September 24th, 2003 Wednesday. Our first day.

We were up at 5:30, and we had a quick cup of coffee. Then while St John was getting the boat, I stripped the beds, put stuff in plastic bags for winter, put sheets and towels in the machine, and loaded the truck with perishables for the boat. I drove to the dock, expecting to see Meadowlark any moment, and pulled the first load to the pier, but there were no boards for 10 feet, so it was back to the house, and a quick carry of all our stuff to the beach.
I was feeling that this cruising life was pretty strenuous when ML came around the corner. St John saw me on the beach and kept coming toward me.
"Do you have the bags?"
"Yes, on the board walk."
"Load them aboard."

The front of ML's hulls were just touching the beach, looking massive. I handed up the bags and at 7am, put my foot up onto the strut that holds the bow sprit. I was aware of the enormity of that little step. We were leaving the land, what was familiar, and would be living on the water for the next 10 months.
I wrote a lot our first day. I was off-balanced by what we were doing, and although we had brought ML down from Maine, I didn't have a frame of reference on her, or in her yet. At 11:45 I wrote: we are out of sight of land, a strange feeling, one of great privacy and isolation, of disconnection from the land, from what I know, almost from my ground of being. This water world: the sky is the dome; will a giant shake us and fill the sky with snow? I was a little frightened by it all.
The motor churned away pushing us toward Block Island at about 6 knots. I go below and see SJ's log. Just the facts. I wrote: if we could put these two journals to music, his would be the steady bass, the tubas and cellos. Mine would be the emotional counterpoint, the violins and piano and flute hurrying, anxious, questioning. I tend to hide from the strident, the critical, even from myself when I'm on edge, sad…pensive.

SJ has been trolling all day with a huge hook and heavy line off the stern. He switched lures three times, and seems to enjoy looking at his tackle box with its multi-colored plastic fish food. Reminds me a little of the plastic displays at a bakery or in a sushi restaurant. What would I bite at? A plastic Krispy Kreme donut? A chunk of chocolate or a big Hersey's bar?

September 25th, Thursday.

We picked up a mooring last night in Block Island's Great Salt Pond. I gave Kerri and John Spier a call this morning, and they came out in their dinghy before they went to work. We met them in Maine two years ago when SJ spotted them on a Maine Cat. We saw them again at the MECAT rendezvous in RI mid-September. Kerri brought fresh basil and John offered us their mooring for tonight-saving us $30. They also invited us to dinner at their house tonight, and are lending us their car for the day.
The world is a better place today! We moved the boat to their mooring, and left our dink tied to their huge new Kelsall catamaran. They are planning to take it south, boat school their three dear children (Dave 10, Sam 9 and Sally 6). We found their house and Cherokee with the keys in it, as promised. All day we explored the island, finding a good bookstore, a gaggle (a stratigraphy?) of geologists examining the erosion from Hurricane Isabel, and a nice restaurant for lunch. The rolling hills, kettle lakes, and open meadows charmed us.
As the sun set, we changed our clothes and got into our dink to go to dinner. I love that contrast: wearing nice clothes, carrying a bottle of wine, and then into the inflatable. I guess I associate the dink with our dirtiest clothes and our wettest feet. We motored into the inner harbor, then under a bridge and into a tidal pond. We recognized the Spier's house, tied the dink to a tree, and walked up the hill.
John and Kerri built their house with their own hands, and have been in it for three years. It has five bedrooms, and curves in a graceful circle. There are books everywhere, no televisions, and in the basement John and the boys are building a mahogany skiff which they will take south. Sam explained to me that they have to sand down the epoxy, then paint her. The boys will value their skiff-not because they could sell her for $500, but because they built her with their own hands. True value. And after working a long day, on some evenings John might prefer to lie down with a good book. But he's giving his boys a sense of worth by putting his time into them.

September 26th, Friday.

Comes sunny and calm in Block Island's Great Salt Pond. We are off by 8:20 to catch Long Island's flowing tide which has a current of 3.5 knots and turns at noon. We'll go into Fisher's Island, "Playground of the rich and famous," says St. John. It is very warm here on Block Island Sound. There are small swells and about 4k of wind. "A short day," says SJ.
In his book on Block Island geology, Les Sirkin says: "After the glacier retreated from Block Island, it paused to form a major recessional moraine to the north. This moraine is seen in the west to east trend of hills and islands that line up the Roanoke Point moraine of the northeast coast of Long Island with the Fisher's Island Moraine south of the Connecticut coast, and then eastward to the Charleston Moraine and Point Judith Moraine in southern Rhode Island." The formation of these islands fascinates me.
Block has a lot of clay because as the glacier retreated 19,000 years ago a lake formed between the glacier and the moraine. Into this lake flowed melting glacial waters murky with silt. The silt became clay as the land became dry, and that clay holds together portions of Block Island's seaside cliffs. What did that lake look like? Grey and icy or blue and warm on a temperate August day? What fish swam in that fresh water? Did horseshoe crabs or loggerhead turtles leave their tracks on the beaches?
Les Sirkin's book describes two kinds of glacial runoff. One is water-driven: outwash. Another is called meltout till, deposits created during the melting or "wasting" of the glacier. Imagine a dirty ice cube melting on the kitchen counter. After the water evaporates, what remains is a pile of jumbled-together sand, gravel, dirt, in no particular order. That would be meltout till. But outwash is a different story.
Rushing water carries heavy stuff-boulders if the water is really rushing. As the water slows, only the smaller stones bounce along. Finally in the slowest flow, only silt and powdery clays are moved along. So the jumble of material in a melting outwash is sorted, organized, and layered.

September 27th. Saturday.

Comes cloudy with drizzle. We are anchored off Duck Island in Long Island Sound. At 7:30 am there is a strong east wind of 10-15 which should push us down the Sound. Maybe I'm learning to relax in this process. We go as fast as we go. This is our 4th day onboard, and we've had lots of time to read, write, learn.
11 am. I've spent the morning reading geology and Annie Dillard. I think the life of the mind will become even more important to me here on ML. That, and keeping dry and clean, which may be impossible. I find Annie Dillard soothing, fascinating.
When I photograph, if I put the light behind me there is depth, three-dimensionality, colors are deeper. Face the sun and our irises contract the pupil to a pinprick. Things appear flattened, in silhouette, and details disappear. We contract our pupils automatically when fearful, have sharp vision but fewer details, less depth perception. Isn't that true? When I'm scared or even just defensive, I miss details, shadowings, subtleties. When relaxed our pupils dilate, we become bella donna, beautiful women, soft and open and calm. (And of course the drug belladonna dilated blood vessels, but it was first used by Italian women for a beautiful, big-eyed look.)
With the sun at my back I'm warmed, I can see deeply. I'm in the flow of photons. Annie wrote about that flow which is called solar wind.
"It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff." (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 35.)
Lovely Annie! The girl can write!
Perhaps cruising forces the activity of my brain to slow. Living our busy summer life, it is as if boulders get pushed along in the current, in the activity. Here on the sea with hours of quiet, the boat becomes a sanctuary. And in a safe place, a sacred place, activity almost ceases. Then ideas emerge, connections form, and learning can occur. It is then that even particles held in suspension filter down and come to rest, and my mind's waters clear.

September 28th, Sunday.

Rainy but not cold.
Not being clean is hard on me, harder than I ever imagined. Last night it took me an hour to wash, dry and stow our dinner dishes. I've stopped actually washing them in hot, soapy water. L. Francis Herreshoff in his 1950's classic on cruising told me to wipe them off with the napkins, wipe with a soapy sponge and rinse, then dip into hot, hot clean water. They dry themselves. I tried that and did the dishes in 15 minutes. Much better. I stowed the dishes and I'm trying to stow my occasional feelings of dismay and keep my mouth shut.
Today we motored through New York City. Our autopilot is still broken, so we take turns on the wheel. Sinjon generously gave me the wheel as we careened through the Hell Gate at 12 knots speed over ground, but I demurred. Too rough for me. The city did not put her best face toward the water. It felt a little like a subway ride with tenement windows and warehouses facing us. However, we saw two beautiful Gothic ruins on Brother Island and Roosevelt Island as we sped by. Because it was Sunday, there was little traffic, but the East River was full of debris and trash.
We looked to our west and there was the Empire State Building, and then it was gone. We were under the Brooklyn Bridge, about eight others, and then out into the Upper Bay. The Statue of Liberty looked graceful and regal, and Ellis Island looked shiny and new as we motored along. I thought of Emma Lazarus' poem (The New Colossus) which I think is engraved on the base of the statue.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

And I thought to myself, I have to get over feeling so wretched. This is the journey of a lifetime.
We anchored in Great Kills, Staten Island, New York on a mooring. As soon as the mooring loop was around the cleat, I felt lighter, easier. Maybe I'm just feeling tempest-tost.

September 29th. Monday.

We are up at 6:30, drinking hot tea in a chilly cabin. As we motor around Sandy Hook, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge looks beautiful in the rising sun. What if immigrants from Europe first saw that graceful suspension bridge? It makes me think that anything is possible.
All morning we have motor sailed over huge swells from Hurricane Juan which leaves lines of white foam on the Jersey beaches. The wind is pricking on, as dear Henry Plummer would say. His steady good nature in The Boy, Me and the Cat is an inspiration to me, and reminds me of my captain. The wind from the west pushes the water into choppy waves.

September 30th. Tuesday.

We sailed all night, and I'm writing in the morning sun which is shining as if nothing happened. Can't fool me! I was white-knuckle scared last night. The wind didn't moderate, as it is supposed to do at sunset, but increased. By 10 pm it was blowing 20-25 and waves were breaking over the hulls, washing up onto the bridge deck windows. During my watch I woke Sinjon twice to put in reefs, and wondered if I should be wearing my wetsuit, which would keep me warm and buoyant if I had to swim to New Jersey.
Sailing past Atlantic City around midnight was fun, and took my mind off the awful wind. One building had a 10-minute repeating light show. The entire 15-story building turned yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, striped, starry, striped again, and started over. But the waves were getting bigger, washing over the bimini roof a couple of times. And we had to keep going down the coast with no safe harbor until the sun rose and we could find our way into Cape May.
Scary, at 2am climbing onto the bimini roof to free the reefing line that was caught around a boom cleat. As long as I had a task at hand, I was focused. But grabbing the shroud to climb back onto the bridge deck I looked at the black water and thought, if I miss and fall in, I'm gone. SJ will never find me. Water was sloshing up through the outboard engine mounts which are about five feet above the water. I stood dressed in thick fleece, my new yellow suit that salts call their "oilies", and tried not to wake SJ a third time. Finally 4am came. He roused up, cheerful and steady as always, drank a cup of soup, and took over. I lay down for 90 minutes of sleep, and woke to a lightening in the sky.
There were other moments when the Undertoad (remember The World According to Garp?) was much too close. Darkness outside Cape May, and a tug radios: "sailboat south of me, do you see my light? I have to get passed you, over."
I've used the radio a couple of times. I respond: "Hi tugboat. I see you and I'm staying away. Oh, over." Oh man.
I cannot tell how close the shore is. I can see lights and the outlines of houses, and our depth is 15 feet. Well, if I run us aground we won't sink. We'll just be battered by waves, but remain a level platform. Oh dear.
The sun rises, we follow the night fishing fleet into the channel, find a spot out of the channel and drop the anchor. Meadowlark warms up in the morning sun, and we try to sleep a little.
Impossible. So I take a shower, using the garden sprayer.

October 1st. Wednesday.

This is my lucky day, I met Sinjon three years ago today. We have a beautiful sunrise in Cape May Harbor. Yesterday we were both stupid from lack of sleep. We went to Utche's Marina where a supercilious Wayne smiled and repeatedly told me "No" when I asked about a shower? Laundromat? We had a terrible and expensive lunch at a harborside restaurant and watched a bedraggled, filthy white heron waiting for a fishing boat's leavings. All in all, Cape May was not a good place.
We are following a fleet of "snowbirds" out the Cape May canal and into Delaware Bay. The moment I took the wheel, the wind increased to 20 and we had the main and big jib (screecher) up. SJ was indisposed at that moment, but emerged quickly from below very much disposed to furling the jib. "A line squall is no joke," he explains. Line squall? I can only see some dark clouds on the horizon.
The wind backed and for most of the day we motored up the Delaware Bay with the wind on our nose. Then down the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal with the tide going 8k! where we saw two bald eagles. We emerged in the Ch. Bay as the sun was setting, saw a salty catamaran anchored, and near her. As we pulled along side we complimented the couple.
"We made her ourselves, with our own hands! Come visit."
7pm. As St. John promised me: "October in the CB, Babe!" We dropped the hook which took a quick and deep bite into the mud of the Elk River. I can almost tie stevedore knots to rig the bridle, but not quite. SJ is right handed, and I am not, so I have to translate what he does with a quick and fluid motion into a mirror image, process it in my right brain, and try to make it work. As my beloved Clifford Ashley says:
"A knot is never 'nearly right'; it is either exactly right, or it is hopelessly wrong, one of the other; there is nothing in between."
Tonight it took me seven tries to get it exactly right.
I radioed the lovely couple near us, using channel 16. I stumbled through radiospeak, as it is such a new language for me.
"Peace, this is Meadowlark, come back."
"Meadowlark, go to 17."
"Hi Peace, I'm..a little new at this. Over."
"You're doing fine. [nice lady!] Can you visit us? I have cocoa."
"Thank you. Can we come over in the morning?"
"That's fine. Enjoy your evening. Peace out."
We had listened to the radio all day. Many people are on their way south, and several knew each other from earlier years. I heard one seasoned salt describe Monday night off the Jersey shore as "stiff winds of 20-25 and very rough." That made me feel less lubberly. In mariner understatement such a passage is called 'boisterous' by our dear Henry M. Plummer and Francis Herreshoff.
Boisterous is a bunch of five-year-olds at a birthday party. Or maybe Christmas morning in most American living rooms. When seas are smashing across our bows, when seas are washing into our bridge deck up the motor wells, when we have two reefs in, that's not boisterous. It's looking the Undertoad in the eye. Henry says of his son H. "Once or twice he has seen the edge of the big shadow not so very far away and has neither batted an eye nor quivered a lip. He'll do. Bene, it is well." (p. 116b)
Let me tell you! It wasn't just my lip that was quivering up on the bimini top, or while I was standing at the wheel that night.
Sinjon said, "I tried to get some sleep, but all I heard was gasps, 'oh dears,' and 'uhhs'." True. Not boisterous. Never did the dawn look so magnificent. But that was Monday night. Now we are here in the calm Elk River with fresh river water, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra CD playing, and I'm writing my journal.

October 2nd. Thursday, our ninth day.

Comes clear and cold. Had trouble sleeping due to the cold. We don't have a thermometer, but it's probably in the low 40's. Stove is on and hot tea is making the morning fine. The sun is rising at 7am.
I have old friends in Still Pond, but we may bypass Still Pond and go to Chestertown for services. We both need laundry, provisions and showers.
5:45 pm. We went out into the Bay around 9am and it was blowing 20-25 with gusts to 27, 28. We were taking green water onto the plastic bridge windows and spray on the bimini roof. SJ wisely decided to do a 180, but surprisingly I found it more exhilarating than terrifying, although I'm losing track of what is thrilling and what causes abject terror. We dropped anchor in the Bohemia River, went ashore with dirty laundry and Tide! I wanted to lie face down on the black top parking lot and press my body into the earth. I don't think SJ was amused.
We did two loads of laundry and after days of anticipation, I forgot my shampoo. So I used Tide. Actually my hair looks shiny with great body.
We got aboard Peace this am before we left. They did build their boat in England themselves, and have been living aboard for over five years. She single-handed a 28' Shannon sloop across the Atlantic. How does one DO that anyway? She told us several stories-but her parting words to me were: your boat can take it, don't worry about the wind or water. I'm almost there.

October 3rd, Friday. Our 10th day.

Woke up at 6:30 in the Bohemia River. The morning temp was in the 40's. We have fleece leggings and coats, flannel sheets, and fleece blankets, which do the trick.
We are heading to Rock Hall today-30 miles. At the moment, the wind is calm and the Bay is almost flat.
We picked up a mooring in Rock Hall, bypassing Chestertown due to the cold weather. We want to get south. While SJ slept off a bug I caught a ride into town from a nice guy at the marina and bought four bags of groceries. Then I hung out at the entrance to the market and within moments a woman asked me if I needed a ride. They were boatin' people also, and when I thanked them and offered to pay something, they refused saying, "Pass it on." I always feel a little magical when the universe delivers like that.

October 4th, Saturday. Our 11th day.

Comes windy and dark in Swan Creek, Rock Hall, MD. Both of us are feeling punk, so we have a day to read and write. I'm feeling discouraged by how long it takes to make a meal. SJ came up with lots of suggestions, which didn't seem to help. He' irritable now (rare!).
"What's causing it?" I ask. "Questions from your wife?"
"Yes, pretty much."

October 5th, Sunday. Our 12th day.

Woke up in Rock Hall and left at 7:30 for Annapolis. We were under the Bay Bridge by 10am. It's about 60 today with the wind at 10-15k. We should be in Annapolis by 2pm.
We found a vacant mooring in Spa Creek and I went ashore for two hours, wandering around looking for a shower. I found a nice book store and an internet café, so we can connect with our family land friends. A hard day.
October 6th, Monday. Our 13th day.

Woke at 5:30 in Spa Creek. The physical adjustment to living on a boat has been tough for me. Lots of new aches which ibuprofen cover, but I am probably taking too many. Read for an hour as the sky lightened and drank hot water, honey, butter and powdered milk which warmed me up.
I'm reading a wonderful book-Tuning the Rig-by Harvey Oxenhorn. Harvey was a gentle, thoughtful young man who died in a car accident in 1990. I think he was 37 when he died. So sad, so sad. His insight I find particularly helpful. Perhaps being dirty all the time didn't bother him too much, but it's constantly on my mind. There is isolation on a boat, and the physical discomforts are with me all the time. This sounds like a litany of complaints, but it is only when I'm in pain that I even notice physical discomfort. I am not a complainer, or am I?
On page 7 Harvey says: "Ships are a very sensual environment…If you listen they will tell you things." Maybe I need to listen to the quiet motion of the boat, let it calm me, drink sweet tea and gentle myself.
After two weeks on board Harvey writes: "There is no time, none at all, to get ahold of yourself, to make sense of what goes on." That helps me. Most cruising books don't talk about the adjustment of the wife, or any nonsailor, to living on board. Just knowing that the wall I'm hitting is normal is good.
The day starts. Sinjon suggests breakfast in town, and eating greasy Maryland scrapple was fun. I found a shower at the harbor master's. Thank You Jesus! Dick and Lynn Vermulen (the designer of the Maine Cat and his wife) were on board when I returned, fixing the autopilot and some other things. They offered to drive me to the Laundromat, so at 4pm off we went. As soon as the Annapolis boat show starts, I'm looking for a collapsible crate to schlep stuff. Our laundry got pretty heavy walking back!

October 7th. Tuesday, our 14th day.

We walked around Annapolis and met up with friends of St. John's from Philadelphia. A good day.

October 8th. Wednesday, our 15th day.

I rented a car and went to Baltimore today to see my God daughter and her darling daughter. After a few errands in Annapolis, I was back on board by 3:30. It is warm!! and sunny, and we dressed up and had a delicious dinner at the Annapolis Yacht Club.

October 9th, Thursday, our 16th day.

After a morning at the boat show where I found the crate I wanted, I returned to ML. I scrubbed the boat and meself, then sat in the sun reading Harvey's book. I love that Harvey.

October 10th, Friday, our 17th day.

We left Annapolis at 9am when the Spa Creek Bridge opened, and headed out to St. Michael's. The day broke overcast, foggy with wind around 15 knots.
Being in Annapolis was good, lots of time on land helped me appreciate cruising. I happened upon a man I taught with at Ruxton, and after I told him what we were doing he said, "You are doing what many people dream of doing." True. I need to step up.

October 11th, Saturday, our 18th day.

Overcast and breezy in St. Michael's which is a charming village with an outstanding Maritime Museum. SJ's cousin came down from Easton to say hello. Sinjon's Lucian is driving down from Philly to see his Dad. That's a 4 hour round trip, a labor of love on his part, I think.
There are beautiful old sailboats here, skipjacks and bugeyes that have been restored for the museum. They have the most graceful hulls, low and sweeping for tonging oysters. For years, it was illegal to fish for oysters from a powered boat. Not any more, and naturally the stocks are being depleted. We saw an oyster as large as a shoe box, which was the norm 100 years ago. One oyster had to be cut into four pieces to eat. Imagine!

October 12th, Sunday. Our 19th day.

We are sailing down the Bay in 15 knots of wind on our starboard beam. Waves are small. "Perfect wind for getting south," says SJ.
5pm. We motored and sailed all day, pulling into beautiful St. John Creek near Soloman's Island just before sunset.
On the pier at Solomon's was The Pride II, Baltimore's goodwill schooner. She looked magnificent in the slanting light of sunset. She is off tomorrow for Annapolis to prepare for the Tall Ship Race that leaves Annapolis on the 16th.
It was on this date in 1912 that Henry began his journal, as he and his son and cat prepared to leave.

October 13th, Monday. Our 20th day.

Up early to sail to Smith Island, a small sandy island in the middle of the southern bay. Smith is so close to water level that storms swamp it. People have lived there for 400 years, but the present population is only 350 year-rounders. The k-6 school has 25 students.
We pulled up to the dock after phoning the number we saw on the sign. The wonders of cell phones! Captain Stephen Eades (410-968-3309) met us and helped us with our lines. He was the kindest of dockkeepers, an attractive man in his early 50's with a neatly trimmed white beard. He gently explained that he had a shower and said the drinking water was delicious, which it was. It felt profligate to use so much to wash down Meadowlark. The shower was clean as a whistle with fluffy towels available. And blow-drying my usually curly, dirty hair reorganized me.
Smith Island is often in the news as a final outpost of traditional waterman culture. We walked around the town, and were surprised to see so much trash strewn about and houses in disrepair. Poverty and perhaps apathy are problems here. Stray cats roamed everywhere, many gaunt with weeping eyes.
We spoke to one man who was industriously tending his crab traps. Said he gets $22/dozen for pailers (peelers) and sheddahs. The Smith Island accent is lilting, with most vowels becoming two syllables.
I later asked Captain Steve if he had been born on Smith. "If I had, I couldn't do this job I'm doing," he said. Steve runs the marina, takes people out on charters, pumps gas, and I hope is making money. He works hard.
On the way out to Great Wicomico I photographed a sign that read: "If you join the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, our watermen will become an endangered species." From reading Tom Horton's essay on Smith Island in Bay Country, we learned that the watermen just want to catch crabs or dig for oysters. They want to maintain the fisheries, but they don't want any more limits placed upon them.

October 14th,Tuesday. Our 21st day.

