"Little did we know . . ."

Little did we know what it was going to take to get Outrageous ready to sail and to turn her into our boat!

Cutting away Outrageous's winter coat

We are in Annapolis, working 6 to 10 hours a day on the boat. (On the “short” days, we spend several hours running around Annapolis picking up stuff we need.) The boat hasn't been sailed for four years, and for four years dirt has been accumulating. I have never done so much cleaning, polishing, scrubbing, and painting, and placing my body in weird positions to do it all. We don't have to go to the gym. The boat is still at the previous owner's dock, in Saltworks Creek at Annapolis. Sixty steps lead down a steep hill to his dock, and we negotiate these several times each day. At night, we drag ourselves to our hotel room, too tired for a night out on the town or to play the games (scrabble, chess) that we brought along to keep ourselves from getting bored.

The previous, original owner of the boat is a really neat guy. (You met Grover in a previous blog.) After we bought the boat, he had it shrink wrapped and kept it heated until we were able to come and begin working on it. And he's letting us keep it at his dock free while we get it ready to go to sea again. But Grover is a bit of a pack rat. He tells us he can't bring himself to throw away a bit of line (rope to you landlubbers), and I believe him. You never know when you might need some! And he had spares for the spares for the spares. He had prepared himself and the boat for extended cruising in remote parts of the world, and he wanted to be entirely self sufficient. I'm pretty sure that whenever he replaced an old part with a new one, he kept the old, just in case he might have to piece something together sometime. It added up to 25 years of accumulated gear, spare parts, and such. All well and good, but Jim and I wouldn't know what to do with most of the stuff, and besides we have to make room for our own junk. Also, there were multiple books on every nautical topic and dozens of VCR tapes for a TV/video player which we also threw out.

So we've been up to our . . . ears in work, going through drawer after drawer and locker after locker, sorting through stuff and trying to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. I never knew that you could store so much on a boat. The first day of this (our second day here) we got rid of 12 big garbage bags full of stuff. After a few days of this, it began to get real discouraging. But then we just decided that what had to go, had to go, and if we found out later that we needed something, we'd just have to buy it. Every once in a while Grover will come across something we are throwing out and say, “Do you really want to get rid of this?” Sometimes we keep it. We ended up carting away over twenty five bags of stuff. Fortunately there's a trail from the boat up to the road, and Grover loaned us his golf cart to get stuff up the hill, so we didn't have to haul it all up the stairs. But taking the golf cart up and down the steep trail is as thrilling as a carnival ride.

When we're not cleaning and sorting and throwing things away we are running around Annapolis shopping for marine items and talking and working with the people who specialize in some aspect of boating, e.g., graphics, engines, electrical work, dodgers (the boat's windshield), cushions, bottom painting, etc. It's real easy to spend money on this project. The old saying is that if you want to know what sailing is like, just stand in a cold shower and tear up $100 bills. We're finding out what the tearing up bills part is like. Only, it could be $1000 dollar bills!

We are getting daily inservice training on the mechanics of the boat, including marine toilet, diesel engine, bilge pumps, water tanks, refrigeration, and on and on. We have a crew of experts working on the engine, rigging, and the canvas. Our sails have gone to the sailmaker's to be checked, repaired where necessary, and washed. We've even had our 120 gallons of diesel fuel polished. And Grover comes around every afternoon, after managing his four coffee shops (and remember, Grover is 81 years old) to answer questions and help us out. Some day we may even be able to sail the boat.

There are several things that have to be done that don't exactly take an expert, but they do take knowhow and time, both of which we have too little of. Things like installing a new water pressure tank or a vent hose to the diesel stove. To our great fortune, Grover introduced us to someone who is has quite a bit of both (knowhow and time). Rob Sutherland has owned boats all of his life and lived aboard for seventeen years. Compared to Jim, he's a young man (only 64) and can crawl into spaces that are getting a bit difficult for Jim. He's already helped us out a lot and will continue working on the boat while we are in Ann Arbor. Thank the gods for Rob!

Spring arrived while we were here!

We haven't tackled the technology side of things yet. One addition we'll be making is a chart plotter. It's a little screen, usually by the boat's wheel, that shows the nautical chart (i.e., map) and a little icon that shows where the boat is. Some sailors have actually sunk their boats steering the icon on the chart plotter instead of looking where their boats were in the water. Sailors talk about having a satellite phone to the tune of $1500 plus $50 dollars a month for about 10 minutes of talking if you are sinking. We decided that we'll just sink and not spend the money. We will have a life raft and an EPIRB that gives off a signal that tells someone where you were when your ship went down. I'm not sure who that someone is.

