Expatriates

In my neighborhood, cars are parked and people are in the street.

The NYT published a map of the USA with arrows of various sizes displaying NYC’s scattered population. In the same edition, an American living in France writes of the same fate for many Parisians, including him and his family, who have expatriated to the seaside.

It seems the locals in the hinterlands of France are as welcoming as the locals in Wisconsin and Michigan, and that is to say, not. My sense is that not that many Chicagoans fled their city, though that might be magical thinking.

Chicago can appear rational at times like this, despite the homicide rate. No AR-15 toting militiamen have stormed city hall and the Illinois Supreme Court has not overturned the governor’s edicts.

Granted this positivity is coming from an inhabitant of a quiet ward on the city’s north side. And when I say quiet, I mean that literally. O’Hare’s multiple east/west runways, other than for a few paroxysms in the late afternoon, are mainly offline.

Most of March was spent in South Carolina due to family concerns. This means for us, 2020 had two springs. Chicago in May is about where South Carolina was in March.

The forsythia budded, bloomed, and greened twice as did the plum and apple trees. There have been two sets of April showers bringing May flowers. Just substitute an un-poetic February and March for the thousand miles that separates SC from IL.

A Victory garden is planted in the backyard, the weeds graciously allow me to think they are under control, and the two mustardy lettuces that grew under a cold frame over the winter were harvested and eaten.

In the garage, the clutter around the BMW R50 is clear. There is hope that after years of neglect its cylinders will plod along again. Two Christmas trees gathering dust and spiders in the attic are gone to the landfill. And a new Chicago flag flies proudly from the front of the house.

Now it is time to wait. Waiting was intolerable in my younger years but at this stage of life, I have patience. Age brings discipline and the practical holds sway over the spontaneous. Still this wait is a waste of the time left to me.

If the world were free, life would be dictated by the wind and the waves, the tides and the currents, and by protected (or not) anchorages with good holding ground for the anchor and chain. The power for this frugal but privileged lifestyle would be generated by solar panels and the navigation done with the help of legions of satellites.

If the world were free, this Chicagoan would flee to the islands of Maine, but as that is not the case, this Chicagoan will join the others in the street, at least in my neighborhood.

May 2020

Queasy

In 2003, 400 square feet of sail were traded away for 5.9 liters of cast iron. On a day with a fair breeze and the destination an easy broad reach away, I wonder if the decision to move by diesel instead of wind was the correct one.

The canals of Canada, the tidal races of the New Jersey inlets and under Lubec Maine’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge, and beating hellacious Great Lake thunderstorms into its harbors, if any of these are justification then, a sound decision was made.

But that is not what I am looking to explore here. It is a more mundane consideration. The one constant for me, whether by sail or power, is seasickness. It has plagued me since I first ventured on the water in a 26 foot sailboat owned by a friend's father.

Each season I awaited the inevitable episode of projectile vomiting. Old age has brought on a diminishing of the senses, so these days I get queasy and not violently ill - knock on wood or in this context fiberglass.

The Atlantic Ocean differs from the Great Lakes in that there seems to be a constant southwest swell that is indifferent to the wind’s direction. I can feel it now even sitting at my kitchen table typing this.

Carrie Rose’s base of operations is in Herrick Bay, Maine. Northeast Harbor and Bar Harbor on Mt. Dessert Island are favorite destinations. They are a 15 to 30 nautical mile cruise northeast from Herrick Bay. There is a point after rounding the island’s Bass Harbor Head lighthouse where the path opens to the Atlantic.

The shallow Bass Harbor Bar extends east off the lighthouse and though, even at low tide we are in no danger of grounding on it, it effectively divides the two waterways. It is common for the sea state to abruptly change, and often so does the wind strength and direction. To the east of the bar lies a few small islands that offers protection but once past them the southeast swell begins to be felt as it lifts Carrie Rose’s stern.

While I never cease to extol our little Nordic Tugs virtues, she does have a few peculiarities. One being the large billboard like transom that loves to get pushed around by a following sea, and two, a not quite buoyant bow. I have tried to remedy this by removing as much weight forward as possible and relocating it below deck in the stern.

With my limited knowledge of naval architecture, this seemed a prudent course of action; I am now beginning to think I have shifted the problem by 30 feet. So, when the swell attempts to raise the stern, the stern does not respond swiftly. With what must be thousands of pounds of pressure, Carrie Rose aft will eventually rise, and often with a thud ricochet off the swell.

I feel pressure build along the outer edge of the stern, and as the boat begins to yaw left into the swell’s belly I correct by turning the rudder to the right. If done correctly the boat will begin to surf as the mass of green water passes under. It can be quite exhilarating.

But buried deep within the petrous portion of my temporal bone the semi circular canal’s miniscule otoliths immediately register the discordant motion. They tumble chaotically and the nervous system, registering that something untoward is up, translates the signals into the dreaded symptoms we know as sea or motion sickness. It begins with a slight acidity taste in the back of my throat. Along with a queasy stomach comes a queasy mind.

Of course, the approach into Northeast Harbor narrows and the traffic significantly increases. It is the boating equivalent of entering onto a crowded city interstate from a rural road. Anything from super yachts to tiny one design sailing dinghies can be and are encountered. This is not to mention speeding ferries and fishing lobster boats. No place to lose situational awareness.

Charlotte instinctively senses this change in me and heightens her surveillance. It is the dividend paid from thousands of hours on the water.

I throttle back the turbocharged 6 cylinders below our feet. Slower is usually better in these circumstances, and am thankful there are no sails to furl. Though, it would be spectacular to quietly sail surrounded by the lush green mountains.

