Dear Fellow Traveler
Winter solstice has come and gone, Hanukah is glowing along, Christmas done outdid itself, and Kwanza is nipping at its heels. Jack Frost is, perhaps, an early victim of Dr. C.O. Two, since both coasts seem to be warm and dry. In any case, good weather and the consequent good feelings are definitely a Gift in this otherwise predictably unpleasant year where, once again, we had too much Greed and not enough Giving.
Talk about kayaking and water, something liquid and lovely.
Yesterday my hands, even in 3 mm gloves, felt clumsy with cold. And worth every shiver of it, with the sun painting the sides of the Muir Beach Overlook to the West, our Little Beach still in anticipatory shadow. The tide was very high at 0705, the second day of the new sun cycle, and the sky was lit up all blue and golden streaks and skeins of high white clouds. The twinkling jewels of light from boats (trolling for salmon, potting for crabs, taking containers to China) sparkled out across the water, with the still visible lights of San Francisco pulsating from the dark under Sutro Tower. And the surface of the sea, always rolling, but yesterday no more than a 10 second primeval surge, no flutter and dance of windy wavelets, all shiny and smooth and worthy of Dutch oils.
Once sealed into the kayak with a waterproof spray skirt and a dry top, I feel a surge of power; I’m a chimera, a boat with arms, an old man with a hull. I’m adapted; I can go anywhere. I can paddle to Pt. Reyes, to Alaska! Of course I can’t, but the feeling is nice. Like a seal, I lump myself down the smooth sand beach, and push hard into the next wash of breaking wave. Some days, it’s a struggle; the ocean in motion throws things back as often as it sucks them in. But now, in the still breathless metallic undulating swirls of moving liquid fire, I glide through the next wave, and it’s all possible.
Just around the corner there are a few pelicans on Bird Rock, and the usual accompaniment of cormorants and red legged black bodied long billed oyster catchers. The latter come in pairs. Cormorants, always reminding me of Paparazzi the way they stand around waiting, seem to be pretty solitary within their flocks. There aren’t enough anchovies to sustain many pelicans these days. Perhaps later a few young sea lions will show up, but right now it’s all birds. And the pungent ammoniac smell of guano hasn’t been completely washed away; it’s been the driest December in a long time.
Because of the high tide and the calm sea, I can visit all of the rock gardens and surge passages along the stretch of cliff between Muir and Slide Ranch. These are places where a difference in timing of the incoming swells creates momentary rushing streams over black jagged rocks that are ready to eat you up as the wave recedes. The idea is to time your paddle in and be lifted up on the bulge of water, feel its power under you and then carve down the wave towards the rocks that, you hope, will be flooded and safe to pass over by the time you get there. For just a moment, as the water all around turns loud and fluffy white with the impact, it’s just like a river. And like a river, if you just relax and work with it, the water will take care of you. Mostly I come shooting out the other side. Sometimes the wave isn’t quite enough, and I am suddenly aground, the water sucking and draining noisily all around, and the crashing approach of the next wave hanging overhead. But my old Perception is made of Tupperware plastic, and doesn’t mind a few jolts and bumps, and then I am floating on the other side of whatever was the obstacle.
In the pools, limned with occasional rays of light, there are big green and purple anemones, and the occasional flit of small fish, the scurry and stop of crabs. Black mussels, mostly young this year, and the double palm sized starfish in startling orange, blue, red that thrive on eating the mussels. And this year knobs and mounds of gooseneck barnacles. The seagulls seem to like them, in an oceanic “I’ll eat you up I love you so” way..
The rolling folds of Pacific kind of seem to be munching on the rocks as well. The ponderous inexorability of the gunmetal shining sea, the splashy tinkly draining anticipation of the sharp black rocks, as the water of the last moment falls back into the trough, and those fast moving time bound birds snatch the uncovered morsel before the heavy pounding smushing rush of water exploded instantly into white foam, escaping skywards in those fierce tendrils that hang forever over the Hokusai boatmen and are repeated everywhere there are waves and humans who venture out on them. “If you didn’t know, it would look like snow’, says Luna, looking down on it all from a high place in the later on of evening.