We were up with the sunrise and had a lumpy motor-sail across the bay to a lovely creek that flows into the Great Wicomico River. Some weather is coming in, and St. John wanted a secure anchorage. We dropped the anchor around 2pm in Horn's Harbor. Because ML only draws 2 feet we can go into shallow water, and we were alone in a quiet, brackish little tributary about 100' wide. The hills rose up 100' on either side of the creek, and we felt well-hidden.
While SJ went over his old logbooks I read, did needlepoint, wrote my journal, and actually got a little bored. (my fault, obviously)

October 15th, Wednesday. Our 22rd day.

The wind blew hard and we heard on the radio that the bay had 5' waves. We are in the right place, thanks to SJ's smart decision. We watched two belted kingfishers, a flock of 5 wild turkeys, and some osprey. Cooked some dreary meals by opening cans. Dinty Moore stew, true cruising food, SJ tells me.
"How do you like cruising, darling?"
"Is this cruising?" I ask. Seems we are sitting here doing very little. In fact we aren't moving at all.
St. John nods. "It's all part of it."
That reminded me of an afternoon on Hennery Island when I lived in MD. My neighbor's son wandered over to my house and asked if I would show him how to fish. In the Susquehanna River the fat carp bite on corn and bread, and they are easy to catch. So I said, "Sure Andrew."
We gathered up a hand line, some bread, and walked out to the end of my dock. Andrew baited the hook with a wad of bread, lowered it into the water, and then sat for about 30 seconds.
"Nothing is happening."
"I know, you have to be patient," I said.
"Are we fishing now?" he asked.
I nodded.

October 16th, Thursday. Our 23rd day.

We left early, early for Virginia. We are trying to escape the cold. Meadowlark loves warm weather, I think. We dropped the yank (a Henry Plummer expression) in the Piankatank River, which sounds like the first line of a limerick. There was a young man from Piankatank, who put all his fish in a tank-a-tank. When fish stocks were depleted, the prices got heated, and he laughed all the way to the bank-a-bank.

October 17th, Friday. Our 24th day.

Motored all day as there was no wind, and entered the enormous harbor of Hampton Roads and the port of Portsmouth, VA. There was The Pride tied up to a wharf. Maybe she won the Tall Ship Race. In addition to that graceful schooner there were an aircraft carrier, battle ships of all sorts, tugs, fancy yachts, and fishing vessels. Really a jumble of ships and a busy place. As we passed a red buoy numbered #36, St. John said, "Take a picture of that. It marks mile number one of the ICW." Ahah! There are 1095 miles of the ICW, and we are beginning. Hooray!
Henry went through Portsmouth Harbor and said: "We were mighty tired of that old harbor with its shrieking whistles and uneasy waters. The river wound and twisted along until it fetched us up near noon at the entrance and first and only lock of the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal. Here we were mulct $7.50 for getting dropped 2 ft., but somehow that little drop seemed to separate us entirely from the North and launch us into Dixie waters. The sun was bright and warm, the air a misty blue from smoke drifting over from big fires in Dismal Swamp. The canal stretched straight away a bright blue line framed by the greens and browns of the bank. Oh! it was all so beautiful, so calmy peaceful and still. We tied to a grapevine and muzzled all four feet right into a great oyster strew and then away on our long road of color." (24c)
We got through the uneasy harbor, went under a high bridge (our mast is 46'), and entered the Dismal Swamp Canal. It was like stepping into another world. Suddenly we were in quiet, molasses water on a river. We dropped the anchor in 3' of water, and the sunset made everything pink. Magical.

October 18th, Saturday, our 25th day.

Comes cloudy and windy, but it doesn't matter as we are in the canal! We had a quiet morning, planning on getting to the Deep Creek Lock at 11am, not trying to make the 8:30 opening. It was good to putter around and have time to just be together without a distant destination.
Sinjon decided to reorganize our books this morning, actually before breakfast! He was head camper at his summer camp, and to earn points for his team, he had to keep the little boys in line. He is good at organizing, a natural leader, and his team won his year. Now, where are all my books?
As I write, we are in Deep Creek Lock. The lock tender says they can get up to 25 boats in it. We tie up to the bulkhead and the gates close. Brown water rushes in, raising the level 8'. Everyone is standing at a cleat, holding a line, keeping their boats from scraping against the bulkhead. All over the walls are the names of boats and dates. Of course, I add ours.
Henry went down the other canal, the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal. In 1912 the Dismal Swamp Canal was private, a money-making route for the owners. We were not mulct anything, the canal and locks are maintained by the Corps of Engineers, who dredge, clear up fallen trees, the works. We heard that Hurricane Isabel felled 684 trees in the Dismal Swamp Canal. They cleared them up in about 10 days, and the canal reopened a few days ago.
I just spoke to the woman on a sloop behind us. I jumped right in and asked, "How many times have you done this?"
"This is our fifth," she said.
"How was your first?"
"Hah!" she said. "I lost 25 pounds, hung onto the rail the whole way, and was ready to divorce my husband of 30 years at the end."
"But she was the first to want to do it again the next year," her husband added.
"Yes, it's so beautiful. It will change you, you'll see."
Such an intimate little piece of conversation…with a stranger. And her words helped me so much.
Much too quickly the enormous lock had filled up 8' and the gates were opening into the DS Canal. We filed out, letting other boats pass us, moving along at 5.5 knots with our sails neatly furled. Henry's description would fit the Dismal. The banks rose up 5 feet on either side, with tall Cyprus trees and live oaks lining the narrow passage. The depth was a steady 8-14 feet, and all was quiet.
The canal was surveyed by George Washington in 1789, and one of the stock holders was Patrick Henry. It is the oldest surviving artificial waterway in the United States, and it was dug by slaves. Before and during the Civil War it was used as a refuge by runaway slaves. Amazing history. It was opened for flatboats in 1805 as it wasn't very deep, then deepened in 1826, and enlarged to its present size in 1899. It was purchased by the government in 1929, and the Corps of Engineers have maintained it ever since.
We didn't have enough nerve to taste it, but the reddish brown water was prized by the Navy and by whale ships because it "kept well." The gum-juniper-cypress and cedar tea is supposed to last longer and taste better than any other water on the eastern seaboard. Perhaps the tannin prevents the formation of bacteria.
We motored happily to the South Mills draw bridge. The lock was another 100 yards beyond, and we decided to tie up to the bulkhead on the edge of the canal-go through the last lock tomorrow morning.
We found a convenience store and I made a terrific dinner of corned beef hash with an egg on it, catsup as the veggie, and individual Little Debbie pecan pies for dessert.

October 19th, Sunday. Our 26th day.

Comes cold, clear. We are waiting in the canal for the lock to open at 8:30. It was 43 degrees in Elizabeth City this morning. We got to Elizabeth City at 1pm.
We looked at the chart, and this is the way to do it: Go through Deep Creek Lock at 8:30am. If you need provisions, tie up to the bulkhead on the left as soon as you go through. There is a Food Lion about 100 yards from the canal. Then keep going, through South Mills drawbridge and lock. The schedule is the same as for Deep Creek (8:30, 11, 1:30, 3:30). Get into the Pasquotank River which is wide with a few anchorages. Obviously you cannot anchor in the DS Canal itself. The next morning, go into Elizabeth City.
They have free dockage for 48 hours, and every day there is a wine and cheese party at 4:30 organized by Fred Fearing, the originator of the Rose Buddies. Every boat that comes in gets a fresh rose. The residents of Elizabeth City have an earned reputation for being very helpful. A lovely young woman took us to the market, laundromat and to Walmart, then delivered us with all our bags back to the boat.
While motoring down the Pasquotank, my son Richard reached us. His Outward Bound course went well. He asked, "So how's it going, Mom?" I told him that it was becoming a lot of fun, but that initially it had been very hard for me.
He said, "Mom, there are four words that OB uses to describe a newcomer's adjustment to something difficult. They are: forming, storming, norming, and performing."
"Yes!" I said. "Exactly. Wish I had known about that about 26 days ago."
We discussed how in the forming stage, a person says: I can do this, I can figure it out. But a lot of learning isn't linear, it's more integrative. We have to learn something in a variety of situations, especially on a boat.
The second stage is storming; self-anger which can flip so easily into depression, and anger at the nearest target. As I think about this stage, I'm filled with remorse for angry words I used, but it helps to be able to label it. Giving that behavior a name gives me a modicum of control over it.
The third stage is norming, finding one's balance again. I think by the second week, I was striving for balance and frequently achieved it. Music in my headphones, Annie Dillard, Harvey Oxenhorn, and needlepoint helped.
At moments I'm in the fourth stage, performing. I see that something needs to be done, and how best to do it. But give me a headache and I'm back storming away. Naturally when we are under stress we regress, that's an axiom in psychology.
"But Richard, as conscious as I tried to be, I hit the wall a few times. Believe me."
"Of course you did, Mom. That's normal."
What good words to hear!
"So, are you driving Sinjon crazy?"
I love that Richard!

There we were at the wine and cheese party with about 25 other boaters. I asked Fred Fearing how it all started. He told me this story:
"My wife had died, and I had seven roses I was going to place on her grave. I came out of church and saw seven masts in our anchorage, and decided that I could honor her by giving a rose to each boat. Then I thought, I have a bottle of wine that isn't busy, and a box of crackers. And that's how it started, 20 years ago."
Every afternoon Fred brings wine and cheese for all the boaters; he drives a golf cart with a "Rose Buddy" logo on the front, and has given his city the friendly reputation it has.

October 20th, Monday, our 27th day.

Comes bright and warm. We are out of the harbor by 7:30 heading over to the town of Manteo on Roanoke Island, the site of the first English settlement in our country. No one knows what happened to the "lost colony of Roanoke" ; 89 men, 17 women and 2 children may have starved to death, or may have been absorbed by friendly Indian tribes. One of the children was Virginia Dare, the first English child born in this country.
We tied up to the town dock the first night, and dropped the hook the second night. Manteo has some first-class restaurants, upscale shops, and showers for boaters ($5/day). Because Albemarle Sound is so shallow, we didn't see many monohulls, mostly catamarans that only draw around 2 feet.

October 21st, Tuesday.

We hired a cab for three hours, and had a wonderful tour of Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers' monument, and the Bodie Island Lighthouse. The damage from Isabel was significant. We passed house after house with a yellow notification that condemns it nailed to exposed foundations. The waves washed away a great deal of sand.
I was particularly taken by the architecture and meticulous construction of
the lighthouse. Clearly, it was a structure of great importance, and the designers and builders gave it a nobility that is usually lacking in functional buildings.
Tied up near Manteo is a replica of The Elizabeth, a caravel that brought Walter Raleigh and settlers to Roanoke. As we dinked out to the surprisingly small ship (picture The Mayflower), Sinjon shouted,"Avast ye scurvy maties, prepare to be boarded."
The three men aboard, dressed in 17th Century garb shouted back, "Belay that you sea dog, prepare to be sunk."

October 22nd, Wednesday.

We are off at 7:15, the sun is rising over Bodie Island Bridge, the bridge from Manteo to the Outer Banks. As we motor down Pamlico Sound we see the black and white Bodie Light.
9:00am. We are following a narrow channel and we just passed the Army Corps of Engineers dredging the channel-interesting. Eventually these shallow sounds will become sand dunes, then spartina marshes, then condos. The dunes are being pushed by the easterly winds to the west.

--We just ran aground!-

As Henry said, after he ran aground on the S. Carolina shore, "For genuine excitement give me the next 12 to 18 hours." We are in a multihull, so when aground we just sit there, horizontally, bouncing up and down from the waves. But it's no fun.
After watching the Corps of Engineers dredge the channel for six hours, we watched them dump tons of mud and sand about five feet outside the markers. They are digging a canal, not a channel. We hit hard about three feet outside the port marker, and there we sat. It felt like we were in a children's story, except the wind was blowing us onto the bar at 25 knots, and the waves were lifting our three-ton hulls and slamming them onto the sand.
We (not I!) took the anchor out into deep water with 100 feet of rode, and winched our bows toward it. No effect. In about an hour, a motor catamaran we met in Manteo arrived and offered to help. While taking our line to them, St. John was blown east. The water was so shallow he couldn't get the motor down deep enough to work. He was getting smaller, moving away from me in the strong wind, and I watched him get out and walk, dragging the dinghy behind him.
The motor cat pulled, the tow line broke, and we tried a heavier line. The motor cat gave it her best effort, but sad Meadowlark just sat on the sand, being pounded by waves.
Dark clouds loomed up and the wind increased-gusts up to 27. But poor Meadowlark was stuck and couldn't escape the storm. Two Coast Guard cutters motored by, showing their big muscles and looking serious.
"Can you help me?" asked Meadowlark, but they didn't answer. They were too important.
A friendly pelican walked over to Meadowlark. "Why aren't you sailing?" asked the pelican.
"If you can walk, you can see that I don't have enough water to sail. I am stuck on this sandbar," said Meadowlark. She was finding it hard to be polite.
At 3:00pm along the channel came a small tugboat. She was painted a happy red, and her name was The George W. The kind tug slowed down and looked at Meadowlark. "I think I can help. I think I can," she said.
"I'm really heavy, and I'm stuck in the sand," Meadowlark said. She was almost crying.
"Let me try," said the tug. "I'll be very gentle."
Two strong lines were tied on each of Meadowlark's hulls, and the tug turned on her powerful engines. The water in the channel foamed and bubbled, and suddenly the hulls moved forward. In less than a minute, Meadowlark was floating again. She was so happy.

The End

We quietly motored to Stumpy Point, but didn't want to approach anything under 8 feet, so we anchored off the shore. It was a beautiful starlight night, and we slept off the exhaustion and tension of the day.

Meadowlark Log, second installment. 10/23-11/10

October 23rd, Thursday. Our 30th day, Ocracoke Island

We are on our way to Ocracoke Island, part of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We are sailing across Pamlico Sound, and it is very bouncy, waves are 4-5 feet high but we're angling into them so there is little splash, just rocking. The motion of the boat is comfortable now, and at night I love being rocked to sleep. In the galley I don't think about bracing myself as I make coffee, or bracing the pot with the fiddles. It's almost automatic.
The residents of Ocracoke voted to remain an island, inaccessible except by boat. The barrier island is close enough to Hatteras to have a bridge, but they said no. Smart group of folks, and as we found out, very talented.
South of Ocracoke, just across the inlet is Portsmouth Island. There is a church there, houses, streets, a little town, but the island is uninhabited. The town was established in 1753, and for 100 years it was a major shipping center with a population of close to 1000. Over 1400 ships passed through the inlet in 1836-37. So many of these sailors were sick that a hospital was built on Portsmouth Island. But in 1846 a huge storm opened an inlet close to Hatteras, drawing shipping up there. The island languished and the last residents left in 1970. The National Park Service (our government at its best) owns the island now. An interesting rise and fall in that history. We couldn't get over to Portsmouth, but it's on our list for the return trip in the spring.
Ocracoke is "quaint and serene" said the guide book. We tied up to a National Park pier, for 30 cents per foot, which is how marinas charge. We've been charged $1.50 a foot, so this was a bargain. Next to us were the two boats that tried to pull us off the sandbar. The two women off those boats understood how exhausting the tension of that can be. They urged us to go with them to hear The Ocracoke Opry that night. Sounded like fun.
I walked into town looking for the post office and a shower while Sinjon rested. I found creative and imaginative shops, and some good ice cream. A restorative (high calorie) walk. We had "boat food" for supper and walked to the Community Center, about a mile from the dock. And let me tell you, the music was great! We held hands through the sad love songs, stamped our feet while the fiddle wailed, laughed at the jokes, and had an evening that we felt we had discovered. The featured music groups were Molasses Creek and Coyote Live, but in addition, there was a 6th grader who was a prodigy on the guitar, a schooner captain who sang a chantey from the 18th century and said "aargh" like a pirate, and a truck driver born and bred on the island who played the guitar at the concert level. Our ears were pinned back!
Glowing Halloween skulls and orange strings of lights lit our way back to Meadowlark, and the stars were brilliant as we went turned in. I felt we had stumbled through a portal onto Broadway, then stepped back onto our catamaran.

October 24th, Friday. In Ocracoke

While St.John did small jobs on the boat, I used the garden sprayer for a shower. St.John had fixed the water pressure problem-clever fellow-and it works. Momma is happy.
I rented a bike, got post cards, mailing envelopes, and two Ocracoke CD's at the Variety Store, printed out the Meadowlark Log at the cybershack, sent the log and answered emails, and biked to the post office feeling balanced and reconnected to the outside world. I wonder how women of the 19th century managed the months of isolation aboard ships. Children were born, people died, and they didn't know. Much less, hear how their grandson did in Tai Kwan Do last Saturday. I've taken the phone for granted for years, but not any longer. The voices, the details of the lives of our loved ones, the sound of a baby's voice, little Madeleine saying, "Well Baba, I can't sleep because there are scary bones under my bed, you know." Those things are priceless.
I biked to the beach, about a quarter mile beyond the post office, and there was overwash damage from Hurricane Isabel, a Bobcat moving piles of sand around, the dunes were eroded with sea oat roots exposed and drying. It took me a good five minutes to walk from the dunes to the surf, almost half a mile of beach. Sinjon's got to see this, I thought, and went home.
I made some sandwiches and we both rented bikes for the afternoon. The beach had the finest of sands, it whistled and squeaked as we scuffed our feet. That sand has been worked by the waves for millennia, and 20% is made of shell--organic, light-weight, and soft. No glaciation this far south, but this old old sand was deposited on the coastal plain 20,000 years ago by rivers flowing out of NC and SC.
I was on the lookout for pieces of eight and doubloons, as that stretch of the Outer Banks is called the Graveyard of the Atlantic. No luck, we found only circular, polished pieces of shell, but worth more than Blackbeard's loot. Worth the effort it took to find them. They clink like wind chimes and sit warm in the hollow of my hand. Just right. How many seasons did it take to break them, smooth them, and bring them way up above the high water mark? Mary Oliver describes shells…"whose edges have rubbed so long against the edges of the world…they have almost vanished." And 50 years earlier, in Broken Shell, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote:

"Look at this spiral, stripped to polished nerve
Of growth. Erect as compass in its curve,
It swings forever to the absolute
Crying out beauty like a silver flute."

We rode our bikes down British Cemetery Road and on the right was a tiny enclosure, framed by granite posts and a small fence. A sign said that it was maintained by the Coast Guard station on Ocracoke. During World War II a German submarine sank a British trawler off Ocracoke. Everyone died, and only four bodies washed up on the beach.
I looked at the markers. Names were chiseled on two granite slabs, and in the same dignified font, the other two grave stones were engraved: An Unknown Soldier. I thought about the bereft families of those men, whose fathers or husbands, brothers or sons had perished so far from home. So many women sitting at their kitchen tables with a cuppa, missing their men. And I bet each of them in her heart thought, that's my man, that's him in that grave, resting safe and honored.
It might have been the shells clinking in my pocket, or maybe the care and attention that the tiny graveyard showed, but when we discovered this verse engraved on a plaque, I was so moved.

"If I should die remember this of me,
that there's some corner of a forgotten
field that is forever England."

Rupert Brooke

We turned in our fat-wheeled bikes which we must have ridden for six miles. Sinjon bought some Wahoo steaks from fishermen at the waterfront, and we had a fine dinner and listened to the new CD of Molasses Creek. We are tired as the sun sets over Silver Lake, the little harbor on Ocracoke. I guess sometimes cruising is pure discovery, like today.

October 25th, Saturday. Our 32nd day , Neuse River

Comes overcast with a beautiful sunrise over the harbor. The sun lit up the clouds, reds, golds, pinks, yellows. Red sun at morning, sailors take warning.
We're sailing toward the Neuse River in a 10-knot breeze, barely enough.
"Is this a following wind?" I ask.
"Dead behind a pain-in-the-ass wind," says Sinjon. Mona, our autopilot doesn't hold a course before the wind, and the big screacher (the huge, light-weight jib) can't decide where to fill. This was the preferred wind for the old square-riggers, but not for 21st century sailboats.
It's very lumpy out here in Pamlico Sound. Where are these waves coming from? I guess the wind has enough fetch, enough distance over water, to build them up. And it's mighty shallow hereabouts

Habits.
Now that we've been sailing for over a month, I've winnowed out what is habit and what is real necessity. Well, I'm working on it. I find that my land-based habits are put into relief, into silhouette here on Meadowlark.
Showers! Taking two a day is too many. Somehow standing with my face lifted into the hot stream of water washed away all stress and gave me a change of state. I missed those showers acutely when we first set out. I read somewhere that it takes a month to break a habit. We've been on board 32 days and it is so much easier. I take a shower when needed, but not twice a day any more.
Laundry! I don't like a pile of dirty clothes, so at home I rushed to wash them as soon as they hit the basket, which in retrospect might have been a teensy bit compulsive. On board, our laundry lives in a bag under our bunk, where it stays happily for six or seven days. Much more efficient, less wasteful.
It's interesting how strong habits masquerade as needs. And a strong need feels like an imperative-almost instinctive. Habits grow their tendrils into us so slowly we don't notice, until we have to stop a behavior. Then the habits, choked of energy, rear up and make us miserable. I guess it does take a month to starve a habit into submission. I had no idea they had such a hold on me.
Henry Plummer came this was on December 4th, 1912. He wrote: "As I write this we are entering the Neuse River at the lower end of Pamlico." It's 3:45pm and we too are entering the Neuse River. It's so wide at its mouth, five miles across. The currents from this river and the Pamlico River have formed shoals five miles out into Pamlico Bay. The charts show long darker green fingers of shoal stretching out from the rivers. It's odd to be out of sight of land and come upon a marker placed in the sand at the head of a long sandbar.
Henry went down Adams Creek to Beaufort, NC (bow-fort). He said: "Along the banks were palms, real palms. Not great big snoozing busters with cocoanuts, but little wee-wees, but palms all the same….Then out of the cut into broad reaches where oyster bars poked up their heads from a few inches of water." (34C) On the short list for names for Meadowlark was The Henry M. Plummer. I'm pretty sure that Henry is here with us, on numerous occasions.

