Characters, One and All

I originally set this blog up as a way for those interested enough to keep loose tabs on me.  Thus, this blog has very  much been about my story and the story of my adventure.  However, recently I've felt the blog lacks something.  The reality has been that much of my adventure has been meeting people and hearing their stories.  Like this guy, who gave me some advice about my non-starting car before leaving the marina and sinking his boat in a storm 40 miles offshore a few days ago:

http://www.kcbd.com/story/20627485/captain-and-his-cat-saved-by-coast-guard



Not all of the stories I hear are quite so publicized, and I will choose to leave out some names and places for various reasons (Posterity, Legality, etc.)  There are some quirky dilemmas that arise in retelling other people's stories.  I don't want to offend or incriminate people for what they share.  So don't be surprised if some key details are omitted in future character stories.

Like this guy:

A neighbor at one of the marinas, who told me a fascinating story about working on an island where rhesus monkeys are bred for clinical trials and all the other horrible things we do to monkeys for vanity and medical research.

Nat. Geo Image:

On this island, sequestered away from civilization, the monkeys are born, fed fruit, and either live out their lives and die naturally, or are captured and sent to labs around the nation (where you can guess what happens to them).  My friend was hired as a basic laborer, but got to witness some amazing things.  He told me many stories about the island.  Here's one.  

He witnessed the alpha male bite into the shoulder of a challenging male, and rip his limb off.  Then the alpha proceeded to beat the challenging monkey with his own severed arm.  Later, my buddy witnessed the survived challenger getting along just fine with one arm.

These monkeys are so much stronger than humans it can be a very dangerous line of work.  In another story about the same alpha male, my buddy was still new at this work and approached the alpha a little too quickly.  The alpha was in the bed of a truck and started howling, screeching and jumping up and down so violently that he was bottoming out the suspension on the truck.  All essentially a show, threatening my friend with a similar punishment the challenging monkey had gotten.  He managed to appease the alpha with strawberries, and remained in one piece.

Here is a pretty good video that sums up the place:

Meanwhile other troubling things happen here.  For instance, the capturing process is complicated and involved- and includes luring the monkeys into pens, sedating them, netting them and carrying them off.  However, this presents a new odd situation of some monkeys developing a dependency on the sedatives, purposely getting captured and sedated.  They build up such a tolerance for the sedative that they then escape easily having gotten their "fix".
Now my friend hasn't worked there for many years, and that chapter long behind him.  He was no doubt breaking protocols by even telling me anything.  Good luck finding him you bastards.

The great thing about meeting people is that as long as I remain adventurous, often their stories and mine intertwine.
This same friend and I nearly got into a turf battle with a biker gang one night.  I was too drunk to be useful, and basically chuckled as the bikers threatened away.  Meanwhile my buddy somehow avoided his own primal tendency towards violence and got us out of there before I got likely beaten to within inches of my life.  So, thanks for that.
During the worst of times when hunger was a consistent shipmate for both of us, he passed me PB&J sandwiches, and I helped him out with boxes of Cheerio's.  No milk.

Now this is just scratching the surface of the pool of fascinating stories and corresponding people I've shared rum with.  So expect more as I float here in Savannah trying to make up for nine months of poverty and boat decay.  Cheers!

Settling in?

So by now you've probably figured out how important to me my dog is, even if you only know me in the context of this blog.
She will be nine years old in February, and has always been an active dog.  Since living on the boat I've tried to do my best to find places I can take her on a daily basis to get her energy out and keep her healthy.
In Beaufort we would walk along a busy street for fifteen minutes to get to an abandoned piece of property that will be turned into a subdivision one of these days.  It looks like this:

And here's a panorama of the parking spot when the weather was too cold to walk the windy busy road from the marina:

Don't get me wrong, it was a spot that was one of the highlights of living in Beaufort.  It had a great view of downtown, the swing bridge, and the river/marsh.  But it was relatively small, and after walking it for ten or fifteen minutes both the dog and I were bored.

