Category:

up the wrong creek with two paddles

9/23/2012

A creek or river has two directions: upriver or down. Easy to navigate. The
winding creeks, bays and marshes of the Chesapeake look, from the air, like a
tangled forest, Mirkwood perhaps. From the water, the view is of a circle of sea
and tree woven together like a mare's tail in a high wind.

I guess I should have stayed with the Vikings. But then I wouldn't have had
an adventure. And adventures are things you tell stories about after you survive
them.

It started at the butt crack of dawn, before it actually; me, in the dark,
zombieing around finding breakfast and the last things I needed to throw in my
buddy's Subaru with the boat gear. I don't do Butt Crack of Dawn. And I really
truly deeply loathe navigating the traffic on 83 south and anywhere near
Baltimore. So I rode shotgun and thought about sleep, but ended up with a big
fat coffee from a pit stop in Mary's land instead.

We headed south, along the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay (laregest
estuary in North America). Through Baltimore, still sleeping in the early
Saturday morning light, silvering its way around tall buildings, the Aquarium,
tall ship Constellation in the harbor. South, south with D.C. far off to the
west, up the Potomac. Our destination, a small farm in southern Maryland, lay
near the other end of the Potomac. There, in a slip at the end of Canoe Neck
Creek, off St. Clement's Bay, off the Potomac, lies a forty foot Viking Longship
called Sae Hrafn, (she's docked at the house of a guy who flies blimps, so the
Longship captain and the Blimp Captain live on the same road... really!).

The ship is owned by the Longship Company, a doughty crew of serious amateur
historians and reinactors fascinated by the Viking Age. We are computer wizards,
cinematographers, artists, writers, fixers of engines, retired Park Service, and
at least one rocket scientist (really; he works for NASA). If you show up for a
voyage (it's free, but donations always accepted) you'll probably find someone
wearing a T-shirt with Viking runes on it that say: if you can read this you are
a Viking, or "Viking World Tour" (in the style of rock concert T-shirts) with a
list of historical high points of Norse culture (often battles and raids). At
least half a dozen crew will be wearing Thor's hammers, and some of us may also
have the Nerf version of Mjolnir (from the Marvel Comics' Thor film) on our
desk.

We pull up to the crumbling tobacco barn, load ship's gear into trucks and
cars, drive down the long farm lane to where the land ends. We load the ship, I
load the kayak... in about the same amount of time. A 1-person crew has to have
all the safety/survival gear the big ship has, with less crew to load it. I have
food, water, canned coffee (all the necessities of life), first aid,
windbreaker, bilge pump, towline, more water, spare paddle, fins (to help me
swim back up onto the boat if I dump), camerabag, cell phone tucked into an
Otter drybox in my PFD pocket. I don diveskin (protection from sunburn and sea
nettles) and hat and river sandals and PFD, shoved the kayak down a short grass
slope into the cool waters of Canoe Neck Creek. Here the world is sandy bottom
(unless it's mucky silt), semi-saltmarsh (we're as far down the west side of the
Bay as Assateague Island is down the east coast), farms, wooded treelines,
scattered houses, and a few marinas out there, somewhere, where there is more
boat traffic.

The new crew (visitors on the ship for the first time) hear the articles read
(rules of the Ship), and get a demonstration of rowing commands. Frogging oars
and catching a crab have nothing to do with local wildlife. The new crew
includes a lady who grew up in Hawaii (who may or may not have had ancestors who
sailed there a thousand years ago), her husband (who may or may not have had
ancestors who sailed the North Atlantic a thousand years ago) and a charming
Halfling (our favorite moniker for children, a reference, of course, to the
beloved Hobbit). The ship is readied, the docklines undone, the crew sets oars
and Sae Hrafn (Sea Raven) slips out of the slip.

I back paddle, shooting video, some stills (easier to upload quickly, videos
require editing, a coherent storyline and music). We head out into the creek,
beating against a brisk 8-10 knot wind, singing sea chanties (the bawdier ones
are left behind as we have a Halfling aboard). I paddle rings around the ship,
literally. They are chugging along under oars at a pace that leave me drifting
in their wake, occasionally dipping a paddle into the drink. I can charge ahead,
turn around and get shots as they pass. Swing behind, and cross the stern firing
video from a camera (a Nikon Coolpix L100) rigged with a bit of aquarium hose
covered wire so I can hold it in my teeth and keep paddling. Aboard, Captain
Dave has the new HP Go Pro slung around Sae Hrafn's dragonwolf figurehead's neck
taking shots of the action aboard.

Out into the sun, bright silver glinting off ever choppier waves as the water
opens up before us. Most of the new crew fall into the rhythm of rowing, and
watch changes (so rowers can rest). I paddle, with no watch changes, but at a
slow enough pace (tracking the ship) to relax. The Halfling takes the Helm; a
tiller attached to a steerboard (hence the word "starboard"), the tiller carved
to look like a raven's head. Someone mentions that Blackistone Island (now known
as St. Clement's Island) lies ahead, there beyond the mouth of St. Clement's
Bay, and we should make for it. Our one Captain and Founder is Bruce
Blackistone, who seems to be related to the founders of the island. He is
aboard, and it seems proper for the Captain to visit his Ancestral Holdings. I
float in the ship's wake, swinging around shooting video, falling back to the
lee side of the ship (port, in this case), so as not to drift into the oarsmen.
The dim misty island stays dim and distant. They row, I paddle.

"Are we there yet?" no one says. We sing, we feel the wind, the chop dances
under our hulls. My bow shoots out of the water on oncoming waves. The camera is
high enough to not get wavesplash, the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the
white gulls are crying...

...to the sea, to the sea, the white gulls are crying, the wind is blowing,
the white foam is flying. That's Legolas' song of the sea from J.R.R.Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings, perhaps my all time favorite bit of poetry, although it is
actually a sort of sad going away song. The rhythm is fine for rowing or
paddling, especially if you sing it in Elvish. Cormorants flap by, blue herons
stalk the edges of the water, an eagle flies overhead and vanishes into the
trees. The Elves would love this.