October 26th, Sunday. Our 33rd day, Beaufort, NC

"Thirty three days," I report, "we are practically old salts." SJ tells me you need three years to qualify, but I'm thinking six months. "You'd be scared enough times to quality in six months," I say. "You'd be at least damp, by then," he concedes.
We woke to flat water in Cedar Creek, a little tributary to Adams Creek which leads to Beaufort. There was some drizzle but a lovely pastel sunrise of the palest pink-yellow and soft blue-grey all reflected perfectly on the glassy water.
I made Sinjon a Sunday morning breakfast of home fries, an omlette with onions, garlic, cilantro and Parmesan cheese. Shook the eggs in a glass jar, cooked the onions and garlic in the fry pan with a little water which saves propane.
9:20am. We're motoring toward Beaufort along the ICW which is about a quarter of a mile wide at this point, lined with spartina marsh, juniper, live oaks, definitely southern vegetation. Laughing gulls mew like kittens, I can see why they are called kittiwakes.
We are making about 20 miles a day on average, about what a wagon train made traveling west on the Oregon Trail. And many of those pioneer women kept journals.
After almost five weeks on Meadowlark, we have some routines. Harvey Oxenhorn talks a lot about routine, and I've always found it helps me through a day. Continually coming into new harbors, having to find the laundry, store, shower--that uses up my energy. Routine frees my energy. I know what to do and can expect it daily. Up yank, hook the chain, tie off the bridles.
Even pulling up the anchor has a little routine. Sinjon motors forward slowly heading where my arm is pointing, along the anchor rode. We put out five times the depth, in these shallow bays usually 60-70 feet. It is important to have the anchor lie almost flat against the bottom for a better hold. I pull in the line, wet and cold in my hands, and throw it onto the starboard trampoline. Almost a month ago, Sinjon marked off lengths on the line (the rode) at 25-foot intervals. Up comes two plastic ties. "Fifty feet," I yell. Along comes one tie. "Twenty-five feet." Then I quick, quick cleat the line and the forward momentum of the boat pulls the nearly vertical rode and chain out of the mud. The taut line relaxes in my hand. "Anchor's aweigh!"
The chain clatters over the aluminum anchor holder, then the yank appears. We have a Fortress anchor. It has a three-foot bar with long, sharp flukes, and I love it. When it has taken its chomp into the mud or sand, I know we are safe for the night.
Anchor names amuse me: Fortress, Bruce, Danforth, Spade, Plow, Yachtsman, CQR. These aren't wimpy names, they are names you can depend on. Imagine having to tie your house to something you stick into your lawn every night. And trees don't count. You pay attention to the kind you get and the bite it takes.
Routines-the yank comes on board clattering into its holder. A hooking gizmo bolted to the hull opens, I hook it into the link I marked 32 days ago with orange cord (now mud-brown). The chain goes once around the cleat and the rode is carefully fed into the forward locker-nothing else goes in there, just anchor rode-so when it is flowing out again there will be no tangles.
Harvey says: "It is precisely in a crisis that routines are most important. Just continuing our normal business under stress helps make extraordinary danger ordinary." (p. 107) Like rehearsing for a play. When adrenaline is flowing because suddenly you are on stage with 200 pairs of eyes looking at you, the lines and motions you've memorized happen, even though your mind is saying, "Sweet Jesus!" Routines are safe, I know the way to do things more and more, and the captain and I can trust my skill. Norming and performing.

October 27th, Monday, our 34th day, Beaufort

Comes rainy, warm and breezy in Beaufort, NC. We are tied to the wharf, within walking distance to the laundry and showers.
Shopped, washed, had a wonderful dinner out! The main street is filled with up-scale shops in old brick store-fronts. Many antique shops, boutiques, and places for the wealthy folks from Pawley's Island. Henry found this in 1912: "Besides the picturesque fishing fleet there is the usual busy main street of a southern town, lined with all kinds of buildings from shanties to modern store affairs. Bales of cotton are standing about. Blacksmith welding a shaft in the street. The high two-wheeled country carts drawn aimlessly along by one ox. Everybody takes his time, and talks about it in slow southern drawl." (36C)

October 28th , Tuesday. Our 35th day, Beaufort

It's rainy and warm, a stationary front. We'll be here until 2pm, then get the propane tank which is being filled and drop the hook in Taylor Creek, on our way down the ICW.

October 29th, Wednesday. Our 36th day, Beaufort

Awake at 1am. I'm soaked, we left the hatch open over our bed, and there is a torrent of rain coming in on my side. The quilt, fleece blanket, flannel sheets, my shirt and pants, soaking. I change and try to sleep some more. Up at 3:20 am--a squall in Taylor's Creek, wind blowing hard and the lines, stays and shrouds and whistling frantically. We have out about 70 feet of rode in 20 feet of water. The current is fast, and the wind is 30-40. We get a radio call: "Catamaran on my bow, this is sailboat Madeline in Taylor Creek. You are dragging anchor." The rain is horizontal, the night is pitch black except for street lights on the shore.
We watch and watch, lining up with lights and landmarks. We are not dragging, but kiting around on the anchor in the wind and current. A very tense situation for about an hour. At 5:00am SJ goes below for a mug up, but I am too scared to eat or drink anything. Around 5:30 Sinjon says: "That beach is awfully close." We are in 4 feet of water and aground. Man!
We drop the dink to lighten the boat, winch the rode in tight, and happily we float free. The rode is shorter now, not the 1:5 ratio, but we'll be in The Madeline's lap if we have 100 feet as we should.
In the midst of the crisis, SJ and the captain of Madeline talk on the radio. Calm, rational, just the facts and so polite. Is that the male/nautical thing going on? I, on the other hand, might say: Hey, Hey, what do you think you are doing? That's my boat you are about to hit. It reassures me to hear SJ's quiet voice, to see him go below to make hot tea, even if I cannot drink it. I'm suited up in my oilies, ready to haul in the yank and reset it. A scary thought with gusts up to 45. Serious wind.
Everything is wet! My hair, my feet, the walls and floors of the boat, clothes by the armful, bedding. I hope we can remedy that today. I'm not up to exploring the ICW now, I need to be dry.
On anchor watch: the sun is rising-6:15 am. I thought I heard a child wailing on shore, but it's a rooster crying, singing up the sun. At first it was charming, rustic, and novel. Now I want to kill him. The cry echoes my residual tension! Anchor watch: on large ships someone is awake all night watching for dragging, for tide changes, for weather. Anything. When Harvey described it, it sounded boring. Not tonight!
I make a pot of coffee, and the smell is comforting. We motor back to the marina in Beaufort to recover. Around 8am, my darling captain takes the soggy quilts, etc. to the Laundromat while I try to get a nap. No success, so I make myself a sandwich of peanut butter and chocolate chips. That does the trick. When SJ gets back to the boat with an armful of warm, dry bedding I have recovered. Someone in the Laundromat told him it blew 50 last night.

Thursday, October 30th. Our 37th day, Camp LeJeune

Comes sunny and breezy. We are underway by 7am. We're getting better at this game, as Henry would say. We had a lovely dinner last night with linen and silver and crystal in a charming restaurant that was a restored factory on the waterfront. It might have been the oyster factory that Henry writes about.
"We visited an oyster-opening plant. Mighty interesting and on the whole, cleanly. Hundreds of men, women and little children at work opening 1500 bu. a day. The little white children looked peaked enough and the dirt, steam, and smell of the opening shed were kind of fierce. In the midst of the mess was a baby in its wagon, the mother at work." (35C)
I did first mate duties this morning quick, quick. Tea, free ropes, stow ropes, stow bumpers, make bed, clean head, all in 30 minutes. Better. I spliced and whipped lines this morning, and when my sister Madeleine called, we reminisced about Mr. Wesley who taught the New Bedford Sailing School for years. She remembered that he taught her to splice. He taught me to sail, but I remember his spirituality. He loved God and would talk about that as we sailed around Padanaram Harbor. I was taught to splice by an old man in Naushon's Bobolink Boathouse about 55 years ago. In another lifetime.
We are motoring down Bogue Inlet. It's a lovely clear day, lots of people are out in their boats, anchored and fishing. The houses on grassy banks have overhanging roofs and verandahs with huge windows to let in sea breezes in the hot, hot summer. We see columns everywhere, even small shingled houses have columns and lots of frosting-must be regional architecture.
As we move deeper into the marsh, we see great blue herons, osprey, egrets-plentiful birdlife. Every quarter of a mile we see an osprey nest, rich fishing in these parts. Delicate little yellow butterflies are all around us. Up on the bimini roof I can see huge breakers and a choppy ocean. I am so glad we are in this protected, beautiful channel.
We are passing Camp LeJeune, the Marine boot camp, and we are passing a sign that says:

---WARNING---
LIVE FIRING IN PROGRESS
WHEN FLASHING
TUNE TO AM 530

I listen to AM 530 and hear a repeating message about terrorist threat. Along the shore I can count eight derelict tanks left there for target practice. They are painted with camo patterns, and the whole area looks like a playground for big boys.
We have the little jib up to push us along, and I rush from the journal to the bird book, from binoculars to the ICW guide. How could anyone find this boring? Here is Henry: "The ripple of the tide at every bend, the line of foam bubbles on every reach was a matter of constant interest and study. Such days are not for either rich or poor, for those ignorant or wise, but for those only who can cast themselves bodily into nature and be absorbed by it. I don't wonder big launch owners and houseboat owners always send their boats south under charge of crew." (62D) Right on cue, a big power launch passes us.
"That must cost $100 an hour to run," says my captain. What is the hurry? When we fill our tanks after two or three days, the bill is $16, or sometimes $21.
As we pass our small wake makes the sea grass bow and bob in unison, like the Rockettes. Higher up the bank is low shrubbery, then juniper. Thick dead trees show there have been trees here a long time.
Dropped yank in the New River Inlet at 3pm, which is where Henry ran hard aground trying to enter from the sea. We dinked out through the inlet to the beach and watched three huge shrimp boats come in. The inlet is dredged, deep and safe now. Shrimpers are festooned with pale green nets hung from tall cranes, and remind me of Faulkner's southern women dressed up in flouncy finery.
Henry spent a week on the beach repairing their launch and cat boat, which was "bilged" on the sandbar, no doubt the lowest, most discouraging point of his journey. We walk the beach, surprised at the amount of human trash. Ocracoke was so clean, and here is plastic detritus mixed in with shells and polished stones. The quahog shells here are 8 inches across and ¼ inch thick.

Friday, October 31st, New River NC

We are up at 5:30 am. The prepackaged teriyaki rice we had for dinner made us both sick, with aches, sneezes and weird dreams. We need to watch out for MSG. We continue down this lovely, safe ICW.
We tape-recorded watermen on the radio, with their rounded vowels, complaining about the lack of shrimp. "Ah hay-ad ah 30 minute dray-ag, all the way across, and only got 13 shree-mp." Vowels become two syllables. I am so aware of my clipped, sharp words. The minute I open my mouth I get that tiny, passing look that says, you aren't from here, lady.
OH our cell phone just fell overboard. A passing wake bounced the boat and the phone jumped off the roof and has returned to the universe, as SJ says. Actually, on the bottom of the ICW.
I was upset for about an hour, then lightened up and shook it off. My two mantras-I think there is a lot of wisdom in those clichés.

Saturday, November 1st, Calabash Creek, NC-SC border

We are going down the Cape Fear River which is part of the ICW. The WPA of F. D. Roosevelt's administration produced a beautifully researched and written guide to the Intra Coastal Waterway. It quotes George Davis in the South Atlantic Magazine (January, 1879): "Looking then to the Cape for the idea and reason of its name, we find that it is the southernmost point of Smith's Island, a naked bleak elbow of sand jutting far into the ocean. Immediately in its front are the Frying Pan Shoals pushing out still farther 20 miles to sea. Together they stand for warning and woe; and together they catch the long majestic roll of the Atlantic as it sweeps through a thousand miles of grandeur from the Arctic toward the Gulf. It is the playground of billows and tempests, the kingdom of silence and awe, disturbed by no sound save the seagull's shriek and the breakers' roar. Its whole aspect is suggestive, not of repose and beauty, but of desolation and terror. Imagination cannot adorn it. Romance cannot hallow it. Local pride cannot soften it. There it stands today, bleak and threatening and pitiless, as it stood 300 years ago when Grenville and White came near unto death upon its sands. And there it will stand bleak and threatening and pitiless until the earth and sea give up their dead. And as its nature, so its name, is now, always has been, and always will be the Cape of Fear." (p. 18)
I want to say, world without end, amen! Wonderfully overwritten. I love it.
George Davis refers to wave theory, "the majestic roll of the Atlantic as it sweeps through a thousand miles…" Here is what SJ explains to me: water transfers energy, wind blowing across it creates waves. The longer the distance that the wind blows (called the fetch), the more energy is transferred into the water and the higher the waves-up to a point. In deep water you get swells. They always seem like messages from the far reaches to me, from the lonely parts of the ocean. In shallow water the swells rear up and crash as breakers.
When a motor boat goes by, especially one that is not planing and is digging a hole in the ocean, the energy it has transferred into the water can be substantial. Its waves can bounce off a bulkhead or a steep shore just like echoes. A wake can hit us on the port side, then bounce and get us on the starboard. Newton was right, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
When we have a rough day, the waves from that are hard for me to shake off. They keep me rocking for a while, in both ways-physically and emotionally. Wave theory.
9:30am We continue to motor with both kickers at full tilt, going about 6 ½ knots. SJ wants to catch the tide for as long as he can. From what I read, the tide in the Cape Fear River is powerful. Also, the navigation is complicated. Here is why it is so difficult for me:
"There are more different types of ranges here [in the Cape Fear R.] than you will se anywhere else along the Waterway, but they are big-ship ranges and you don't have to be concerned with them. It's just as well-you will be busy enough trying to sort out the markers and buoys. The red aids will be to starboard (northbound to port) until you reach the main channel of the Cape Fear R., then until the juncture with the ICW, they will be to port (nb to starboard)" (Moeller, The ICW, p. 68) And this makes sense to our smart captain.
3:00pm. Anchored in the Calabash Creek. For some reason, this was a long day for me, and I feel strangely restless, ill at ease.
6:15pm. I had a swim! The water was 72 and for 20 minutes in a 2-knot current I swam around Meadowlark scrubbing off the green algae. Great exercise, and it balanced me out. I changed and we dinked to shore for a great, greasy southern meal of hush puppies, slaw, cat fish, and shrimp. The waitress called us "darling." Can't get enough of that!

Monday, November 3rd. Our 41st day, Georgetown SC

We are motoring through an enormous Cyprus swamp. The thick-based trees grow up out of the reddish-brown water. It tastes wonderful, slightly astringent, and it gives a cleansing note to the air. If we had a kayak we might be able to 'yak into the swamp. The water is 67, but I did submerge for a moment yesterday. We are wearing bathing suits now, so warm.
We just passed Bucksport, SC, named for the boatbuilder from Maine who founded Bucksport, ME. He got all his lumber here-cyprus and yellow pine. This wood is resistant to rot.
The creeks flowing into the Waccamaw River (this part of the ICW) have interesting names: Enterprise Creek, Old Dock Creek, Old River, Sand House Creek, Cow House Creek. There must be stories there.

Monday, November 4th, our 48th day, McClellenville SC through Sunday, November 9th in Charleston, SC.

We spent a mosquitous and wakeful night anchored in a huge spartina marsh without the screens up, and got into Charleston the next day where I tried to shake off my annoyance at those damn bugs. SJ's nephew and niece came over to the marina as soon as we arrived, handing us a big jar of benne wafers with a warm "Welcome to Charleston!"
We were treated to southern hospitality for four days. They opened their house to us (shower, washer, drier, tv, phone!), loaned us their car, gave us lunches and dinners, and were as thoughtful as could be. We walked through the gracious old Battery, which SJ tells me was spared by General Sherman because he had a girl friend in Charleston (the General, not my Captain). We walked through little alleys, and saw fascinating architectural details, and tastefully ornate buildings, the kind that imagination, leisure and wealth can produce. Many of the mansions were only used during the "season." Probably from November to January.
SJ's niece arranged a private tour of the Alston-Edmonston House, a carefully preserved and restored waterfront mansion, and Ben took us to the Middleton Plantation. The gracefully landscaped terraces and sloping hills down to the Ashley River with the huge mansion sitting on a bluff was what antebellum guests first saw as they arrived by water. Only one wing of the house remains, as it was burned and looted by northern troops. I know that happens in war, but what a loss to our country's rich heritage to have had such destruction. It saddened me. Most of the Big House is today just various piles of brick.
One afternoon I walked back to the marina from the house, about a mile. Part of their neighborhood was once the Ashley Plantation, and lining Ashley Street are 200-year-old live oaks. I felt as if I had stepped back in history, and as I've been reading a lot of poetry, here is this:

I want to decorate this page with a
Narrow span of words that tell
How I walked to the boat down a tunnel--
Live oaks along the old plantation drive.
Ponderous, elegant, concentrated
Wealth and years and sweat.
The Big House decayed to dust to dust
In Charleston's heat and rain,
Just the trees, the land, dense wood.
The Big House said: Look here y'all,
This is power, I have gravity that
You cannot escape.

How I walked to the boat, but the drawbridge blocked me;
How the bridge worker in a hard hat said:
I'll carry you over, it's a narrow span.
And I shook his black hand.

We hope to return to Charleston in April to see the famous azalea gardens in bloom.
During our visit in Charleston the weather went from 90 degrees, 90% humidity to 30 knots of wind and a 30 degree drop in temp. Winter is catching up with us, so we are off again, down the ICW.
We heard on the radio this morning: "The Gulf Stream has 25 foot waves and 45 knots of wind." Sinjon said if we were out there, we'd have to use a storm anchor and strap ourselves to our bunk. Just ride it out as best we could. No, no, no. Let's stay in the ICW.
Sunday, November 9th. Our 47th day.

Comes windy, overcast and cool. The wind is gusting to 30. We are planning to go to Beaufort, SC (Beu-fort, the French pronounciation), but we may wait out this blow and for the front to pass. I can almost see the gradient now, the steep slope between the valley of the low and the plateau of the high, where the wind is sliding down. The hot, hot weather is gone and we feel energized at last. And, we have a new cell phone that has normalized our communications again-our family is at the touch of a button. So important to me.

Monday, November 10th, our 48th day.

Comes clearing and breezy and cold. We are off at 7:30 and on our way down the Ditch, which is really a disrespectful word! The ICW is a long ribbon of green, much of it runs between enormous spartina marshes, tidal estuaries that are nurseries to uncountable creatures.
We anchored near oyster banks on the edge of a huge marsh, not far from Beaufort. I decided to go ashore for some oysters, as Henry talks of the sweet oyster stews he and H. enjoy. I thought I could gather some from the beach at low tide. The black mud was covered with several layers of shell, and I jumped onto the beach holding the painter. My topsiders sank into the mud up to my ankles, soft, black, and viscous. I clambered up the shore, trying to find an oyster. None there. I found a big shell and dug a hole in the beach for quahogs. What was I thinking? I was digging in clay that could have been made into bowls and dishes. It was so gooey. I was caked with it by now, on my knees, shoes, socks, and under my fingernails. I saw an oyster shell and reached for it, just a half of course. They cannot live in mud like a clam, they need flowing water for nutrients-and they are sharp. It cut my fingers, so now I had black mud and red blood on everything. I gave up, washed my boat shoes and climbed back into the dink, tracking mud and leaving blood on all the lines. Back to ML empty handed, unlike Maine where mussels abound.

Tuesday, November 11th, our 49th day. Beaufort, SC

Up early at 6am in a tidal creek near Beaufort, SC. The anchor rode caught under the boat and we were broadside to the current and the wind. A bad situation. We struggled with the rode, and SJ cut the bridles off-which helped us eventually free up the rode. We pulled the yank aboard, and it was an anxious way to start the day. I learned later (because he rarely complains) that SJ was up several times during the night, which didn't help his cold.
As I write, we are motoring into Beaufort. The ICW is wide here and the sun is warm and bright. We are both getting browner, although we use a lot of block. We can see a low-flying helicopter out of Parris Island, a Marine Corps basic training center.
We are operating on Ocean Time, a time zone that St. John invented. We are up at dawn and go to bed shortly after sunset, so it makes sense to revert to Daylight Savings Time, or the time zone 900 miles east of us, each time zone being about 900 miles wide. So when the sun sets it is now 6:20, not 5:20, which is a proper time to have a "see through" (martini) or a "greenie" (Heinekin beer). And I'm happy to have dinner finished and cleaned up by 6:30 Standard Time.
The WPA guide describes Beaufort's population in 1937 at 2,776. Today it is around 100,000. It was laid out in 1710 and was named for the Duke of Beaufort, an Englishman despite his French name. "The site was originally used for summer homes of wealthy plantation owners of the sea islands and there are a number of old homes, some built before the Revolution, others typifying the prosperous period before the Civil War, that have survived the many wars and the tropical storms of the coast. The homes escaped the flames of the Civil War when the rest of the coast was laid waste, owing to the Federal occupation of the town throughout the hostilities." (p. 36)
We went to the Visitor's Center here and was told by a soft-spoken Southern woman that the Northern troops occupied the town and forced the home owners to leave "with dinner on the table". When they returned after the war, their houses had been sold, and few had the resources to buy them back. Having been to Middleton Plantation, I feel the destruction and displacement strongly.
The charming brick houses have the narrow side facing the street, the longer front with a two-story verandah faces into the yard. They were built this way to either catch the prevailing breeze or to avoid the house tax which was based on street footage. Maybe both.

Wednesday, November 12th. Beaufort, SC marina.

Comes foggy, then sunny as it burns off. Sinjon has a sore throat and is feeling punk, but I'm ok. On the strength of caffeine, I scrub the bridge deck and take a shower before breakfast. There is a courtesy car here, so I go into town for provisions.
It's 5pm, 6 ocean time. SJ continues to feel poorly, but what a good sport. While I was sitting in the marina bathroom coloring my hair and looking like the bride of Frankenstein, I met a charmant woman from Montreal also on her first trip. She and her husband sold their maison, and are planning on a two-year voyage. Quelle courage! She graciously spoke French with me, and we talked a little about being so new at this game, and being scared from time to time. Helpful.
St. John spent the day transferring his notes, anchorages, and information from his 10-year-old chart books to new ones. Now the buoy numbers match, and the shoals are accurate. He kept remarking, "I was here in '98," and "I left the boat here in '96." Fun to look back. We left the old chart books in the Laundromat "library" where people leave books they have finished and pick up what they want. They were gone in an hour. Someone will benefit from his notes and recorded experience.
I also love to put a $1 bill and a stamped envelope in an empty coke bottle and drop it into the wake. It helps to keep my imagination open-ended. Where will it end up? I put a note in asking the finder to let us know where he picked it up. We have gotten back one letter, so far.

Thursday, November 13th. Our 51st day. Heading to GA.

I lost track of how many days we've been aboard. A good sign. SJ had a rough night, but feels ok now and is eager to be off. The sun is just rising as we have hot tea and head down the ICW toward Georgia.
St. John has an excellent book on the geology and flora of the Georgia barrier islands, and their formation is similar to the North and South Carolina islands, fascinating stuff.
About 18,000 years ago when the oceans were 300 feet lower, and the dry land extended out 200 about miles to the edge of the Continental Shelf, rivers draining the flat lands to the west brought sand and silt down onto the coastal plain. When the oceans rose as the warming climate melted the great ice caps, all that sand was gradually flooded. Wind from the west pushed up dunes, and ocean storms from the east overwashed these dunes, pushing them toward the land.
The rate of warming and sea level rise stabilized about 5000 years ago, so new islands became established. The ends of the islands eroded to the north, and grew toward the south as longshore current deposited sand in the calm southern eddies. And this process is continuing today, both at Hatteras, Ocracoke, and all along the Georgia shore.

