Shore Leave
27 July 2015 | Salem River, New Jersey
Caroline / 81º, partly cloudy and humid
After 16 months and over 6,000 nautical miles of travel - not including our time aboard Blue Star last summer - we decided it was time to take a short break and visit west coast family and friends. So we booked circuitous but ridiculously inexpensive flights from Baltimore to San Francisco to Portland.
Arriving at Anchorage Marina in Baltimore a week ahead of our July 1 departure date, we spent some time doing the inevitable shore-based errands and securing Thalia. We needed to do our best to make sure she wasn’t stolen, sunk, or smelly by the time we returned July 16. Although the marina is gated and pretty secure, being so far away from our home made us a little anxious that something might happen (stolen bikes or a leaky pipe, for example), and we wouldn’t even know about it. Turns out everything was fine, of course.
Once we left Baltimore, our itinerary included doing a presentation at the San Francisco Yacht Club describing our path to - and life aboard - a sailboat. We also had an ambitious schedule visiting too many people, eating and drinking way too much, in both San Francisco and Portland. We hadn’t seen most of these folks since we left the west coast in January 2014. It turned out to be - as nearly all homecomings are - even busier than we had anticipated.
Living on Land
We’re often asked what it’s like to live on the water, in a very tiny space, without the conveniences of cars, televisions, dishwashers and laundry machines. What was interesting to us, though, was our reaction to being off the boat, sleeping in various friends’ houses and driving around in cars. On top of that, we knew Portland would have changed since we left, and were curious to see how it now stacks up to the many east coast cities in which we’ve been based since leaving.
Here are some of our observations.
Air travel is still a huge hassle compared to boat travel. True, it enables one to cover vast distances in very little time, but what a pain it is! Airport security, flight delays, horrible food, dealing with parking and airport transportation, etc. are all experiences we really have not missed in the past few years. Our very first flight was delayed so much that we would have missed our connection in LA. We ended up having to scramble to get onto a totally different flight - to SFO instead of OAK, and routed through Salt Lake City. This turned out to be a blessing, as it was a shorter distance and got us in a couple hours earlier. But it was stressful. And completely out of our control. (Oh, and what about the carbon footprint of flying vs.sailing? Larry thinks the federal government should give us tax credits for sailing!)
We did a good amount of driving while on our shore leave, borrowing son Mike’s car while in Baltimore, my Mom’s car in Marin County, and an extra car of friends Julie and Craig’s in Portland. Plus various friends and family members drove us around. With the exception of our friend Jake - who rides his bike most places - it now seems to us that everyone drives everywhere, even short distances. Of course, we used to do that, too. But until we got away from that lifestyle, we didn’t even notice it.
After more than a month on land driving rather than walking or riding bikes, we started feeling like we were gaining back the weight we’d lost, and losing muscle tone. And the accompanying frustrations of dealing with inconsiderate, texting, and just plain bad drivers bothered us, not to mention traffic that was even worse than we’d remembered.
Air conditioning is an interesting subject for us. We don’t have it, and needless to say, we’ve been spending a lot of time in places where it would be very welcome indeed. But now that we’ve literally acclimated to living without it, we’re realizing just how freezing cold most Americans keep things! Restaurants, stores, and movie theaters are particularly bad. I really welcome the relief of walking into an air conditioned building on a hot, humid day, but if it’s so cold that I have to put on a sweater, I’m thinking maybe that’s colder than it needs to be. I know most Europeans would agree with that.
Other aspects of our brief stint on land, though, have been wonderful. Being able to take reasonably long showers - even in drought-stricken California - was a pleasure. Loading dishes into a machine was nice. Having the use of a food processor and a Kitchen Aid mixer was a treat. And being able to do laundry whenever we liked - without having to leave the house - made me realize how much trouble we have to go to, to get this simple task done.
Marin County
I grew up in Belvedere in Marin County. Visiting this summer, it didn’t seem all that much different to me than it ever has. It’s stunningly beautiful, the weather is great, and the real estate prices are stratospherically high. These things have always been true, though, so no surprises there.
We had a wonderful time while in Marin. My sister and her youngest son, as well as my brother, his wife, and both of their kids, all made it to town to visit while we were there. We also saw nearly all of our old friends.
The presentation at the yacht club was a 40 minute talk and slideshow to about 50 people, hosted by Mom’s beau Al as an evening cocktail event. Larry and I both felt it went really well, and it was fun to share our experiences and tell some of our tales. Many of the people there have known me since I was a kid, so it definitely felt like a homecoming to return to the place where I learned to sail to share our story.
