by Judy Handley | Oct 30, 2005 | Sailing Logs Year 1, US - Boston to Norfolk |
Days 11 through 13, Year 1: Off-shore Medical Course
Date: Friday to Sunday, October 28 to 30, 2005
Weather: Nice Fall Weather
Location: Hampton, Virginia
It is Sunday evening and we are driving home from our three-day emergency medical course in Hampton, Virginia, as I write this log. The course was an Outward Bound wilderness medicine course taught by Jeff Isaac and adapted for offshore sailors. It was all about managing your own health issues when you are the first and only responder. It was a sobering reminder of the risks any sailor is taking when heading offshore. In this course, heading offshore was referred to as the “big magnifier.” Linda, you will be very proud. We learned a new equation. Risk = Probability x Consequence. When you take yourself offshore, the probability of many health risks might go down, but the consequences are much greater. Not exactly an uplifting thought, but a necessary reality. For those who make this choice, it is vital to know how to deal with medical emergencies and this weekend course gave us a great beginning.
We learned about the “risk/benefit ratio” that has you constantly evaluating whether a medical situation is a low or high risk. Making a good risk to benefit decision is most important. You want to avoid high-risk solutions to low risk problems. In order to do this, you need to know when a situation might be life threatening. And when it is, you need to know how to seek advice from a doctor and how to find a way to get the person evacuated. The course was supposed to prepare us to deal with emergency situations and it exceeded our expectations.
We learned and practiced many technical health care procedures such as how to clean and dress nasty wounds, how to splint, how to make a cast, how to give an intramuscular injection, how to use a catheter, and how to use various medical tools such as an otoscope for checking eardrums. We also learned the uses for various medications, how to check vital signs of primary body systems, how to relocate a dislocated shoulder, how to do a patient assessment and communicate that information to a health professional over the radio, and on, and on, and on. It is a good feeling to come away from an intense learning experience like this and feel more confident in your own ability to deal with medical emergencies. Your hope is that the situation will never arise, but if it does, Mark and I both feel much better prepared.
As always, the best thing about cruising and cruise related activities is the people you meet. Christina was in the class, and she, along with her husband, Joe, and their seven and nine year old daughters, will be heading to Tortola in the US Virgin Islands next weekend. They will be sailing their 51 foot Switch catamaran named Zia in the Caribbean 1500. For those of you who are not sailors, this is a cruising rally to the Caribbean. Christina and Joe are home schooling the girls and hope to head across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean after spending the winter in the Caribbean. Joyce and Gordon were from Chicago where they sail their Slocum 43 in Lake Michigan. Next spring they hope to head up the St. Lawrence Seaway into the Atlantic, and then down to the Caribbean in Jabberwocky. Then there was Kathy and Gene from Houston. They are heading to the Caribbean and beyond next spring in their 44 foot Stamas named Dream Ketcher. Beth and Rob were from Annapolis and are currently between sailboats. The instructor, Jeff, just bought a Cape Dory that he is keeping in Maine for now. The horse ranch in Colorado is just not the right place for that sailboat, but he has been a life-long sailor and hopes to spend more time on the ocean. And at lunch today we met Rex Conn. He was not in the class but is in Hampton preparing for the Caribbean 1500. Steve Black, one of the organizers of the rally, will be a crew member on Rex’s 50 foot trimaran, Alacrity. Rex says he hopes to be the first to arrive in Tortola this year, so watch for that name.
Tomorrow we hope to sail Windbird out of Lewes, Delaware, and to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. I say “hope” since we have changed plans so many times in the past week. When I called my daughter, Heather, this weekend, she greeted me by saying, “Mom, you guys are crazy. You can’t stick with a decision for more than 12 hours.” Well, there’s no denying that she is right. But then I guess that’s one of the perks of retirement!