For MECAT.com

Third Installment: 11/9-11/27

Sunday, November 9th. Our 47th day.

Comes windy, overcast and cool. The wind is gusting to 30. We are planning to go to Beaufort, SC (Beu-fort, the French pronunciation), but we may wait out this blow and for the front to pass. I can almost see the gradient now, the steep slope between the valley of the low and the plateau of the high, with the wind sliding down. The hot, hot weather is gone and we feel energized at last. And, we have a new cell phone that has normalized our communications again-our family is at the touch of a button. So important to me.

Monday, November 10th, our 48th day.

Comes clearing and breezy and cold. We are off at 7:30 and on our way down the Ditch, which is really a disrespectful word! The ICW is a long ribbon of green, much of it runs between enormous spartina marshes, tidal estuaries that are nurseries to uncountable creatures.
We anchored near oyster banks on the edge of a huge marsh, not far from Beaufort. I decided to go ashore for some oysters, as Henry talks of the sweet oyster stews he and H. enjoy. I thought I could gather some from the beach at low tide. The black mud was covered with several layers of shell, and I jumped onto the beach holding the painter. My topsiders sank into the mud up to my ankles, soft, black, and viscous. I clambered up the shore, trying to find an oyster. None there. I found a big shell and dug a hole in the beach for quahogs. What was I thinking? I was digging in clay that could have been made into bowls and dishes, it was so gooey. I was caked with it by now, on my knees, shoes, socks, and under my fingernails. I saw an oyster shell and reached for it, just a half of course. They cannot live in mud like a clam, they need flowing water for nutrients-and they are sharp. It cut my fingers, so now I had black mud and red blood on everything. I gave up, washed my boat shoes and climbed back into the dink, tracking mud and leaving blood on all the lines. Back to ML empty handed, unlike Maine where mussels abound and the foraging is easy.

Tuesday, November 11th, our 49th day. Beaufort, SC

Up early at 6am in a tidal creek near Beaufort, SC. The anchor rode caught under the boat and we were broadside to the current and the wind. A bad situation. We struggled with the rode, and SJ cut the bridles off-which helped us eventually free up the rode. We pulled the yank aboard, and it was an anxious way to start the day. I learned later (because he rarely complains) that SJ was up several times during the night to check the anchor, which didn't help his cold.
As I write, we are motoring into Beaufort. The ICW is wide here and the sun is warm and bright. We are both getting browner, although we use a lot of block. We can see a low-flying helicopter out of Parris Island, a Marine Corps basic training center.
We are operating on Ocean Time, a time zone that St. John invented. We are up at dawn and go to bed shortly after sunset, so it makes sense to revert to Daylight Savings Time, or the time zone 900 miles east of us, each time zone being about 900 miles wide. So when the sun sets it is now 6:20, not 5:20, which is a proper time to have a "see through" (martini) or a "greenie" (Heineken beer). And I'm happy to have dinner finished and cleaned up by 6:30 Standard Time.
The WPA guide describes Beaufort's population in 1937 at 2,776. Today it is around 100,000. It was laid out in 1710 and was named for the Duke of Beaufort, an Englishman despite his French name. "The site was originally used for summer homes of wealthy plantation owners of the sea islands and there are a number of old homes, some built before the Revolution, others typifying the prosperous period before the Civil War, that have survived the many wars and the tropical storms of the coast. The homes escaped the flames of the Civil War when the rest of the coast was laid waste, owing to the Federal occupation of the town throughout the hostilities." (p. 36)
We went to the Visitor's Center here and were told by a soft-spoken Southern woman that the Northern troops occupied the town and forced the home owners to leave "with dinner on the table". When they returned after the war, their houses had been sold, and few had the resources to buy them back. Having been to Middleton Plantation, I feel the destruction and displacement strongly.
The charming brick houses have the narrow side facing the street, the longer front with a two-story verandah faces into the yard. They were built this way to either catch the prevailing breeze or to avoid the house tax which was based on street footage. Maybe both.

Wednesday, November 12th. Beaufort, SC marina.

Comes foggy, then sunny as it burns off. Sinjon has a sore throat and is feeling punk, but I'm ok. On the strength of caffeine, I scrub the bridge deck and take a shower before breakfast. There is a courtesy car here, so I go into town for provisions.
It's 5pm, 6 ocean time. SJ continues to feel poorly, but what a good sport. While I was sitting in the marina bathroom coloring my hair and looking like the bride of Frankenstein, I met a charmant woman from Montreal also on her first trip. She and her husband sold their maison, and are planning on a two-year voyage. Quelle courage! She graciously spoke French with me, and we talked a little about being so new at this game, and being scared from time to time. Helpful.
St. John spent the day transferring his notes, anchorages, and information from his 10-year-old chart books to new ones. Now the buoy numbers match, and the shoals are accurate. He kept remarking, "I was here in '98," and "I left the boat here in '96." Fun to look back. We left the old chart books in the laundromat "library" where people leave books they have finished and pick up what they want. They were gone in an hour. Someone will benefit from his notes and recorded experience.
In the same spirit, I love to put a $1 bill and a stamped envelope in an empty coke bottle and drop it into the wake. It helps to keep my imagination open-ended. Where will it end up? I put in a note asking the finder to let us know where he picked it up. We have gotten back one letter, so far.

Thursday, November 13th. Our 51st day.

I lost track of how many days we've been aboard. A good sign. SJ had a rough and feverish night, but feels ok now and is eager to be off. The sun is just rising as we have hot tea and head down the ICW toward Georgia.
St. John has an excellent book on the geology and flora of the Georgia barrier islands, and their formation is similar to the North and South Carolina islands, fascinating stuff.
About 18,000 years ago when the oceans were 300 feet lower, and the dry land extended out about 200 miles to the edge of the Continental Shelf, rivers draining the flat lands to the west brought sand and silt down onto the coastal plain. When the oceans rose because the warming climate melted the great ice caps, all that sand was gradually flooded. Wind from the west pushed up dunes, and ocean storms from the east overwashed these dunes, pushing them toward the land. So for thousands of years, the sand was worked by wind and water, grinding it into soft powder.
The rate of warming and sea level rise stabilized about 5000 years ago, and new islands became established. The ends of the islands eroded to the north, and grew toward the south as longshore current deposited sand in the calm southern eddies. And this process is continuing today, both at Hatteras, Ocracoke, and all along the Georgia shore.

Friday, November 14th, our 52nd day.

Comes cold and sunny. SJ rigged a light-weight chain to our anchor, and we dropped it in a pretty creek last night. It lay on the bottom where it belongs, no more tangled skegs and rudders.
When I dropped it in there was a fearsome clatter of chain as it banged out of the locker, across the trampoline and over the anchor support. I stood back shaking my hands in helplessness. Then came the friendly rope and I wrapped it quick around the cleat. We were in 25 knots of wind and a 1.5 knot current, so the Fortress anchor dug in hard and we were home. And what a lovely neighborhood.
Every night we choose a new neighborhood. Sometimes we own it, but sometimes we have to share it with later arrivals. We've been following what I call the Brillo Pad cat down the ICW-an aluminum power cat that looks fierce, like something out of Road Warrior or Water World. It has been burnished with a wire brush and this morning, she was gleaming and silvery, but in overcast skies she is just grey and foreboding. Whoever owns her seeks out the private bayous to spend the night.
We were up quick this morning, 35 degrees in Savannah! And at 9am still only 60 in our cabin. But I'm in shorts and great boat shoes that we found in the Beaufort marina: Topsider sandals. All I have to do is push my foot into them; easy, airy, and smart.
As I was clambering over our bed this morning to make it with tight edges, smooth quilt, folded and tucked in over the pillows, tightly rolled up blankets, all ship-shape, I thought about my teensy need to be neat. I'm not really obsessive-compulsive, but on a boat, being little anal is a good thing.
Safety is primary on ML, so lines are coiled the same way each time, things are stowed in the same lace, and the decks are kept clear of clutter. My kind of place! If Sinjon needs something quickly, like a knife, I know where it is and he has it in hand immediately.
We are approaching the Savannah River, the border between South Carolina and Georgia. Here on our right is the cemetery that was in the Garden of Good and Evil, Bonadventure Cemetery. It appears only good in the 10am morning sun. Here is what Roosevelt's WPA writers said: "Bonadventure Cemetery is recognized as one of America's most beautiful burial places. It was originally the Colonial plantation of the Tattnall Family."
Anthony Bailey in The Inside Passage came up the ICW in 1965 and said that there was a boat builder who built most of the coffins used in Bonadventure, but he hated to do the job, and had to …"be bribed with increasing quantities of liquor. Finally, the procedure was to put the lumber and a jug of whisky in the workshop at nightfall and lock Ned in. In the morning, the whisky would be gone and the coffin would be built. This didn't go on for long, however, because one night Ned got so lit up before his courage was armed that he forgot what he was building. In the morning, he was found asleep alongside a well-made coffin, complete with centerboard." (p. 89)
We pass Thunderbolt where a couple of boats that passed us a few weeks ago are hauled out for repairs. Makes me feel a little victorious, the tortoise wins the race! But this isn't a race, just a progress.
I make Saint Captain another cuppa, lime juice and honey, to soothe his sore throat. And does he complain? No.
Henry came through Thunderbolt on January 16, 1913 where he hauled the launch and turned it over to a boat builder. Then he got Mascot up on the beach. "These beaches, so called, are not real beaches at all but huge mud banks covered several feet with oyster shells through which the brown clay oozes at every step. Into this stuff we had to shovel a pit deep enough to crawl into and get under the rudder. H. did it, you bet, and such a mess he was." (66D)
My little foraging trip made an impression on me. Such gelatinous black mud, more like dark chocolate fudge. Were it chocolate, it might surround the Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was the kind of mud that on a really hot day would be fun to wallow in. Then take a long swim. It is the kind of mud used only by the best salons, I bet it could draw out all kinds of poisons.
We are at a marina at the Isle of Hope where SJ can rest and get well. As he was sunning on the back of Meadowlark a man came by in a graceful wooden kayak. They began chatting, he knew people in East Falmouth, MA, and the conversation ranged to Marshall Cat Boats, South Dartmouth, and then Mishaum Point. I heard SJ call me, "Honey, there is a man out here who knows your cousin." I introduced myself, and we had a little chat.
An hour later, he called us inviting us to dinner on the island of Skidaway. He drove us all over the island, then had cocktails with a charming couple from Brookline who winter in GA. She went to Winsor School, for heaven's sake. Dinner was delicious, and we returned to the boat-a serendipitous evening.

Saturday, November 15th, our 53rd day. Isle au Hope

Comes cold cold but by sunrise it's 50. We're off to use bikes to explore. SJ sounds like an ad for Nyquil, poor darling. He must feel crummy. We wandered around an art show, then left the marina and headed down the ICW at a leisurely pace.
Not knowing where we'll be every night, or precisely where we are going has been a challenge for me. It's all part of control whose layers are onion-like. I get rid of a little and another layer emerges. Of course, we can't know our itinerary until the day's weather develops.
We have been reading On the Water by Nathaniel Stone about a rowboat journey up the Hudson River from New York City, down the Mississippi, around the Florida Keys, and back up the east coast. So when we saw a live-aboard rower this morning, I was thrilled. On closer inspection he appeared a little crusty, with a long beard, a makeshift cover over his bow of a ragged blue tarpaulin, and a plastic lawn chair strapped to his stern. On his bow was a large American flag, there for love of country or increased visibility. He rowed standing up, pushing the oars away from himself. He was headed for Isle of Hope, where I do hope he has shelter. He gave us a formal, full arm wave and went back to his oars.
We are heading to Jekyll Island, about 90 miles away, and will be out of touch on the way, no towers in the vastness of the GA marshes, which is fine.
11:20am: we are entering Hell Gate in the warm GA sun. A narrow cut connects the Vernon River with the Ogeechee River and at some point, it must have a fast current. The name is a warning, or shows a zany humor, similar to mine, I fear. Not much to Hell Gate, nothing like The Hell Gate of the East River in NYC. That was some-ting!
As we leave Hell Gate we make a big, lazy turn to the right to avoid shoals. Rivers run faster on outside bends, slower on inside bends. I used to teach this concept by taking students to the gym and playing snap the whip, which I try to remember when I'm driving. Sand and silt drop down in the calm waters of inside bends, but deeper channels are cut into outside bends-safer.
1:30pm: we are going along a lovely part of the ICW, going toward Birthday Creek where we will anchor. It goes deep into the marshes. There is a sense of peace here, of quiet growth. I don't want to forget any detail of our journey, and I hope this journal will help. I love this new neighborhood, silent, a changing view as ML kites a little on her anchor chain-the wind and current are opposed just now. I listen to the current against the boat, a lapping, swallowing sound-as if ML were drinking the creek we are in. It is the softest sound, natural, full, satisfying.
We covered 30 miles today like the wagons on the Oregon Trail-and I wonder how I have changed from this journey. When we return to Massachusetts, I'll find out, as interior change is best seen in contrast to the old.
Nathaniel rows his way to New Orleans and says: "New York City is not the far end of a straight line away from me, or a marathon 24-hour drive, or a three-hour flight, but worlds away, back the way I've come, around every river bend, through every lock, up rural streams…" (p. 159).
Worlds away. Maybe CO will be that. Our experience on ML which is taking on the old-shoe familiar is a world I cannot fully describe to my sisters, my children, or my close friends. To live in motion, not only as we head south, but the motion of the water, the wavelets, sensing at 2am that our heads are now pointing in another direction-that the invisible arrow in our bodies is swinging 180 degrees…to always wonder, will we have enough propane, always watching the wind indicator, calmed by soft breezes, tensed by big wind.

Sunday, November 16th, our 54th day. Birthday Creek, GA

We were asleep by 8:30 and up at 6:30. SJ was pretty uncomfortable last night. Today comes warmer and sunny. The sun rose at 6:45 and the creek had a lovely small fog lying on it about three feet deep, softening everything. It is too warm in our solarium, so I'm down on our bunk in the coolness of the hull which sits two feet into the water. So nice to have alternatives on ML, I can sit in the oven or on our cool bunk, or on the trampoline which is surrounded by air.

Monday, November 17th, our 55th day.

Comes foggy, then sunshiny. We had broken sleep all night, but I took a shower this morning and shook it off! I'm getting better at this game.
I've been watching cormorants-anhingas or shags, as they are called. They dive for their fish, so graceful and fluid. Down here they don't have to hang their wings out to dry, there is less work for them to do. I guess this is their winter vacation.
We are heading down the Frederica River to anchor near Oglethorpe's Fort Frederica. The guide book says that this fort was the largest and most expensive British fort in North America, but it only operated for 13 years, from 1736 to 1749. The town surrounding the fort was modeled on an English village-a very early effort at city planning. Even the settlers were carefully selected. Bailey lists the trades represented: …"hatter, tailor, dyer, weaver, tanner, shoemaker, cordwainer, saddler, sawyer, woodcutter, carpenter, coachmaker, bricklayer, pilot, surveyor, accountant, baker, brewer, tallow chandler, cooper, blacksmith, locksmith, brazier, miller, millwright, wheelwright, and husbandman." (p. 70)
Each man, woman, and child was given almost a pound of meat a day, a pound of starch (flour, rice, or corn), butter, spices, molasses, and many other staples. But fire destroyed the village, and the fort closed after the Spanish were no longer a danger. Our beloved Park Service maintains the fort and the town foundations, and the small museum has interactive exhibits and a good movie.
Bugs, bugs, bugs, how did the settlers stand them? On ML we have effective screens, thank God!

Tuesday, November 18th. Fort Frederica.

Comes warm with high mare's tails. We heading for St. Simon's Island and a marina for laundry, internet, mail, and showers.

Wednesday and Thursday, November 19-20. Jekyll Island.

We are exploring the Georgia barrier islands, making discoveries as we go. Jekyll Is. was owned by a consortium of the very wealthy and used as a hunting preserve. The owners had complete privacy, and could be in NYC on their private train in 24 hours. Huge "cottages" were built, a chapel, and the Jekyll Island Club. The historical portion of the island is fun, very accessible with volunteers eager to tell us the history. We wandered into Faith Chapel, and there in the setting sun were two magnificent Tiffany stained-glass windows. Takes your breath away-I felt myself filling up with color.
We borrowed bikes from the marina and rode about 12 miles along paved bike paths. This island caters to tourists. On the vast ocean-side beaches we found dozens of tiny whelks, from ½ inch in size. There is something so pleasing in their shape, they follow the Fibonacci sequence in their spirals-it may be that. I can't get enough of them.
We celebrate St. John's 65th birthday with a wonderful dinner at the Jekyll Island Club-crystal, linen, impeccable service. Then we bike in the dark back to the boat, all dressed up and smiling with the fun of it.

Friday & Saturday, November 21st and 22nd. Cumberland Island.

This is our voyage of discovery! We are reading Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes about Captain James Cook, who made grand discoveries: Australia and New Zealand, for example. We make tiny but no less exciting ones. The whelks, the Tiffany windows, sunlight slanting down through cathedrals of live oaks and Spanish moss. We have to say to ourselves: remember this, store this image. I feel we are getting fat on the beauty we are seeing.
In the 1880's Thomas Carnegie (younger brother of Andrew) owned most of Cumberland Island where he built a castle-Dungeness. It had been abandoned for years and then burned in 1959-and given to the National Park Foundation by the Carnegies in 1971. Rising up from formal lawns cropped short by the wild horses are two 300-foot chimneys, brick arches, granite facing stones, and sweeping entrance stairs, all vine-covered. They give a sense of the grandeur and look like a Coleridge's Xanadu-a mighty pleasure palace. All was quiet as we walked, no cars, just a handful of other tourists on foot.
At a discrete distance from the Big House was the laundry building with 8 solid marble sinks, huge boilers, three-foot wringers for the sheets, all intact. I love finding these support structures, they give detail to the lives that were lived 125 years ago. A little further along we came to a 25-foot diameter brick circle. What was that?
We walked over a boardwalk and extensive dunes. The beach had a barely perceptible rise, a single wave flowed up for 20 or 30 feet. On the way back to the boat, we walked into a forest of dwarf live oak trees, limited in height by the wind from the ocean. And in the curvy-limbed jungle were 20 children climbing, doing what we wanted to do, had we been 50 years younger!
I thought I understood the geology, but as we walked through the lovely woods, SJ explained that the powerful tidal currents (9-foot tides here due to the funneling of the indented shoreline) scour out the inlets. Tidal currents here are more powerful than the currents that keep the North and South Carolina inlets open. Thus up there, the inlets tend to move south as longshore water movement erodes the north end and builds up the south end of the barrier beaches. And in the Carolinas, the islands are narrow. But in Georgia, the barrier islands are several miles wide with stable forests of massive live oak.
"So what did the Carnegies do all day," I ask. A trip to the beach involved calling for the carriage, no spontaneity there. Could the children beach comb? Were they allowed to explore the forests and build treehouses? The trees cry out for treehouses.
Lucy Coleman Carnegie was widowed with nine children when her husband Thomas died at age 43. But she had help with her brood-200 servants! So we know what she spent her time, managing her army of help.
"What did they do? Did they hunt peccaries? Armadillos?" I ask.
"Not armadillos," SJ explains.
"Maybe the elusive, hybrid peccadillo?" I wonder.

We are huge fans of the National Park Service, but Cumberland needs Amy Jordan Webb's touch, some interpretation. There are too many fascinating ruins that leave questions.

Sunday, November 23rd. Our 61st day. Cumberland Island.

Comes sunny and warm, a friendly sun shining onto the bridge deck. I took a shower and I'm at peace with the world. The Zen of momma maintenance. The mean cold that SJ has had for 10 days almost caught me, but I took hourly doses of vitamin C and cold calm. I think it did the trick.

Monday, November 24th. Into Florida.

We stopped at Fernandina for gas and water, and what a smelly place with acrid smoke from a pulp paper mill. How can people live with that smoke? We demand paper, obviously, but the effluent from the mill is shocking. Along the horizon is a shroud of ochre-yellow haze; it seems a desecration to this most beautiful part of the world.
We decide not to spend the night there, and are heading to St. Augustine as I write. The water is getting warmer, the air is balmy and healthy. We drop the yank at 2pm in the Fort George River. We are next to vast sandflats that edge up to the marsh.
"The waterway guide says there are oysters and quahogs here, babe," says SJ. So I'm into the dink and off in a flash.
The sandflats quake beneath my feet, almost like quick sand-the flats are unstable until the tide drains them. I walk toward the marsh, digging experimental holes with no success. Next to the marsh I see an enormous quahog half buried in the mud, and I pry it out. It is larger than my fist, and there is another! In 20 minutes I find 15 which almost fill our bucket and weigh at least 15 pounds. Feeling victorious, I dink back to the boat, and we have a feast on the back deck.
We are running low on provisions, so I invent a soup which actually turned out. It included a can of coconut milk, a little water, ginger, yams, onions, and tomatoes cut up small, a can of baby corn, curry, peanut butter, salt and pepper. It didn't use much propane as everything cooked up quickly.

Tuesday, November 25th. Our 63rd day.

Cold and cloudy. We are heading to St. Augustine, and passing huge mansions that face the ICW.

Wednesday, November 26th. St. Augustine.

The marina is clean with tame egrets, herons, and peeps. Identifying shore birds is very difficult. They may be ruddy turnstones and hang around the boat waiting for pretzels, dear little things. We do our laundry, shower, wash down the boat, and provision. We take a tour of the city in the afternoon, and learn that when Ponce de Leon first arrived it was spring with a profusion of flowers, thus the name: Florida.
St. Augustine is the oldest, continually inhabited (by Europeans) city in the country. I think Santa Fe might be older-it was the capital of North Mexico. Anyway, Ponce de Leon built a fort to defend against the English, which we can see from the marina. The architecture throughout the city shows Spanish influence, but the main force here was Henry M. Flagler who spent over 60 million dollars developing Florida in the 1880's.
We walked up to Flagler's church, an enormous structure in the Spanish style, just at the chimes rang 4pm. A sign said the church closed at 4, but a vicar saw us and said, "Come in for a quick peek." And there were dozens of Tiffany windows gleaming in the late afternoon sun, a magnificent organ, hundreds of carved oak pews…another discovery.
Flagler was close to his daughter, and when she and her infant died in childbirth he was devastated. He built the church in her memory, and she lies buried there with her infant cradled in her arms. When Henry M. died years later, he was buried there beside her.

Thursday, November 27th. St. Augustine.