"Are we going to make landfall on the island?" I ask. I'm thinking I may have
had too much coffee for breakfast, and not enough potty breaks.

"Want to go scout ahead?" Since I can paddle considerably faster than they
can row, and have less stuff catching the ripping good headwind, it seems like a
good idea. I stuff the paddle in the water and shoot ahead. (Comparative Stuff
That Catches Wind 101: Me: me (the kayak has ridiculously low freeboard)...
Them: a few feet of freeboard, mast, rigging, manblocks, random boathooks spears
and axes, 40' hull, a dozen rowers, a sail furled on a yard, figurehead shaped
like a cross between a wolf and a dragon, tail high atop the sternpost, oars,
flags, cameras, the Captain's Chest, tiller, steerboard). For the
sailing-impaired: freeboard is how much of your boat sticks out of the water.

The sky is a still blue dome, spotted with sheep clouds and no chance of Thor
slaying frost giants with Mjolnir (no thunderstorms predicted). The wind is in
our faces kicking up waves. Still above, chaos below. A chart of the area shows
a sandy bottom varying in depth from foot-deep shoals to thirteen feet or so in
the channel. Wind blows the water, tide pulls it another direction, it bounces
off shoals, intersects with a powerboat wake, drops into the deep, ricochets off
riprap (the ubiquitous rock armour lining many shores, especially ones humans
have built stuff on, stuff they don't want washed out to sea when the sand
erodes). The waves rock, roll and collide, making a pattern like a horse
galloping over rough country in the dark. After awhile, my head is spinning
trying to keep up with the motion; not seasick, but kind of wishing it would all
just stand still for a minute. I focus up, on the non-moving horizon and the
motion under the hull starts to make sense again.

The ship is behind me now, a blit somewhere against a distant treeline. I
can't turn around to look; turning the nearly eighteen foot sea kayak is like
turning a truck... and while you're turning, waves are blasting you from all
angles, and at the height of the turn, blasting you dead broadside. Just turning
in the cockpit is a yoga maneuver, one best not done in bouncing waves... you're
likely to be twisted like a pretzel about the time you get a wayward broadside
and find yourself in the drink. So I paddle ahead, keeping an eye on the biggish
tree in the middle of St.Clements Island. I note the compass course as I start
away from the ship: the reciprocal heading is 210 (the direction I want to be
going on the way back). I actually learned to use a compass underwater; for our
dive test we had to navigate a triangle in about ten feet of visibility, and end
up back at our starting point.

Easy compared to navigating the Bay.

The low blueish line of trees that is Blackistone/Clements creeps closer. The
water to either side rolls away to the horizon. That must be the Chesapeake. I
think about turning around, to see where Sae Hrafn is. I think about turning
back; it's getting choppier and I am essentially alone. I have a whistle. I have
a cell phone. I soon learn that the primitive tech is far more useful. I eye the
beach; is that a dock? A ramp? Sand (easy to beach on)? Or riprap (impossible to
land on)?

The waves shift shape again, lower, reflecting waves bounce off the shore,
and the shallows beneath. I spot a dock, with guys fishing off it. I paddle up
and shout ahoy or something. They ignore me. I shout again, and ask if there's a
public landing. I get a blank look and something about their look and demeanor
suggests they might not speak English.

Now I know how Captain John Smith felt. He was the first Englishman to
explore the Chesapeake. He went in a small boat called a shallop (about the size
of Sae Hrafn) with a dozen or so guys, rowed and sailed into unknown territory.
He encountered people, but they did not share his language. He had a compass and
other navigational instruments, but had to make up his map as he went. He had no
support, no backup, just him and his crew. There's a spot on the modern map
called Stingray Point, not far from where we are rowing today; it's where Capt.
Smith saw a stingray in the shallows and ran it through with his sword. The ray
objected and stabbed Mr. Smith in return. The Goode Captain became so ill he
told his men to dig his grave... he managed to recover enough to have the ray
for dinner... and to go on to help create that Pocahontas myth.

I see sea nettles, but no stingrays. I do see a water taxi, and evidence that
Blackistone/Clements is now a tourist destination. I paddle under the dock in
some nice waves, yell something like "Ahoy the taxi!" and get someone who speaks
the same language. Yes, there is a boat ramp around the other side of the
island...and a potti.

The last thing I want to do at this point ispaddle around an entire %$#^%$#^
island. I look at the island; not very large, actually. I'll just go around that
point and see whats there. I really gotta go.

I pass a picnic area. Something decidedly Park Pottyish. Riprap and nowhere
to land. I keep paddling. The waves shiftshape, flaten, rise, reflect, bounce
off the riprap. I turn the corner and LO! there is an actual sand beach. rising
above it are bushes and trees in Victorian fall colors; deep greens and browns
and burgundys and rusts. And rising above that is a white house with a cuppola
on top which is a Light.

I haul the boat up on the beach, then haul it up farther. The last thing I
want is to call 911 and explain that I am stranded on an island because I didn't
park the boat correctly. I find the potty. I take some pics of the lighthouse,
and somewhere in there I play phone tag with the crew of Sae Hrafn.

I'm hauling the kayak up higher on the empty beach when I hear the muffled
sound of the Star Wars theme. I crack open the Otter box in my PFD pocket and
see the call is from Dave. "Hello? HELLO?!?"

bzzzzzt... the phone calls vanishes into the ether. I hastily dry my hands on
the least wet thing I can find and poke through the phone menu to find which
Dave number that was (I am tech-impaired, so this took a minute). I call back,
he calls back, call drops, I call back.

I can see for miles across the flatness that is the lower Potomac land and
seascape. I can't imagine what's blocking a cell signal. I move up the steps to
the lighthouse and the phone rings again. "HELLO?!?!?"