We're getting things under control, though. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the boat will be beautiful when we get done with her. And we are having fun, even if we are exhausted at the end of the day. Jim says he never could have taken on this project without me. He says I'm the driving force. We're nearly done with this phase of our work and easing off a bit. Jim is out on the dock washing sheets (the lines that go to the sails). He says he will do the pillow cases next.

On our next trip here Outrageous will be taken to the boatyard and hauled out of the water to have her bottom done and for a few other jobs that have to be done while she is “on the hard,” as sailors say. One of those jobs will be to peel off her old name. Outrageous doesn't quite fit Jim's and my feelings about who we want her to be. The new name she will sport on her stern quarters will be BEL CANTO, Italian for beautiful song or beautiful singing. Home port, ANN ARBOR, MI.

Sails back on, ready to go!

Swimming Lessons

A FAQ (frequently asked question, for those of you who have only used a computer for a week) we get when people hear that we are going off on a one to three year ocean sailing trip is “Do you know how to swim?” Well, the truth is that I've just sent away for a 10 lesson, self-coaching, learn to swim program. But not because I think that swimming is going to save my life if I accidentally fall overboard or if the boat sinks. First of all, if you go overboard in a storm, say with 50 knot winds and 8 foot seas, no amount of swimming is going to save you, even if you are Mark Spitz. Second, if you fall aboard while, say, using the rail to save a trip below to the head, as males are wont to do, you won't be able to swim fast enough to catch up to the boat, and you'll be too far from shore (think 10-200 miles) to make it that way. So the way you prevent that catastrophe is to wear an inflatable life vest at all times that a trip overboard is even remotely possible and, in extreme conditions, keep yourself tethered to the boat. Besides, though I am a lousy swimmer, I'm not afraid of the water, and I can keep myself afloat almost indefinitely by turning myself into a jellyfish (try it in a pool sometime) and raising my head out of the water only for taking in each breath.

Knowing how to swim won't help you here!

So why the swimming lessons? I grew up around the water, a few miles from Lake Michigan, and a mile or so from Mona Lake, near Muskegon, Michigan. Both were frequent destinations for me and my brothers and friends, and sometimes for the whole family, when I was a kid. I loved the water, but never mastered enough swimming technique to do more than the 20 yards or so to make it to the swim raft. As I recall, my two older brothers were quite good swimmers. I think they got their technique in the swim classes we were required to take in high school. That didn't work for me. Maybe because we had to swim in the nude, and my outstanding memory of that was my swim instructor, a typical (for that era) overweight ex-jock, asking me, as I was getting dressed in the locker room after swim class, why I thought that I needed to wear a jock strap. Needless to say, though I remember his name today, he didn't become one of my favorite teachers.

So what's a (nearly) 77 year old guy doing trying to achieve something that has eluded him for almost three quarters of a century? Well, for one thing, age doesn't deter me. I was well into my fifties when I became a proficient white water paddler in an open boat canoe. I was just shy of my 60^th birthday when I learned to ice skate (another skill that my older brothers picked up, but that I somehow missed out on), and I became a pretty decent skater. I kept that up until a two foot high kid tried to skate between my legs in a crowded ice rink and sent me crashing to the ice. It was a year before the pain in my hip was gone, and that may have been why I needed physical therapy to strengthen my leg muscles now. The kicker was that I ran across a reference (in a book on cooking, of all things) to the Total Immersion method of becoming a competent swimmer. It promises to show you how to swim efficiently without tiresome drills and roadblocks like flutter-kicking a board from one end of the pool to another, in 10 easy lessons. I've bought my swim cap and goggles and tomorrow I hit the pool. We'll see how it goes!

Getting Fit

Stepping the mast after transiting the Erie Canal

Once we decided we were really going to do the cruising thing, I began pouring on the steam in my personal fitness routine. It wasn't enough just to keep moving. I figured I was pretty fit for an old guy, but I wanted to be sure that I had enough strength and stamina to handle a 42 foot sailboat. I upped the ante on the weights and aerobic exercises. I even went so far as to go to a physical therapist to strengthen a knee that once in a while felt like it might give out on me. This was all going very well. Then one day, lying on the mat at the gym doing some exercise which was supposed to strengthen my butt muscles (the therapist said this would help my knees) I happened to catch sight of loose, wrinkled skin hanging from the crook of my arm. My god, I thought, that's just what an old man's arm looks like. That can't be me! The sight was made worse by the fact that I had been going through slides taken on our year aboard Escapade, 27 years ago. While I was never what you would call a hunk—I had what in my school days was described as an isomorphic rather that a mesomorphic build (you young ones, look it up!)--I still thought I looked pretty buff in the pictures.