From Space- our walking paths in red:

Here in Savannah there is a conservation park a short drive from here that is much larger, much prettier for its woods and perhaps more important- lots of space to explore.  So far in visiting twice Morgan and I have explored this much of it:

Here is the comparison of the size of the old walk vs. the new walk- see the size difference which equals awesomeness difference, health factor, and nap-time length:

So what?  Now you have all this technical data on my dog's morning routine right?  Shuddup, this is my blog, and there's more...

More you say? Fascinating.

Well try this on for size.  Day two and I've already found a body...

I believe that's a hoof in the last coroner's shot there.

So take that, without my houndish dog sniffing out new foot trails I wouldn't get such wonderful surprises.  So while it's very important for both of us to get this every day:

It's just as important to simply get out into the world and see the crazy things going on, to ask answerless questions about what you find.  "what happened to that goat or whatever?"  or  "Am I breaking the law right now?"

I think I'll like it here.

Like a Peach

What an adventure indeed.
I finally got out of South Carolina, after approximately 10 months in the state.  Five jobs and three marinas later I have crossed into Georgia, and I have to admit in the roughly 18 hours that I've been here with the boat I get the very strong feeling I'm going to like it.

The voyage here from Beaufort SC was not short on stress, worry, mistakes, or any of the other measurement hallmarks that make it a real adventure.
Just getting out of Beaufort turned into a four day struggle waking each morning thinking: "This is the day I move" or "this is the last time I walk the dog here" or "this is the last time I buy my coffee at the circle-k"

In the week leading up to my attempt(s) to leave I discovered a mouse has moved onto the boat.  Not the worst thing, but became a problem when I discovered he/she/it had chewed through some of the electrical wiring deep in the bowels of the boat.  It had cut power to my bilge pump (that keep s the boat from sinking) the fridge (which keeps milk for my coffee), and the VHF radio (which allows me to call the bridges that I have to open).  The fridge I can live without, the bilge pump and the radio are essential.

So I got some wire and did a quick and dirty rewiring of the bilge pump so that I wouldn't have to bale water by hand, I borrowed a hand held VHF radio from one of my old coworkers at the yacht club where I taught swim lessons this past summer and I stopped putting milk in my coffee.
I still had a full spare tank of fuel from my travels in 2012, and I remembered I had gassed up the boat back then too.  Add some oil and I was ready to go, I thought.

On day three of trying to leave Beaufort I discovered that the growth on the bottom of the boat I was hoping was still light enough to get me to Georgia was actually thick enough I couldn't even get the boat out of the slip...
$60 for a cheap cleaning by diver and that problem was out of the way.  Finally on the fourth day I got the boat out of the slip and away from the marina.  But only after nearly crashing it into my friend and neighbor's boat...
Adequately shaken up from my violent departure from the marina my very first task was to open the Ladies Island Swing Bridge.  In the winter these bridges operate on a restricted schedule, so you have to have the boat in the right place at the right time, and your radio has to work in order to call the bridge operators.  Already late in leaving and only a few thousand feet from where I was docked I waited the fifteen minutes (and ran aground while waiting) I needed to until 10 o'clock and made it through the bridge...

The Ladies Island Swing Bridge upon departing Beaufort

Finally on my way, with the distantly familiar fear deep in my chest I made my way out of Beaufort, away from my uncle's town, away from the starvation and disappointment of having few things go my way.  I jotted down a note so I would remember:

About an hour into the journey I decided to break and top off the gas tank.  I couldn't remember exactly how long it had been since I put in fuel, how far I had driven the boat, or how quickly the fuel gets used up.  I don't have a fuel gauge (or any other instruments) and so even though these inboard diesels sip fuel I figured I wouldn't have enough for a whole day under motor power (my sails are in various states of disintegration rendering them essentially useless).  Easy enough problem, just pop the gas cap and pour in diesel from the spare container I keep on the boat, just top her off for good measure.