We establish that I made it to the island, and they didn't. The other tall
ships in the Bay have backup engines for conditions where they can't sail. Even
then, they often are much less efficient under power, or in the case of the 1768
Schooner Sultana, buck and snort like recalcitrant Shetland Ponies because their
hulls were designed to fly before the wind, not plow into it. Sae Hrafn's backup
engine is the dozen or so rowers aboard (the longship, shaped like a big canoe,
is not built for any kind of engine). We are investigating the use of a push
boat (much like the push boats used by Skipjacks) in our (hah hah) copious free
time. The wind has shoved Sae Hrafn into a near standstill. Without forward
motion, you can't steer her; the steerboard doesn't have enough water flowing
past it to be effective. Then the wind grabs her and shoves her sideways. the
rowers try to counteract this by rowing more on one side or the other. In a
kayak, you instinctively counteract the force of the wind and the shove of waves
with an extra stroke, a harder stroke, a longer stroke. On the longship, you are
coordinating 8 to 12 rowers, shouting orders over the wind that's shoving you
into the marsh.

They wisely have decided to turn around and sail back.

I am half an hour ahead of them, I haven't eaten anything except a few
granola bars since breakfast at 6am. I've been paddling since noon, it's now
about 2:30. I know I can't catch them once they set sail (I have paced them
under sail, but I can't paddle faster than they can sail, or make up a half hour
lead). I need to eat, and then I'm making the voyage back alone. I have a
compass course, and I can see their sail when I get farther up the creek (though
they might have dropped it by then). I down a few quick bites and contemplate
resting on the beach for a bit... I'll have the wind behind me, surfing on the
waves, but it will still be rough, a rest would be good.

I don't waste much time. I take a few pics and video of the light and the
beach to prove I was there. I batten everything down in the 'yak, dryboxes,
drybags, stowed. I shove her out into the waves and hop in, popping the
sprayskirt around the cockpit. I paddle around the island to the midpoint where
I first approached, set my compass course, look up the creek from which we came
and...

...there are two creeks. Separated by a bit of land. Two long stretches of
water, bordered by treelines and agricultural land and scattered houses. No road
signs. No arrows pointing "this way to longship landing". Left creek or right
creek? I look at the compass again. Looks like left creek. Unless I'm at the
wrong point on the island. Does that look familiar? Can't tell. Water. Trees. I
head out into open water, to where it stretches away to the far misty blue blur
that might be distant trees or clouds on the edge of the world. I dance on the
waves, they sweep up behind me, yawing the 'yak right and left, even with the
rudder down. I shove on the paddle, the 'yak surges forward, surfing the waves
home.

Finally the treelines around the creeks grow greener, nearer. I check the
compass a few more times; it seems like I am on the right track.

Then the bright red triangle of a daymark appears in front if me. Really, I
don't remember that. I look at the compas. I twist around and look back at the
island. Yep, this makes sense, that looks like what I was paddling toward.

How could I have missed the osprey condo with the big bright red triangle on
it? I call Dave, and raise the ship. Just want to make sure I'm on the right
track before I paddle up the wrong creek. Dave and Bruce check the chart aboard
Sae Hrafn, Can't find the red daymark, number 2. No really, I'm sitting infront
of it, it's here. What? what was that again? The phone crackles like a joke in a
horror film. I hear mumbled sounds, then "Oh, here it is."

And I am totally up the wrong creek, with two paddles. And they are telling
me it's St. Patrick's creek I am in.. and that I should be in Canoe Neck, and
that's to the north. I look that way and all I see is a long unbroken treeline.
I am convinced I am either in the correct creek or I need to be in the one to
the far right (east). A conversation ensues while I try not to drop the cell
phone in the wrong creek and the guys on the ship check the chart again. Unable
to visualize what they're telling me, I finally agree to go up the creek and
look for a marina. They'll come find me.

What I don't know, is that I am actually in the mouth of St. Clements Bay,
the "creek" to the right (east) is Breton Bay and would put me somewhere on the
far side of the world if I paddled up it. St. Patrick's Creek is to my left
(west) and Canoe Neck just beyond it to the north. I can't see either one of
them. In the Chesapeake region, creeks, rivers and bays make stumpy tree shapes,
branches going out short and thick and twisty, then abruptly ending in marsh and
land. The land interweaving with this ends in gazillions of puzzling peninsulas
called "necks". I was looking at a series of "necks" which from that angle,
looked like one solid treeline.

Stealth ninja creeks.

I paddle up the broad chunk of whatever water I'm in, looking for a marina.
Farms, stray houses, fields, riprap, wooded shores falling into the water as the
sand under the trees' feet is eroded by wind and weather and tide, a random dock
here, a tied up boat there. Nothing like a marina with an address that someone
could drive to. I see a large, official (ie: non-houselike) building with a
sandy beach at its feet. I pull the boat up on the beach, start to hike up to
the building, now clearly i can see it is a quonsett hut, a big silver half
cylinder (farm? secret meth lab?) surrounded, in the back, by tall chain link
fence. I pause, turn and pull the boat up farther, then tie it to a tree.

The building is empty of life, except for two vehicles parked out front, It
looks like some sort of business, and a sign suggests farm. then from somewhere
in back coems a deep throated bark, more like a dragon cough, then a roar, then
more, and I consider two things: the guard dogs will bring humans who I can ask
the address of and if it's OK for my friends to pick me up here... or the dogs
will jump the fence... or the dogs are guarding a meth lab. OK, that's three
things. I run back to the beach and untie the boat, head out, very tired, into a
lowering sun and falling light on an empty river.

Then I see a sailboat, going downriver under engine power. I paddle out
toward it, wave vaguely. Shout. Finally blow my whistle. They look, slow, turn
and come alongside.

"Is there a marina around here somewhere?"

"No, you're in St. Clements Bay. No marinas."

I explain where I came from and that I am lost and looking for St Clements
Creek, no wait, Canoe Neck. It's been a long day.

"It's up there." One sailor points vaguely at the distant treeish haze.
Pause... "you want us to throw you a line?"

Sure. Absolutely. Two random guys on a boat, towing me some random place I
can't see. They could be pirates. Axe murderers. Drug dealers. But probably not.
There's a kind of law of the sea at work here. The kind of thing that causes
three kayakers to go up to a 60 foot catamaran they've passed at the same spot
hours before and ask if everything's OK, and find out they're stuck on a
sandbar, and offer to tow them off. We didn't hook the towline up to the 'yaks,
we used the cat's anchor to kedge them off the bar. Law of the sea. The guy
struggling with his jet ski in the middle of a thunderstorm on the banks of the
Susquehanna while I cowered in my van (Thor may be one of my favorite mythic
characters, but I really hate thunderstorms)... I jumped out and helped him with
his boat, even though I loathe jet skis.