Talk about the family. Well, at some point today we will all be here at Muir Beach, even including the extended family, that now have to be spelled out as Neumann-Deantonis -Steinbach-Sanchez in order to include us all. Aminta (and boyfriend Aaron) arrived with a big box full of Dungeness crabs (Aaron has a friend in the crab boat business). Aminta is full time at Rockridge Kids helping connect families with the right toy or stroller, and living sober. Perhaps the greatest blessing of the year is the joy of daily exchanges with Aminta, sharing dog care, washing up after dinner; all the normals that parents of brilliant children hope for. Severin that most brilliant child of Aminta, now closing in on 20 years old, lives independently in El Sobramte and works in landscaping. And has a car. And a girlfriend. And seems happy, yet looking towards move. Tirien lives not far away in Berkeley, filling her life with Ernesto (who is a member of the California Bar, and working at a law office in SF) and those most brilliant of grandchildren Amalia (now 9) and Joaquin (almost 7). A and J are at the same Berkeley public school, and both liking it. Joaquin is very busy with book-making; mostly bright colored cabbalistic symbols, but with increasing snippets of explanatory words. Amalia’s books tend toward the picaresque, fraught with adventure and intrigue. This week, the Muir Grandparents (S,A and Yeshi our upstairs landpartner) were hosts to A, J and also their agemates Luna and Plum, children of Rachel and Jason. Gingerbread houses, potato block printing, and there is always the beach and the small dog Fuji to play with. Emma, aunt to Luna and Plum is back from Portland and full of plans for a spring wedding to Jon.
Fuji..now there’s a bright star in the firmament! Who would have thunk that a 12.5 pound Chihuahua mix could burrow and brazen her way so deeply into our lives? Perhaps because she has all of the brass and bravado of a big dog and fits into a lap or under the seat of an airplane. Yes, she barks at suspicions, but with tail wagging, and holds her own with much larger dogs and small children. Since Aminta rescued her over two years ago now, she definitely rules the family.
With so much change in the world, we all seem to be pretty occupied. Sala has just finished up an 8 week Practice Period at Green Gulch Zen Monastary just up the road, and will move back there for a month in January. She’s a senior practitioner there now, and not just in age. As always she remains a student of zen, a grandmother and mother, wife and friend, enjoying her life and being helpful when she can.
I didn’t give Tirien and her ongoing saga as Executive Director at East Bay Community Law Center enough space. EBCLC is weathering the hard times for NGO’s, largely due to T’s ability as a fundraiser and organizer. As the Clinic for Boalt Law (now Berkeley Law School), they enjoy waves of eager young professionals bent on upholding the law and de-criminalizing poverty. My good friend Osha is a senior presence in the clinic dealing with emergent neighborhood legal issues, a perfect role for a legally trained experience wise intensity junky.
Alan, that’s me, was happily retired into two days a week of medical practice and one half semester of tutoring medical students, and then….well, as you know, when you close a door, another opens. I had stopped the regular teaching last year, and begun to consult on another project that my friend and work partner Kevin(really work soul mate!) had begun in Florida; nothing less than a new medical school to be developed outside the University context. Sadly, Kevin was killed last July while riding in a shuttle between UCSF and SF General where he worked in the psych ER. And so I have increased my work on the Florida project, and if it gets funded and credentialed, will be out of retirement for a few years in the very near future. The project is very exciting and will be challenging as well. When I think about the days I won’t be sailing or kayaking or riding a bike on the path from Woods Hole to North Falmouth, I feel some regret. Then I think about Dr. Kevin Mack, and his incredibly effective and porous boundaries, and his love for the work of Problem Based Learning, and all the world’s people, and I feel blessed to have the opportunity. And, after all, my father retired two..no, three times, so I have a few to go.