Note: The price of gasoline down here is $2.25 per gallon. That is considerably lower that the price when we left New England. Have things changed that much in the past two weeks or are the prices here that much better? And did it really snow in Boston this weekend?
by Judy Handley | Oct 27, 2005 | Sailing Logs Year 1, US - Boston to Norfolk |
Day 10, Year 1: A Slight Change in Course
Date: Thursday, October 27, 2005
Weather:
Location: Town Dock, Lewes, Delaware
I think I ended yesterday’s log stating that flexibility is the name of the game when out here cruising. And that it is. It seems as soon as we make one decision, something else happens that causes us to alter that decision practically before acting on it. Both Mark and I are currently headed to Hampton to take the offshore medical course. As of this morning, I was to be going alone. But we decided to leave the boat in Lewes in the care of David Laux. David will install the v-drive while we are gone and Carl Stein will check on Windbird throughout the weekend. We had planned that Mark would find crew and sail the boat around to the Chesapeake while I went to Hampton, but since it is going to be at least another week or so before a new engine arrives, we decided that it was more important for both of us to have the medical training. On Monday, the two of us will begin the sail to the Chesapeake, so this solves the problem of finding crew.
I am writing this log as we are driving to Hampton, Virginia, in my brother’s van. My brother, Dickie, and his wife, Conda, drove from West Virginia to their son’s home near Annapolis, and then headed on over to Lewes to deliver the van today. I didn’t know until last night that my brother was planning to do this and it is just one more example of the incredible gestures of kindness that we have experienced in the past week. Dickie was twelve when I was born, and as my older brother, he has always taken care of me. Thank you, Dickel and Conda. I love you!
Here’s the latest ‘technical’ news for today. We actually got a couple of bits of good news. An East Coast representative for Mack-Boring was able to confirm that as of last week, there were six transmissions of the type we need in the Ft. Lauderdale plant. There is still no way to confirm this as communication lines to Ft. Lauderdale are still not up and running, but the hope is now that by Monday or Tuesday the transmission will be located and can be shipped to New Jersey. Once there, the transmission will be attached to the new engine and then early the following week the whole thing will be shipped to us in Oxford, Maryland. If this all works, we should be ready to begin the installation of the new engine no later than the end of week after next. By the way, patience is the other essential needed for cruising. I have no problem being flexible, but this patience thing is a whole new skill for me. The other piece of good news today was that the bearings arrived for the repair of the current v-drive. We stopped by Dave’s house on the way south this evening and got to see the beautiful new bearings. Yes, I do now think bearings are beautiful. While there, Dave gave us a lesson in how to use a small ball peen hammer to shape gaskets from sheets of gasket material. Dave takes every opportunity to teach us new tricks of the trade and we truly appreciate that. While at his home we got to see pictures of many of the beautiful boats he has built in the shop attached to his house. We were most impressed.
I need to make a correction to an the Day Eight log. Dick and Claire Wiklund owned the 43 foot Mason, not 44 foot Morgan, and Dick confirmed by e-mail that it was the sailboat from the movie Romancing the Stone. We are now crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and soon be in Hampton. I’ll give you an update on the offshore medical course tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | Oct 26, 2005 | Sailing Logs Year 1, US - Boston to Norfolk |
Day 9, Year 1: Happy 31st Anniversary . . . a little early
Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Town Dock, Lewes, Delaware
This is the log for Wednesday, October 25. The weather continues to be cool, but today was a beautiful sunny day, with more of the same forecast for the coming week. Tomorrow is our 31st wedding anniversary, but since I will be heading to Hampton, Virginia, for a three-day offshore medical course, we celebrated this evening. We had dinner at the Café Azafran in Lewes. This is a great little place with a Mediterranean menu, live music, and owners, Mark and Jessica Steele, who have sailed to the Mediterranean and own a Dickerson sailboat. Our boat prior to Windbird was a Dickerson, so we immediately struck up a conversation with Mark. Dickersons are Chesapeake Bay built boats and it is always great to meet people who are of the same “kind.”