I run up behind the sailboat, one guy ties a line off to the 'yak's bow, they
pay out 30 feet or so of line and start the diesel. "Don't worry, we won't put
her up on plane or anything..." Sailor humor. Sailboats don't plane, powerboats
plane. Kayaks would plane, for about two seconds before they did some rather
spectacular special effects. We don't plane, we chug along, the wind blowing the
diesel fumes sideways, the 'yak gliding along at an unnatural speed, the rudder
keeping her in line with the big boat.

Somewhwere in here, Star Wars rings out in muffled splendor from my PFD
pocket. I juggle the phone, the paddle (trying not to catch a crab with it as
I'm being towed)... "I, ah, hitched a ride"...

A few minutes later, they untie the line at Canoe Neck Creek. I invite them
to come play with Vikings, and I paddle up the creek looking for the third cove
on the right, and certain that I'm going to have a chart next time. 　

10 mile paddle. Mostly into the wind. Plus 1.6 mi up St. Clement's Bay to the
quonsett hut (farm/beach), towed to mouth of Canoe Neck Creek by sailboat.

St.Clement's is actually Saint Clements Island State Park.

I was in the mouth of St. Clement's Bay, not St. Patricks Creek (to the
left/west at that point), and needed to go up the Bay (north) to Canoe Neck
Creek. I went north as far as the quonsett hut place (visible on Google Earth,
1.6 mi north of the mouth of Canoe Neck Creek).

The two creeks I was looking at were actually St. Clements Bay and Breton
Bay. Indeed the water to the right (Breton Bay) would have been way wrong.

The course out of Canoe Neck to St. Clements Is. is a long sweeping curve;
there is no point where it seems like you have made a sharp right turn to the
south. I was following the ship and shooting video, so I wasn't really paying
attention to the course.

Charts: never leave home without them.

www.longshipco.org We need a few good
rowers...uh...sailors. No experience
necessary.

　

2 Comments

Earthquakes, hurricanes, pirates, sprit tops'ls and duct tape...(or How I Spent My Summer Vacation)

8/26/2011

2 Comments

My vacation this year included; an earthquake, a pirate voyage, a hurricane (and forced evacuation from a barrier island), pipefish, sandburrs, wild horses, spaceships and cowboys, and a lot of duct tape.

Each year (or more often if I can make it) I make a sort of pilgrimage to a set of barrier islands off the coast of Maryland and Virginia. Assateague is a long, low dragon shape, stretched across the MD/VA border. Chincoteague lies like a tiny egg inside the curve of Assateague's "tail" (The Hook). Assateague is home to wild horses, waterfowl, and sea life. Chincoteague is home to watermen, saltwater cowboys, art galleries and nifty shops, and the only wild horse roundup on the east coast.

First, the pirate ship. Lewes DE lies on the edge of DelMarVa. Occasionally, during the summer, it is the home port of a "pirate ship", the Kalmar Nyckel, a glorious big blue wedding cake of a vessel, carved and decorated and square rigged and cannoned, with a leaping lion on the bow and merrows on the stern and fighting tops aloft (so the crew can go, literally, "over the top"). A reproduction of the 1638 ship that brought the first settlers to Wilmington DE (New Sweden then), she does "pirate sails" out of Lewes, out into the open waters of the Delaware Bay. The guests are invited to help haul on lines, to sing sea shanties, to perch on windlass or cannon, to take ridiculously cool pictures of themselves with a set of 1630's rigging or deck carvings as the set. The crew is in period garb. They climb picturesquely aloft... with a purpose; to set the 17th century windmachine that will haul us out into the High Seas without fossil fuels (mostly, they do have backup engines). One young man tells a fun tale of a kid who becomes a pirate for a day. Another talks about the real history (and misconceptions) of the Golden Age of Piracy. We learn Captain Lauren's last name is Morgan... we think she's a lot cooler than the guy on the rum bottle. We form a line and help set a tops'l. It's a lot harder than jumping in the car and turning a key. The Helmsman steers from a cubbyhole about the size of Harry Potter's closet. There is a huge stick (the whipstaff) attached to a tiller below the deck he's standing on, (the tiller attaches to the rudder, the whipstaff gives some mechanical advantage to the mere human attempting to heave the 100 foot ship on a new course). From HP's closet, the helmsman can see masts, yards, deck stuff, tourists, more tourists, rigging, and a tiny bit of water to port and another tiny bit to starboard. He mostly listens to the orders coming from the Captain, above. We set only the tops'ls (the big square bits above the bigger square bits on the masts... masts = levers that the wind pushes on... a light wind pushing on sails higher up... topsails... is more efficient) as the wind is very light, and the deck is very full (of tourists). We also set the sprit tops'l.

The wha??? you say. Pay attention, this is significant. The boat has a big pointy thing in front: the bowsprit. It helps hold the whole thing together (standing rigging runs through the bowsprit and the masts, like a big string puzzle). The bowsprit on a 17th century Dutch vessel of this type has a sprits'l (a square sail slung low on the bowsprit like a baby's bib) and a sprit topsail, hung a bit higher. Kalmar is the only ship in the western hemisphere to have a sprit tops'l, and she doesn't usually set it. There's a guy from some museum ( in, I believe it was Sweden) who is sailing the next day to study how this works (they have an original vessel of this time period, raised from where it sank in a harbor on its maiden voyage; it was preserved by freshwater in the port... and the sewage... all of which created an anaerobic environment which preserved the ship).

Not quite as ordinary as boarding a comuter flight to Miami.

Somewhere in the midst of the voyage, over the ship's radio, comes the earthquake report.

Back in PA, my uncle is sitting in the car, in a parking lot, waiting for my aunt. He feels someone "shaking the car"...turns around to see no-one.

Kalmar sails back to port with no rumbles felt, no tsunamis seen. We get some pirate booty (T-shirt, a cool line drawing of Kalmar) and I head south by land.