Well, that’s the Solskwanaskah news for 2011. May 2012 bring you meaningful Occupation, and the many joys that family and society offer all of us, if we have good fortune and good health, and we accept the challenge, to reach out for the gifts.
Joaquin, Amalia, Ernesto,Tirien,Sev, Aminta,Sala,Alan
Monday, December 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Petrolia 11-11-11
11-12-11 0600 L&C Cabin, Petrolia. Still dark in this time of daylight saving. The little dog is curled up under a sleeping bag on the futon on the floor. Do night people feel as virtuous in their night life as us morning people feel in our predawn? This respite from the wired world feels particularly good; writing for perhaps the wrong reasons, lack of internet, but nevertheless writing.
Petrolia is a one-store-and-post office town near the The Mendocino Triple Junction (MTJ), the meeting of the Gorda, North America, and Pacific tectonic plates, perhaps the most active regions of the San Andreas system. Eighty quakes a year. John and Kathy just built a retirement house down in the valley, and john says the rocky soil they excavated all came tumbling down from the hills surrounding. The Mattole River has been cutting this valley for millennia, and Lighthouse Ridge, where the Land and Cattle Company cabin is located is the southern side of the valley.
Moonset won’t happen before sunrise today, and right now the moon is lighting up the meadow, making romantic visuals out of the fall swales of grass, ferns and disintegrating wildflower stems. The deer seem to know its hunting season, and my only glimpses have been of fast moving hindquarters. Beyond the meadow the Douglas fir are busily eclipsing the view North towards Cape Mendocino, and anyway, the ocean and rock interface is still too dark to see clearly.
The beach here on the Lost Coast, stretching south from the Mattole to Shelter Cover 25 miles away, is my favorite ocean beach. At some point or other, it really has everything I want in a beach. Well, I have to warn you, its warm tranquil spots are pretty limited and seasonal.
One of my favorite things it has is small very vigorous streams flowing across the beach and into the ocean. There are adventurous little trout in the pools, and if you struggle through the barrier of poison oak and brush, there are glades and meadows back inside the steep hills the streams have cut through over time. On the beach, the wind can get up to 30 mph even in summer, and in winter up on the ridges it regularly tumbles trailers and caves in barns.
I had a hard time if coming back from the sea lion colony one year when the wind came up out of the North. Until I realized that it was an invitation to become a penguin, my outstretched jacket enough to let me lean 45 degrees and use my feet more like flippers against the sand, soaring on the wind rather than walking. Of course, when the wind suddenly dropped I did an immediate face plant, but it all seemed funny rather than onerous, and the trip back morphed from a trial to a triumph.
The beach collects stuff better than any other I know. Stuff in the form of marine mammal bones, net floats and discarded hunks of net, crab pots and wrecked bits of boats. And driftwood, from whole tree trunks transformed into sculpted Titans to miniature masterpieces of knots in the likenesses of polar bears and pileated woodpeckers.
Of course, over the years there have been entire gigantic stinking carcasses of sperm and grey whales. And this year, in the two miles going south to Punta Gorda, four sea lions in various stages of decay. Fuji, with her sense of smell and genetic need to roll in rotting flesh, was very happy about that, but it’s probably another indicator of global climate change. There was a team of students from Humboldt State University out there yesterday, counting corpses.
The combination of wind and water keeps the beach swept neatly, and the treasure of flotsam and jetsam is beautifully displayed, particularly in the incident light of morning or evening. Mid-day is a good time to hunker down and construct mobiles, or let the miles unwind under your feet. The crepuscular hours are the best time for viewing.
The sky is lightening behind me; sunrise will be about 0710 today. We’ll make a sausage and egg breakfast, Fuji’s favorite, and maybe walk up to the crest of the hill to see if the growing firs have left any view. Feral pigs sometimes come rooting through, and Fuji can smell their presence, also the moles that somehow manage to tunnel through the incredibly rocky soil. The ferns are browning, the grass is golding, and the perpetual shadows under the second growth oak and fir are perfect for snurfing and snortling around.