Jim and Dennis Kittel displaying their catch

That image was enhanced by the fact that my slender but well toned body sported what in those days we called a healthy tan. Ever since the day while walking along the beach in Barra de Navidad, Mexico, I started getting little rosettes on my arms from the sun, I haven't dared expose them to much sunlight. That, and the fact that I've already had a squamous cell carcinoma removed from one ear (ending my dreams of becoming a movie idol) means that I'm going to have to keep my body pretty well covered while we re-explore the island paradises. Angie says that's probably a good thing.

Angie wearing her Bahamas tan

Tribute to Warry

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To us, Maruata is Paradise on the Pacific. A small indigenous village on the coast of Michoacan, Mexico, it has somehow escaped the ravages of modernity. It accommodates tourists, but only those willing to sleep in a simple wooden hut, or to rent a hammock under a palapa, or who have an RV small enough to negotiate the dirt track that leads to the beach front encampment. We found our way in driving Howie, our 1990 Ford cargo van in which we had been touring Mexico. We had no idea where we were going, but along the way someone told us to “just ask for Warry.” We finally spotted a stubby blue school bus inside a fenced off compound. A stocky, greying, bearded man with a long pony tail waved to us and motioned toward a gate. He yelled something like, “Hey, you old goat, come on in here,” as he opened the gate and guided us into the compound. 

Maruata, Michoacan

That was our introduction to Warren Harrison, known to everyone in Maruata simply as Warry. Warry and his wife Sherry Tice had been spending six months every year in Mexico, most of it camped right where they were in the compound overseen by Don Elodio and Martina. Their home was a converted special education school bus surrounded by all kinds of paraphenelia making up an outdoor kithcen and dinng area, a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and photographs and memorabilia that summed up their lives. 

Don Elodio, 87, on his horse

Martina

Warren and Sherry in Maruata

Warry had a robust figure, but obviously limited use of his right arm, stemming he said from a motorcycle accident which had almost taken his life years before. In spite of this slight handicap, every day Warry donned a wet suit, weights, and mask and took his spear down to the beach and went swimming for several hours. He seldom if ever returned without bringing two or three large fish with him. These he gave to his hosts or other people in the village, keeping only enough to feed him and Sherry, and occasionally those, like us, lucky enough to be his guests. As a result he was loved by everyone in the village. It didn't hurt that Sherry made friends with many of the women in the village, even leading classes in aerobics and belly dancing, sharing cooking ideas, and just helping out in any way she could think of. 

Warry's Shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe

Warry loved to talk and tell stories. He had a colorful past, including a brush with the feds when, as captain of a fishing boat out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, he was asked by the boat's owner to pick up a "special cargo" at some point out in the Atlantic. In another adventure Warry had ridden a motorcycle across Europe and Asia. His favorite country was Afghanistan, where Warry had traded rifles with a tribal chieftan. Warry called Afghanistan the last bastion of free people.

Getting to know Warry and Sherry was a big part of what made Maruata special for us. We spent many wonderful candle lit evenings sitting around the table outside their bus telling tales and discussing the state of the world. Warry's political views could probably best be described as libertarian. He was a strong believer in indvidual effort and self-reliance, and his life mirrored his beliefs. While he had little faith in “society” or government, he seemed to love everyone he met, and he was loved in return.

Kocapelli, the fluteplayer

Three years ago we learned from Sherry that they were no longer going to Mexico. We wondered what change of health or circumstances had brought about the change in life style, but we didn't ask. A few days ago we received this email from Sherry (abridged):

“My husband, of 30 years passed away yesterday, Sunday, March 3, 2013. He was a wonderful man who lived a wonderful life. Those who knew him, loved him. He touched many lives & helped many people. He was a lover of humanity. Up until 3 years ago, life was very full for him & he was in love with it. Three years ago he went into a deep depression that he was unable to let go of. Yesterday I returned home from a conference & found him lying in the driveway with a bullet in his head. I will always love him dearly. People have asked, "Is there anything we might do for you? My reply is, Yes you can love yourself unconditionally & share that love with everyone--ALL of God's creation--& hopefully it will help keep someone else from putting a bullet in their head. Warren loved everyone. He could not stop thinking of all who suffer in this world & all the deceptions & cruelties & injustices--man's general inhumanity to his brothers & sisters. He said he no longer wanted to live on this planet. His solution was a loss for us all. To all that loved him, please know that I share in YOUR grief as well. Love, Sherry.”