Chincoteague VA, island of the wild ponies, made famous by a 1940s book, Misty of Chincoteague (and 60s film) by Marguerite Henry. I saw it first in 1972, the last year Misty (the pony in the story) was alive. I toured her stable, saw her snoozing in the back corner of her stall (she was old, and her palomino gold color was faded to sand), and didn't take a picture (the flash would have disturbed her). She died a few months later. I never got the picture.

I park, find my buddies, we eat dinner, and someone produces a set of DVDs of a short run TV series called Firefly. It's a sort of post-apocalyptic sci-fi/western with a crew of pirate-smuggler-privateer types flying under the radar of the Evil Totalitarian Government that controls the galaxy. Sort of the opposite of Star Trek. The last image in the opening credits pretty much sums it up: a herd of thundering horses with a spaceship (firefly class, the ship of the title) zooming overhead. Over the next few nights, I find the need to stay up way too late, have too many beers (two, which leads to a headache, and a need to drink lots of water and find the porta-bucket in the middle of the night), and absorb the entire series at once.

I get up early for the Marine Explorers program done by the Park Service, we launch a couple of kayaks into Chincoteague Bay, I test the underwater housing from the Dark Ages given to me by a buddy (anybody remember the old Jaques Cousteau specials? Yeah, it's like that stuff), I use the giant sized kitchen strainer to sift out eelgrass, algae, sea-lettuce and a pipefush from the grass beds in the Bay, climb the lighthouse in winds that led the lighthouse interpretive guide to suggest I batten down my hat, I try leaping the waves like I did when I first came to Assateague...

My knees reminded me that leaping like a dolphin is for 20 year olds.

Chris finds the first sandburr. I am aware of this by the sudden shrieks reminiscent of a torture scene in Firefly when the Captain is kidnapped by a psychopathic mobster. I find sandburrs (for the record, Teva sandals, the hiking/river/kayaking sort, are immune...the flipflops are like wearing marshmallows where sandburrs are concerned), Heather's bare feet find more sanburrs. She, always barefoot, resorts to the dreaded Shoe. I find more: on the edges of my longish shorts, stuck to the webbing of my sandals, under my toes...

The islands are full of vampires: several kinds of bloodsucking flies, several dozen kinds of bloodsucking mosquitoes, 3 kinds of ticks, and sandburrs. Perhaps if the Twilight series had been written here, it would actually be scary.

Then we got wind of the weather...

To quote the guy at the beginning of The Little Mermaid..."hurricane a'comin'!!!"

The skies remained sunny, the wind too brisk now for kayaks. The birds went about their business as usual; egrets and blue herons, tricolored herons and sandpipers fishing the shallows, beaks pumping like sewing machines in the sand at the sea's edge. Pelicans soared over the waves like pteradactyls. A mysterious fin surfaced near my kayak (maybe a dolphin).

Oh, we'll just have some rain the last two days of my vacation...I'll drive home Monday, as planned.

Went to the museum that used to be called The Oyster Museum. It's grown in scope from its days as an ode to the local industry. There are exhibits on local culture, waterfowl, the oyster industry, history, the fire company, watermen, the pony roundup...and Misty.

Really, Misty herself, in all her stuffed, taxidermied glory (along with her daughter, Stormy, who I once sketched alive). Taxidermy done by a well-meaning local craftsman with a rather random knowledge of horse anatomy. I take pictures, mostly video, anyway, an experiment in filmaking (shooting around the bad bits, trying to make the stuffed horses look more... unstuffed).

I burn some memory card, abosorb Vast Knowledge until my brain is full, and my eyes glassy.

The guys at the front desk are packing their bags, their boxes...the entire museum, in fact, is being battened down. Back on the beach, the Park Service is using some interesting large Tonka toys to move the changing rooms and porta-pottis off the beach. The girl at the Kite Koop advises me to leave Thursday night, before the causeway (the only way on and off the island that doesn't require a boat) is closed, and we are actually stranded on a desert island. And before the traffic to the north becomes a dreaded crawl through gale force winds and closed bridges and torrential rain.

At the rental house we hover around the weather channel, watching the worst storm since 1962 (the nor'easter that inspired Stormy; Misty's Foal) form and advance toward the Outer Banks. We learn the beach will close at ten tonight, and not reopen until the storm has passed.

We opt for food, beer, and more episodes of Firefly. But first, three of us pile into Janet's car and head for one last look at the beach. The sky sputters. Pours. We drive in the dark out the causeway to Assateague, headlights of other cars occasionally shining through the downpour. Water pools on the road; rain? or rising seas?? Heather rumbles from the backseat as if she is driving a dogsled; "...gee, gee, no haw...stay out of the lagoon!" I remember my dive instructor said to never drive through standing water.... I can't remember how much it takes to sweep you off the road and into the lagoon.

The road becomes packed sand with beach parking lot signs.

The rain peters out into a fine drizzle.

We step out, headlamp shining on rolling surf. I turn the light out. Dim light, the continual roar of surf on sloping sand. The flash of the distant lighthouse on the white breakers; blink-blink....blink-blink....

Friday am, we aquire tarps, plastic, plywood, and copious amounts of duct tape, battening down our buddy Heather's houses, and treasured old books. Chincoteague issues an evacuation notice, rental houses are called; non-residents must be off-island by 6pm... residents by the next day.

We pack, reluctantly, under skies that morph from rain to sun to cloud to sun to drizzle to sun.

Vultures perch on the roof of the condo. The lighthouse is visible across the marsh, sentinel from the Civil War, on the highest piece of ground for miles around, double walled brick tower still flashing its light through the rain Thursday night.

I drive north Friday under sunny skies, calm hot windless skies. The mighty landship Fearaf (my 1983 Ford Econoline van) is loaded with gas, food, water, blankets. I only fear getting out too late and sinking the van.

And the Traffic Jams of Doom.

Chincoteague's Main street is being boarded up (the bay is only a few yards away, and most of Chincoteague is actually below sea level). I take some last pictures, throw good wishes at some guys boarding up a store front. They grin, keep working. They've been through it all before. No big deal.