Thanksgiving! Also my darling daughter's 36th birthday. We found a lovely, personal restaurant in a 350 year old building that was serving a Thanksgiving dinner which we had at noon. Great fun, great food. Then we walked over to the Ponce de Leon Hotel, today Flagler College, and we had an excellent tour. Amazingly, the hotel was built in a year and a half. It has been restored, but never went through a period of abandonment. Henry M. Flagler had great imagination and over the period of an hour, we looked in detail at the art, carving, and windows (valued at 25 million). The tour was a treat-fascinating and given by a very funny student who knew his stuff. Flagler College has a 36 million dollar endowment, so tuition there is only $11,500 a year which includes room and board.
We are back on Meadowlark now, replete with turkey, stuffing, Henry M. Flagler tales, and warm sunshine. We send a very happy Thanksgiving to you.

Meadowlark Log, 4th Installment. 11/27-12/

Friday, November 28th. Our 66th day. St. Augustine.

Comes sunny and windy with the cold front that was predicted. The first mate did chores, went online and sent the third log installment, and we left St. Augustine at 9:30am. I am feeling a little sick, with no appetite, thank God. Probably post-prandial.

Saturday, November 29th. Palm Coast Golf Resort.

We arrived in this new marina yesterday, and last night a strong storm blew through with driving rain and gusts up to 30, which we watched from the safety of a nice bar. We had been told that this bar had happy hour hors d'oeuvres, which it did. There were piles of tiny meatballs, salsa and taco chips-all the dinner we wanted. While we ate, the boat was washed clean by the rain, which abated just as we walked home.

The marina was new, clean, no bugs, and part of "the fastest growing community in Florida," a woman proudly said. She had been looking at ML for a little while, and asked, "Is that a Maine 30?"

"Yes, a Maine Cat 30," I said.
"How many days have you been aboard?"
"About 67," I said smiling.
"Do you mind the lack of privacy on the bridge deck?" An odd question I thought.
"We usually anchor in a bayou where we are alone, and we do have privacy in the hulls," I explained.
She nodded and walked away. But this morning when I walked across the bridge deck at 7:30am to get us our tea in the galley, I felt a little out in the open. But no one was around that early on a Saturday morning. We are proud of our boat, she is proud of her community-and we are worlds apart.

We are heading down the ICW, left the marina at 8:45am, to cover 40 miles today. One of the captain's talents is planning nice anchorages when weather permits, and finding good marinas when it doesn't. Not as easy as he makes it look.

I've finished Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz which is the story of Captain James Cook's voyages, and Tony's funny efforts to follow in his footsteps. He got me thinking about voyages of discovery. In lots of ways St. John and I are explorers-married a year, doing something challenging as we take Meadowlark about 1000 miles to the Bahamas. Tony says: "Explorers live or die by first impressions. Is the approaching inlet a shelter or a shoal-strewn trap? The figures beckoning from the beach-are they friends or foes? Act too cautiously and you will discover nothing. Too recklessly, and you may end up dashed against rocks, or like Magellan, lying on the sand with a spear through your gut." (p. 248).

We don't have mortal worries-no savages or uncharted shoals; our concerns are about physical comfort and good taste. Do they have a shower? Will that motor yacht keep playing rap all night? Is there a market near by? Not exactly life-threatening.

But the places that stand out in my memory were ones that gave us happy discoveries and surprises: singing Amazing Grace in Beaufort, NC; Molasses Creek on Ocracoke; Tiffany windows on Jekyll and in St. Augustine, finding five-pound quahogs on Fort George River. If I were naming those places, I'd use superlatives. Quahog Surprise for example. And when I think of Cape May and the supercilious fellow in the marina, I'd rename that Arrogance Inlet.

What power Cook must have felt painting the map British red, and choosing names. Many of his original names have reverted to the native ones-what we know as the Hawaiian Islands were the Sandwich Islands, named for Cook's benefactor Lord Sandwich. Savage Islanders frightened off Cook's party by smearing their teeth with red banana juice, painting their faces black and white, and matting their hair with mud. Cook described their bizarre grimaces and weird gestures, which protected the islanders from Cook and missionaries for 50 years. Today, Savage Island is the tiny nation of Niue (New-ay), its original name.

That sounds critical of Cook, but I greatly admire his navigational skill, his courage, and the fact he was a self-made man, very unusual in the 1700's. He had been born to a common laborer in Yorkshire, and look what he achieved-three voyages and over 200,000 lifetime miles. We recommend Blue Latitudes. Here is a footnote: Cook carried Harrison's latest chronometer on his first voyage, as described in Dava Sobel's Longitude, another good read.

So here we are motoring at six knots past Flagler Beach on a cool morning in late November. The way is clearly marked by red triangles and green squares, the rare rock is flagged and a new waterway guide, two chart books, and our Rand McNally Road Atlas show us the way. Wouldn't both of the Henry M's (Plummer and Flagler) be surprised!

Most of the bridges along here are high enough for our 46' mast to clear. But occasionally we get on Channel 9 and say, "Main Street Bridge, this is a south-bound sailboat, do you have an opening schedule?"

The bridge tender comes back, "Captain, we open on demand, what is the name of your vessel?"

"Roger that. We are Meadowlark."

Then bells ring, the wooden traffic barriers lower, cars and trucks back up and slowly the span opens. Tons of steel gears and roadway begin to lift, higher and higher. Sinjon gives ML full power and we go through triumphantly. It must be similar to a military wedding when the bride and groom process under an archway made of raised swords. Our attendants are 30 or 40 vehicles on either side. Each time it is dramatic, and it gives me a little rush of power, I have to say.

In just two days, we've gone from eight-foot tides on Jekyll Island to one
foot here. The curved coast of Georgia really funnels tide and current. North up in St. Augustine we watched a motorboat get caught. It was being pushed into the downstream wharf in two knots of current. Along the wharf ran the marina employees and boat owners, it was really a snaggle-frag with the motorboat unable to control itself.

We just passed Ormond Beach, originally named New Britain. The WPA guide says that…"Ormond Beach is a quiet, reserved, and complacent city. The town was established in 1873 by the Corbin Lock Company of New Britain, Connecticut as a resort for its employees threatened with tuberculosis." (p. 65) Its name was changed to honor Captain James Ormond, a plantation owner who was killed by a runaway slave in 1829. It does make me wonder about the slave's name. And imagine a company creating a resort for its employees today.

St. John tells me that his grandmother spent winter vacations here, as did John D. Rockefeller, Sr. who played golf and "dispensed dimes." Down we go, making excellent time. It's only 11:15 and we've gone 20 miles already.

We watched a marsh hawk chase an osprey this morning. It may have been territorial or the osprey may have had a tasty fish. They wheeled and dove, and after a few minutes, the larger hawk gave up. Bird life here is a source of endless pleasure. I'm still not accustomed to seeing egrets and herons. Down here they are huge, not GBH, but GBBH-great big blue herons. In St. Augustine one evening after dark I noticed a heron sitting on a rail.

"It's a night heron," said SJ. I thought he was pulling my leg, as in a yellow-bellied sap sucker. "Look it up," he suggested.

My bird knowledge is limited to Make Way for Ducklings, so I reached for the Audubon Society Nature Guide. Sure enough, there was a black-crowned night heron. How could I doubt the Captain?

I have poor visual recognition, and I find birding an exercise in frustration. But now I can spot a snowy egret by his silly yellow feet on the end of long black legs. He looks like he's wearing his galoshes. There was a tame one on the marina dock at St. Augustine, and I moved to within two feet of him. The pose is innately elegant and graceful. He carries himself like royalty, slowly and gracefully.

Shore birds continue to baffle me, and I do find our shore bird book a little intimidating. Not only do those small birds have adult and juvenile plumage, but in addition they have breeding and winter colors, and in any season their feathers get "worn." I guess that means old and tattered. That means for one species there are about six coloration possibilities.

I thought when birds molted they couldn't fly, like Mrs. Mallard in the Boston Garden. But shore birds can fly in mid-molt. Clearly an aspiring birder needs to be dedicated. Arthur Morris in Shorebirds, Beautiful Beachcombers says: "Within half a decade, I found myself able to identify a shorebird species at 40 yards without binoculars." (p.13) Arthur, that is five years of frequent trips to the marsh-say once a week. Do the math, 260 visits over five years of 3-4 hours duration equals 1040 hours. C'mon, Arthur!

St. John calls all the little ones peeps, but that's just protective coloration. I bet he knows them all and is just being thoughtful. After all, he knew a night heron.

Sunday, November 30th. Rock House Creek.

Cold!

Monday, December 1st. Titusville.

Down we went through Speedo Lagoon and the Indian River through Haul Over Canal toward Titusville. As we exited Haul Over Canal we saw our first six pink flamingos-so pink, the color of Double Bubble Gum. We also saw many white pelicans, GBH, and some ibis. It seems as if we have entered a new habitat.

I comment on the chart. "Darling, a depressive named these little islands next to the channel. Listen to this: Foul Island, Stumps Island, Spoil Island, Pipe Island, Obstn Island. How do you pronounce that last one?"

"Obstruction. What's the elevation?"

When I first started map reading in Colorado I was puzzled that so many mountains were named Mt. El.

"Ahah."

"Those islands were all created when the channel was dredged. Good for birds, you know."

Sinjon doesn't appear alarmed at having married an idiot.

Tuesday, December 2nd. Our 72nd day. Titusville

SJ phoned all the cab companies in Titusville and found one to take us out to Kennedy Space Center for $10 per head. There is no public transportation out there. Once there, we were mulct-as Henry would say--$52 apiece for the all-inclusive ticket. We toured the KSC "campus" which is measured in miles, not acres. We saw two launch pads surrounded by moats which are filled with water just prior to a launch to control wildfire. One of NASA's stated goals is to inspire future space exploration, and parts of it were inspiring.

We went to a building housing the Apollo artifacts, which was like a secular cathedral. Stirring trumpet voluntaries and fanfares played continually, the ceiling was at least 60 feet high, and there were life-sized mockups of rockets and the lunar module-the spidery thing that landed on the moon. About 100 of us were herded into a theater with a replica of the control center where there was a sound and lights show to simulate an Apollo launch. It was dramatic; barely a dry eye-and those glory days of NASA's push to the moon have probably become a part of the American psyche. But it seems to me that a rocket with robotics would be safer and cheaper than manned space flight at this point in time.

We saw an IMAX movie of the Soyuz rocket launching an American up to the International Space Station, and off it went, surrounded by Russians, families and friends. No security worries, no moat, a lot less expense, and the Soyuz rockets are very reliable. I think they return the astronauts by parachute, they don't have a Space Shuttle glider do the job. It will be interesting to watch NASA's progress in the 21st Century.

They have 16,000 employees and coincidentally, 16,000 peccaries live on the campus. They also have about 6000 alligators, and we were thrilled to see four in drainage ditches. We spent about six hours there, and left wanting more science, and fewer trumpets.

Wednesday, December 3rd. Our 71st day.

Awoke feeling that I cannot do this job. I didn't sleep much last night and hurt a lot. Everything is hard for me today, and I'm discouraged. E. B. White, master of the written word, is pulling me out of this funk-along with cabbage salad.

Cabbage is the perfect boat food. It has a long shelf life, a satisfying crunch, and I have found that a single leaf acts much like a tortilla wrap, with ten times the strength. Children know that peanut butter is the perfect food, and I have been rediscovering this. I wanted a soothing salad, so I sliced some beautifully organized cabbage leaves into a bowl, stirred a spoonful of peanut butter into rice wine as a dressing, and there it was. Goes down, stays down, has crunch and takes a nice, long time to eat. At least two E. B. White essays worth.

Thursday, December 4th. Off Merritt Island in the Indian River.

Warm but windy and very rocky last night, hard to sleep! Heading down the Indian River to Vero Beach.

There is something in me that wants a reward when I do the hard thing, the brave thing. If I'm sick and I don't complain, I think I deserve a teensy reward-a handful o chocolate chips maybe. S during the first 30 days of our trip, I ate too many peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwiches. Actually, I don't like bread, it was only the holder. And of course, I gained weight.

That's part of storming, on the way to norming and performing, part of the balancing act. I was feeling crank at first. That is an old sailing term, a crank vessel has too little ballast and too much windage. She can tip over in a blow. That was me, a little tender and cranky, so I increased my ballast.

For the last 30 days or so, I've been more in the performing stage and paying better attention to the fat intake. I've been trying t get stronger also, to fix a chronic lower back thang. Nothing radical, just easing off on the chips, and replacing bread with cabbage. I may throw away all those "just add water" packages of corn bread and cheese biscuits also. I hope the shakedown is over.

But no. We were leaving the anchorage a couple of days ago and SJ said, "Let's go over the process of leaving." Right away I was defensive. "I couldn't hear you because the plastic windscreen was zipped in, and it wasn't making intuitive sense to me. I said that to you, but you couldn't hear me either."

An hour later, he patiently raised it again, and I kept quiet. The problem was that I quick, quick wanted to stow bumpers and lines, and wasn't watching the "real world," as he calls it. He was right, was I tripped up by my compulsiveness? Man. Shake down. Where is that chocolate?

Friday, December 5th. Pine Island.

Comes hot and muggy. We had the fan on all night which made a big difference. We are heading in a leisurely fashion to Vero Beach for two nights where I will meet St. John's cousin and her husband. We will clean up the boat, shower, mail stuff home, and hopefully see the movie Master & Commander. Then down to Stewart where we'll wait for a mooring.

Saturday, December 6th. Vero Beach.

We slept on "the hard" last night, our first night off Meadowlark in 73 days. I was a little sad to break our record, but what a good sleep. SJ's cousins opened their house to us, and we spent the day shopping, etc. We were both tired, maybe adjusting to being on land again. It did seem strange to be inside a car or a house all day.

Sunday, December 7th. Vero Beach.

We did see the O'Brien movie: Master & Commander, and sitting in the theater with surround sound I became viscerally aware of our quiet, 19th Century lifestyle on Meadowlark without tv, traffic, or confusion. It put me in mind of the poem: getting and spending, we lay waste our powers..

I can feel my resources being spent and draining away as we negotiate traffic or wander through the plethora of merchandise in Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Give me the back of beyond! However, I can say that now because I don't have to earn my living, and I'm in the company of a magnificent man. But when I was up at 6:15 every morning to be at school by 7:30, when a snow day felt like a gift from God, when I finished teaching and was too tired to drive home, on those days I never imagined I'd be here on a lovely catamaran heading south. Far beyond my wildest expectations.

We have just motored through Jensen Beach Bridge which opened slowly. There are high rises to the east on Hutchinson Island, a few Norfolk Island pines and Australian pines, and down the Indian River we go toward Peck Lake. There are dolphin, a few sailboats, and the sunbeams are slanting down through the clouds.

We heard a radio call to the Coast Guard, "I've just rescued a man off a boat, he appears ok-his boat is still running. I can see it between my boat and the mainland. I've contacted Seatow."

"There is a chance for a salvor," says SJ. "If someone tries to save your boat and puts himself in danger, he is entitled to salvage rights on your boat."

We begin to talk about this ancient law. "Never sign a piece of paper that has 'salvage' on it-for example if you need a tow. And be sure you throw them your line."

"Like when the tug pulled us off the sandbar?"

"Yes, you remember how careful I was to give him our line?"

"Sort of, there was a lot going on. Why is it so important?" I ask.

"A salvor is entitled to 40% of the value of your boat. Of course, an Admiralty Court can decide anything, but if Seatow rescues the abandoned boat, and the fellow on the radio chooses to rescue the man instead of the boat, each could get 20% of the value of the boat."

"So by rescuing the man, he wouldn't forfeit salvage rights in the boat. It will be interesting to watch the impact of Seatow and Towboat US on boatin'."

At 3:40pm we dropped the yank in Peck Lake, within earshot of the ocean surf. "We've done 990 Ditch miles," says the Captain. We'll go further south before we sail overnight to the Bahamas.

It's quiet now (4:15) as we sit drinking-me: hot cambric tea; SJ-a hot rum toddy. We read our books-me: Good Poems, a collection by Garrison Keillor; SJ: Sailing to the Sun, by Howard Bloomfield. Howard and his wife and one-year-old son made this trip in 1942. He wrote well, being a professional writer and an editor for The New Yorker in the days of the great E. B. White. I'm loving Garrison's choices from the King James Bible to dear Emily, to Wendell Berry. And we make little vocalizations-just tiny audible acknowledgements of what we read, of the sweet moments. The sun shines low in the west, the surf pounds as we sit here, so close to perfection that I can hardly breathe.

Wednesday, December 10th. Our 78th day. Peck Lake

Up late last night with strong winds and a bouncy sleep. A trawler dragged, and we were alerted by someone blowing a horn. We listened to alarmed voices on the radio and stood on deck watching, watching. The captain never responded or appeared on deck, and eventually his anchor bit in. Guess he didn't set it, just dropped it over and went to sleep.

We took an hour's walk on the ocean beach just north of Hobe Sound. What a sad and filthy beach. I wanted to unleash a class of 6th graders with trash bags. They would do the job. There was plastic detritus of all sorts, onions, fruit, and glass bottles. Disgusting. However, the ocean was warm and a beautiful milky aqua color with the roiling sand.

I'm out of balance today from lack of sleep. Garrison helps as does Annie Dillard. The messy beach really upset me.

Thursday, December 11th. Our 79th day. St. Lucie River

We anchored in a private little bay off the ICW while a windy cold front passed us.

Friday, December 12th. Our 80th day. Stewart.

We got the last mooring available and had cocktails with Fitzcat's Don and Diane, a retired couple who have been living aboard for three years. Diane made an easy adjustment to life on the water, and seemed surprised that I had occasional trouble. That's ok. I'm getting better at it.

We went to dinner at a nice Thai restaurant, and walked into town to the Lyric Theater to hear a Christmas concert: Messiah, Corelli's Christmas Concerto, and a wonderful oboist play Handel's Oboe Concerto in Bb Major. Beautiful. The oboe is such a difficult instrument, the poor man turned red with the effort, and we were all holding our breath for him. Have you noticed how some musicians resemble their instruments? The double bass was a tall, dolorous fellow; the trumpeters were strong, compact men. And the chorus was filled with attractive older man and women. I bet they learned to sing in some prep school about 45 years ago and have retired to the "Treasure Coast" as this area is called. I can relate-I'd seek out a chorus if we lived here. Singing is such fun, and some research shows it promotes longevity.

Initially, we sang the National Anthem, and then the Hallelujah Chorus (generous of the director to invite that). The soloists were good, especially a very round and happy alto. But the fat lady could sing!

It is still so special to dink to town dressed up, have a nice dinner and hear live music. I'll never get tired of that.

11:30am. We are heading back to Vero to gam with the Spiers, then tomorrow to the marina and Monday we drive to Ft. Lauderdale and fly to Colorado for Christmas. We wish you a very merry Christmas and joy

January 11th, 2004. Our 81st day on board. Vero Beach Municipal Marina

We had a wonderful if exhausting three weeks of Christmas in Lyons, Colorado with our families and friends. I "made" Christmas in one day of marathon shopping, including the tree and the ham. And learned once again that the presents are fun, but a small part of the celebration.

It was cold, cold in Lyons, below zero for several nights. We saw hawk, deer and elk, and we had a beautiful 6" snow storm. We returned to Vero Beach sneezing and coughing, but filled up with loving memories of children, siblings, and friends. Good stuff. We returned to Ft. Lauderdale and had a two-day visit with St. John's dear sister in Naples. Then back to Vero Beach.

Meadowlark was in Vero Beach Marina almost 30 days. It was an excellent marina with courteous and intelligent staff, clean showers, and a free bus into town. Boaters call it Velcro Beach, because they find it hard to leave. In 1937 the WPA Guide described Vero as a "fruit packing center that is connected with the ocean by a bridge." It had a population of 2500, a casino, bathing beach, and a number of "amusement devices." (p. 72) Howard Bloomfield sailed through Vero in 1942 and said, "Vero Beach is an interesting jungle-land, but remote from stores, and the bugs are sometimes fierce." (p. 194)

Today Vero Beach is an assortment of lovely old houses, recently developed gated communities, high-rise condos, and one-storey bungalows. We thought it was pretty densely populated, no longer a jungle-land. St. John's lovely cousin lives in Vero, and she scrubbed Meadowlark thoroughly the day before we arrived. What a labor of love. We returned to a snowy-white boat. It's no joke washing off 30 days of soot and bird poo.

We were underway on the 11th by 9:30 in a norther with winds gusting into the 20's. The wind was strong yesterday also, and we watched a small motorboat lose control and bang into the stern and self-steering equipment of a large sloop. Lots of excitement, phone calls, and something we want to avoid! In a narrow place, I prefer flat wind and water. But it is good, good to be back in our cozy bunk. Last night it was 42 degrees when we turned in, and we slept with cold noses-10 hours of sleep. Isn't that something!

We just sailed past the ICW marker 163 green down the Indian River-famous for its oranges. John McPhee's book Oranges is fascinating, he wrote it in 1966, and we think it is one of his best. His love of the orange (history, culture, taste, color, etc.) is contagious. They are indeed the "golden apples of the sun."

Down the Indian River we go with 15 knots of wind pushing up a following sea, we are motor-sailing over rolling 3' waves. McPhee explains that the Indian River "is not actually a river, but a tidal lagoon, about two miles wide in most places and 120 miles long, running between the Florida mainland and the Atlantic barrier beaches." (p. 91) Since McPhee wrote that, huge high-rise condos have been built all along the barrier beach, marching south toward Ft. Lauderdale, perhaps housing retired baby boomers. The population is exploding down here, real estate prices follow the demand, and indeed we do feel younger and healthier in this warm, moist air.

Did the island of Krakatoa explode in 1835? I know that the upper atmosphere dust from Krakatoa caused global cooling. For some reason, in the winter of 1835 there was a hard freeze in Florida with temps as low as 11 degrees for 56 hours. The freeze killed every orange tree except the orchards on Merritt Island, which is part of the NASA campus, today. The Indian River waters surrounding the island moderated the temperature. Those trees provided buds that were grafted onto durable sour orange root stock, and are the ancestors of most of Florida's present orange groves. Floridians didn't know why the freeze occurred, and some guessed there was a huge ice berg off the coast.

There are colorful stories about the early settlers, encouraged to settle by the government's offer of 160 free acres if they could defend the land from the Seminoles for seven years. My favorite story is about an unpopular settler, Major Russell, whose arm was grazed by a Seminole arrow. During the night he had some pain, reached for salve, and grabbed a bottle of ink by mistake. In the morning he saw the black stain on his arm, and convinced himself that he had gangrene. The white settlers thought less of Russell that did the Seminoles, and kept quiet about the ink. Russell sought a doctor in St. Augustine who told him he would recover, but Russell insisted on amputation, so the doctor complied. Evidently, Russell lived for another 31 years and died in Orlando. Did anyone ever tell him about the ink? I wonder.