Well the last time I had pulled the gas cap off was in summer, and I didn't bother checking (I know, I know...) the levels because I knew I had plenty of fuel on board.  My mistake number two of the day. The cap uses a specially shaped key to open, and I cranked that key as hard as I could.  I stopped the engine and drifted for fifteen minutes trying to pry off the cap:

I was down on hands and knees cheek to the paint grunting violently drifting in the silent river.  Thank goodness no one but the dog was around to witness embarrassing moment of my own irresponsible making... and then I hear a blowhole.  Funny enough, even with the motor banging away I most often hear dolphin before I see them.  They are essentially silent.  But the periodic sound of their blowholes is a distinctive one.  I stand up and indeed there was a dolphin, its dorsal fin jaggedly cut into at the base, cut several inches into such that the entire fin was crooked.  So he popped up, looking right at me basically curious what this large deep finned creature was doing grunting away drifting quietly.

A side note about dolphin: usually they are seen fishing.  You'll see them thousands of yards away, their fins popping up and disappearing in the same place, often in groups of two or more, sometimes seeming like a dozen are fishing the same place, but how do you keep track?  It's all similar looking fins disappearing under murky water.  They pause their fishing as you pass by, having watched that spot intensely for the whole approach, and then continue as before.
The other way I usually see dolphin are when they are being curious, and in exactly the opposite fashion as the fishing behavior, they follow the boat popping up frequently inches away from the hull and they look at me in the cockpit, frantically trying to snap the phone camera at the right moment (which rarely happens).  They clearly know that the interesting part of the boat is where the person/dog is.
The encounters go something like this, I'm lost in thought or referencing the map and the notes I wrote about which signposts to follow or checking the GPS on my phone when suddenly about two feet from me (usually on the starboard side strangely enough) a big, sleek, dark smooth and so strangely different from myself creature slides up and shocks the hell out of me with a whoosh of air like a tire suddenly just went flat.  They are like, "HEY" back under

"Whatsup?" back under
Whatcha doin?" back under
"Nice fin on the bottom there" back...
"Where ya goin?" back down
"Nice phone" back under
"Any good shots yet?" disappears
"Wanna play?" under

Usually at this point I frustratingly put the phone down having yet again failed.

"Wanna?" down
"Play?" down

I'm like, "Yeah, ok."  If a dolphin has stuck around this long without getting bored I figure they deserve a little play time.

So I gun the engine and start steering back and forth like I'm drunk, getting the mast really swinging.  I might whistle, the simplest human equivalent to dolphin noise without going totally basketcase alone on a boat.  I vary the throttle in response to whatever the dolphin does and we cruise along together like as if we're playing tag, or some aquatic version of skipping down the hall together whistling away


Back to the key and cap problem.  I distractedly obliged the curious dolphin by grabbing my phone in usual touristy fare, but put it down again quickly.  "Sorry buddy, I just discovered I can't refuel because I'm an idiot and can't get the gas cap off... I don't feel like playing right now"  And the gash in his fin only made it worse because even though the dolphin was clearly fine you couldn't help but think about the various ways a dorsal fin gets mutilated like that... think: propeller most likely.

I turn the engine back on, and swiftly decided which direction to go.  Back a short way to Beaufort where I can figure out this gas cap thing?  Or South to my destination, and the distinct possibility of running out of fuel like a noob and surely a tow the rest of the way?

Obviously I went South.  Now I was really worried.  I could run out of gas at any time, and if it happened in the wrong place (like in the middle of any of the really broad rivers with faster currents and winds) then I could really be in trouble.  Literally washed out to sea without a motor or sails... and I had now willingly put myself in this spot.

But the motor was still running and even though I felt like the hammer could drop at any time... well it's no way to live.  So I thought to myself, I'm a resourceful guy.  I can figure this out.  It's a gas cap after all... I just needed more leverage.

This is what I came up with while driving and navigating:

The key is sandwiched between two winch handles, the blue key is not the key

And it didn't work because I didn't really try to use it.  I never ran out of gas.  I made it, and still haven't pried open the cap...
But I didn't know I was gonna make it, so just keep in mind that's what I had going on in my head the rest of the way.