One of them says; "Everybody gets all excited when God starts rearranging the furniture..."

The Traffic of Doom does not materialize, only some Friday evening rush hour traffic in Dover and Smyrna. Gale force winds do not materialize. The kayaks remain lashed to the roof of the van. Neither I or they blow to Oz. Torrential rains do not materialize. Nor do bridge closings (I still have to get off DelMarVa, which was a penninsula, and now, due to the C&D Canal, is actually a rather large island). I drive north in weather that can't decide what outfit to wear; rain, sun, cloud, rain, drizzle, sun, setting sun.

Somewhere in the middle of the rain, my driver side windshield wiper goes "kraat!" and lurches hard aport.

"That doesn't look right..."

I pull over and inspect this small, and ridiculously important piece of technology I just had replaced a month ago. There's a greebly that turns and a thingie that pops and something that holds it all on the windshield washer arm thingie...

I twist it and poke it and sort of get it back together.

It pops loose.

"@%$&^%$!!!!!?!!!"

I delve into the Mighty Landship Fearaf, laden with Hurricane Survival Gear, searching for....

Duct tape, the Force that holds the universe together.

I drive north through rain, the wipers slapping a happy, and slightly offbeat rhythm...

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Weekend Soundtrack

8/12/2009

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National Public Radio has a feature they call Weekend Soundtrack. They invite us, the listeners, to send in our inspiring soundtracks. This was mine...
　

It varies, depending on the expedition brainfart of the week, but, right now... yeah, it's Pirates. The Soundtrack, you know, from those Disney flicks. Ok, before you send me by the boards to be marooned forever in some mosquito infested salt marsh (one of my favorite environments, by the way), let me explain.

I grew up on horseback, a total landlubber in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.The Susquehanna flows down through our farm hills into that great inland sea called the Chesapeake Bay, and then into the sea. I remained blissfully unaware of it through my childhood and youth, though I grew up on the likes of Sea Hunt and Flipper and Cousteau specials. I eventually learned to swim, and even SCUBA dive: but floatin' boats were to get you to the sunken one, and the floatin' ones were usually stinky noisy diesel affairs. I did living history from the Viking age to the Renaissance, mostly bopping big guys upside the head with broadswords and galloping picturesquely about on my horse. Sometimes I would join my friends in The Longship Company on one of their Viking longships. I was certainly no sailor; mostly we rowed around the marina and creeks at Solomon's Island, MD, once in awhile, we'd put up the big square thingie and blow downwind for awhile.

Then came a year when tall ships sailed the silver screen; Peter Pan, Master and Commander, and the first Pirates film brought us adventure on the high seas, and it looked awesome. Still, it was a film fantasy, something I knew a bit about as an artist and writer specializing in the young adult fantasy genre.

Then a friend took me to a tall ship festival in Baltimore. I rounded the corner in the water taxi and fell in love.

She lay there, sleek cutlass blade hull hugging the water, her two masts raked as if she was going warp eleven, even at the dock.

Which is how I found myself on a pirate ship on Halloween. Ok, not technically a "pirate" ship, a privateer. The Chesapeake Bay, and Baltimore in particular, were famed for their swift, agile "sharp-built schooners", used in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. They were privateering vessels with government issued letters of marque and reprisal; "Flyers" who would run blockades and carry goods, and carry off any enemy merchants who happened to get in their way; "Sea Wolves" who would prey on enemy merchants, capturing "prizes" for a struggling young nation (and themselves, in the bargain). The Pride of Baltimore II is a recreation of the famed Baltimore Clippers of 1812, and for a wee bit of gold (or your Gold Card) she'll let you sign on as Guest Crew for a few days before the mast, no experience required.

Some sailor once compared the experience to riding a wild black mare through the wild woods in the dark of night. I understand the Black Mare imagery: I had my own wild black mare; a mustang adopted through the Bureau of Land Management's Adopt-A-Horse program. Not the Lone Ranger White Knight, not the Roy Rogers Golden Hero. Batman, Bagheera, Arnold's black-leather Harley-riding Terminator, the night-black steed of Zorro, dangerous power, the one riding the thin line between light and dark, good and evil.

The Chesapeake Bay privateers made their mark on history, and faded from it as the great Bay grew crowded, silted, full of phosphorus and nitrogen and algae blooms and dead zones, deficient in shad and crab and oyster and striper and skipjack.

Roaring on a reach, under slatey skies in early November, with a full press of canvas over my head, I caught a glimpse of the Bay that was.

That might yet be. I catch more glimpses, later, as I paddle my sea kayak on parts of the Captain John Smith Water Trail. As I feel the shape of waves reflecting off the marshes' mudwalls, as I watch an eagle sail out of the woods to snatch a fish from a fleeing osprey.

I want others to see this too. To feel it. To experience it.

Pride is not the only ship that still sails that vast inland sea. There are others; a small fleet made of the things of Earth; wood and canvas and line, others who creak and sing and gallop over the waves, flying on the wind; schooners, colonial ships, skipjacks and others. The 1769 era topsail schooner Sultana carries more than 4,600 students each year on educational adventures. I met one of those kids, on Chincoteague Island; his mom said he hadn't stopped talking about it for weeks. I manned her helm (tiller and steering tackle, not a wheel) in a cold May rain for forty minutes (and wished for more) while she balooshed cheerfully through the Bay chop from Annapolis to St. Michaels. Upon our arrival (under slightly sunnier skies than we had set out) a group of kids on the lighthouse yelled "Arrrr, hey pirates! Yo! Pirate ship!" The original Sultana was a pre-Revolution revenue cutter for the British Navy, we didn't bother to correct them.

Wouldn't you want to sail on a pirate ship?

The Chesapeake Bay Program (a multigovernmental interstate partnership along with the Environmental Protection Agency) has as one of its goals to give 100 percent of students a meangingful watershed educational experience by their high school graduation.

An experience: not a list of facts and names and dates which will sail in one ear and out the other.