Not much happened today in terms of boat progress. We can’t order a new engine until we can find out if the transmission we need is available in this country. The engine is in New Jersey and is available, but the transmission “might” be in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The problem is that there is no phone service to the plant in Ft. Lauderdale due to Wilma. Until we can hear from them, there is no way to know what we will be able to do. If the transmission is in Ft. Lauderdale and can be sent out next week, we will go ahead with the purchase and installation of a new engine. However, if a new transmission is not available right away, we might decide to go with our current engine with the rebuilt v-drive. There are many decisions and each one depends on something that we have little or no control over. But things do seem to get a little better each day, so we will hope for the best.
Mark is still planning to sail the boat around to the Chesapeake this weekend. Unfortunately, the tides and winds will be against him on Saturday, but Sunday and Monday look better. He is planning to head to Chesapeake City on Saturday, on to the Magothy River in the Annapolis area on Sunday, and then to Oxford, Maryland, on Monday. I will meet him on Sunday evening and sail the last leg to Oxford. Of course, this all depends on finding crew. If we can’t find someone to sail with Mark, we will just wait until Monday and sail around together.
So as with everything in life, flexibility is the key.
by Judy Handley | Oct 25, 2005 | Sailing Logs Year 1, US - Boston to Norfolk |
Day 8, Year 1: The Having of Wonderful Friends and Family . . . and a Missing Bolt
Date: Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Weather: Winds 30 to 50 knots, Rainy and Cold
Location: Town Dock, Lewes, Delaware
This is the log for Tuesday, October 25. Starting at about 3:00 pm on Monday and extending into Tuesday morning, the winds were blowing anywhere from 30 to 50 knots even here at the dock in a protected area. Wilma was passing about 400 miles offshore, but my daughter Heather explains to me that the winds were not from Wilma herself, but rather from a meeting of the hurricane with a low forming on land. Heather is becoming a weather junkie on our behalf and is e-mailing and calling us with her weather tips. Very helpful!
It rained most of the day and seems to get colder every hour. We do have heat in the boat right now and that’s a good thing. David Laux, the person working on our engine, came around noon and spent the rest of the day trying to remove a bearing on the prop shaft where it enters the v-drive. I have to tell you that I had never heard of a v-drive until last Saturday and I think I could have continued to live a happy and healthy life without v-drive knowledge. But as fate has it, I am learning new things about everything down in the engine room and realizing that I should have taken a greater interest before. Anyway, after using a torch for 4 hours with little or no luck at moving anything, David decided to go for removing the whole v-drive. He wasn’t sure it would work, but it did. In fact, he discovered the source of our problem. There are four bolts that attach the oil cooler to the v-drive itself. One of those bolts was missing and others were loose and that was the source of the transmission fluid leak from the v-drive. He removed the remaining three bolts and emerged with the v-drive in hand and a smile on his face. It had been a frustrating afternoon, but it did end with success. He is hoping to be able to find new bearings locally and get the v-drive reinstalled by the end of tomorrow or Thursday. At that point, I will leave for the medical class in Hampton and Mark will sail the boat around to the Chesapeake. We will wait in Oxford, Maryland, for the new engine to arrive and David will install it there. At least that is today’s plan.
Now about the having of wonderful friends and family . . . I know I have mentioned this in other logs, but it is truly overwhelming to get the e-mails from so many of you. Concord Yacht Club friends, friends from the Concord School District, friends from New Hampshire Public Radio, our three children, Justin, Heather, and Heather’s husband, Jed, Jed’s mother and father, friends from Shipyard Quarters back in Charlestown, our brothers and sisters and their families, and our new friends here in Lewes. We always felt like we worked too much and didn’t take enough time for friends, but right now we feel very supported by a whole host of you. Your confidence that we will get through this and continue our voyage a little smarter, albeit a little poorer, is most heartening. Thank you.