It felt like ropes were trying to pull me back to Beaufort, but I was used to that feeling, those ropes had done a good job of keeping me there long enough and more.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful besides more fishing dolphin (which sort of, ya know, gets old after a while).  But South Carolina is far more powerful than people give it credit.  At just the right moment, it threw me one more obstacle before I could cross the state line.

The very last fork in the road before making it to Georgia is a combination man made trench and a natural drainage river.  It looks like this from space:

And yes, the blue line is my path and yes, I took the wrong direction.

I was following the map, and my notes, and I missed it.  Not from space, everything looks the same on the water.  The same marsh, the same trees.  The path to take just didn't seem like it, and somehow without even noticing, I just. Didn't, See. It.  What waited upriver, were places where it would eventually get too shallow for my boat and inevitably stick me there, possibly forever.

Just for some scale, I went more than a mile out of my way, got lucky, checked my phone GPS to my horror, and turned back before a bad grounding would occur.  More Scale: the grey line in the bottom left corner of the map is the SC/GA border...

I made it through the last bridge that had to open to get me through at exactly 5:30, and then sunset was in full swing and I was running out of light with a few more miles to go, and a shoal to navigate around in the dark as I docked at the new marina (some boat people told me about the shoal when I drove down to check out the marina the week before).  I docked in the dark "Anywhere you can find an open spot" based on the instructions of the dockmaster over the phone.  End of story (for now).

Pictures!

On the road again

The bridge to Hilton Head

On crappy phone-zoom, you can make out the Bridge that hangs over Downtown Savannah. it is still very far away.  They don't call it the Lowcountry for nothin'

A break in the mostly overcast sky, in my face

Bird chillin

Waiting for the bridge, waiting for 5:30

The Causton Bluff Bascule Bridge

Other side, made it!

Looking back as the sun finally set and I was about two miles from my destination. Time to turn on the Nav lights and get out my flashlight to finish navigating

It's a New Year, let's be good to our blog.

Rather than explain where I have been for the last nine months to a silent digital audience I will instead do a little of this: (and then tell a nice story about Quiet)

I have been tested by Beaufort.  But it’s a New Year and I am finally getting the F out of here.  Next stop-Savannah (more on that to come).  It’s not my style to really believe that there is much of a will behind the way the world works.  But looking back at my time here, especially knowing that I’m finally leaving, it’s a bit of a revelation to see the big picture of what this past year taught me.  The message is so clear now, and I admit my pride has taken a bit of a hit at realizing how obvious it all is.  January 1^st of 2012 I made the decision to make the final liquidation of my assets and move the boat to the coast no matter the cost, and disregarding that I knew I couldn’t afford it.  At the time I felt trapped, landlocked on a lake in the middle of the Carolinas.  I wasn’t saving money as I once was due in large part to an hour long commute inflating my gas costs.  I was having immediate relationship problems with my parents, and I was ready for a change of pace.  Funny enough I think I was in South Carolina when I had the urge to flee.  I was on my way back to Charlotte, on the highway (an excellent place for revelations, epiphanies, and prophecies).   Little did I know that S. Carolina would become my Davey Jones’ Locker, trapping me, testing me, trying to drown the dream with all hands aboard.  *Trying.

What lay ahead for me back then was discomfort, fear, anxiety, and a very tangible sense of ongoing adventure.  It is addictive, and when the miles tick by and the nights of fretful sleep anchored in the middle of nowhere end and you step out into the morning light realizing you’ve survived another night the exhilaration is delicious.  Underequipped and alone.  That kind of adventure got replaced upon my arrival in Beaufort with a different kind; how to make enough cash to keep moving.  That meant learning new things, making new contacts and trying to use my skill set to get the most out of my life and my time in a new place.

I don’t want this to be a forum for bitching like so many blogs can be, so I’ll leave it at that.  I also appreciate that a bulk of my trip has yet to be documented here.  However, I’ve sort of lost track of the chronology and my memory won’t do the trip justice.  But rather than deprive you of any decent plot I will describe one day and two nights I spent anchored just south of Myrtle Beach.  When I think of the trip down I always think of that stop for some reason.  I think it might represent in my mind the freedom I felt alone on the water.