An experience: spending even a few hours unplugged from the I-pod and the Game Boy, in a world where you pay attention to the direction of the wind and tide, to the shape of the swells rolling under your feet, to the color of the clouds on the far horizon, where a mysterious fin flashes out of the depths and then vanishes, where travel means hauling on a line with six other people, standing out in the rain, or the sun, where air conditioning is your hat, and central heating is a wool sweater... an experience of connecting to the real world, and maybe caring enough about it to make sure the Bay will have oyster reefs and grass beds and clear water for the next generation.

If it starts with a cheesy Hollywood image, or a book, or a soundtrack, arrrr, so be it! Captain Jack, and Captain John, would be grinning.

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Changing Tack

8/12/2009

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2009.05.27
I wrote this in May, after a long-awaited voyage got blown out, and half a dozen of us had to figure out what we were going to do with a Saturday off. Sometimes, you change course, and strange things happen...　

I like tall ships for the same reasons I like sled dogs and wild horses; they are inextricably tied to the rhythms of the natural world.

Round eared dogs, like Golden Retrievers, will wait at your feet with great eager brown eyes, "give me a command, come on, what do you want me to do?" Northern dogs will take a message and get back to you. Maybe.

If you point the nose of a normal domestic horse in any direction, he goes there without complaint. Wild horses must be whispered to, connected with. And they'll tell you when they think your human knowledge is too narrow and limited.

Most of our technology is 'push a button and go there'. Hop in the car, turn a key and point its nose north.

Tall ships are more like living things; they creak and groan, moving according to the shape of the water under them, spreading thousands of square feet of wings on the wind. And if the wind is blowing the wrong way, or not at all, you wait. If you run aground, you wait for high tide. If it's already high tide, you wait for a spring tide. The wind shapes the evolution of their wings, the way it does the wings of birds. Water shapes their hulls, the way it shapes fish or dolphin or whale. Their very nature is to migrate, to follow the wind. They take us out of our clock time world and into another one, a world of the rhythms of sun and tide and the clouds taking shape on the far edge of the world.

Last year, about this time, (May 10) two friends and I spent a day crossing the Chesapeake Bay in style: 18th century style. Rain, sog and ripping good wind, the 1768 Schooner Sultana balooshing through the waves like a sturdy Shetland pony on a rocky trail, sailing from Annapolis to St. Michael’s.

We decided to recreate the adventure this year, on the run from Annapolis to Chestertown.

With a few more crew. I rounded up Connie (a cousin) who had sailed last year, another cousin, Josh, one of the Longship Company guys (a captain on longship Sae Hrafn), my buddy Rainey, paddling buddy Sandy. I juggled packing lists, a campsite, who was driving what where (no return transport is provided, except the cars you shuttle yourself). I have a certain amount of trip anxiety, I guess, fretting over what goes in which pack and did I get enough stuff at Giant and is the food box too full or not enough and do I really need two bags of marshmallows, and where did I put the tie-down straps for stuff like packs and bedrolls (I swear they were in the kayak gear box), and will the van break down and what do we do if it does (AAA is my friend).

The week before the trip sucked. Insanity at work (stress and coupons, I hate you Corporate Subway Boys in the Ivory Tower). A horse that suddenly founders, with us floundering to find a new vet because the other one has apparently developed a case of insanity or overwhelming ego.

Then the well-trained sled dogs, who always wait when I open the gate, give me a heart attack. Legolas blows past me out the gate, runs to the kennel to inspect the food bucket, which is out of his reach, blows on by, runs around the back forty, finds a dessicated dead thing, blasts into the front yard and toward the Davidsburd Deathway (I grew up with a large population of flat cats). Screaming "target, target" (his signal to come and press his nose to my hand for a bikkie) I struggle after him. I can’t run (knees, arthritic feet, winter flab). Gasping I get to the front yard to see him trotting off with the big dead thing in his mouth. "TARGET!" I shriek, waving the food bowl. Somehow he decides the familiar (boring) shiny metal thing is more interesting than properly aged rabbit corpse. I grab him, stuff his nose in the food dish, and haul him back to the kennel.

The horse also survives, so far, with an admonition from the vet that she’s too bloody fat (I knew that, you wire her teeth shut or something).

I’m totally stressed and need a vacation.

And the weather sucks.

The weather report continues to suck. I find my Frogg Toggs, they worked fine last year in the drizzle. And the sun eventually came out.

Friday, May 15, Drew McMullen from Sultana Projects calls and says the weather is looking very iffy: 70/30 in favor of not going. The problem is not only random thunderstorms, or potential rain (the Bay is known for its sudden and fierce squalls), but the north wind blowing from the direction we are going to.

We are used to clock time. To pushing a button and getting light, heat, ground coffee. To jumping in a car and turning a key, pointing our bow north and going there.

Sultana hails from a time when your world was sixty feet of deck. And the whole limitless horizon. When you studied the clouds and knew their language. When where the wind was coming from was important. Sultana runs on the rhythms of wind and tide and weather. She has a backup engine, a fairly strong one, but her hull is designed to sail, her bluff bow designed to ride the waves, and her canvas wings designed to catch the wind from abaft the beam.

If you point her nose into the wind and turn on her alien engine, she bucks and snorts like a recalcitrant pony, or just stands there.

The last time they tried to sail in those conditions, the guest crew were cowering on the quarterdeck, three of them barfing the whole way across the Bay.

Saturday morning, Drew calls to tell us we’ve been blown out. The crew will likely wait till Monday to sail the ship north to Chestertown.

Damn.

Sultana’s crew is professional, experienced. They know sailing, the Bay, their ship, what to expect from certain weather patterns. I know, from years messing with the Longship Company, with kayaks, horses camping and sled dogs, that there are parts of the world that yet run on the rhythms of wind and tide and weather. Things that don’t work because you push a button.

There are two more sails in September and October.

I’m still disappointed.

Now what? I’ve pried two days off, on a weekend, and I want to do something other than sit at home. I call everybody, we look like those vultures in the old Disney "Jungle Book" film: "so...whadday wanna do? I dunno, whadda YOU wanna do? I dunno..."

Connie bails till Sunday. Fred is in Bowie and probably goes to the longship work session. I can’t raise him on the cell. I get Josh and Sandy and Rainey. Josh shows early (9:30) and pokes around on his Blackberry.

