sleep was had under the Milky Way while the deserted lighthouse flashed white once a second.

How To . . .

A young man on the Internet asked the question, “How do I learn to write?” The website this was posted on has a way to respond to the question. In fact, that is the reason the site exists: post a question, answer a question. I have done neither. This time I considered participating; after all, I have asked the same question — mostly to myself — numerous times.

The appropriate buttons were touched, the answer written, and then I hit a snag. Username and password, sign in with Google or Facebook, a deep yawn surfaced. I retreated, turned off the iPhone, and went in search of a physical project, one that eventually required a trip to the engine room.

There is comfort in tinkering with the substance of the earth. That is not to say that bits and bytes aren’t made up of substance, electrons have mass after all. But I am thinking on a gross level: wood, metal, plastic, oil, and grease. The world cannot do without them.

And I am thinking of the tools needed to mess with the above: screwdrivers and drills, hammers and saws, wrenches, pilers and knives. The kind of tools that end up crushing, scraping or cutting me despite my familiarity with them.

Now to my question, will the projects on Carrie Rose ever be complete, I think not. To complete them would mean what; it would mean that it is time to move on to another venue. Time to join a Zen monastery, a cloistered order, or retreat into the deep forest and live the life of a hermit masquerading as a wise man. No, remaining entwined to this world requires projects.

What describes a project; we each have our own definition. Today mine is typing this, which I wrote with green ink in a Moleskin notebook, into Word. This morning’s was to attach the new letters C-H-I-C-A-G-O to the bottom of the dinghy, fill the fresh water tanks, settle the marina’s bill, and whisk Charlotte and I several bowls of matcha.

Once done, I sat in the pilothouse as a squall blew through and remembered the young man’s question, “How do I learn to write?”

Write!

Inlet

There are breakers in the distance. It is obvious they are coming across the inlet’s bar that we are about to turn into. There are also many small fishing boats (most with hundreds of horsepower strapped to their sterns) negotiating the passage. This makes me feel better about piloting Carrie Rose through, for you see this is Barnegat Inlet. An inlet infamous up and down the Atlantic coast for being the most treacherous of a treacherous group of inlets that makes up the New Jersey coast.

We left Cape May, NJ in the early morning’s calm, and the wind and waves have slowly increased. So now, Carrie Rose has to contend with a SE facing inlet, 15 knot NE wind waves, and the 3 foot swell that has been pushing us along for the last few hours. Though I did not realize this, Charlotte has been quietly studying the tide and current app on her iPhone. She quietly mentions that at this moment, minutes away from turning into the fray, there is a full ebb tidal current racing out of the inlet’s opening and running head first into the above wind and waves.

I hear this above the din and bile rises into my throat. This is a good time to take a few deep breaths. I turn into the inlet and push the throttle up a few extra hundred RPMs. Suddenly we are in a weird combination of broadside breakers, a following swell, 4 to 5 foot vertical waves standing straight up in the air, their curly little edges defying gravity.

The next moment the sea is oily flat with various eddies and whirlpools, then it erupts into sharp little wavelets that remind me of the meringue on a lemon cream pie. I can feel the stern rise as a trough opens up before me. The swell twists the hull to the port, so I turn the rudder starboard. Of course, I over correct and struggle to spin wheel over to the port.

Remember the little boats transiting the inlet, well they are coming and going amongst the waves. Some obviously frolicking while others twist and turn trying to compensate for the melee. One completely disappears into the swell ahead and pops out within a second.

Since this is not the first time we have been through an inlet — though this is the most extreme — we quietly talk to each other and make sure that Carrie Rose is between the red and green markers. All 220hp are engaged. The extra power makes us more responsive and stable. It also has the added effect of creating an imposing bow wave that keeps the squirrely-ist power boaters thinking twice before getting in our way.

That said the Barnegat Bay boating community seems to be a full throttle all the time crowd. It does not matter how shallow, narrow, winding, or crowded it is, this is a take no prisoner boating environment. I was thinking of getting a “Baby Seal On Board” sign for Carrie Rose but realized that they would only go faster and get closer out of spite. The odd thing is once we are out of the inlet most of these boats are stopped about a mile off shore trying to catch whatever pelagic creature that wanders by.

We decided to ignore the maelstrom and keep on task, which once through the inlet is no less daunting. Since the inlet and the area a few miles west are always changing, the charts are unreliable. I looked ahead and saw boats everywhere but where I thought they should be. Granted there was a large red buoy to port, which I would have aimed for but it was close to the shore and lighthouse. I pulled back the throttle to idled.

