it's getting to be a bad habit of mine to be too tired to blog at day's end... i did finish yesterday's blog tonight, so refere back to that for now. but i'm too stinking tired to write about today. it's a grand tale, which i shall set about the telling of tomorrow...
i'm sure you've heard a bit about it from pam's blog tonight, but you'll get my take tomorrow.
after pouring over the charts (sea maps), and pouring over the good advice we recieved from our good friends that know this bay, we decided to head out on our wonderful gunkholing adventure for good! we decided to head east south east to the little choptank river. this spot is all the way across the bay (you can't see one side from the other at this point of the bay), and a little north. the winds were blowing pretty well when it was time to leave in the morning, so we decided to try for the first time to leave anchor without the use of the diesel (real sailor like!). if you would have been on board you might have had quite the amusing time at the little comody of errors going on while i tried to hoist the anchor, and get the sail up at the same time! we are true sailors, but inexperianced true sailors as of yet. this time we were working with just two crew, so i didn't have time to wash the anchor chain as it came up. sounds a bit silly, but it isn't just a matter of persnicketty "ship shape and bristol fashion." the chain comes up all mucky gooey from the bottom of this bay, and if you don't wash the lion's share of it off it goes right down to the chain locker, which is one little cabinet door away from where we sleep. if too much gets in there it can begin to get a bit smelly, like sleeping in a swampy swamp. but today there was no one to wash the chain as she came up (papa jerr bear had been helping with this before) , and my hands were getting muddy from handling the chain. there is a manual winch to heave the anchor and chain up with, but inevitably one must help it with the hands. but now i need to use these same hands to handle the halyards (the lines [ropes] that pull up the sails. you don't want to handle these lines with muddy hands because it gets into these expensive lines and prematurely wears them down. so i had to throw our little sea bucket on a rope into the water, and hoist up water to rinse my hands. all the while the boat is pitching, and as soon as the anchor is off the ground, cricket is begining to move i think that's enough explaining so you get the idea. i'm sure you're wondering at this time where pam is in all this mess? well, she's at the wheel trying to keep us from going too far astray into shallow water, or into another boat, or into someone's crab pot buoys, etc. she's got her hands full too, especially when we don't have steerageway ( the boat's not going fast enough to steer her)...
anyway... after we'd finally gotten off, and tacked (zig zagged) here and there to dance around a lot (and i mean a lot!) of saturday boat traffic (i think Pam counted at least 100+ boats behind us when we were clear of them all), and tacked to avoid shallows, and got heading in the ultimate right direction we had a wonderful, smooth, slow sail. the winds died down for quite a while, but we were in no hurry. there was usually just enough wind to go in our intended direction. sometimes we sat there bobbing like a cork waiting for the wind to pick up, and today it always did. it was so nice to be out there trimming sail, navigating and just being! there was a good long time that i sat on the bowsprit, in the shadow of the jib reading the last of "kon-tiki." fantastic!
long about 6:00 we were just about to turn the engine on because we were at our "drop dead" time to make 5-6 knots, or anchor in the dark, when a beautiful wind swept up and pushed us along at a great speed! for the last leg into the choptank river we were making 6-8 knots, and cricket was cruising along very cheerily! it is so fun to be sailing like that! healed over, moving like the wind!
we rounded the corner, sailed up the river, picked out where we wanted to spend the night, and got to where we needed to start our engine in order to safely make it to anchorage. it turned the key and the starter twirled once and quit... oh no! dead battery! i tried again... nope. o boy. now what do we do? turn off all electronics ( including the nav instruments [yes, this will come into play soon]), so thatcthe batteries can hopefully recoup soon. guess we'll have to do it the old fashioned way and sail all the way to anchorage. things were going fairly well at this, when all of a sudden our bow swung around for no apperent reason. she had run into some mud on the bottom, and was now grounding herself up in some shallows! without words we both said short prayers, i doused the sails, and we decided to try the engine... she started! i tried to back her out. no go. tried to push her forward and around to get out of the mud. she came around a bit, but we couldn't get her off. the wind was pushing us in further and further. right then we heard a man calling from the channel. we looked over, and there was another sailboat with a man and a woman aboard. he called, "how much do you draw?" i called back, "5' 11" " he said we'd better do something to get us out quick, and suggested that we bring him a line in our dinghy. like lightning Pam began to tie a bunch of our docklines together, and i hopped in jimminy to get him untied and started. by the time i did pam had the lines ready, so she handed them to me and i motored to the channel. it was quite a chore to drive the bobbing dinghy, controling her outboard with one hand, and trying to keep our wet docklines in the other hand, and try to get to the other boat! the lines didn't seem long enough, but after he'd made a couple of passes i was finally able to grab his dinghy, and pull myself up to his boat boat. he took the line and made it fast on a cleat, and started to pull. his little sailboat pulled and pulled until finally cricket began to suck out of the mud, and was pulled free into the channel!
we both anchored near each other, and pam and i went over to their boat ,spellbound to thank them again. pete and pam are their names. they were so gracious! they invited us aboard, gave us some good wine, and we had a wonderful conversation! he made a few suggestions that i'm sure we'll follow. a few places to see, and a few things to consider for cricket. when we headed back in jimminy it was dark, so we had our headlights on (flashlights you wear on your head). it was very cute to see two little yellow eyes shining back at us from cricket's deck. owen had come out to greet us!
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