Wait, there’s a tall ship in Wilmington I’d like to sail on, "Try the Kalmar Nyckel site." I suggest.

Kalmar sails between 10 and 3, and it’s already nearly noon. We’d never get there in time.

Plan C.

Baltimore. Close, and we can still get in a few hours at the aquarium.

We load up in Josh’s car and head down 83. Josh navigates Baltimore more easuily than York. Thank the gods of travel; I loathe interstates, I detest going over 55, I really really hate 695, the insanity loop around Baltimore. We’ve pared our Sultana daypacks down to simpler packs for a shorter mission. I’ve got granola bars, V8, Frogg Toggs, water bottles, two cameras and a shipload of batteries. I pause in the parking garage, reading the manual on my new camera, to figure out how to tell it that it has now devoured lithium batteries not alkaline.

We walk toward the aquarium.

Masts loom on the waterfront; the Constellation, most of it the original ship from before the Civil War (1854). In between her three stately masts rise two other masts, raked hard, as if she is going warp eleven.

Pride’s here!

The Pride of Baltimore II is the first tall ship I fell in love with. A few years ago, on the heels of the first Pirates movie, some friends and I went to Inner Harbor for a tall ship festival. We rounded the corner in the water taxi and there she was, cutlass blade hull hugging the water and those warp eleven masts. She's a "schooner, pilot boat-built" as they said in the old days. Now they call them Baltimore Clippers; the jet fighters of 1812. Fliers and sea-wolves with government issued letters of marque and reprisal; they ran blockades (fliers), like Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon, or took enemy ships as "prizes".

I sailed on Pride II a few times since; on the Chester River at Downrigging weekend, on a two day guest crew passage from Baltimore to Chestertown. I walked on her decks every time I saw her open for tourists. Sent pictures to the Pride office (one appears on their Privateer Society brochure). She is, with Sultana and Kalmar and Sae Hrafn, one of my favorite ships.

I’m not sure why I didn’t think of checking her site that Saturday morning. I guess I assumed she was busy. Or on her way to ports more exotic. Out of reach. I forgot that she too, does simpler things like two hour tours and groups of school kids.

"Hey, let’s go over and take a look." I drag the other three after me, past Constellation’s looming stern.

There’s life aboard, a crew. And a gangway to the waterfront walkway. Tourists are wandering aboard, eyeing the new varnish and the antique technology that was the cutting edge of its time.

"Let’s go aboard." I wander up, camera in hand, as full of wonder as when I first saw her. Form follows function, and her form is beautiful. "Like a fine Arabian steed", one British observer in the War of 1812 years wrote. "Like a wild black mare galloping through the woods at night," observed several sailors of the first Pride. Even sitting still, her canvas wings folded she is full of rich details: the perfectly straight lines of standing rigging, the sweeping curves of running rigging, the sculpture formed by carefully belayed and coiled line, the textures of varnished cabin trunks and rails, of weathered deck, of layered mast hoops and sail edges like the feathers of a giant bird.

She’s leaving tomorrow on her summer tour which will take her to the Caribbean, up the coast to the Canadian Maritimes, Baltimore’s icon doesn’t stay in Baltimore much of the year.

They’re doing a public sail at 3. One last public sail till fall.

It doesn’t take much convincing to ditch the aquarium in favor of a sail on Pride.

Her mighty engines (bright yellow, about the size of refrigerators, and one, in 2007, was guarded by a foot tall pink plastic Jesus) fire up. Over the side I can see the murky harbor water churn under Pride's screws. We chug backwards, through the green and purple dragon boats peddalled by tourists, past the docked sailboats.

Then Pride begins to spread her wings. The foresail, fore-staysail, and the square topsail. There are too many people on deck (though the original Baltimore Clippers had crews of more than a hundred), and the space between Fort McHenry and the Francis Scott Key Bridge is too small for her 10,000 square feet of full canvas. We tack back and forth, often with the wind nearly in front of us (on a tack, you change course across the eye of the wind, so it is in front of us as we change course). I try to watch the frantic coordinated dance of lines loosed and belayed somewhere else, of the vast wing of the foresail (which reaches past the mainmast) slipped past lines and mainmast, of half a dozen hearty sailors (including several strong young women) hauling on a line to crank the topsail around to catch the wind.

I shoot hundreds of pictures, and remember why horsemen and sailors have calluses.

We pass Fort McHenry, and one of the four remaining screwpile lighthouses in the Bay (Seven Foot Knoll, a round red one at Inner Harbor). The Lasy Maryland, the only pungy schooner reproduction, is docked at the foot of the lighthouse.

Pride flies on the wind, demanding effort and attention to detail from the crew handling her lines. Finally she fold her wings and drifts back past Seven Foot Knoll, the dragon boats, the aquarium. We hold cannon fire until we’re past the aquarium, then let loose with a shout that echoes off the skyscrapers.

Pride is here, carrying the memories of her ancestors.

The wind changes. The carefully coordinated adventure takes a left turn. The spontaneous action produces a startling result, and a new, unexpected adventure.

I always thought someone should do a movie about the privateers. A woman aboard is writing a screenplay about privateers in her family. I have her card. She has some good books to recommend on privateers. Maybe there’s a story in here for me as well.
We pass a street performer, Unicycle Lady (she has a website under that name). She’s in slightly cheesy pirate garb, doing a wonderful performance, part of which is done to the old Styx song, "Come Sail Away", one of my favorite songs of all time (I sang along with a live performance of it once, ten feet from the lead guitarist, Tommy Shaw). Unicycle Lady reminds me of the Motley Folk, the travelling entertainers, in the Inkheart trilogy, which I just read, nay, devoured. An excellent example of YA fantasy, an example to emulate.

Privateers, firedancers, fliers and sea wolves. There’s a story to be told. Many of them. And sometimes, you have to take a different tack to find them.

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up the wrong creek with two paddles

Earthquakes, hurricanes, pirates, sprit tops'ls and duct tape...(or How I Spent My Summer Vacation)

Weekend Soundtrack

Changing Tack

about: Teanna

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