Slept aboard Vibrant and after the tension of the first day we slept well despite the cramped V shaped space of the forward berth. The starboard locker door could be closed on the V- berth to make it private and on the inside of the locker door, which was the outside when you used the door to enclose the V berth was a plaque that read, CAPTAINS QUARTERS. That simple little sign made my gut tighten because I understood all too well the responsibilities that went with that title and how rusty my sailing skills were. But I reasoned that sailing was a lot like riding a bike and slept well.
We had to wait for the tide when we got up the next morning so we used marina bikes and rode to a local breakfast spot. Coffee and a hearty breakfast later we were aboard VIBRANT and preparing to depart. Got he engine started - batteries on, ignition switch on, choke, starter button. Engine turns over and starts immediately. Go below and open the valve that pulls water through the engine for cooling. All lines recovered and we are under way!
Immediate turn to port out of the slip and follow the buoys out - red right returning so that means red left leaving. So what side do you leave the green ones on? Jeez...been a long time! We clear the breakwater and are in the bay...there's a little breeze so it's time to put the sails up. Head to wind, main sail goes up, but the top batten fouls on the lazy jacks. Lazy jacks are a rig that is supposed to catch the mainsail when you drop it. Prevents the sail from spilling all over the deck. It's a great idea but I'd never sailed with one and the dang thing was really causing a lot of problems. We lowered and raised the sail, then lowered and raised the sail, and finally got the sail up. Whew!
Then the big test - the jenny. Would it set properly? Holding my breath I asked Ron to set the jenny. The damn thing blossomed like magic as the wind caught it. OMG! How cool was that?!!
OK, so now we head south with the wind a little aft of the beam. We play around with the GPS and the auto pilot. The auto pilot makes unexpected major heading changes so we turn it off. Learn later that the control head is supposed to be anchored to one of the rails but the fixture had been broken. SO the unit is essentially useless...oh well.
So we leave the engine on and are making about 6 miles an hour. Wow! We turn the engine off and slow to 3-4 mph and love the quiet - but 3-4 mph is not going to get us down the bay so we start the engine again.
A little later the wind picked up and we killed the engine. Without the engine, the water slap in the hull and the wind in the rigging surfaced. Oh, oh, oh... this is what I remember from all those years ago at the Academy and later racing Lightnings on the Potomac.
Well the rest of the day we sailed down the Bay with the wind on our beam or a little aft. For a sailboat we screamed at 6 or 7 mph - what a glorious day. We traded off on the wheel, I got to spend time in the bow pulpit with the wind in my face and the bow slap of water in my ears. Eva fixed sandwiches and we drank water and sports drinks. Under the Bay Bridge and past the Severn River and the small trade school I attended there. Where I learned to sail over thirty years ago.
Now it's about three in the afternoon and we have to figure out where we are going to spend the night. We have a Chesapeake Bay spiral bound set of navigation charts and a book that describes all the marinas on the Bay. We choose Deale, Md for our overnight and Eva gets on her cell phone and calls the Marina we pick and makes a transient reservation. Ain't technology grand.
We fire up the iron jenny, point her into the wind, drop the main (the jack stays work like a charm) and retract the jenny and that works like a charm as well. Ron does a great job making her shipshape as we motor into the inner harbor. Red, right returning works now. I have studied the charts, looked at the pictures, but this is my first time into an unknown port and I miss the buoy that marks a split in the channel - and as we all search for the marina we are staying at - we go hard aground. Oh crap! Back down - not working - try to go forward at full throttle and bull my way through. No dice. And there is a restaurant on the shore not fifty yards away with a deck full of evening diners - probably all laughing their a** off at the dumby that just ran aground.
This may be the most publicly embarrassing moment I've ever experienced. And with my training at Navy, well grounding a ship is the end of a career. To say I am mortified is, well, I was mortified. But don't worry, it only got worse. Eva has been on the cell phone and has called the local Boat US tow service and their boat shows up to help out. My plan was to wait for the tide and hope we would float free - but I was so wrapped up in my misery I hadn't told anyone.
We had purchased Boat US towing insurance only two days before and Eva did what made sense to her. It was exactly the right thing to do and after the tow boat skipper got us hooked up he yanked us off the bottom, much to the delight of the onlookers who cheered wildly, and towed us to our final destination.
Dinner at the local Tiki Bar and few beers later and I was still mortified. In fact I have been dancing around writing this for over a year now. That's a pretty good measure of just how embarrassed I was. It's taken all this time to work through that, to accept that failure, to laugh at it, to laugh at myself, and to accept that in MY navy of one boat, I couldn't just fire myself. In the end, no one got hurt, a lot of people got a good laugh at my expense, and I learned alot about the boat, my wife, and myself.
What could be better?
