Silly Sailor Brings a Schedule
27 May 2008 | Holland Bar - Chesapeake Bay
Becalmed and Glad to Be so...
Hello All,
This is part of my getting this webblog up to date. Here is a group e-mail that I sent out from s/v Milenka, using my "DoomsDay Radio' (DDR) on ham frequencies to the shore based WinLink e-mail server.
I was sailing my way south after leaving my employment with an advanced Defence research company, and instead took a pay cut, but a RISE in life style, bu moving aboard and sailing down to Northern Virginia.
---- Original E-mail ---
Dear Friends,
One of the best sayings I've heard is as follows:
The two most dangerous things to bring aboard a sailboat are
1. Gasoline
2. A schedule
Milenka - poor tired dear that she is, has continued southward toward my new home in a mixture of light wind and at other times mere wisps. If I had been able to press-on, likely as not, it would have been a wonderful evening, becoming reacquainted with friends who have just returned from a long cruise to Maine - and that would have been wonderful - tomorrow perhaps. Because here I sit becalmed in nearly total silence, the sea birds for companions and what appear to be pelicans in abundance, doing their precision flying, wing tips often less than one inch from the surface of the water as they glide past. -another just flew buy, almost totally silently, except for the SPLASH! as it dove to catch it's dinner. Yes, silly sailor (me) would have kept sailing toward 'the goal' and missed all of this. I'm beginning to understand that bush pilot who , when asked over a ham radio relay, if he could pick-us up at and specific meadow a day early - no emergency- just time for tequila and steaks. His answer: "Maybe tomorrow...". That's probably a good sailor's schedule: "Maybe tomorrow". You can take the engineer out of the lab, but it takes time to take the lab out of the engineer. ;^) Yes, the wind died completely, just as I made it to this spot and dropped the anchor for the night.
This is coming to you via ham radio, because I am well and truly out of range of cell phones and VHF marine radio to the western shore. Ham's LIVE for times like this! ha ha
My anchorage tonight is near Holland Island Bay (38 08N / 076 07W) . Looking at the map, I just cannot get away from 'work' anywhere! I ran out of wind just as I cleared the lower edge of an unexploded ordinance area - like Aberdeen... weapons, weapons everywhere... , so I REALLY did not want to drop my anchor in there to see what may be left lying around. Some WW II, 16 inch naval shell waiting to explode? Yet, everywhere around me, the sea is literally bubbling with milling schools of fish, and the larger fish who are hunting them for dinner and of course the sea birds as well. My friends, you know me and how much I missed my wilderness when I moved here. Sure, I've traveled a lot, but the east was draining me, until sailing gave me a BIGGER wilderness to explore. The silence is invigorating. The tip-tapping of my keyboard seems too loud. This is what I've been needing.
On the other side, I'm enjoying being a sailing 'purist' and received -once again- a hearty congratulations from Don, owner of my former marina, when I sailed out of the "Z" shaped slip in extremely light air and tacked out the channel toward the open Bay , I am finding that my not having secondary propulsion (unless you count the oar I broke...) is limiting where I can go and the places that I would like to explore down in coastal Virginia, so Dear Friends, cover your eyes if your are frail, but I RadioRay plan to put an outboard on Milenka. That way, I have an engine for gunk holing and also for use in marinas, where, if they do not know me, they will have insurance concerns about tight maneuvering under sail - and I would not blame them. There is also the teensy-weensy problem of running out of wind in shipping channels... Oh, that could prove to be 'non-habit forming'...
Time to set-up the "DoomsDay Radio" radio and send this update.
>Ray
sv. Milenka
Holland Straights
Chesapeake Bay