Well, any account wouldn’t be any good
without a really epic adventure plugged in somewhere. Of course any epic adventure would be a sham
without a good potentially life threatening miscalculation/oversight.
So here is the first of hopefully many really
epic “mistakes” to grace the pages of this blog.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, the 22nd of February:
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| The way out of Beaufort Inlet, the clearly visible building is where we started, dubbed "The Hotel" |
Antonio and I set out early to attack the headwind on the
way South- after our very dull
(wind-wise) introduction to the ICW the day before, we were anxious to make some
real headway, and Antonio was especially anxious to see what it was like out on
“the big blue”. Having sailed on the
ocean before, I was slightly better prepared for the uncertainty it could
offer, but I was keen to make some headway too.
It was probably this irrational urge to tackle something big and scary
that led to our undoing, like so many before us no doubt.
We made it out of the Beaufort Inlet with some difficulty,
tacking in and out of the wind to save the engine, and then proceeded about ten
miles off the coast. We would need to
travel south-west towards Wilmington, but we had to tack east to keep from
running back into the land. It’s the
painful part of traveling into the wind; spending too much time heading away from
the destination, and far too little time cruising triumphantly towards it.
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| Putting distance between us and land... |
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| This is the Chinook on its way back, we didn't get a shot of it directly overhead and loud |
On the way out we got to see some really fun stuff, starting
with dolphins (sorry, they are really tricky to get on camera). We got buzzed by a Chinook on patrol a few
times, by buzzed I mean we could read the lettering on the pilot’s sunglasses
(the first indication that the military was paying some attention to us).
Meanwhile we had plenty of time to speculate what this mysterious
ship was all about:
It was moving in and out on the main channel the entire time
we headed away from land, and theories ranged from 'it’s training day' to 'the pilot anxiously needed to pee'
Finally far enough offshore we made our first big tack to
the South, to the future. The day went
well as we alternated control of the vessel, meanwhile the other did stuff like
confirm our position, make tea, and stare off into the unending horizon. I suppose that is the one constantly
impressive thing about being on the ocean when you’ve been enveloped by land
forever leading up to the departure. It’s
easily recalled and imagined for anyone who’s been to the beach, but when it’s
in front of your face as well as behind your ears, for hours, you really come
to appreciate it.
Land is to starboard (right side of boat) not that you can much see it...
...moving on from postulating what is most impressive about the
ocean… (everything is impressive).
So we made our way for most of the day, without much
incident, and with plenty of documentation.
The nature of the trip changed when night started to fall,
and we started making decisions based on how far we’d come and what we had left
to go- namely, “Whaddayah think about this restricted area up ahead?”… (refer to map at bottom of post)
We approached Bogue Inlet with the idea we’d stop and anchor
for the night and resume our journey the next morning. I had access to the weather forecast, and
while it didn’t look too terrible rain-wise, the wind was getting heavier and
we’d been moving all day. I was not
thrilled about what would have been an all-nighter into the wind to get to
Wilmington (although Antonio was more for that idea) if we could stop and rest
after what had already been a big day.
In referencing the charts it was difficult to get a read on how to enter
the inlet. Unlike Beaufort inlet, Bogue
was narrow, shallow, and didn’t seem to have any good markers.
We got closer to take a good look, only to see a beach (with
car headlights on it), and no apparent inlet at all… This is more or less what it looked like on the GPS:
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| Looks like water to me... |
…but all we could see was one massive beach with rather
large crashing waves. No inlet.
We were getting
closer though, involuntarily riding waves crashing towards the beach. I decided now was a time to use what little
engine time we had at our disposal and gunned it back out to deeper
waters.
With the light fading fast and
no way of telling where the "inlet" part of Bogue Inlet really was, we decided we had no choice but to skip the overnight rest area and keep moving
towards Wilmington. To do so, we would
have to put a lot of distance between us and the coast, because we would need
to get around the massive “Restricted Area”.
It became more and more obvious as
we approached the restricted area that it was no joke, it was lit by a huge
flare constantly, and from miles away we could see the “fence” of beacons that
outlined its edge- on top of that there were muffled booming noises coming from
that general direction. All of that
combined with the information about submerged explosives/mines that we got from
our chart and it was clear that we shouldn’t mess with the military.
Just about then, as we were getting used to the idea of a
very uncomfortable night of wind, waves, and avoiding the military, we noticed
the Coast Guard approaching us from the direction of the inlet.
They had seen us from the coast and assumed we were in
trouble; I didn’t have the VHF radio on, so we didn’t hear them trying to hail
us either. Oops, my bad…
Anyway, after a lifetime of reassuring the circling coast
guard patrol (and myself) that we were OK and weren’t in need of formal
assistance the wind had only gotten stronger, and the swells were getting
pretty rough. While I wasn’t too worried
about the structural state of the hull, seeing the steel rigging snapping
between noodle-loose and too-tight got me nervous and we pulled in the sails to
keep from demasting the boat…
Normally, the captain would cut the motor on… which we
couldn’t do. So we found ourselves
looking at a stronger wind, that was blowing the wrong way, a motor we couldn’t
count on, and sails that might break the camel’s back. The nausea was bad enough when the weather
was nice, and the nausea was bad enough riding crashing waves, the nausea was
really bad with the Coast Guard patrol circling the boat taking down all our
information… but none of it was as nauseating as floating along without any
forward propulsion or method of directing the boat into the waves… that were still
getting bigger. We were adrift in
mounting storm conditions. Inside, the
cabin was already strewn with every imaginable item that was totally useless at
the time. Nothing was left on the
shelves, and the floor was invisible under all my personal belongings piled
knee high. Things were only getting
worse. Something had to be done.