The usually reliable cruising guide’s only comment on Barnegat Bay was, “Use Local Knowledge, call on channel 16”. I ponder this and wondered whom I would call when on our port side I saw a Sea Tow rescue towboat. I picked up the radio’s microphone and called, “Sea Tow, Sea Tow, Sea Tow this is Carrie Rose, the trawler behind you.” He responded and I tried to sound calm when I asked, “I am new to the bay and I am confused about how to proceed, can you help direct me”.

In a comforting voice, he instructed me to follow him and then mentioned a shortcut across what was land on our charts. Charlotte groaned, I kept quiet and turned in behind him. Boats streamed passed us both ways. At one point, one large speeding boat got so close to him that the spray flying off the bow splashed the Sea Tow captain. Five minutes into this the radio crackled, “Captain just follow the large markers on in and watch out at buoy 37, it gets shallow and tricky there”, and off he went.

I looked ahead, saw a nun (red) and a can (green) silhouetted in the sun and spray, and headed between them. In another 10 minutes we were out in the bay and in 15 minutes more Spencer at Spencer’s Marina caught our lines. He graciously welcomed us. I slowed my breathing and tried to answer the questions the crowd on the dock peppered us with: where did you come from; how long are you staying; do you need to borrow a car; Chicago, how the hell did you get here from Chicago.

For the first time in weeks I slept soundly, woke at five and nudged Charlotte, “We gotta get out of here, sooner is better”. Charlotte made coffee for the thermos, took quick showers, pumped the head, and then headed east to exit the inlet. It was obvious that most of the bay’s fishermen go to church on Saturday evening because they again streamed passed us. Other than the ruckus, it turned out to be helpful. We followed their wakes out and by 7:50 were on the North Atlantic. As a fitting send off, the largest boat thus far encounter blew passed us creating such a large wake that it spirited us out of the channel and pointed us north.

Autopilot on, heading 014 degrees, coffee, banana, and a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, we settled in for the 7 hour cruise to Great Kills on Staten Island. The NYC skyline slowly emerged from the curvature of the earth. We rounded Sandy Hook and saw the first large grouping of sailboats since Annapolis, and what I assumed to be New Yorker’s sunning themselves on the beach. Carrie Rose cut across both St. Ambrose and Cherry Hill Ship Channels while heading into another ebb current. I spied a boat flying a “Don’t Thread On Me” flag and followed it into the large Great Kills Harbor basin. Ah, home, for a week . . .

AIS

In the you-can-never-have-enough-information category, I am including the newly purchased AIS. No, it’s not misspelt, it is AIS, as in Automated Identification System. It came packaged in a Standard Horizon VHF radio. The Matrix AIS/GPS GX2200 to be precise. This marvel of technology has a VHF radio, GPS, compass, rudimentary but quite useable navigation abilities, and AIS. There is more, like a foghorn and a hailer but I do not want to be a bore.

For some background on AIS, working vessels are required to transmit their name, location, heading, and speed on a near constant time frame, and this is what AIS does using VHF frequencies. Depending on how a boat is equipped, it can transmit its own information and receive others, or just receive other transmitting boat’s data. The latter is what Carrie Rose chooses to do.

A VHF (very high frequency) radio is how boats communicate. There are specific channels for specific functions. Channel 16 is for emergencies and to be monitored at all times. Channel 9 is for calling other boats, though this often falls to 16. Channel 13 is for ship to ship or ship to bridge. The channels run into the 80’s and then there are 10 channels devoted to weather forecast.

In what I believe to be a remarkably simple solution for the government, they decided to use a radio signal, not some exotic space technology thus the price for an AIS devise is reasonable, and no complicated hardware is needed. For AIS to work all that is needed is power and an antenna.

Carrie Rose has always had two VHF radios that is until last year when the older of the two finally died. The AIS/GPS function added about 150 dollars to the cost of a plain radio, which in terms of “boat bucks” is a tolerable hit, that is if the AIS proves useful.

The first several cruises from Herrington Harbor South, where I installed it, to the Magothy and Chester Rivers and then to Rock Hall did not highlight its usefulness. I was beginning to doubt the expenditure. Then from Rock Hall to the Sassafras River, and onto Havre de Grace and the C&D Canal, the added information helped make the trips less demanding.