And now for a story about a new friend. Yesterday, Carl Stein, a local physician that we had met on the dock last Saturday when we first arrived, came by in the pouring rain to invite us to his house for dinner. His wife, Melissa, is a teacher, and their 14 year old son, Alex, is a sailor. He is currently racing a Hobie and has grand plans for future boats. While we were talking before dinner, Carl explained that he had become a doctor later in life. At one point, he had been a fisherman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and had survived a December boat wreck and subsequent sinking. That was the end of fishing for Carl, but he went on to build boats. He got his Master’s in Engineering from the University of New Hampshire and later decided to become a physician specializing in anesthesiology. He mentioned doing his residency at Yale and that prompted me to ask if he happened to know Richard Wiklund, a friend from Shipyard, who is an anesthesiologist and was at Yale at about the same time. Carl looked at me and said, “You know Dick Wiklund?” It is a small world. If I understood correctly, Carl did his residency with Dick. He also told us something about Dick and Claire that we didn’t know. Carl said that Dick once owned a 44 foot Morgan, the same 44 foot Morgan that was hauled down a street in New York City in the movie Romancing the Stone. Dick and Claire, is this true? Until tomorrow . . .
by Judy Handley | Oct 24, 2005 | Sailing Logs Year 1, US - Boston to Norfolk |
Day 7, Year 1: Lewes, Delaware
Date: Monday, October 24, 2005
Weather:
Location: Town Dock, Lewes, Delaware
Here’s a little history lesson for you. Did you know that Lewes, Delaware, Sussex County, was discovered by Henry Hudson in 1609 and became the first city established in the first state of the United States? It was settled in 1631 by Dutch colonists, plundered by Captain Kidd and other pirates as late as 1698, bombarded by a British frigate during the war of 1812, and invaded by Judy and Mark Handley aboard Windbird in October of 2005. We certainly didn’t all know this until we landed here. It is a very welcoming community, but it is still not home. When you are experiencing “technical difficulties” you feel particularly far away from friends and family. So many of you have called and e-mailed and offered assistance and we truly appreciate it. Our biggest problem right now is finding a temporary home for Windbird where the required work can be done. The required work is indeed going to be the installation of a new engine, and finding the right place to do that here is a challenge. The challenge brings me to the wonderful people here.
Sitting here at the town dock, we have met some incredible people. Most notable among those is Scott Gaston. He is what I would call a young entrepreneur and a great friend of sailors. He is 24 years old, owns 13 boats at the moment, and hopes soon to sail around the world. He is one of the most helpful people we could possibly hope to meet. He is trying at this moment to find a place that we can take our boat to have the necessary work done. The problem here is our size. We are too wide and too deep for most docks, so in the meantime we sit here at the Lewes Town Dock and are paying $2.00 per foot per day. Ouch! Because of our depth, we can only move about in this canal at high tide. That is around 3:00 in the afternoon and today we tried to move to the marina which is a stone’s throw across the canal. After about an hour of maneuvering, we returned to the Town Dock with a bent stanchion and a lot of wood from pilings on our rub rail. We tried valiantly to get into one of the finger piers offered to us by Captain Parsons, but hard as we tried, we could not plow our way into the shallow slips. Scott, whom I mentioned above, came in here to the Town Dock last night and struck up a conversation with Mark. He has his Tartan 35 docked up the Broadkill River and is offering to let us have his slip, but on the way there we would have to clear a place with 5 foot depths and that would probably stop us dead in the water. He is continuing to try and find other options for us and we are so appreciative.
The other person who has been tremendously helpful is David Laux, boat builder and engine repair person extraordinaire. He is working with us to figure out the best way to fix our problem and make sure we have the best power system for our cruise to the South Pacific and beyond. David, Mark, and I are of the same “vintage” and we are really enjoying getting to know David and his wife, Donna, as friends, as well as “boat repairers.”
Now for the negative side of what is happening here and that would be the weather. Right now we are recording 25 knot winds in this protected canal, but we understand the winds are predicted to reach 50 miles per hour. Another ouch! Mark is out on the dock right now securing the lines and adding more fenders. This blow is supposed to last through tomorrow. We’ll just have to see what tomorrow brings.