We are passing Fort Pierce, full of marinas and boats "on the hard." Henry Plummer came this way in 1913, and said: "At Fort Pierce, a distressingly barren looking town, we stopped for gas…" (p. 84E) Not like that at all, with huge fuel storage tanks, a refinery, and a dozen marinas. The water is the color of opals as we approach the St. Lucie inlet and the Atlantic Ocean. It is 65 degrees, colder than when we left. It is January, after all.

Henry was guided down the Indian River by "finger posts." He went through Hobe Sound and saw …"lots of ideally beautiful Florida winter homes. The houses, unpretentious, well done, and the gardens a mass of bloom and color." (85E)

January 12th, Monday. Peck Lake. Our 82nd day.

Dawn is calm. During the night the winds stopped, dropping from 20 to 2. It is buggy, warm and sticky as we enter southern Florida. Beautiful houses and manicured golf courses line the ICW. Even the rip rap is made of picturesque limestone boulders. I have a bug and feel crummy.

January 13th, Las Ochos Marina, Ft. Lauderdale.

Early this morning I slipped on the companionway stairs, rolled my left foot under itself, and heard something snap. It is very sore to walk on, and I'm not much use on the boat today. I guess we are both worried, and as we aren't having a great day, I didn't tell St. John that it is my birthday until we were going to the Spier's boat for dinner.

"Oh damn!"

Both John and Kerri Spear are trained as Emergency Medical Technicians, and John didn't think I broke anything as I could walk on it, and the swelling was only moderate.

We have to be so careful on a boat, especially when we are a little sick or off our game. Mindful, as St. John would say.

January 14th, Las Ochos.

My foot is better, responding to the I vitamin (ibuprofen). Yesterday we got gas as a fancy-pants fuel dock. In front of us was a 40' shiny motor boat which took on 1100 gallons. That's $3000 worth! I asked the deck guy (dressed in a British-looking uniform) what their record was.

"We pumped 40,000 gallons once, but 20,000 is more common. And we offer economies of scale, of course."

"How does one pay for that? With a VISA?" I asked, smiling.

"In a variety of ways, ma'am," he said seriously, "often with an electronic transfer."

So we got our 16 gallons and paid the $2.50/per gallon charge of $40.

"Shall I wire the money, darling?" Sinjon asked me.

"No luv, let's use the Mastercard."

A different world, and I much prefer ours which is controllable and hands on. For those big yachts, when is enough, enough? Here on Meadowlark our economies of scale include days of sunshine, miles of turquoise water, hours of books, and time.

St. John is listening to the weather report, and after each day's prediction, he shouts, "Perfect!" We'll have NW winds to sail outside in the Atlantic (finally!) to Key Biscayne and then to Ocean Reef on the north end of Key Largo.

January 15th. Los Ochos Marina.

Up at 6:30 and off by 7:30 and through the cut at Fort Lauderdale. The ocean temperature is 74 degrees, warmed by the Gulf Stream. Seawater comes out of the galley sink pump warm and friendly on my hands. The sea water in the head is as clear as gin, no more murky, brackish water.

Sailing through Ft. Lauderdale Harbor, we pass 80' to 100' gleaming white power yachts. Their crews are busy polishing and shining, but there is no sign of the owners. We pass huge cruise ships that look like sleek rabbit warrens. I guess every stateroom has a port hole and an ocean view.

We are sailing again, with the screacher and the main up in 10 knots of wind. We are making 7 knots of speed. On the horizon we can see the Gulf Stream waves, very lumpy. The wind is NW so it is blowing against the Stream and making 7' waves. We listen to the VHF and hear reports from people out there who are bouncing around.

January 16th. Our 86th day in No Name Harbor, Kay Biscayne.

This lovely barrier island is where President Nixon had a retreat. As we entered the channel for No Name, we passed Stiltsville-a group of six or seven houses built on stilts about a mile from land. They are open to the elements, and several lacked roofs. Sinjon thinks the Park Service owns them now. But someone had courage and imagination to build them! Doesn't Stiltsville sound like a town in a Bugs Bunny cartoon?

We anchored in No Name next to a Park Service restaurant, and were serenaded until midnight by a fellow with an accordion and a loud tenor voice. We slept thought most of it, but we want to change the name of this harbor to Cacophony Cove.

I've been reading Bruce Van Sant's book Passages South and I can see how it has influenced SJ. Bruce is smart, specific, and safe, safe. For example: "When a Weather Window comes by, take the leading edge of it and don't delay." (7) He also advises an early departure so you arrive in good light. It's no fun trying to find an anchorage in the dark. It is not an accident that St. John consistently arrives at our destinations early in the afternoon. We aren't exhausted, we can find a slip or a mooring, or we have our choice of anchorages. What does that mean? A good sleep, a happy first mate, and a safe cruise. Planning. St. John makes it look easy, but there are a lot of first timers on the radio stumbling about in the dark.

Van Sant is refreshingly blunt, which I find reassuring. "If you want to make it south to the Caribbean and you want to go only in sunny weather, take a plane." (p. 21)

January 22nd. Thursday. Ocean Reef, Key Largo

We spent three nights and four days with a gracious and welcoming family whom St. John knew in Philadelphia in their Frank Lloyd Wright house in Ocean Reef on Key Largo. We explored Ocean Reef which is a planned development, but has developed over 30 years and has an organic look to it. They opened their house, laundry, phone, guest room, and kitchen to us. They loaned us their golf cart for transportation, and we left feeling clean and ready for the crossing to the Bahamas.

If Key Largo reminds you of a Bogart movie, that is because the early developers thought Rock Harbor Cay too prosaic, so changed the name! St. John wandered down to the harbor and found the African Queen (a boat used in another Bogie movie) and the motor boat used in On Golden Pond. Bogie was dead when that movie was made, but Katherine Hepburn (with him in African Queen) was in it.

After Key Largo, we sailed south into Florida Bay waiting for a weather window and for my foot to improve. The huge and empty Bay is aquamarine green with white sand, and is a uniform 5-6' deep. Mangroves have formed islands and some small beaches edge them with white lines. Picture the end of the peninsula of Florida with the FL Keys running to the southwest. The entire body of water enclosed by the Keys is Florida Bay, and it is all part of the Everglades National Park.

On our way back to Angelfish Creek where we will leave for the Bahamas, we shopped in the town of Key Largo, dragging our laden crate over dusty, scruffy roads. But what produce! Native avocados weighing 1 ½ pounds apiece, tangerines, oranges, and citrus of all sorts. As Henry would say, we cut open an avocado and muzzled all four feet right into it. Here is a recipe for "Goes Down Stays Down." My sister Madeleine gets credit for it: cut up into ½ inch pieces mango, avocado, tomato, and a little onion. Grate lime zest over it and squeeze some lime juice onto it. Heap into the avocado and serve. (If you have cilantro, add that.)

January 24th. Tarpon Basin.

We are heading up to Angelfish Creek to poise ourselves for the trip to Cat Cay in the Berry Islands, our first landfall in the Bahamas. St. John is making ready, in his wetsuit (water temp is 66) as he checks the twirly thing under the boat that gives us our speed through the water, then up on the Bimini roof to remove the sail cover. I just sit around with my foot wrapped in an ace bandage.

In Angelfish there are two other boats getting ready for the jump, a sloop that we've seen before named Tortuga, and an Endeavor Cat out of Long Boat Key in Florida. I'll leave her name out of the log. We all wave to each other and wish each other safe sailing. We set our alarm for 5am, check our anchor bite as there is a 2 knot tidal current, and turn in.

January 25th. Angelfish Creek.

At 4:58 St. John and I are awakened by a thunderous crash against our starboard hull. We run up onto the deck, and there in the dark is the Endeavor Cat going sideways down the Creek.

"The current got me," yells the skipper, as he careens along.

I was hyperventilating as I grabbed a flashlight to look at the damage to our starboard pontoon. Couldn't see anything in the dark, and it wasn't until a week later when we found the ding. Not a huge ding, about the size of a silver dollar. Some wakeup.

There was a warm breeze from the south and crystalline stars, so we upped yank about 5:20am, and while I shined the flashlight, SJ followed the red triangles and green squares out a channel almost due east away from America!

The sun rose a little after 7am, but we had predawn light for an hour, then up over the watery horizon came the big, orange sun. By 8am we were warmed up and out in the open ocean, by 8:20 the water temp was up to 74 degrees from 66 in Angelfish.
"The Gulf Stream should be around 77 degrees," says the Captain. In the next hour, the temp rises to 76. And what a color it is. The blue is close to that of a sapphire, the purest color with no green at all. It's bouncy on the Gulf Stream with waves of 4-5 feet and swells running from the north. The breeze is on the nose, so we are motoring, going 6.5 knots over ground (measured by the GPS). St. John thinks we'll be at Cat Cay by 3pm, and that we are making good time.

It is noon as I write. I can count eight other sailboats making the passage with us. There is lots of yellow Sargasso seaweed floating in the Gulf Stream. I've read that Sargasso crabs live in the weed, and are a species specific to it. I'd love to see one, but we are going too fast to catch any. The clumps of yellow are like messages from the south.

Speaking of messages, we dropped two bottles in the Gulf Stream. Each contained a one dollar bill (to encourage someone to pick it up) and a stamped envelope with our address, asking the finder to let us know where and when he found it.

12:30 pm-the wind is heading us and the current (2.5 knots to the north) is setting us, so we'll have to move south to make Cat Cay. The Gulf Stream is like a 45 mile river carrying warm water north along the New England coast, then over to England where the warm water enables palm trees to grow in the Scilly Islands. (I haven't checked my geography, but I think that is right.)

How can I describe the Gulf Stream blue. Do you remember Waterman ink pens? The Waterman blue ink mixed into a glass of water would come close. It is a translucent jewel of a pure indigo edging on violet, it's a deep color, not just in tone but in volume. When I look at the Stream, there is something profound about it. We have traveled 40 miles-almost 7 hours--and we are still in it; a massive river of 79 degree water.

What did early mariners think when they felt this tepid water? Wouldn't Henry M. have loved this! Bluebird water…definitely bluebird water. Warm like a living thing. The walls of our pontoons are nearly skin temperature. But think of Winslow Homer's painting "Gulf Stream," the terrified islanders in an open sloop surrounded by huge waves and sharks. It can be lethal.

Our guide books all warn us: "It's a 45-mile river-and when a norther is blowing…there are elephants out there, giant square waves, high seas kicked up by the Stream's determination to win its way north, come what may." (Mathew Wilson, The Bahama Cruising Guide, p. 20).

Mathew Wilson crossed in his 26-foot catamaran Terrapin in March, 1994, and his log reads: "horrid triangular waves and an evil swell from the north. A witches' cauldron…worst ever crossing. Terrapin like an orange crate caught in a millrace. Sick as dogs all the way." (p. 22)

Ten minutes after I copied that into my log, I felt sick! Sick as a pup, not a dog. I shouldn't read or write down below in rough seas. I read the ingredients in Dramamine, which almost send me to the rail. So I drink a Lime Coke. Better. Then we sight the Cat Cay lighthouse on the horizon. Much better. St. John says the best cure for sea sickness is to sit under an apple tree. "Did you know that nausea and nautical come from the same Greek root for sea?" I ask. He nods patiently. We arrive at Cat Cay, tired and excited to be out of the USA.

As captain, SJ must go to a Bahama entry office and present the ship's documentation and all the passports of the crew. We have to fly the "quarantine" yellow flag, and I must stay on board until we have been admitted. I look around the new marina at Cat Cay which has room for 80 boats. There are about six here, but clearly this privately owned island is being developed. We turn in early.

January 26th. Gun Cay, Bahamas

We met our friends John and Kerri Spier on their catamaran Songbird as they arrived to sign in. We later learned that we could have entered the Bahamas at Chub Cay and saved $100. Next time.

We sail a couple of miles north to Gun Cay and spend the day snorkeling and resting. I followed three manta rays along the beach in 3 feet of water, entranced by such graceful creatures. The water was 76 degrees, and the little group of curious barracuda added to the perfection. The Spiers came over for dinner, great fun to have guests. I made the mango chutney. We will leave tomorrow morning at 2am for the 80 mile sail to Chub Cay in the Berry Islands

January 27th, Chub Cay. Our 97th day.

We were up at 1:30am and under the brightest stars we upped the main and screacher. By dawn we had gone 30 miles in 18-20 knot winds. The seas were washing across the hulls and we were both wet and chilly, but coping. A far cry from our nighttime passage down the Jersey Shore! The sun rose at 7:05 and we furled the screacher. At that moment, a dolphin cut across our bows. "He approves," said SJ.

The Bahama Banks are a huge area of 150 miles by 80 miles of open water, all about 12 feet deep. We are crossing the Banks to Chub Cay, and we have lost the Gulf Stream warmth, the water is about 70 degrees.

The Spiers passed us in their faster catamaran around 2pm, and then warned us of an increase in wind and water about three miles ahead, which allowed us to get in a reef and get ready. For about five miles, we had 5-6 foot waves, but with reduced sail, Meadowlark did well. We entered the marina at Chub Cay around 3pm, having sailed 80 miles in 12 hours. It was the best sail of the trip! With six or seven mariners watching from the dock and giving us advice, we tied up next to the Spiers.

January 29th. Our 99th day. Chub Cay.

On the 28th we felt alert and healthy all day, but turned in at 7pm, and slept until 7am! Then last night we slept from 8 to 7. Those night sails take a lot out of us.

Chub Cay has a nice shower and laundry for boaters. There is a beautiful swimming pool that overlooks a beach. We took the three darling Spier children to the pool so Kerri and John could have a couple of hours "off." Huge fun for us, and when we returned to Meadowlark, there was a warm, freshly-baked loaf of bread from Kerri, which we had for supper with a can of conch chowder I found in the local market.

While at the pool, I had a brief but intimate conversation with a woman who is making her first trip to the Bahamas with her husband. I asked how it was going. She said, "When we got to the Gulf Stream, I went into the forward cabin and had a good cry. I will miss my cell phone so much, miss talking to my daughter, to my friends." I told her I had similar feelings, and how I took the phone for granted. I said, "I really miss the company of women." She nodded and we smiled at each other. I don't know who she was, we didn't introduce ourselves, but I think we gave each other some comfort.

A couple of days earlier, when I mentioned to my son Richard how much I'd miss phone conversations and being connected to loved ones, he said, "Mom, you are spending the winter in the Bahamas. I don't feel sorry for you AT ALL!"

We plan to stay in the Berry Islands for a few days, then sail to Nassau on our way to the Exumas. We want to get further south, and then work our way back north and east to the Abacos.

January 31st. Little Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands. Our 101st day!

With our shoal draft of 2.5 feet, we were able to sail into a very protected harbor to wait out a front that is due in tonight. We planned to have dinner at Flo's Conch Bar and Restaurant here, but it was pouring rain last night, so we went over today. Flo and Chester Darville began their restaurant in 1992, and several guide books mention them. They are the only inhabitants of the cay. We were the only customers and had delicious fish, cold slaw, and beans with rice. There is a casual, friendly way about things here. Two other boats are anchored near us, and seem to have been here a while.

One is owned by a young man, maybe 30? He and Flo have known each other for several years, and he was building a table near us as we ate. We didn't get a chance to chat with him, but the other skipper, an older man named Weasel, told us he was a retired stone mason from West Virginia, and he spends his winters here. So much mystery about these mariners, in my mind! Nice folks.

February 1st. Little Harbour Cay.

I have caught up with my log, and it is actually Feb. 1st as I write. St. John is listening to the Super Bowl, and I am finishing this log so we can send it by email tomorrow in Nassau.

We scrubbed Meadowlark this morning, getting a black oily film off her. Must be from diesel smoke, we think. Then we made a small lunch, climbed into our wetsuits, and took the dinghy across the sand flats to the end of Little Harbour Cay. We anchored the dink and went for a long snorkel. Sinjon was carrying a 6-foot spear, with which to get dinner. I was looking at anemones, fish, shells, and was continually amazed by the underwater world. We didn't find any conch or lobsters, but got a lot of exercise. Then we walked along a white sand beach for half a mile, and never saw another person or boat. No one. I said to myself: remember this.

We will get up at 6am and head for Nassau tomorrow, where we hope to find a Batelco (Bahamas Telephone Company) office, send the log to Maine Cat, check email, and get provisions. As I adjust to the lack of communication, it seems to be that both Richard and the lady at Chub Cay are right…we are so lucky to be here, but that doesn't diminish the heartache of missing our loved ones.

February 3, 2004 Nassau

I am in a Mailboxes, Etc. store about to use their computer to send this log and check our email. We had a smooth crossing from Little Harbour Cay to Nassau, and got in yesterday around 3pm. We passed four HUGE cruise ships, and up close they towered over us. They are beautiful when viewed from 50 feet away, and give an ocean vacation to thousands of people. We were motoring into Nassau and one of the liners blew the horns to announce it was leaving the dock. It was such a low, loud sound that we thought our engine had suddenly developed trouble. Impressive.

We found a good market for provisioning, a Bed, Bath, and Home for a couple of sheets and wash cloths, and this Mailboxes, Etc. so we are feeling well taken care of. It is a big city, however, and the traffic seems to careen around the streets. We will be here one more night, then sail for the "Zoomers." I will try to send a log and emails from Georgetown, Great Exuma.

February 4th. From Nassau to Allen's Cay in the Exuma Islands.

We were up at 7am in Nassau and off the wharf at 7:45, a leisurely and calm exit! We are getting better at this. I took a Dramamine and was happy and dopey all day as we sailed across the infamous Yellow Bank, a shallow area with numerous coral heads. I used to think that coral was fairly soft. No, no! It is a sharp, cutting rock that can slice through a hull. No joke.

We dropped the yank in a beautiful, protected spot near Allen's Cay on the east and an archipelago of small islands on the west. There are 15 boats anchored here with us. Allen's is known for its population of wild iguanas. As I was writing a 40 foot cigarette boat pulled up to the beach and 20 or so folks got off. The iguanas came rushing, I counted 50+. They are interesting, prehistoric in appearance, with very aggressive behavior. They jump on each other and fight for the food scraps. The iguanas, of course. The tourists range from older potatus couchas to the younger, posing bikinium nubilia. There are signs saying: Do Not Feed the Iguanas, which are entirely ignored.

February 9th. Our 110th day. Allens to Norman's Cay.

We spent five days at Allen's Cay, diving on coral heads, and exploring the shores by dink. We climb into our black wet suits, looking a little like Christian missionaries from a distance. When we see a dark shadow in the water, I put on my mask and snorkel, lean over and take a look. If the depth is manageable (less than 15') and the sand will hold our little anchor, we drop the yank over and tumble into the water. This was scary for me at first. If we anchored a mile from shore, I felt very vulnerable, just a dot on the ocean, but I'm used to it now. Then the fun begins: floating, diving, watching the gently undulating anemones, the curious Sergeant Majors, and being a part of the extraordinary underwater world. Sinjon dives with a spear looking for dinner, but I'm happy to float around keeping an eye out for barracuda. That species is also curious and on several occasions, I've turned and come upon a big one. Startling!

We were listening to Channel 16 and heard that a neighboring boat-a huge (42x28) catamaran-was having battery trouble. We had been on board the night before, and the owners proudly showed us their power winch, fridge, freezer, water maker, ice maker, microwave, tv, vcr, stove, oven, sound system, macerating head, and electronic system. They will have to return to Nassau today to fix the problem. St. John says: simplify! Once again, we love our Meadowlark. Our four solar panels silently charge our batteries. We have a fridge, we can play CD's, and we can charge our phone and 'puter. And what would Henry say to that? There is a lot to be said for a lighter, simpler boat.

At 3pm we drop the hook in Norman's Cay harbor, about a quarter mile from a crashed plane, of which we can see the rusted tail and cockpit. Quite a story here. Steve Pavlidis in The Exuma Guide gives some history.

In the 1970's and 1980's the Bahamas, and especially Norman's Cay, became a major link in the drug route from Colombia, Venezuela to the US. In 1977 Carlos Lehder, a German in the Medellin Cartel from Colombia began buying properties on Norman's a la Tony Soprano. If the owner wouldn't sell, Carlos intimidated. Two years later he bought one half of Norman's for 900 large as Tony would say ($900,000). He spent another five million dollars enlarging the airstrip, wharf, and constructing a complex of buildings, communications, and roads. He used Norman's as a jumping off place for Florida and Georgia. Were winter snowbirds welcome? No, no, no. Boaters were encouraged to leave by Lehder's thugs.

The DEA got suspicious and disguised themselves as boaters with mechanical trouble. They watched Carlos' activities. I wish I could have seen DEA agents dressed as boaters. I asked SJ what disguise an agent would wear in the '70's.

"Hawaiian shirts, yachting caps, white pants, white belts. No wonder they were shot at."

The DEA raided Norman's Cay but it was clean as a whistle, thanks to a warning given by the Bahamian government. Supposedly, Lehder's bribes insured his freedom on Norman's for another four years. The story was that even the Bahamian Prime Minister was in on it.

By 1983 Lehder's pilots were being arrested and his drugs confiscated; his operation was failing, and he returned to Venezuela where he lived as a fugitive until his deportation to the US in 1987. In '88 he was convicted and given life plus 135 years. Residents live on the north end, but boaters can explore the Lehder ruins. We'll go over tomorrow. We can see a very small island to our south with one palm tree-the desert island cliché that looks like a New Yorker cartoon. We'll take pictures of each other there tomorrow also.

Dinner: I made an orange and purple salad of mango, sweet potatoes and cabbage, plus a bowl of rice and a dish of sautéed onions and garlic. After dinner we made a large leftover salad by mixing all three which turned out to be tasty.

We are swimming almost two hours a day, great exercise. There is a species called tunicates, my current favorite. I hope to find books on them in Exuma Park.

February 10th, Tuesday. Norman's Cay.

We dinked to the deserted and graffitied headquarters of Lehder. There were numerous buildings, a garage, and a communication center with the aerial tower still standing for a lucky osprey, but it was all trashed. Covered with rubble were huge oil and fuel drums, a limestone-paved boulevard that rose grandly to the headquarters, and poured concrete floors and walls which have withstood hurricanes.

We dinked out to the airplane in the shallow bay. Softened by the aqua water, the wings and hull looked almost pretty-but up close we saw that the cabin was rusted to a razor-sharp shambles. It was just another ugly piece of detritus.

Norman's gave me the sense of the ephemeral nature of these islands. Five million invested, and the only ones to benefit were the Bahamian officials. In 50 years pine, dunes, and hurricanes will cover the open dumps, and wash off the graffiti. Already the process has begun, which is good.

Carlos Lehder's four years scarred the island, but in the long run, make little difference. As Steve Pavlidis says, the Bahamians have been profiting from visitors for 100's of years. There is a justice in that, seems to me.