May 2020

Violets

Violets, the weed not the dainty purple flower that populates our minds eye, have become significance this pandemic season. The neighbors to the south, during a particularly difficult moment, let their backyard turn into a field of violets. Years later the entire lawn was shaved off and replaced with sod.

Sod is a miraculous thing: like the aunt that disappears for a few months and comes back renewed with years taken off. In one moment, everyone else is forced to reassess their image in the mirror and wonder if they can do better.

And so, it was with our lawn. It went from lush green to a lumpy weed ridden mess. Of course, not prone to quick decisions it remained status quo. Then one day the violets, now expunged from the southern lawn, began to migrate north across the two foot sidewalk and under the cyclone fence into our back forty.

A violet is cleverly designed. They present with a few quarter to half dollar sized leaves supported by flimsy whitish stalks. The stalk originates at the interface between the earth and the sky, and once in the grass intertwines with the grass’s rhizomes. Their soft snarly tuber is buried deep in the soil. And on that pencil-sized carrot like appendage, subterranean tendrils are sent off to inform others of the species that here lives an unsuspecting humanoid open to colonization.

If the strategy is to pull off the leaves, this is wholly ineffectual. Like pruning a tree by cutting off the ends of the limbs, this promotes spindly growth that worsens the problem trying to be hastily solved with one stroke of the clippers.

Thus, when on weed patrol I carry several devices that resemble recently discovered Neanderthal tools. The best outcome is to remove, in one motion, the inches deep tuber without creating a large divot in the lawn. This is seldom the case. Once done the lawn looks like the tee off section of a major golf tournament, pot marked.

If violets would only confined themselves to the lawn it might be possible to eradicate them using physical and chemical means. They sprout from beneath any fixed object that has been haphazardly thrown into the garden. Every brick, cobble, decorative rock, metal sculpture, wooden plank, or fence provides a sanctuary for the tuber. I have dismantled entire portions of the gardenscape to get at an offending root.

In the past, I could not ignore the dandelion’s pretentious display; they were quickly dispatched. But readying for the summer cruise distracted me from what I thought were insignificant purple flowers. Now sequestered, I see the folly of shirking my due diligence. If my mother, an Olympian weed culler, were alive, she would be proud of my efforts despite the fact that it took a pandemic to motivate me.

May 2020

Shelves

This time of the year, I am usually immersed in planning for the spring and summer cruising season. Part of the process is staging materials deemed essential on allocated shelves in the basement. This year the shelves are filling much slower.

There sits the new AIS (Automatic Identification System). For those familiar with flying, it is the transponder of the watery world. AIS is simple in concept but immensely complex in execution. The device locates similarly equipped boats and displays their location on a screen for us to see, and broadcasts our location to them. Next to it is an ever enlarging folder with our and Carrie Rose’s papers just in case we need to justify our existence to the authorities.

There are the two solar panels I replaced last year that are going to be reborn because Dave tells me that one electron is as good as the next when it comes to recharging the new and larger batteries just installed. There is more but that is what I can remember without getting out of my chair to go look, and since the topic of this essay is a remembrance of Carrie Rose’s first cruise, I hardly think it matters.

It was the end of October 2003 when the monthly payments began. The boat spent its first half year in our possession unseen in heated storage in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. An entire winter passed without seeing it. As I think back, I am not sure why we never drove up to see her in storage but we did not.

The next time we saw her she was bobbing in a marina. It was mid May and almost blizzard condition prevailed. The wind was gale force and the temperature was hovering in the low forties. We walked to the slip with heads bowed into the northwest wind and the horizontal rain.

There she was, the occupant of our winter’s dreamscapes. We stumbled aboard and it was freezing. The previous owner had instructed me on how to start the heater. All I needed to do was connect the electricity. I knew how to do it but was not sure of the steps. Lenore, our now departed sailboat, was never kept on a slip always swinging on her mooring at the mouth of Montrose Harbor in Chicago, so I seldom had to.

The gangly yellow power cable was located in one of two dock boxes located on the salon’s roof. It was time to go back out into the wind and rain, and retrieve and connect the cable. The heavy cable is about as big around as a thumb. It would be hard to design a more obstinate thing.

The connecting points are an odd assortment of three curved appendages made to connect to only the thirty amp receptacle. It can only go in one way. In the best of times it is an awkward process, so when in a gale on a unfamiliar boat in an unfamiliar marina in the dark while hovering over water which will kill you in 15 minutes, well it puts a bit of an edge on the whole procedure.

With a little forethought, and some trial and error, the now connected cable swung between the dock and the boat. Back in the cabin, I striped off the soaked rain gear while trying not to drip water on the teak and holly floor. I made my way to the pilothouse, turned a few knobs, flipped a few switches, and heat began to calm our shivering.

The storm continued unabated the next day, the day we were to start our delivery trip back to Chicago. We stayed put and awoke to a calm crystal blue morning. It was time to leave.

Why we did not head south along the Wisconsin coast I cannot remember. It would have been simpler and less of a risk, but we did not. We headed straight east over the deepest portion of Lake Michigan (900 feet) for a 90 nautical mile cruise at 10 MPH to Frankfort, Michigan.

The trip south was a series of false alarms, large following waves, mal de mer on land not on the sea, waterspouts, and help from our friend’s on loan 16 year old daughter. What were they thinking! It took us a week longer than planned to arrive home due to 5 days spent sheltered up a river due to a late spring storm. But alas, that is Great Lake cruising.

Sixteen years have come and gone. Now the Great Lakes clear fresh water has been forsaken for the North Atlantic’s frigid brimming-with-life salt water. I will keep filling the shelves in the hope that the seventeenth year will not come and go without any log entries.

April 2020