We really love hearing from so many of you. It helps us feel connected and loved. Keep those e-mails coming and send your positive energy this direction. We need it right now. I’ll let you know tomorrow if we have made progress.
by Judy Handley | Oct 23, 2005 | Sailing Logs Year 1, US - Boston to Norfolk |
Days 5 and 6, Year 1: A Little “Bump” in the Road
Date: Saturday and Sunday, October 22 and October 23, 2005
Weather: Sat–Winds 25-35, Gusts to 48 knots; Sun–Beautiful and Cool
Location: Town Dock, Lewes, Delaware
We arrived here in Lewes, Delaware, yesterday morning, Saturday, October 22, and here we will be for the next week or two, or possibly longer. That’s because of the little “bump” in the road. That transmission v-drive problem I mentioned in earlier logs is the bump and it could turn out to be a bigger problem than we had thought. I’ll let that unfold as I tell the story of the past two days.
I sent the Day Four log at about 5:00 pm on Friday. If you read that log, I had described the unbelievable day with the birds. As night approached, a couple of the little birds decided that they were going to spend the night in the cockpit or in the main cabin. They kept flying in and we kept chasing them out. Finally, we closed the hatch and decided to let them stay in the corner of the cockpit floor where they were huddled. Their persistence was stronger than ours, and soon it became apparent why they didn’t want to fly out into the night. The winds got stronger and stronger. At first they were the predicted 15-20 knots but with unpredicted gusts to 30. We double reefed the head sail and the main, checked the weather again which again did not predict these strong winds, and flew into the night. The winds kept building. While I was on watch from 10:00 pm to 1:30 am, the winds settled at 25 knots with gusts to 35. When I came back on watch at 4:00, the winds were 25 to 35 knots with gusts up to 48 knots! The winds were still behind us and we hoped to keep them that way. The boat was handling the wind and waves very well, but as the waves built and we got closer to land, anything and everything that was not well battened down ended up in the floor. (A note for our friend Claire: No worries. The clementines were safe and sound in the new tiered basket.) I have to say that the two hours from 4:00 to 6:00 am were two of the longest in my life. Since the winds just kept getting stronger and the drizzling rain became a down pour blowing into the cockpit from behind and we were getting closer and closer to the entrance to the Delaware Bay, I dared not think what might happen next. When you are on watch alone in the middle of a blustery night, you really have to think positive thoughts. But those little birds were still huddled in the cockpit floor and I was thinking I just might like to cuddle up with them. At 6:00 am it was time to wake Mark and change course to go into the Delaware Bay. I came below as it was so wet in the cockpit, but I was not going to be able to sleep. I finally laid down, but soon Mark asked me to man the radar. We were in the Delaware Bay shipping channel and even though it was daylight, the pouring rain caused visibility to be almost nil. A cargo ship had come up behind us but luckily Mark had seen it in time to get out of the way. He did a securite call on the radio to alert other boats of our position and the Coast Guard radioed us to verify our position and alert other ships in the area. It is always a good feeling to have the Coast Guard looking out for you.
Now I’ll add the sad story of the v-drive transmission problem. Earlier in the evening when we were motoring, it had became apparent that we were not going to be able to keep up with the loss of fluid. As fast as we could fill it, it would disappear. We had to continue filling it through the night evening though we were not running the motor. That was because we were literally flying through the water which was causing the propeller to turn the drive shaft and the noise was not a pretty one when the fluid was low. By morning when we found ourselves in terrible weather conditions in the Delaware Bay we were reminded of just how important it is to have a reliable transmission. Once in the bay, the winds settled back to 25 knots but the wind was now coming against us. We were not going to be able to make it to the C & D Canal by nightfall without the engine to help us, so we had to make a decision. We could go in behind the breakwater on Cape Henlopen or we could try and make it to the C & D Canal without the help of the engine and go through the canal during the night. However, you have to be under motor power in the canal. What further damage might we cause if we tried this? We were exhausted and hungry, so we decided to eat breakfast while we were deciding. I left my post at the radar screen to walk into the galley and almost stepped on a little bird fast asleep on the main cabin floor! I checked with Mark and there were no birds left in the cockpit. Then when I reached in the basket to get a banana, I found two more little birds cuddled in the bottom of the basket. I picked up the bird on the carpet, put it in the basket, and handed the basket to Mark. I don’t know how they got in, but it was time for these little guys to make their way to land.