Fuji loves the beach as well; leaping off cut banks of sand, and barking wildly at the ominous figuration of up thrust tree roots. We’ll get a little ahead on splitting seasoned oak and madrone for the fire. I’ll write these notes, for later emailing, and Fuji will disapprove and want to bounce into my lap and lick my face to remind me we should be heading for the beach.
Yesterday, early on with the sun behind us, Fuji spotted a gaggle of gulls in the distance, and valiantly galloped off to rout them. They rose in a beautiful wheeling wave of white wings, soaring overhead and downwind. She also routed a raven enjoying a quiet meal on dead seabird along the tideline. There was a wind, and it was cold enough for polypro as well as gortex. Seals just offshore, their curious mermaid heads with large eyes staring at us. And the waves roll in, 5 feet, 8 feet, a constant crashing drum beat of water on land, white foam lathering the beach, blowing over the smooth yellow sand.
A little wind this morning already, just stirring the taller blades of grass. And now the blue of the sky shuttered by long windrows of clouds is beginning to light up a bit, and the trees are definitely a shade of green, and the brown and yellow of the grass in the meadow is no longer my imagination. I can see the sharp triangle of Mendocino Rock, or whatever it’s called away to the North. Fuji pops out from under the sleeping bag, and it’s time to get on with things.
Petrolia is a one-store-and-post office town near the The Mendocino Triple Junction (MTJ), the meeting of the Gorda, North America, and Pacific tectonic plates, perhaps the most active regions of the San Andreas system. Eighty quakes a year. John and Kathy just built a retirement house down in the valley, and john says the rocky soil they excavated all came tumbling down from the hills surrounding. The Mattole River has been cutting this valley for millennia, and Lighthouse Ridge, where the Land and Cattle Company cabin is located is the southern side of the valley.
Moonset won’t happen before sunrise today, and right now the moon is lighting up the meadow, making romantic visuals out of the fall swales of grass, ferns and disintegrating wildflower stems. The deer seem to know its hunting season, and my only glimpses have been of fast moving hindquarters. Beyond the meadow the Douglas fir are busily eclipsing the view North towards Cape Mendocino, and anyway, the ocean and rock interface is still too dark to see clearly.
The beach here on the Lost Coast, stretching south from the Mattole to Shelter Cover 25 miles away, is my favorite ocean beach. At some point or other, it really has everything I want in a beach. Well, I have to warn you, its warm tranquil spots are pretty limited and seasonal.
One of my favorite things it has is small very vigorous streams flowing across the beach and into the ocean. There are adventurous little trout in the pools, and if you struggle through the barrier of poison oak and brush, there are glades and meadows back inside the steep hills the streams have cut through over time. On the beach, the wind can get up to 30 mph even in summer, and in winter up on the ridges it regularly tumbles trailers and caves in barns.
I had a hard time if coming back from the sea lion colony one year when the wind came up out of the North. Until I realized that it was an invitation to become a penguin, my outstretched jacket enough to let me lean 45 degrees and use my feet more like flippers against the sand, soaring on the wind rather than walking. Of course, when the wind suddenly dropped I did an immediate face plant, but it all seemed funny rather than onerous, and the trip back morphed from a trial to a triumph.
The beach collects stuff better than any other I know. Stuff in the form of marine mammal bones, net floats and discarded hunks of net, crab pots and wrecked bits of boats. And driftwood, from whole tree trunks transformed into sculpted Titans to miniature masterpieces of knots in the likenesses of polar bears and pileated woodpeckers.
Of course, over the years there have been entire gigantic stinking carcasses of sperm and grey whales. And this year, in the two miles going south to Punta Gorda, four sea lions in various stages of decay. Fuji, with her sense of smell and genetic need to roll in rotting flesh, was very happy about that, but it’s probably another indicator of global climate change. There was a team of students from Humboldt State University out there yesterday, counting corpses.