Although it might not have been hopeless to head into the
wind and try and get around the restricted area I decided it would be safer to
turn the wind direction to our advantage and let it blow us back to where we
came from, where we belonged at that time.
I pulled the headsail out just enough to give me some drive, with the
headsail rolled out less than a third the wind was plenty strong enough to use
that to point us back towards Beaufort. So
that’s what we did, for hours we backtracked with a handkerchief in the dark.
The swells were still massive, but they were pretty regular
which helped because unlike movies would lead you to believe, they are almost
impossible to see silhouetted against the stars:
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| A fabricated image(yes it's supposed to be dark) to give you the impression of what the waves look like at night... this particular one is right next to the boat |
The big violent ones don’t look like it, while the most
harmless ones can look scarier than the rest.
So continuing to get bashed around I looked for anything to take my mind
off the danger, cold, and nausea.
I stumbled across a game I dubbed “Seabird Slalom” after hearing
an uncharacteristic “thud” and laughing at the incredibly surprised and awkward
escape of a sleeping seabird- my first “roadkill” (it flew away just fine). It still boggles my mind to some degree how I
was able to run into a bird with my slow moving banged up boat… Keep in mind that the boat was making a lot
of noise in that wind, with ropes smacking the mast a few times a second, the
rigging snapping to and fro in the gusts, and the waves slapping the hull.
If you’re at all afraid of the dark I don’t recommend the
experience. The sleeping
seabirds a few feet away, were no more defined than a plastic jug...
This was definitely the darkest chapter in the Big Venture
thus far, without a trustworthy engine and rigging that was not inspiring
confidence, I was still looking at the prospect of re-entering Beaufort Inlet
in wind-storm conditions.
Apparently, I
wasn’t the only one concerned with our immediate future. Antonio told me later that during one of his
shifts a spotlight on shore tracked us for miles.
… and miles and miles and miles of this. I suppose I should thank ADHD that in the intense attention that must be paid in a situation like this I
found a sense of… boredom?
Which isn’t
the right word for it of course, but when your nerves have been frayed for that
long without anything really terrible actually happening, you just get sort of
sick of it- it becomes monotonous...
The
inlet meant we were close to a place we could put in for the night, a place we
could sleep, a place we could get off the boat and kiss the ground. But it also meant a harrowing journey through
the unpredictable inlet that was difficult enough to get out of earlier that
day when we were freshly awake and oh yeah, when we could see…
It got really nerve racking when we made the turn into the
main channel leading to the inlet, the wind was coming at more of an angle now,
and so were the waves. The currents
around inlets are unpredictable always, and in these storm conditions in the
dark I was having to quadruple check our position and verify and re-verify
where the markers were- this must have gotten really annoying for Antonio, but
he did a great job reassuring me again and again with the chart, the GPS and
the spotlight we were using to read markers…
Meanwhile the waves were getting more violent and frothy seeming, or was it because we were at a less submissive angle than we had been all night?
Soon we were riding crashing waves that seemed to put
Bernoulli on the same scale as a surfboard.
I was terrified that one of these crashing waves was going to “drop” the
boat on a sandbank, breaking its back and starting the sinking process. I figured it was due time alert the Coast
Guard of our situation.
Antonio had his doubts about bringing the authorities into the picture, but I figured that is what they
are there for, and that their services yield the most benefit for those that
make the call earlier rather than too late…
Antonio made the call on the VHF asking for an escort- Since
my VHF radio is inside the cabin Antonio was having to relay their questions
and answers to me in the cockpit.
Meanwhile, I even more distractedly continued into the gauntlet, I mean inlet, still
without engine power -gnashing my teeth the whole time.
Unfortunately the Coast Guard only arrived after we had
made it through the treacherous mouth of the inlet and were back in protected
waters. First thing they asked as they approached was if we
were carrying any weapons- I immediately thought of my machete… next question
was where it was located on the boat… I immediately thought of the knee deep
swamp of personal belongings...
They asked
question after question about where this and that, I simply kept answering “Probably
on the floor?”
In the end they did escort us the remaining few thousand
feet to a slip just up the way from where we started the previous morning.
The time was about 5:30am when the Coast
Guard left us with a ticket for having expired flares…
I don’t regret calling
them, because we were probably lucky we didn’t need their assistance in the
end, and had we slightly less luck on our side they might have been fishing us
out of the water.
We were utterly exhausted, I’ve probably only been that
psychologically strained a small handful of times in my whole life, and after
grappling with the rudder all day and night and having been so utterly consumed
by stress over survival for such a long time, it was a rather unreal experience
peeling off the wet clothes and literally picking up the pieces of my shattered
life off the floor. But we were safe, as
hard as it was to convince myself it was over.
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| The next day when we awoke safe and sound... pheew! |
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| The sheet from the chart book we used that day AFTER being repaired with masking tape and hung out to dry... |
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| The path we took on that day of adventure, with the Marines' restricted area on the left |