Portland
Somehow, in just a year and a half, Portland went and grew up on us. It’s gotten very crowded and expensive in that time - so little time for such big changes! We saw road and building construction projects everywhere, and the traffic is much worse. Real estate friends told us that home values have skyrocketed. This was a little shocking to us because it made us realize we can no longer afford to live in the place we called home for so many years.
Portland has always had an amazing rich - and mercurial - food and restaurant scene, and that, too, has continued to grow. Gone were several places we used to enjoy, but many more have taken their places. The food truck scene is as lively and wonderful as ever. The city doesn’t strike me as being quite as clean as it used to, but the people are still friendly to strangers and the overall vibe hasn’t changed much.
We got to visit with many friends either one-one-one, or at one of the great parties our two hosts threw for us. We were sad not to be able to catch up with more old friends, but there was so little time, as it turned out.
Baltimore
Just about everyone we saw on the west coast was concerned about our being in Baltimore, given the recent unrest there. And not to make light of those appalling actions and the resulting violence, it was nevertheless rather exaggerated in the media, as is often the case.
We saw more of Baltimore this time around because we were there longer, and had a car at our disposal much of that time. To a west coaster, Baltimore is both beautiful and terrible, depending upon where you are. The architecture and history in the city are wonderful. As with many American cities, entire neighborhoods have gentrified, making them much more pleasant to visit, but disenfranchising those who historically lived there. And parts of Baltimore are really sad - what were once lovely old row houses are now sagging, boarded up, covered with graffiti and surrounded by litter.
But still, there’s something about Baltimore that we both find really appealing. It is such a very real place, not pretentious, full of a lot of down-to-earth people who love simple pleasures. For instance, when our son Mike and daughter-in-law Megh were out of town, Megh’s parents found out we’d never had soft-shelled crabs. They promptly invited us over for a traditional meal prepared by Megh’s 80-year-old grandfather, Dennis. I think Dennis and John went to a good deal of trouble finding those crabs - the supply is very fickle - but find them they did. We were treated to an enormous meal of crab dip on Old Bay-seasoned crostini, huge sandwiches with the pan-fried crabs layered with tomato and lettuce, plus corn on the cob, cole slaw, and potato salad. It was such a treat!
Coincidentally, both Larry’s sister Maureen and my brother Dan had trips to DC while we were here, so we got to see each of them. With Maureen and Larry’s kids, we took a water taxi over to Fort McHenry and then did a walking tour of Fell’s Point. When Dan was here, we gave him a tour of Thalia and then drove up to have dinner with Mike and Megh, so he could finally meet our daughter-in-law and see where they live.
Moving On
Despite - or perhaps because of - all the fun we managed to have the entire five weeks Thalia was at dock, we got down to business and got some work done the last week we were in Baltimore, in anticipation of moving on.
I sanded the exterior teak and added two more coats of varnish. Larry did diesel and outboard engine maintenance projects, checked over all our systems, designed and built a new bilge pump control system, and did countless small repairs. Thalia got a good scrubbing, and we drained and then refilled her water tanks.
We both worked on removing hardware and stripping old varnish off a cockpit table that friends Randy and Sharon - who have the same boat as us, with a new table - were kind enough to give us. We managed to get it sanded, but not re-varnished - that will have to happen down the road (so to speak, of course).
We stocked up on some needed boat supplies, rode our bikes to a couple of grocery stores to provision, borrowed Mike’s car for a run to a great liquor store to stock up on wine, beer, and gin, and made one last trip to the Fells Point farmers market on Saturday to load up on veggies and fruit. After a lunch Saturday with all our east coast kids, we were at last ready to move on.
Heading North
Sunday we left the marina, with me at the helm so I could get some needed experience maneuvering in a crowded marina (it went great!).
We stopped for fuel, and headed down the Patapsco River into the Chesapeake and up to a favorite, remote anchorage in the Sassafras River. It wasn’t quite as remote this time as it was last fall - this was Sunday afternoon and there were an astonishing number of power boats out having fun. But they all left by evening, and we were alone with one other sailboat anchored a mile or two away, and a pair of bald eagles. What a pleasant, quiet, reflective evening it was, after so much hustle and bustle this summer!
Tonight we’re anchored in the Salem River in New Jersey, just over the state line from Delaware. We had an uneventful day motoring up through the north end of the Chesapeake Bay and through the C&D Canal into the Delaware River. If we were to turn north up the river from here, it would take us to Philadelphia. Intriguing, but we are instead heading south tomorrow to Cape May, New Jersey, then on up to Atlantic City and Sandy Hook in an effort to avoid a repeat of that long passage we took to Block Island last fall. Our destination this time is the Maine Coast, the first time either of us will have visited that state.