8pm. This was a perfect, facetted gem of a day. We left Norman's at noon, and dove on several coral heads after we anchored near Songbird off Shroud Cay. We are inside the Bahamian National Park and the fish are plentiful, with very little garbage on the grass-a quiet day of 5-10 knot winds.

We dinked over to a tidal creek through Shroud, an island that has a vast mangrove swamp on the inside of higher limestone hills, and entered a wonderland of twisting streams, pure sand, and yellow to green to blue water-silent-clean. Then we rounded a bend and there, framed by the creek's mouth, was the turquoise of the ocean. White lines of surf were breaking on the yellow sand. What would Monet or Van Gogh have done with these colors? Wept! So beautiful it was hard to believe my eyes, to be trite.

We walked on talcum power sand, shells ground by the waves to particles that were soft, soft. And we were alone. No one out to sea, no one as far as we could see…miles…no one. There was a mailbox incongruously placed next to a limestone outcropping with comments going back three years. I added ours.

On the ride back to our boat, we floated in the current next to the dink looking into the roots of the mangroves, little Gothic arches with a purity and sanctity about them-guarding schools of slivery fish, some tiny, some 18" long, all unthreatened by our presence.

The Spiers came for cocktails and I made brownies and oatmeal bread for the children, carrot and sweet potato sticks, dips, cheese, apples and crackers for the adults. The bread and brownies were a hit! I'm learning how to bake on a burner turned down low. Hot bread, even dense as a brick, is nice sliced with butter.

The boys performed Lewis Carroll's "Father William" flawlessly, and then Miss Sally (aged 6) recited full paragraphs of Rascal by Sterling North. What gifted children, and they gifted us.

The sun set and there was a green flash. We all saw it, although it was more of a green blink, a small circle of chartreuse on the horizon just as Sol disappeared. It was a delight to see, but after hearing about The Green Flash for years and years, I was a teensy bit disappointed. It was very small, beautiful but small. However, another facet of our perfect day.

I've done the dishes and I'm writing on our bunk. The stars are crystalline, Venus is casting a reflection of the placid water. The air is just cooling enough for us to sleep.

Beyond my wildest expectations.

February 11th. Wednesday off Shroud Cay. Our 112th day on Meadowlark.

Dawns beautiful, calm, slightly cloudy. We anchored over a reef; lovely fish with 3-5 foot barracudas…so we left. Went a mile into another mangrove swamp on Shroud and floated in warmed, 90-degree water for an hour. It made me feel like a piece of plankton, very much a part of the water world.

February 13th, Friday. Off Shroud.

Had a painful night after our float down the mangrove creek…just hurt all over-and Vitamin I didn't help. Consequently I was groggy yesterday.

I tried to swim, to shake it off, and there in 5 feet of water was a 4-foot barracuda, BIG and curious and very close. I jumped out of the water quick, quick.

We are heading to civilization today as we need laundry, market, post office.

February 14th. St. Valentine's Day. Staniel Cay.

I wandered around the small town, found Batelco and put money on our card, and found the postmistress who invited me into her kitchen, for heaven's sake, so I could address an envelope. Flo's Pink Pearl Grocery was open so I bought a little food and asked her about laundry. "My daughter will do it, darling. Dried in the sun, make your boat smell good." I chatted with Flo about grandchildren, and told her I worried that our grands would forget us-as we had been gone so long. "Don't you worry, darling. Their blood will speak to them. They will remember you." What a loving woman, I felt filled up when I left.

We had a wonderful St. Valentine's meal at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club complete with red and white carnations for all the women, chocolates, lobster, steak, and (yes, yes) veggies. They served an A+ chocolate dessert. What a lovely way to spend 2/14 with my Saint.

February 15-16th. Staniel Cay.

We dove Thunderball Hole, a hollowed-out cave in a small limestone island. Its diameter is about 100', but in the James Bond movie by that name, it looked much bigger. It was just scary enough to swim in under the sharp eroded limestone and into the dark hole. A little act of faith. Once in, we watched huge grouper, fluorescent sponges, sea fans, and a large school of uniformed Sergeant Majors who turned up their noses at purple cabbage. Next time I'll feed them my brick bread.

We then dressed up and dinked ashore to go to church and pick up the laundry. Church was sparsely attended, but the music was terrific. A young teenage boy accompanied the organ with a full set of drums, hitting the cymbals each time Jesus' name was mentioned. Everyone sang, clapped their hands, danced, played tambourines, and we did too. The spirit was contagious.

We picked up our laundry from Flo, and headed north to a hidey hole in the south mooring field of Warderick Wells Cay. St. John's excellent planning meant that we were on a sturdy mooring and anchored to an eyebolt with an inch-thick hawser. A front was coming, and he wanted us nailed down. By 7:45 pm it was blowing 30 knots.

February 18-19th, Warderick Wells off Hog Cay.

It poured rain last night, but the captain had our port hole closed so the first mate stayed dry. "We'll get wind today," he said. "There is a sailor's rhyme for it…goes…

'When rain comes before the wind,
Halyards, sheets, and braces mind,
When wind comes before rain,
Soon you may make sail again.'"

And that is exactly what happened. It blew hard all Wednesday, steady at 30 with one gust up to 41. Our little Meadowlark was vibrating and shaking until we tied off the jibs. When on deck, we had to hang on tight. We listened to distressed mariners trying to get into Norman's, and other sailors giving them reassurance. In many ways, our VHF radio is like an old-fashioned party line. I love to listen in to the chatter.

Early Wed. morning we heard Exuma Park hailing a sailboat. It went on and on until around 8am the boat answered. "Do you have a captain on board named John? Over." "Roger that, I'm John." "Captain, your wife went into labor early this morning. We were notified at 5am, over." "You have to be kidding."

We listened to Captain John talking to Exuma Park during the day. He was too worried about his boat in the wind storm to leave her and dink ashore. Will his wife understand? Very tough decision, I'm sure.

The noise of a wind storm is hard to describe. There is a frantic, strident, continuous hum as the wind vibrates the shrouds and halyards. It reminds me of a steam kettle boiling or an opera singer singing an interminable high note. The first time we had a blow back in Taylor's Creek the sounds echoed my level of anxiety. Now, they are background…not something I viscerally respond to, just a situation where we have to be mindful. Progress.

I "baked" bread, made coffee cake, wrote a long letter to the Colorado grandchildren, and finished reading about Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie, by Ralph G. Martin. Wonderful book about the fin de siecle. The wind continued to blow. The sun was out, but the water was churned into 4' waves. Outside, 10' waves were crashing onto Hog Cay, sending spray 30' into the air. I try not to exaggerate numbers. The barracuda was four feet long, and the surf yesterday was big, big. During the hours that we sat watching the anemometer (wind measure thing), I read in Read's Nautical Companion that wave sizes have names. Flat seas are code 0 and are called "glassy". Code 5, 8-13 feet, are called "rough". Waves over 45 feet are code 9, "phenomenal." Finally a name that fits. No more boisterous! Such waves are boat-eaters! Our mast is 46', and I cannot imagine a wave that high. Of course, on the open sea, as St. John points out, the waves wouldn't be smashing themselves against a reef. True.
Sinjon showed me more seamen's rhymes in Reads. I love this arcana. Here is one:

Mackerel sky and mares' tails,
Make tall ships carry low sails.

And one we all know:

Red sky at night, sailor's delight,
Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

February 20-23, Warderick Wells: Exuma Land and Sea Park

We went ashore at 8:45 and climbed the Park building which was high enough to make some phone calls. We need line-of-sight to a Batelco tower to activate our cell phone. Baby Watch continues in S. Dartmouth. First babies are usually a little late.

We volunteered at the Park all morning, St. John bolted a rub rail to a skiff and I cleaned a couple of bathrooms and sinks. Not an entirely unpleasant task for someone who is a little compulsive. Good upper body exercise, and good for the soul to give some back.

We snorkeled two coral heads, and after, while we were drinking tea to warm up, St. John saw a night heron fishing-on the day shift. It had a pink head, not yellow as Sibley describes, but maybe its diet caused that coloration.

We did a second day of volunteering, then made a treasure hunt for Molly and Ben who will be with us the end of March.

February 24, Tuesday. Staniel Cay.

On the Cay at Isles General Store I found fresh basil, of all things! Made a nice pesto for our sundowners with another couple. Weather is due in tomorrow so we'll head to Compass Cay for protection.

February 25-29th. Compass Cay.

Yesterday at the market I saw a family we had met at the Park where I showed their young teenage girls how to feed the bananaquits sugar from one's palm. The tiny yellow and black birds are about the size of a wren. The girls seemed passive and a little bored by it, what to me was a minor miracle-12 birds on my hand at once. They only weigh an ounce or two, but a dozen was a noticeable weight. What fun. I was saddened by their jaded attitude, and hoped the outdoor, slower life here would rub off.

The wife was tense and a little brittle and the father was driven. He leaned forward as if walking into a strong wind, his expression was focused, intense, and he did not like waiting for the market to open. Most out-island markets close for a couple of hours at lunchtime, which we found inconvenient, but we adjusted. Now we sit in the shade, chat with other people who are waiting, and settle down. A couple of hours of quiet time in the heat of the day makes sense. Healthy for us, seems to me. The poor man paced in front of the market, checked the time, fretted. I've often thought that if I go faster, do more, work harder, that I'll get the good stuff. But doing nothing--sitting still-listening--calming is another door to the good stuff, I think.

Sometimes Americans think the Bahamians are indolent, but all the islanders I have observed have been industrious-not always keeping to a schedule, but savvy and hard-working. This morning at 6:30 am we heard hammer blows on shore, and the conch and lobster fishermen are out for days at a time. The Bahamian women seem equally focused, but calm and easy, and in many instances, almost regal. I want to learn their secret.

We heard with joy that St. John has a brand new granddaughter. We can't wait to hold her and hug her capable, impressive Mom & Dad.

We plan to head slowly down to George Town, Grand Exuma where we will send emails and reprovision. For those trying to reach us, leave a message on our cell phone, or write to svmeadowlark@pocketmail.com.

Meadowlark Log # 7

February 29th.

This story is not chronological. I think I needed some distance from it. A week ago we anchored in Chicken Cay, and as the sun set I thought I'd take the dink to the edge of the harbor, drop the anchor, and fish in the current of the flooding tide. I baited my drop line with a piece of conch and let it down to the bottom, then pulled it up six inches. All that took about 10 minutes, and in another 10, I thought: I don't have the attention span for this. So I distracted myself by looking at the other boats in the anchorage.

There were two catamarans and a sloop. One we knew, a couple on a large catamaran named Susanna. I made up stories about the others. Were they long-term cruisers? Were their wives adjusted to life on the water? Did the name on the boat reflect literary knowledge and whimsy like Narnia, or romance like Dyad, or was it a reference to a 12-step program like Third Step?

A white C&C 33 sloop came in on the tidal current, and the skipper dropped an anchor off his stern in the stream. Two dinks off other boats came over and offered help. I love this sense of camaraderie, I thought, how we all look out for each other. The dinghies pushed the sloop toward a calmer location, and the skipper sunk his hook into white sand, better holding.

No nibbles on my line, and the bait was still on, so I sat and watched. He looks salty, I thought. But what is the matter with his engine? Why did he need a push from the dinghies? I watched him flake his jib carefully, as if folding fresh laundry. Then he did the same to the mainsail, stopping it at precise intervals. He's careful, and probably single handing, I guessed.

He was a slender, bearded man dressed in faded pants and a tucked-in tee shirt. Probably in his early 50's, I guessed. He looked as trim as his boat, whose name I couldn't read. The lettering was faced and small. Guess he's been at this game for a while.

We had dinner at sunset and before we had finished, his boat was dark with only an anchor light on the stern. "He goes to bed before us," Said Sinjon.

"Must have been worn out, and I think he's a single hander," I said. "He's careful, I watched him flake his sails. Tidy."

"You love tidy."

"You bet."

"But he looked a little off-hand when he anchored. He could have sailed out of the current, he had the wind," Sinjon said. "Didn't look quite right to me."

The next morning we were underway before he showed himself. As we motored passed him we saw his boxy, collapsible dinghy lashed to his cabin roof.

"It looks home made," I said. "I like the colors, yellow with red dots. A little silliness is a good thing."

"He has a good boat for a solo sailor without a motor. The C&C is a cruiser/racer, fast and comfortable," Sinjon said. I took another look, trying to match that comment to the boat's lines, and then turned my attention to our journey.

Two days later we were double-anchored in the lee of Pipe Creek Cay, sitting out a squall. The VHF was crowded with voices checking on each other, and in the confusion we heard Exuma Park reporting that an abandoned sloop had been found on the rocks off Pipe Creek Cay.

"That's less than a half mile from us," I said.

We continued to monitor the radio. The voices were calm and factual. The boat was not damaged, the main was up, but the jib was down. The boat had no motor, and the dinghy was red with yellow dots.

"Breaker, this is Susanna."

"Go ahead, Susanna."

"I think we were anchored in Chicken Cay on Sunday with that boat. Is it a C&C 33?"

"Roger, a C&C 33."

I turned to Sinjon. "We were there too." He was silent, frowning. The wind was hitting 35 and a line of rain clouds was approaching. Night was coming on fast, pushed by the storm.

"It's too dark to continue the search," the Park reported. "We'll resume it at daybreak. We're returning to our base, do you read?"

"Roger that, what is your eta?"

"About an hour and a half. The waves are 7-9 on the Banks. We'll need hot coffee, we're soaked."

"Roger. Hour and a half. Hot coffee. Standing by one six."

We raised Susanna on the VHF. "We were all with him two days ago, weren't we?"

"Roger. We're praying for him."

An experienced sailor missing, how could that happen? I felt the dark very close to us, and turned in my folder to the Navy Hymn: Eternal Father strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave…"

"We are all vulnerable, aren't we?"

"An accident can happen in a second," Sinjon said. "He may have fallen over while setting his jib. But on the Banks in 35 knots of wind, not much chance for him, I'm afraid."

"This is paradise," I argued, unwilling to accept what we had heard.

"Not always."

I love my husband's rational, practical point of view. He saw the speed and comfort of the C&C 33, while I was inventing a life for that single hander. He faced into the danger of the storm, while I was in denial. But I fell asleep listening to the waves crashing on Pipe Creek Cay and the chorus of the hymn:

"Hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea."

I wrote that little story ten days ago, and still no word on the missing sailor.

Monday, March 1st, Big Major Spot.

This was a wonderful day. We left Compass around 9:30 and were at Big Majors Spot by noon. We anchored with 30 other boats off the northwest shore, in the lee from a strong SE blow. The water is flat, but the wind is hooting.

At noon we heard of an impromptu concert on the beach, and joined 25 other dinks on the shore and over 50 people listening to Les Gatechair, a musician and fellow cruiser. Dogs were running around chased by a few children. Les had portable sound equipment so we could hear his musical poetry. Sinjon sat on the sand in front of me, leaning back, while Les sang a song called Mars & Venus. Made me cry! "He loves the wind, he loves the waves, he moves with ease, the swells below his feet. She loves the leaves, she loves the soil, she fears the wind, the storm that follows…"

By now, I'm pretty comfy in a blow, and I know we will return to the leaves and the soil, but Les captured both the tension and the love between a practical sailor and a romantic first mate. After the concert we met Les and his wife, and we plan to have a sundowner together.

In the afternoon we snorked the shore, and I pointed out a pretty bottle caught in a rock. Sinjon nodded, and I kept swimming in the shallow water. I found some graceful tube worms and looked around for my husband. No sign. I stood up and took off my mask-no sign. I thought to myself: he's buoyant in his wet suit, so omigod, where is he?? I began to swim back, looked up, and there he was in the dinghy returning from Meadowlark.

"Good for you!" he shouted.

"What did I do?"

"You found that lobster."

"What lobster?" I was confused.

"The one under the rock-you showed it to me, for heaven's sake."

"I didn't know one was there. I was showing you a bottle!" How did that happen, I wondered.

I watched SJ take careful aim and pull out a succulent, big West Indies Spiny Lobster (panulirus argus). How about that! As I write this log, Chef St. John is steaming it for hors d'oeuvres. What a treat.

I hadn't had quite enough swimming, so I began to turn over chunks of rock, just as I've been doing on the shores of Mishaum and now Nonquitt for almost 61 years. And sure enough, there were treasures hiding under them: brittle stars that are in the starfish family. But these graceful creatures can move 20 times faster than a starfish. Picture a button center with five long, thin, bristly legs. The legs remind me of monkey tails and move together to propel the brittle star quickly across the ocean floor. I placed them back under their rocks. Can't wait to show the Webbies who visit us in a couple of weeks.

As I write, the sun just set, and the anchorage echoes with conch horns blowing down the sun. It's an ancient sound.

Thursday, March 4th, Staniel Cay.

I've talked to several women and I'm reassured that when cruising, we tend to be more emotional than when on the hard-when we have our feet on the ground. It still dismays me when I wake up with a dark cloud over my head, as I've rarely been depressed. We are living in paradise, and it seems so cavalier and so spoiled to even admit to the blues, but facing the dark clouds is the best way. I hate the fact that St. John has to live with a frowning person. I want to shake myself!

Friday, March 5th. Staniel.

More thoughts on depression: other women have told me that living in a foreign culture, far from family and home, far from a female network and female support is hard. Perhaps it is a lifestyle more suited to men, to people who love to be on the move, explore, find shelter, face the elements. For 1000's of years, Cro Magnon men were the hunters, out finding meat, exploring, often solitary (at least in my imagination). Meanwhile we Cro Magnon women were the gathers. We women were living together, in caves or tents, but together. That may be a glib explanation, but it makes sense to me. Sinjon and I were talking about this, and we heard two young boys on the beach: "First they are girls, then they are females." St. John agreed.

When we began this adventure I wondered how my New England ethic-my need to work and be productive and have goals would mesh with the quiet days-hours of reading, exploring, snorkeling. Would a hedonistic life turn my brains to pea soup? Or would there be a synthesis where I'd become calmer, more in the moment. I've been watching the interface. I am better at not knowing what tomorrow will bring-a five hour sail or staying at anchor for instance. I'm puzzling out how this trip is changing me. Is it raising the bar, developing internal strengths that match my new physical strength? I can pull up 80 feet of chain, of which I'm inordinately proud.

There is a state of mind (or mindlessness) that I slip into when feeling overwhelmed, and to compensate and balance, I've eaten too many chocolate and peanut butter sandwiches, with predictable results. Not only do I feel out of control, but I'm disgusted with myself. Now I have a goal: to lose those pounds. And also, not struggle against the discomfort, but give in to it. Give myself permission to be lazy, have a cuppa, and be quiet. I've seen this as weakness, but maybe it's not. Maybe it is an important step in adjusting to the life of cruising.

Paula Huntley published a journal that she wrote while living in Kosovo for eight months (The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo). She said: "…I am driven to write everything down as soon as possible. I don't want to forget anything or anyone…But mostly, I write because by writing I experience it all again, and begin to try to make some sense of it all." (p. 115)

Well said.

Sunday, March 7th Black Point

We are heading south, and came into this harbor that is well protected from the prevailing easterlies. Black Point is a quiet, rural Bahamian town. I poked into the two markets, a small store, and a restaurant, and was greeted with great friendliness.

Sinjon is dealing with floaties in our water today, but oddly I'm not as appalled as I might be. I gave all four tanks a jolt of Clorox so we should be ok. I squeeze some lime juice into the drinking water, and it looks and tastes fine. Goes down and stays down.

Monday, March 8th. Rudder Cay

We had a wonderful dive in four feet of water along the shore and then asked the other two boats anchored with us over for a sundowner. One of the women advised me: give it six months. Somehow going through those two days of the blues, and then getting control of myself reordered things. I want to be positive and involved, not just for SJ, but it is the foundation of my philosophy-choose life, bite into it, embrace it.

This has been an inner journey, a time for discoveries. I haven't been so physical for years, and I'm as delighted with my new muscles as a growing child. I think physical changes have a powerful affect on our emotions. Lose 20 pounds, work out, break a habit and deep changes occur. And integration is essential; we can't cut off or deny parts of ourselves. Star fish can lose a limb and regenerate it, but we "higher life forms" are stuck with the whole package.

Eileen Quinn is a long-time cruiser who writes funny, edgy songs about her watery life. Her song, "Time To Move On," goes: I tell you what it means to me/this gypsy life out on the sea/bare my soul, say my say/it's hard to pack it back away/…a sailor has a restless heart/ what draws us close pulls us apart/…hello, so long, a gain, a loss/will our paths cross?" I've commented on that in this log-baring my emotions to a woman I barely know, searching for rapport, asking, "How is it going for you?" Eileen gets it. I first heard about her because of a famous (in boating circles) song she wrote: If I Killed The Captain.

As I write, we are north of George Town on Great Exuma Island-the biggest town in the Exuma archipelago. We are not in a hurry to get there, and love the uncrowded bays where we are along and "own" the anchorage.

Tuesday, March 9th. Between the Darbys

While traveling to our protected spot between the Darby Cays, we met a couple who were avid divers. They dinked to Meadowlark and told us in detail how many fish, conch, and lobsters they have caught. Hmm, I thought. Maybe a wee bit in need of an audience? Or maybe I was jealous, as we haven't quite learned the knack.

Today, an hour before sunset, we heard the wife's voice on Channel 16. She was asking a local guide to help her find her husband. "He was diving and I've lost sight of him. The current is heading out, and we are losing light." Her voice was brittle with worry. The Bahamian guide didn't hesitate: "I'm on my way."

We listened for 90 minutes, the missing diver was reported to Bahamian police and we heard a general request: "Any boaters in the area please assist." As we listened, I had a superstitious fear that people with whom we had a brief contact got into trouble. Was there a cloud over us? Even I could see that was irrational, but sometimes the dark edge of life can feel close

"That missing man is sitting here in front of me," we heard an hour later. And the next day, the story unfolded in bits and pieces. The couple was separated while diving; the man swam to shore and walked to a bar. But as we considered it, that didn't make sense, either. Nevertheless, it was a valuable cautionary tale for us. . Ocean current is no joke when you are diving. A good swimmer can counter a knot of current with flippers on, but 1.5 knots is too much. We always swim with a line trailing off our stern.

We met another couple who introduced me to sea beans-large beans that float down the Amazon River, over to Africa, across on the trades and onto the beaches in the Bahamas. I found a "hamburger bean" and two "sea hearts." I recognized the sea hearts because last summer I threw away St. John's older collection, thinking they might be poisonous to our teething and curious little granddaughter. So now I'm replacing them. We harvested coconuts (hard work) and climbed over shore rocks. Great exercise. On the beach walk the woman urged me to get involved in navigating, and finally the penny dropped. Sinjon was totally supportive, so I worked out the waypoints to George Town. It made such a difference to my fun level. I knew where we were and where we were going.

Wednesday, March 10th. George Town.