The northern portions of the Chesapeake are confined. We travelled closer, if not in, the large ship channel and crossed it several times once during a thunderstorm where the rain severely curtailed visibility. In the distance, I could see large tows (tugs pushing barges). Their speed and direction are the concern. If close enough, radar is a good way to keep track of them but now with the AIS, while many miles away I could see the little circle with a line pointing to their direction in relation to us.

I cued up the AIS screen and picked my target. There was the speed and direction. Though we were headed to the same place — the entrance of the C&D Canal — our speed was 7.1 knots and theirs was 6.8. I relaxed. Carrie Rose would slowly gain distance and be anchored in Chesapeake City without interference from the behemoth.

I would have easily dealt with this in pre AIS times, but by taking the guesswork out of the navigational question, it took the stress out. A simple thing this marvel, a couple of data points broadcast over Marconi’s wireless telegraphy.

Noise

The quietist place I have been, other than Mammoth Caves, is a narrow dead end cove in Canada’s North Channel. The only noise that interrupted my mild tinnitus and the clock’s soft tick was the abrupt surfacing of a large loon outside of Carrie Rose’s pilothouse door. It lingered long enough to give me the once over and then disappeared without a ripple only to surface a football field away.

It might be melodramatic to say this but it was a transcendental moment. I cannot say that in Cape May, NJ anything as inspirational has occurred but on this 4th of July weekend noise is plentiful. I think it would be an interesting exercise to try to describe my aural surroundings, so what follows is a somewhat disjointed “vision” of the sounds as they happened.

A small sport fishing boat just coasted by with hardly a sound, while on the pier across the canal (about 50 feet wide) a similar boat is having the sea’s salt power washed off. Back on our dock, two diesels quietly rumbled as a boat backs into its slip. There is an obvious void when they cease running.

Then a much quicker boat riles up the canal’s water. The waves it generates smack against the piers causing the pilings to squeal. Behind it, a spitting outboard heads for the fuel dock, and crunches in and out of reverse as it slows to make its approach. There is laughter and conversation in the background, and from our absent neighbor’s radio, a baseball game from Philly drones on.

In Copenhagen, a famous little boy tinkles into a fountain making a sound similar to the streams of water emanating from the sides of powerboat’s air conditioners, and a small plane struggles to keep its nose into the wind as it drags a long advertising banner overhead.

I would have commented on the wind had I written this yesterday, but today it is calm. With the wind silent, the ospreys were up early in the morning high above our heads peeping as they looked for food. And amongst the trees that line the northern bank of the marina, a few nest-robbing crows were chased by an assortment of smaller birds.

The road noise increased as the sun rose in the sky. When I took my bike ride across the bridge over the Cape May Canal to the marine supply store (where else!) the traffic was dense. A gaggle of Harleys hit all the base notes, each with their sound systems playing incompatible tunes.

On Carrie Rose’s aft deck, Charlotte flips through the pages of the Waterway Guide when suddenly the yelps of little boys and girls penetrate the din at the discovery of crabs in the traps their parents had set earlier in the day. And that brings me back, I start to focus on my other senses, and wonder how the loon is fairing in that cool quiet North Channel cove — a world away.

Crazy

It is blowing crazy out of the southwest; there is wind in the rigging for sure. Most of the transients both power and sail, stayed in port. A few large sailboats straggled in today with various levels of difficulty. Other than for the wind the weather is close to perfect. I can see why folk are drawn to Cape May. The air is clean and the light is fluorescent.

Cape May sits as the pinnacle with the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay teetering respectively to the east and west. Both have a bad reputation. Before we left Delaware City to venture onto Delaware Bay, Tim the owner of the marina provided us with a detailed analysis of wind and waves, and tides and currents. We sat for three days waiting for the correct condition to make the 52 NM trip south to go north.

We have crossed larger bodies of water but Delaware Bay has a certain mystic about it. It might be because it starts as a river and then widens into a bay. It might be because the many large ocean going ships and tows are syphoned into a small deep canal. It might be due to its large mouth open to the North Atlantic and how the bay’s water interacts with the tide, tidal current, and river and canals current. The bay is also shallow and this just adds to the complexity of transiting.

Charlotte and I have the luxury of time. This makes a tremendous difference in the amount of risk we are willing to take. Though we have a destination, there is no hurry to get there. A common refrain in recreational flying is that most accidents happen trying to get home and since Carrie Rose does not have one, we can wait.