I can only add, Love the life you have, live it to the fullest, and be kind to your fellow creatures. Let that be our tribute to the Warry's of the world.

Sunset at Maruata

 Click here to read our earlier post on Maruata.

Don't Screw Up!

Schooner in fog, Cutler, Maine

Sometimes the biggest danger in cruising is the stupidity of the captain. Like when we sailed into Cutler, Maine, and entered the harbor in a dense fog without radar (and of course no GPS—this was in 1985). After two days and nights of idyllic sailing across the Bay of Maine, we reached Cutler about noon with the fog so thick we couldn't see more than a few boat lengths in any direction. What I should have done is contact a local fishing or lobster boat and have them lead us into the harbor. But what I did was station Angie on the bow, listening for the bell buoy that marked the entrance to the harbor, and forged ahead as she directed. We made it into the harbor, where the fog blanket ended. Looking back, we could see the giant rocks on all sides that we had miraculously missed foundering on. Neptune was kind to us that day.

I'm not sure I want to tell you about all of the stupid things I've done aboard boats, but here's one that wasn't too serious and which ended up with a good result. We were heading for an anchorage at the Niantic Yacht Club in Connecticut, off Long Island Sound. To get to it we had to go up the Niantic River past a railroad trestle and through a swinging bridge. As we entered the river, I slowed Escapade because I couldn't see around a bend of the river to where the bridge was. Suddenly I noticed that the boat was being swept by a stiff current toward the pilings of the railroad trestle and we were in danger of being pinned. I gunned the engine and we made it through the bridge, which had just swung open.

After the bridge, the river broadened out in a wide expanse, but there was only a narrow winding channel with water deep enough for Escapade. We proceeded up the channel with Angie on the bow sighting the channel markers. Suddenly she indicated that the channel made a sharp turn to the left. But directly ahead I saw sailboats anchored and two rows of buoys leading to them. “I think this is a short cut, I called to her. “No,” she called back, “the channel goes this way!” But I took the short cut. Suddenly the depthsounder plunged and the boat came to a stop. We were aground.

OK, the drill when you go aground—especially in soft mud like this—is to put an anchor in the dinghy, along with lots of line, run it out in the direction you want to go, set the anchor, and then try to pull the boat free by hauling on the anchor. It's called kedging. I tried winching the anchor line in, while Angie gunned the motor and swung the tiller back and forth. The boat didn't budge. A guy came by in a canoe and offered to help. “Maybe if I hang on the end of the boom, it will heel the boat over enough to help it break free,” he said. “Won't hurt to try,” I answered. Then a couple of young guys in a launch with a big outboard came up and offered to help. I was throwing them an anchor line and securing it to the mast, when a warden came up, his blue light flashing. He was right inbetween us and the boat that was trying to help. “Tides going out,” he said, helpfully. “Better just stay there until it comes back in and you float free.” Then he took off. Wait until the middle of the night and the next high tide was just what we didn't want to do. So I gave the signal to our two young helpers, and they started to pull on the line. The line stretched tight—then gave way with a bang. Luckily I had a brand new, spare anchor line, which I broke out to replace the old one. Again they hauled, Angie swung the rudder back and forth, the canoeist hung from the end of the boom, and I gunned the engine. Suddenly Escapade broke free and shot across the channel like she had been shot out of a slingshot. Luckily, Angie got her headed up the channel before she went aground again on the other side.

An hour later, we were safely anchored in the yacht club anchorage, and Angie was sitting on the cabin top fuming. She was silent, and when Angie is silent, I know I'm in deep _____. “I hate this place,” she said. “The only reason I'd ever want to come back here is if you proposed to me.” I knew I was in trouble. In a few moments I came up out of the cabin with two gin and tonics in my hands, sat down next to her, and said, “OK, will you marry me?” She began beating on me and yelling “Don't play with my mind!” But I was serious. I didn't want to lose the best first mate I was likely ever to find. And so it happens that 27 years later we're getting ready to embark on another sailing adventure together. Oh, and the “short cut” channel markers? They were lobster trap buoys.

