Headed for a Rocky shore
2002-09-03

Well the trip home is one I'd rather forget. We watched the weather chanel at the OAR on Sunday while the ladies drank mudslides and Lisa waited for the High speed ferry to Galilee. A big low was forming off the Jersey coast. The forecast for Monday had changed. They were now calling for rain, very high waves and some breeze. Most of our friends were planning on leaving about 9:00. We planned on leaving when we got up which was about 7:30. Leaving at 7:30 wasn't the problem, the mistakes we made later were.

As I headed out of the harbor in full rain gear I thought to myself, this isn't so bad. I checked the fuel gage, and we had a quarter of a tank. In normal conditions that would be plenty. I planned on motoring all the way home since the weather was so crappy. The main sail cover was on, and the headstay bare. The #2 was packed snugly in its bag in the forepeak.

Once we got past the 1BI bouy, the waves were bigger than Thursday. Some were easily 12 feet. All my electronics were out except for the compass and the GPS which was below. ME went down to put in a course to Pt Judith and came up sea sick. She laid on the bridge deck for most of the ride to the Pt trying not to throw up.

Visability was on and off, sometimes wonderful, sometimes way less than a mile in fog. I tried to play it safe and err on the ocean side of the course. Point Judith isn't known as the graveyard of the Atlantic for nothing. Over 200 ships have been wrecked in her rocky current filled waters. But I had made this trip dozens of times. Nothing to worry about right?

The lighthouse came up right where it was supposed to. The waves kept getting bigger and bigger. We dipped the bow down into one trough and took a big breaker right up to the mast. It was at that point that the engine either gulped in a bunch of air or sludge from the tank. Everything got real quiet except for the wind and breaking waves. It was dead. I tried to restart it, but no luck. The wind was pushing us steadily torwards the rocks. Not good.

We needed to get sails up fast. I thought jib, but M.E. couldn't go below and suggested the main. it would be faster. We went main.

We struggled to get the cover off in the increasingly bigger and bigger waves. I could see people on the shore watching us, could make out their faces as we tried to save the boat and ourselves. The halyard that raises the sail was frozen closed. I got the vice grips and pried it open and put it in the sail. The boat was bouncing so much I couldn't get it screwed in. Finally I did and we began to raise the sail. Slowly it came up. It we were down wind and facing the shore so not only was it very hard to raise, the more we raised it, the faster we headed in towards the rocks. ME. just wore out and I cranked up the rest by myself. We had little way on and the boat wouldn't tack to safety. I was shaking, M.E. was terrified. I headed the boat down wind even closer to the shore to get some speed up, said a prayer and tacked. This time the bow came over and we began to claw our way off the rocky shore. PHEW!

We sailed off the shore, headed towards the Azores for probably a half hour. M.E was still sick but begining to calm down. I was still pretty tense and we discussed options. Call Sea Tow? Bail into Newport and try to catch a mooring? Dutch Harbor? We finally decided to just keep sailing and see how things went.

The wind was mostly on the nose and we had to tack slowly up the shore. The wind was dying but the waves still remained. I started to settle down and figured the danger was mostly over. We were sailing, it's what we do best. M.E started to understand that too as we ghosted in the bay. The radio was off and it was so quiet. We talked about putting up the jib and decided to wait until we got past the Jamestown Bridge. Our one last obstacle. We made it with a couple of boat lenghts to spare and soon had the jib up. We were flying, the first time just the two of us had full sail up in the new boat. We still didn't have instruments but we had to be doing close to 8 knots. M.E. mentioned a friends comment that this boat like a thoroughbred was just made to run, and run we did. Up the bay grinning.

The turn to Greenwich bay was gentle. We reached into out home port in the dying breeze. We called the Club and said we might need a tow. Several people heard us and were waiting. We dropped the main and sailed under the jib into the channel. I gave the engine one more chance and it started. We pulled into the fuel dock unassisted and were happy. We thanked all the people who stood buy and put in 20 gallons of fuel. We motored out to the mooring to try and clean up the mess.

The cabin was soaked. One of the waves had gotten in through a hatch lock which broke on impact. Water also came in around the mast. We sorted out the lines, put the cover on the main, packed up our clothes and left over food and called the launch. then we went home showered went out for a nice dinner and back to the club for drinks. There we heard that a friend in a brand new 37 footer had lost his mast, not 5 miles from where we had our problem. Sigh...

So what did we learn... Well even though we had raced the night before I should have made arrangements for more fuel, either before we left or at the Block. We also should hav ehad the jib on the furler. We could have just rolled it out and lots of grief and aggrivation would have been avoided. The third thing? Try to keep M.E above deck as much as possible in rough weather. I'll do a better job of that next time. And the final but most important thing which we discussed as we were ghosting around in the flat water... Life jackets and harnesses. If one of us had fallen in in those conditions they could have easily drowned while the other tried to sail back and save them. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Mistakes that will not be made again. Our life could depend on it.

Previous - Next