I was here:

In the middle of nowhere, pretty inland South Carolina, I pulled up with enough light to carefully anchor and then dramatically do some work for my old job.  I had to use my phone to hook the computer to the internet and took care of some last minute work my coworkers in offices around the country needed done.  Anyway once I was finished with that I sat in the cockpit and watched a hawk bringing nesting material back to the top of a piling that had an ICW marker signpost mounted on it.  I could hear the baby hawks calling out to their mother when she flew off to find nesting material.  The water was as flat as glass and the spot was very well protected from the wind.  It was so quite that even though I couldn’t see the chicks I could hear them. 

Many quiet cups of tea and perhaps a wildlife documentary later it was dark and I got in bed.  Very quickly I realized how much I would need to get used to the quiet.  The mangroves came alive at night, the creature calls were vivid, and close.  Like predators were stalking... but I'm on a boat.  Can jaguars swim?  Cats...
As the tide drew water across my boat all night I could hear the myriad of minutia scraping along my hull.  Picture a night so still that a twig floating down a river bumps into the hull of a boat and because it’s the lowlands (they call it The Lowcountry here) the water is moving so very slowly along… well inside the boat it’s as if that sound gets amplified and you can’t hear anything else since you’re paranoid already that the anchor is slipping or something as bad, and you’re trying to go to sleep too early with too much energy after a full day of mostly sitting still behind a wheel pulling on some ropes from time to time. All. Day.  But you don’t have electricity besides some dim cabin lights- no company, no booze.

Then suddenly a slightly larger twig suddenly strikes causing you to jump every few minutes.  That first night was all about the primal ability to listen intensely, especially as you let your guard down.

By the next morning I was used to the twigs and was relishing the one day I didn’t sail and the only day I stopped for my entire trip into South Carolina.  I was looking forward to reading outside in the windless weather.  I had been battered around at the coast for long enough.  So I read an ancient copy of one of the Sherlock Holmes sequels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (whose name I love) that was passed to me when I was younger by my great uncle John Ash.  The best part was that it had been such a long time since I read the tales as a child that I didn’t remember a single one of the mysteries.

Drank more tea… PB&J again, it was really quiet.  All day.  I had gotten used to weeks of day in day out feeling pressed to keep moving, to keep running no matter what.  It was eerie to be fighting what I had gotten used to in order to sit and relax and enjoy the environment.  Probably gave in watched another nature documentary on my laptop to break up the silence with the soothing and subtly inspired voice of David Attenborough tell me about migratory patterns of the snowbirds… or whatever.  Phonebook.

 I made up my mind to leave early the next day and stock up on supplies by stopping at a marina down the way.  Middle of the night, I suddenly wake.  Something about the gentle movements the  boat was making had changed.  It was so subtle I immediately chalked it up to the paranoia that had been haunting my sleeping hours with its chaotic silence.  But I got up to check anyway.  Out in the cockpit looking into the oily black-dark water of the night with a flashlight there it is, the mother of all twigs.

I had a limb, a very large limb that had snagged somewhere beneath the boat.  It was big enough I could see it from both sides of the boat.  Crap.  It’s the middle of the night I’m not even awake.  Is it caught on the keel or the rudder?  Keel would be ok, but rudder would be bad.  I can’t see, much less operate the boat in this dark to free myself.  I tried poking it with the blunt end of my docking hook.  It hasn’t broken anything yet.  It’ll have to wait until morning.  A few more hours of light, often interrupted sleep later I got up at dawn and slowly make preparations to free myself.  I poked it some more. 

UPDATE: I found the documentation of this Limb!

Finally I decided that because the boat was pointed into the current my best bet would be to back off of the tree limb.  Started her up and gunned it in reverse and ran away from the dislodged massive tree limb.  When I got to the marina to ride my bike into town for groceries… I was a bit of a mess.  Like I had been camping and wasn’t quite ready to hop back into society.  I wasn’t.  But I lived.  It was a good time.

Oh, and here are some pictures...