At about 9:00 am we made the decision to go into Cape Henlopen. In doing this, we knew we might not make it to the Chesapeake this coming week as the weather reports we had read were for nasty weather all week. We needed to get the boat to a mechanic. And then there was Wilma. What was she going to do? We wanted to go on, but common sense told us to stop. So with heavy hearts we tucked in behind the breakwater. We were both exhausted and we needed to find a safe place to anchor and rest. I looked in the Waterway guide but found no radio or phone numbers for anything in Lewes, so I got on the radio and called for the Cape Henlopen harbor master. I called a couple of times and got no answer, so we decided to just anchor and figure things out later. Our charts showed less than 6 feet of water in the Lewes (pronounced loo-is) and Rehobeth Canal, so the anchorage basin looked like the only alternative. Then someone called Windbird on the radio. It was a guy named Steve Smyk with the Delaware River and Canal Police Department. He had heard my call for the harbor master and wanted to let me know that there is not one, but that he would be glad to help us with information. He was unbelievable. He kept me on standby while he called a marina in the Lewes and Rehobeth Canal. He found that there is really 11 feet of water at mean low tide if you stay right in the middle and that the town dock had enough water for our nearly 6 foot draft. He even called Tow Boat US to be on standby in case our transmission failed before we reached the dock. And then he called us back later in the afternoon to make sure we had made it in. It is wonderful to know that there are such caring folks out here. Thank you, Steve.
We tied up to the town dock and tried to figure out what to do next. I had the number of the Towboat US contact, so Mark called him to thank him for being on standby for us and asked if he could recommend a good mechanic. We called the guy he recommended and he said he would come by Monday morning to check things out, but he couldn’t promise he could do the work right away. He’s the mechanic for all of the fishing charter boats across the canal from the town dock and he would have to fit us in between any work he would need to do for the charter boats. I hooked up the hose and started spraying off some of the salt we had collected on Windbird and found that the town dock is a very busy little place. People started coming down to check out the new boat in town. People also fish from the dock and a couple of guys who had been fishing stopped to say hello. I told them our sad v-drive transmission story and one of the guys told me his favorite transmission story. He is a commercial fisherman and has a 43 foot aluminum boat built by a local guy. Not long after it was built, he was hauling in traps and got the line wrapped around the prop. But he didn’t know that. After pulling up the traps, he put the boat in gear and revved the engine. The strain on the transmission caused the gears to actually blow out the side of the gear box. He called the guy who had built the boat and before the end of the day, he had repaired the gear box and was back in business. He suggested we call this guy to see if he could help us. So we did.
An hour and a half later, David Laux and his wife arrived. He came with a stethoscope and asked me to start the engine and put it in gear while he listened. His diagnosis is that there is probably not too much damage, but at the very least the seals and bearings need to be replaced. The problem is that the v-drive is attached to the transmission gear box and that is attached to the engine. The v-drive box has to be removed to be worked on, and that could possibly require the entire engine to be removed. We did that in 2002 when we had the engine rebuilt and it is not an easy or a cheap task. David is checking to see if the box can be removed without taking out the whole engine, but his recommendation is that we buy a new engine. When he said that, I thought I might faint. And I’m not faint-hearted. He feels we made the wrong decision in getting the engine rebuilt in the first place and will be happier and safer in the long run with a new engine. We have lots of thinking and technical checking to do before making such a decision, but if it will require taking out the engine to fix the v-drive, we will probably not put this engine back in. If we can get a new engine here in the next couple of days, David thinks he can get it installed and running in a little more than a week. We won’t make it to Hampton by boat for our emergency medical class this next weekend, but we might still make it there by Friday, November 5, when my family is planning to come for a send-off. But again, not only the work that needs to be done will determine this, the weather will have to be with us as well. We’ll just have to see.
For now, here we sit in Lewes, Delaware. It is beautiful today, but cooler than yesterday requiring fall jackets. I’ll post a log tomorrow once we know what we will be doing about the engine. Until then . . .