"The best first mate I was likely to find" guiding Escapade up the East River, NYC

 

 

 

 

The First Mate Speaks: Take 2

Angie Modeling Scarf for Nile Styles

When we lived aboard Escapade we had to learn a lot of new things about sailing and anchoring in tidal waters, but the technology was fairly simple. We had a LORAN, which would tell us our location within a quarter of a mile, a depth sounder, and a compass. Now we will have radar, GPS, a chartplotter—all new technology that we will both have to master, a mast so tall that we will have to duck when going under bridges on the intracoastal, huge sails twice as big as those on Escapade, a windlass to raise and lower the anchor, refrigeration, propane gas oven, generator, inverter—the list goes on and on. It's a different ball game now, and I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it.
At 42 feet, Outrageous is a lot longer and heavier than Escapade, a mere 30 feet long. So this summer we will be practicing and learning in the Chesapeake, sailing out of Annapolis, home of the U.S. Naval Academy. When I was younger, I thought if I ever joined the service, it would be the navy, and now I'll be sailing in their waters. 

  

As we prepare for this adventure, my life is already beginning to change. The second most difficult thing for me to do was to give up my job at the U of M Medical School working with medical students and residents. I loved the job that I had been doing for eight years, and there were tears in my eyes when I resigned. The most difficult decision was to give up our Sophie, our 17 year old cat. Since her sister and littermate, Georgie, died four years ago, she has become much closer to us. I decided, though, that she was too old and set in her ways to go to sea. Fortunately, I found a new home for her with a really nice couple who love cats and who live on a lake. She will be able to look out on the water from her balcony, and that is the closest she will ever want to come to open water. I know that the new owners will take really good care of her, but I will still miss her terribly. When I'm sitting on the sofa and she hops up to cuddle next to me I begin to choke up thinking about it. She's been my entertainment and my buddy for seventeen years.

My Dream Hat at Fleur de Paris

If you know me, you know that I am fashion conscious and love hats, scarves, boots, shoes, hair fascinators, etc. Women travel from all over the world to buy custom made hats at Fleur de Paris, a shop in New Orleans. I bought one a year ago when we were in New Orleans, a summer hat, and had my eye on another one for winter. Jim secretly planned to buy it for me for Christmas, and when we were in New Orleans in December for our 27^th wedding anniversary he would have bought it for me. I'm sure Jim was amazed when I turned him down. I told him we could buy a new anchor for what the hat would cost. (My wedding presents to myself twenty-seven years ago were a 33 pound Bruce anchor and a rigging knife.) I think of what we have to buy for the boat—a life raft, perhaps a new motor for the dinghy, new cushions for the V-berth (forward cabin), a new anchor. . . and the list seems endless. What was I thinking when I yelled at Jim to come look at those photos of Small World?

The Final Step_Surveying Outrageous

The last step in our decision whether to buy Outrageous was to have her examined by a marine surveyor. In the event, this turned out to be Gale Browning of Hartoft Marine Survey. Gale has a fantastic history: she's sailed to nearly all points of the globe, raced a 22 foot boat across the Atlantic singlehanded, sailed her 65 foot schooner up the East Coast with her three children as crew, surviving a brush with a hurricane,  and took part in a cross country motorcycle tour undaunted by a broken foot when she "laid her bike down" on it.

We board the boat where she rests in her slip in Grover's backyard, and Gale starts by going over every inch of her deck with a mallet and moisture meter, looking for areas where the water might have permeated the hull.


















Gale insists on removing some cabinetry so she could get a better look at the engine




















Our broker, Richard Kahn, stands ready to guide the bow as we leave Grover's slip to head for the boatyard for the rest of the survey.

 Grover takes the helm as we head down the Severn River toward Annapolis.

Outrageous waits at the yard before backing into the hoist for to have her bottom inspected.

Grover and Jim look at the prop and prop shaft.

A few days after the survey was completed Gale sent us her report, a 40 some page document detailing everything that she had inspected. She gave the boat a good report, pronouncing it fully capable of coastal and bluewater (open ocean) sailing. She did, however, also give us a rather long list of things that we should give some attention to--ranging from a cracked faucet to sticky seacock valves, to the need for a ground fault interrupter in the AC wiring.  Almost everything on the list was minor and could be easily corrected.  A few things, like the need to replace the liferaft, would involve considerable expense. After a little renegotiation with Grover, we sent in the required paperwork (and the final payment). Outrageous became our boat and our future home!