"That was a rollicking sail we had to G. Town," said Sinjon. And it was fun, out on the Sound with 6 foot waves and 20 knots of wind at a good angle. So right away, I wanted to know the sail gradations. Sinjon entered into the spirit of the game and said, "Let's see. Ghosting-Easing-Sailing-Snorting-Rollicking-Boisterous-Pounding-One Reef-Two Reefs-Hove To. Hull speed is at Boisterous. Come to Jesus is Hove To." So that's the St. John Scale.

I was assailed by mal de mer, but Sinjon provided the fish cure. About five miles outside George Town I looked at the lure that we have been dragging behind us for-maybe 700 miles. It was submerged! After great excitement, we landed a beautiful, golden Mahi Mahi which was about 4 feet long. We had been told to squirt alcohol into the gills which kills the fish quickly. In our excitement, I managed to pour about a cup of Absolut on the fish. Did the trick, but now I have cheap vodka ready in a proper squirt bottle. Then AGAIN, another hit, and we landed a bigger golden Mahi Mahi. As soon as we dropped the yank, we dinked ashore and cleaned the fish on the beach. We stood in the water carving chunks of sashimi, dipping them in the water, and eating them, with juice dripping off our chins. "Remember this," we said. We gave away some beautiful fillets, what fun.

George Town has two markets that stock everything from New Zealand steaks to sandpaper. We loaded up and dropped the hook off a private beach in seven feet of "catamaran water." We were between two big cats, but as the hook hit the sand, a man appeared on the beach yelling at us. "What the F*** do you think you are doing? This is private property and you are too close to those coral heads."

"We draw very little, and we are 80 feet from the heads. I think we are all right," said my captain, holding his temper.

"You get out of here, or I'll come out and get you. Don't you respect the environment?"

"We love our natural world," I yelled. "What is the matter with you?"

"Don't be an ass h---," he yelled. "Get out of here. I'm reporting you to the Harbor Master."

As we were pulling up the anchor, the skipper from the neighboring catamaran dinked over. "You have a legal right to be here, you are above the high water mark, and that man is nuts-violent."

"Seems like a good reason to move, then," I said. And that is what we ended up doing. But the encounter stirred us up to the point of distress and nausea. And it stirred up the boating community who heard our conversation with the courteous Harbor Master on the party line VHF. We received two calls from long-time cruisers who are concerned about the proprietary attitude wealthy, private landowners have toward the waters off their beaches. We were asked to report it, and we haven't decided what to do yet.

That evening I went to 'Volley Ball Beach" to buy water from the owner of Chat & Chill, a gracious and sympathetic Bahamian who heard my story. "I write for the local paper, and I'd like to talk to you and your husband-this is the kind of story we want to publicize." "What an ugly American that man is," I said. "Makes me a little ashamed." "We have some, but most people are good, you know." True. We need to remember that.

We will stay in the area of George Town, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Boulder Webbies who will be on board for a week.

Meadowlark Log #8 George Town, Great Exuma back to Staniel Cay

We arrived in George Town on March 10th, and left on the 29th after we kissed the Boulder Webbs goodbye. We were there almost three weeks, with a two-day trip east to Long Island (76 miles long). The wind blew and blew, with stationery fronts and troughs, mackerel skies and mares tails, and red suns in the morning, all the warning signs for mariners. We wanted to take Robin, Amy, Molly and Ben to remote anchorages, snorkel reefs, and catch another mahi mahi, but the 25-30 knot winds kept everyone pinned down. We tried to sail on Exuma Sound one morning, but the waves were 4-6 feet and the wind was gusting over 30. The children must have thought it was St. John's Wild Ride, but I was tense as we surfed back to George Town past reefs and breakers, hitting 8 knots of speed over ground.

The Webbs were perfect guests, but we wanted to entertain the children, so we devised the Meadowlark Merit Badge with about 25 ways each child could earn points. Some of the tasks included finding and drawing marine flora and birds, creating and performing a song about Meadowlark, learning knots, memorizing sailors' rhymes, and weaving a Bahamian basket. They each earned a MMB, but it took each a week to accumulate 100 points.

On Stocking Island across from George Town there are three beaches: Hamburger, Sand Dollar, and Volley Ball. The children had fun playing with an international assortment of kids at Volley Ball while the adults drank Kalik beer at Chat & Chill. We hiked to the ocean beach from Hamburger, built sand castles, and collected shells. And we had our resident geologist, Dr. Webb show us the visible passage of the Hubble Telescope and the International Space Station, which from Meadowlark looked like tiny stars arcing across the night sky. It reminded me of watching Sputnik pass over our house in Massachusetts when I was about 15. We snorked a shallow reef at Sand Dollar, and watched Amy swim a "work out" of about 45 minutes. She made a wake without flippers.

Molly got corn rows the last day, and looked even more sophisticated with 16 tiny French braids. We had a good lunch at the Peace and Plenty with Goombay smashes and pina colatas to help them negotiate customs at the airport. The next morning we quick quick took Meadow up to Lee Stocking Island where we anchored for the night. Amy and Robin brought so many great things from Colorado, that we feel they left a little of themselves: beans, seeds, and a sprouter; thrift shop towels that were not stiff with dried salt, an elegant cast aluminum coffee percolator, coffee, pb, Clairol 25G, two best sellers, cash, and our mail! They each deserve a MMB for collecting and carrying everything.

We headed back to the Darbys in tandem with Song Bird and Socia, both catamarans with young parents and young children. Song Bird is from Block Island, and I've mentioned the remarkable Spier family in this log. The two boys on Socia have been cruising since they were small, and their dad Jeff makes sailing look easy. He is nearly as good a mariner as is St. John. The moon was full and we planned to beach our boat on the moon tide and give her a fresh coat of ablative (love that word) antifouling paint.

April 4th, Sunday. Little Darby Island

We contacted the gracious caretaker on Little Darby who gave us permission to hike the ocean beaches, so five adults and five children walked across the island, over the runway and onto the pristine, white beaches. During this cruise, Sinjon and I have been dropping bottles in the ocean containing a one dollar bill to catch the eye and a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Perhaps for that reason, I look at beached bottles carefully. And today, 4/4/04, I found a beautiful pale green wine bottle with a message. We could see a child's photo through the glass, and two dates: 1987-2003, so we guessed the bottle contained sad information. When we completed our hike, all ten of us gathered in a beach gazebo while St. John pulled out the cork with his leatherman tool. Jeff snagged the message with a stick and gently removed it.

It was a program from Paul Chester's memorial service with a handwritten note on the first page: "Paul, please deliver this to the right person. I miss you terribly. I hope you're safe and happy. Love, Dad." There was an email address, and the date and location.

"That must be the owner of the island, so the bottle probably traveled less than a mile," said John Spier. "His son must have played on these beaches," said Kerri. The loss of a 16 year-old boy-what a waste.

"I think you should repackage the bottle and put it back in the ocean," said John. "I'll ask the doctor what he'd like me to do," I said. And the next day, I emailed Dr. Chester: "…We read aloud parts of the service, and we were all moved to be on the same beach that your son might have run on, but it as clear to us that the bottle made a very short journey. Because of that, we would be happy to return Paul's bottle to the ocean…."

We received an immediate reply: "Your email has brought tears to my eyes, and yes, I would greatly appreciate your returning the bottle to the ocean on your way home. Wherever you feel moved will be fine. And please add your own message if you wish. The more people Paul affects the easier it is for me to work through my intense pain at his loss."

So when we cross the Gulf Stream at the end of the month, we will return Paul's bottle to the universe, with a note from us as well. And Paul's service did touch me; it included James Taylor's Fire and Rain, and Strength for the Journey by Poirer. Powerful music, powerful message. I transcribed the entire service, and if you contact me, I'd be glad to send it to you. Paul chose an unusual way to reach us, and he is now as much a part of our cruise as is Henry M. Plummer. Never far from our thoughts.

April 6th, Tuesday.

We beached Meadowlark on the moon tide, and by 2pm she was almost dry. Being a teensy bit compulsive, I had a ball polishing the gel coat and with SJ, painting the hull. We ended up splattered with the exorbitantly expensive antifouling paint, but we have been using a wonder cleaner: Collinite. It cleans and shines any surface, but wait…that's not all! It polishes silver and we discovered, removes paint. So after six hours of labor, we waded into deeper water with a scrubber sponge and Collinite, and shined ourselves.

St. John guessed that we would be afloat at 8pm, and at 7:45pm I went to the bow and pulled against the kedge anchor. I could feel the hulls inching backward into deeper water until we broke free. It gave us a sense of elation to be free-moving again after 7 hours on the hard. We motored into deep water and under the full moon, dropped anchor and collapsed into our bunk.

April 7th, Wednesday. Staniel Cay. Our 168th day.

My addictive cleaning has spread to the captain. For about two hours, SJ sat on the deck removing bits of paint and tar with a toothpick. Meadowlark is pristine, but that's not all. We took five weeks of laundry to Isles General. We did have clean clothes daily using our precious R O (reverse osmosis) water (@ .60 a gallon), but we had rugs and towels caked with salt. As we sail north, all is polished, painted, cleaned, and folded. What a good feeling.

April 8th, Thursday. Shroud Cay.

We dropped the hook in a beautifully protected little harbor in 4 feet of water. Catamaran water! I walked over to the anchor and jumped on it, but it was well buried. The moon rises later now, so the evening stars are vivid. Sinjon blew down the sun, and after a nice meal of pasta and red sauce, I am typing and SJ is reading on the bunk. We were talking about the adjustment to "America." The phone will ring again, we will eat inside; in fact, we'll live inside. What will that be like? We have become attuned to the tides, the phases of the moon, and wind direction, which seem much more basic, more real than what drives our lives on land. How have we changed, and will those changes remain with us? I wonder. It is natural to reuse fresh water a couple of times, to get up and put on sun screen, to have a pile of books to read, and to harvest palm fronds for baskets. I've learned how to cook pasta and bread using very little propane, which foods keep the longest, and how to make a bleach bath for fruit. I'm only a little shy meeting new people. Boaters are gregarious and friendly, and that helps. I've learned to accept gifts of yeast, bread, fruit, or dinner. But we in turn give as much as we can spare to someone in need.

April 10, 2004 Saturday. Royal Island--Eleuthrera.

In 1649, 70 colonists from Bermuda landed on Eleuthera (Greek for freedom) seeking refuge from religious persecution. This was the time of the English Civil War, and the time that the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts was settled by some of my ancestors. Some of the colonists stayed on Eleuthera, but 57 went over to the smaller island of Spanish Wells.

I am very curious about this island. Descendants of the original settlers have lived here almost 400 years, and there is a distinctive look to them, which makes sense, given the small gene pool. They sell 75% of the Bahamian lobster harvest much of it to Red Lobster, and they are financially secure. Also insular. They don't want any black Bahamians living on the island-workers must commute. I read that girls marry between the ages of 15 and 20, and 90% of the boys quit school by the 8th grade. But those boys can make $40,000 in a month of lobster fishing. It is a community of contrasts, which is why I am so curious.

After we anchored in Royal Harbor we watched a pretty dark blue sloop come in and drop the yank. In the bow was a long-haired, well-tanned young man giving loud directions to the skipper, his Dad, we guessed. "Sounds like he knows what he's doing," Sinjon said. "But he is a wee bit directive," I said. "Maybe showing his old man what he can do," Sinjon guessed. Fun to gossip about people we don't know.

As the sun set I got the conch horn ready. The sound is elemental, ancient; and honoring the setting of the sun is mete and right so to do. My effort is still more squeak than blast, and it is surprising tricky to get a resonant note. It's technique, not strength. Sam Spier who is 10, has mastered it, but I need practice. So I gave it a try, embarrassed myself, and handed it to Sinjon. He blew a strong 10 second note. From the various boats we could hear shouts of appreciation. Then in the lull as the sun disappeared, the young man on the blue sloop walked to the bow, raised his conch horn, and blew for a full 30 seconds; no wavering, just a long, steady note. There was a moment of silence, then the harbor erupted in bravos, applause, and delighted laughter.

We don't know each other, but we all know when something is done well, and with élan, style, and chutzpah.

April 17th, Saturday at Spanish Wells. Our 178th day.

I have been hitting a wall again, which down here in paradise seems spoiled and selfish to me, but the wall is there, and I need to find a way around it, or a door through it. I get into a frame of mind when the islands all look about the same to me, the towns are no longer charming, but dusty, trash-ridden, and poor. Is this me talking? I've believed for years that I am master of my emotions, and that with positive thinking, I can turn myself around. Sinjon and I have talked about it, because for us to cruise in the future, I need to figure it out. The activities of daily living: making hot water, taking a shower, finding the laundry, food, mail, and phone services feel overwhelming. I've had some little accidents--a symptom of being out of rapport with myself. I sprained my back, I cut my fingers twice, and I have an assortment of new bruises. So I'm complaining here in the journal, to try to find the door through the wall.

I think the wall has something to do with fundamentals. I'm not that bothered by cold water showers, by dust, by a lack of communication or hard work. It's something else…as basic as this: what gives my life meaning? The old existential question. On the hard, there are so many options, so many ways to distract myself that I hardly ever come up against this question, except in an abstract, philosophical way. On the boat, the routines are so sparse that they leave me with hours to fill. So what does give my life meaning? These things: loving my husband, loving my children, siblings, mother, and friends; having beauty in my life, which gives me a little window into the infinite-gives me a connection to all that is wondrous in our world. Add in humor-to bring up those bubbles of delight that leaven my soul, and help me to wear life like a loose garment. All this reminds me of what I included in my journal notebook for this 8 month voyage-the poetry, the quotes-all connections to something much greater than myself.

Sinjon and I talked about a visit to Colorado in May, and that helped. Maybe the blues are about options-or a lack of them. I'll keep hammering at them until I have some clarity-all part of cruising I think.

April 25, 2004, Green Turtle Cay, the Abacos.

Shortly after the last entry, the blues were gone, and I was back in the game. We have decided to do this again next year for three months, and are planning to leave the boat in Florida. I'm thrilled to return to these islands which in themselves change so easily and where I've changed.

Spanish Wells which turned out to be a lovely island; clean, crime-free, and prosperous. There is a small village of Haitians over a bridge on Russell Island and these men and women find employment in Spanish Wells. We were beach combing and I heard an older Spanish Wellian gently instructing a young Haitian as they built a house together. Not everything in the guide books is accurate.

We had a wonderful sail in the deep Atlantic to the Abacos. We had a pilot lead us through the infamous Devil's Backbone, a series of deadly coral heads that edge the Atlantic side of Eleuthra. Two other sailboats were with us, sailing in tandem, which adds safety to any passage. I have to admit, I found the couples on these boats a little annoying-they talked a lot about their nautical skills, about passages they had made, etc. The fact was they had both been tied up to the marina dock for over 10 days. We three shared a pilot, which was fine, but they were 45 minutes late. Then a few miles out we heard the two boats on the radio. One had lost his GPS and the other didn't seem to know what to do.

"That is why you need to know how to navigate without electronics," Sinjon said to me.

"Meadowlark, can you lead us through Little Harbor Cut?" one asked on the VHF.

Sinjon quickly agreed. No big deal. "That's what we do for each other," he said to me.

"With all their experience, they don't seem to know much," I said. "Just talking the talk."

We were rocking and rolling on big swells, and in the midst of that we caught a 15 pound mahi mahi. It took our combined strength to hoist her into the dinghy and put her to sleep with a squirt of alcohol in the gills. We covered her with a wet towel to keep her cool and fresh, and then pulled in the lure. No sense catching another fish we wouldn't eat.

It is really difficult to see channel openings from a rolling deck. There are no buoys or markers in the Bahamas, and the big swells hitting the reef were our only navigational aid. Sinjon lined up the boat, I watched for deeper water, and we went. The point of no return was a little before we could see the cut, and my voice got squeaky as the captain asked: What do you see? Where is the channel?

Once in it, we were propelled by big swells which pushed us forward. "Hang on!" Sinjon shouted. I looked back and directly in our wake were the two sloops following us like obedient children, their masts arcing 40 degrees in the surge. Then we were in, and we motored to a calm anchorage in the lee of Lynyard Cay. The Sea of Abaco lies between the barrier cays and Great Abaco Island, and we were out of rough, open Atlantic.

We filleted the lovely mahi mahi and took dinner to several boats anchored near us. Then I lifted buckets of water to wash the blood off our white boat. That night we blew the conch horn at 7:20pm, and had a wonderful meal of sashimi, rice and salad. Well earned. I have to say. A safe passage, and a big fish; my captain walks the walk. Some sailor.

We decided that I needed to learn to be captain for a day. There is a saying down here: Your best life insurance is to teach your wife to skipper. We heard a story of a couple who sailed out of George Town last year, and about an hour later, her voice was heard on the VHF: Can anybody hear me? I don't know how to work this radio. My husband fell overboard, and I don't know how to sail the boat, I don't know where he is, please help me.

Friends immediately notified BASRA (Bahamas Air & Sea Rescue Association) and sent out two fast motor boats. One found the husband safely floating in his lifejacket, the other came along side the sailboat, put someone aboard who could sail, and the story ended happily.

Even I can use the radio. Now I'm learning how our GPS location translates onto the chart, how to match the chart to the real world, and how to plan a course and sail it. The more involved I am in navigating, the more fun cruising is. For me it is counterintuitive, because finding waypoints and charting the course is tedious. Driving the boat is good practice, but I'd rather be weaving a Bahamian basket and talking to the skipper. Yet practicing these skills is pulling me into the process. And what did I learn? To be a little more humble. Sinjon is so good at it that he makes it look easy, and it's not. I am really tired after skippering all day, and although dropping the anchor from the bow takes more muscle but less skill than the delicate power adjustments required to control the boat, the latter is real work. "Was I talking the talk too much?" I ask. "Maybe a little," he says diplomatically. All part of the dance, I tell myself. And if I had to, I could drive the boat. Good to know.

We went to Bakers Cay, a deserted island today, but about 6 years ago it was a regular stop for the Disney cruise line. Just behind the palms is a concrete and wood amphitheater that seated 500, a stage with rusted spot lights, bars, shacks, wooden walkways, and tiki huts. The Australian pines have grown between the theater seats, the walkways are rotting, but there is still a sense of entertainment on the grand scale. We followed a path into the heart of the island that took us past a grove of golden palms, and we were surrounded by brilliant yellow-green light filtered through the fronds-never never land-the colors of a Disney cartoon. "These must have been planted by the cruise line," I said. "None of them is native." Some of the palms had spectacular 30 foot fronds. What will it look like in 10 years? Just the trees will remain, the wood will decay in this tropical climate. Another example of the ephemeral nature of these islands.

We beach combed on the ocean side, but found discouraging piles of plastic detritus. We did interrupt a young couple napping in a makeshift hammock. "They are off Magic Frog," Sinjon said. That is one of the boats we have seen occasionally. It is a small sailboat with an old dinghy. The couple is not traveling first class, but they are having more fun than most of us, and they are doing it! Sailing in the Bahamas for a winter isn't about having a lot of money. As we walked back to the boat, we watched them wade into the ocean holding hands and then snorkel a reef.

There is little to spend money on in the Bahamas, and we have eaten pretty well for about $100 a week. Gas and water (60 cents/gallon) cost us about $30 a week. There are plenty of websites that give accurate costs, so I think that what stops people from doing it is…what? Inertia? Fear? The limited communication to family is hard, but satellite phones work down here. Our Verizon phone works on analog if we have a Batelco tower in view, most of the time. Sinjon tells me one could find an adequate sailboat for about $12,000.

So what stops people? I wrote an essay about pulling myself off the sandbar with a kedge anchor, and I'm thinking: the people I know who want to do this need just that! A mental kedge anchor. Of course, Sinjon has depths of experience that few have, but we have watched very green sailors bumble around down here, and that is all right. They are learning, and they are having a huge adventure.

"What would you have done if you were single handing and couldn't find a channel?" Sinjon asked me. "Wait for someone experienced like you, and follow you in," I answer. "Then the next time, I'd know what to do."

"Exactly," he says. We saw a sailboat in Hope Town harbor called Just Duet. I might name a boat Just Tao It.

I'm thinking back to my first step, literally. Stepping off the Nonquitt beach onto the bowsprit stay, then climbing up onto the bow as Sinjon backed Meadowlark off the beach and we started. That was over six months ago. Someone told me, "Give it six months," when I was feeling discouraged with salty hair, dirty clothes and isolation. And it was at that point (182 days) that I began to feel like a sailor, past forming, storming, norming, and finally performing…well, on some days.

April 28, 2004. Our 188th day. Homeward Bound!

We are sailing toward the last cay in the Abaco Chain, Great Sale, from which we will jump into the breech-go across the Gulf Stream and make landfall in Florida. Back in the US, with supermarkets, phone service, free water, and showers. I'm not sure how much I have missed that, or how much I long to be back in our country.

We had a wonderful 24 hours on Manjack Cay with Bill and Leslie Harrington. Three years ago, Sinjon and I were on a charter cat with Anne and Roger Webb, and we landed on Manjack. Leslie and Bill were living in their house, but it was still a work in progress. Hurricane Hugo had damaged their piers, trees, and structures, but they were rebuilding. I remember Leslie's artistic sense-everything was pleasing to the eye. It still is, with details such as a Yes Trespassing sign, carved dolphins in the woodwork, a thatched table with a dolphin weathervane built below the high tide mark, a beautiful triptych, and the liberal use of native woods and stone. They have made an island home that is self-sufficient and welcoming; quite an achievement.

May 12, 2004 Lyons, Colorado.

I am writing this last entry at my computer a mile above sea level. It is snowing and 35 degrees outside. This is my winter, this tiny snowstorm and one day of cold. My mind knows it is spring, but my body thinks fall should be the next season, as it lived in summer for four months.

We left dear Meadowlark in Ft. Pierce on the hard, and stripped her of anchors, chains, pillows, blankets, and summer clothes. We plan to return to the Bahamas next winter for three months. Sinjon drove the gear north in a rent car, and I flew to CO to visit family in Denver. For three days in CO I felt the motion of the ocean, until my inner ears caught up with my feet. The blues of the Bahamas have been replaced with the tans and pale greens of spring in the Rockies. I have sorted four months of mail, and found the one of our bottles had been returned. Here is the letter: Dear Robin-My 8 year-old son Calyn found your "message in a bottle" on 4-20-04 on our intercoastal beach in Rocky Point, Stuart, FL. We are so curious to find out where and when you sent this message in a bottle off to sea, and more abut you too! (and then in Calyn's hand) Thank you for the 1$!

I wrote her back. What fun.

In lots of ways, Sinjon and I threw ourselves into the ocean, and there were times I felt adrift, but I can't wait to do it again. Back in the Dismal Swamp lock last October, a woman told me: It was hard at times, but I couldn't wait to go again. Exactly.