The combination of wind and water keeps the beach swept neatly, and the treasure of flotsam and jetsam is beautifully displayed, particularly in the incident light of morning or evening. Mid-day is a good time to hunker down and construct mobiles, or let the miles unwind under your feet. The crepuscular hours are the best time for viewing.
The sky is lightening behind me; sunrise will be about 0710 today. We’ll make a sausage and egg breakfast, Fuji’s favorite, and maybe walk up to the crest of the hill to see if the growing firs have left any view. Feral pigs sometimes come rooting through, and Fuji can smell their presence, also the moles that somehow manage to tunnel through the incredibly rocky soil. The ferns are browning, the grass is golding, and the perpetual shadows under the second growth oak and fir are perfect for snurfing and snortling around.
Fuji loves the beach as well; leaping off cut banks of sand, and barking wildly at the ominous figuration of up thrust tree roots. We’ll get a little ahead on splitting seasoned oak and madrone for the fire. I’ll write these notes, for later emailing, and Fuji will disapprove and want to bounce into my lap and lick my face to remind me we should be heading for the beach.
Yesterday, early on with the sun behind us, Fuji spotted a gaggle of gulls in the distance, and valiantly galloped off to rout them. They rose in a beautiful wheeling wave of white wings, soaring overhead and downwind. She also routed a raven enjoying a quiet meal on dead seabird along the tideline. There was a wind, and it was cold enough for polypro as well as gortex. Seals just offshore, their curious mermaid heads with large eyes staring at us. And the waves roll in, 5 feet, 8 feet, a constant crashing drum beat of water on land, white foam lathering the beach, blowing over the smooth yellow sand.
A little wind this morning already, just stirring the taller blades of grass. And now the blue of the sky shuttered by long windrows of clouds is beginning to light up a bit, and the trees are definitely a shade of green, and the brown and yellow of the grass in the meadow is no longer my imagination. I can see the sharp triangle of Mendocino Rock, or whatever it’s called away to the North. Fuji pops out from under the sleeping bag, and it’s time to get on with things.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Hasty DC
10-29-11 0955 Dulles Intl Airport Gate B70. So, do I really prefer underground trains to those loveable dinosaurian mobile lounges that used to lumber out into the combat zone of the airfield itself, bravely dodging 747's and Cessna alike, and carrying a bunch of us nervous passengers, already subdued after being hydraulically lowered to bug level before being transported out to where I am now? Maybe not. The whole experience of Dulles is kind of emblematic of The Man’s foreign policy..Industrial grade concrete blocks and metal girders interspersed with seemingly random curves. Vast vertical spaces traversed by escalators. A whole airplane ('Daedalus’, the MiT human powered airplane), and of course us bugs, scurrying along in response to directives displayed by international style yellow black and white signage and voiced, if you wander off course, by chunky uniformed TSA employees. The trains that now take the place of the lounges are one step further away from a human touch. No operator in evidence and the tone of the gendered voice telling us assume battle stations make no pretense of Hal's gentle early communications. This is way beyond ‘Mind the Gap!!’ My favorite verbal was programmed into the last message warning of arrival at Gates B..'This train is now out of service'. A part of me hoped the power would be cut and our whole granfaloon would be left in the electronic twilight...halfway between heaven and hell..
But no, it all worked perfectly, with a hiss and a clunk, and the escalators escalated, the power consumption remained at...hmmm...about 10 Megawatts? Outside, DC is enjoying perhaps its first real winter tantrum...snow possible in some areas.
I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Reston for Thursday and Friday, here to meet people involved in simulations and medical practice management. Reston is a bedroom suburb (aka New City) dreamed up by a man of initials RES, whose still alive and also represented by a life size bronze statue sitting on a bench alongside is beloved Lake Anne. The rest of Reston was planned starting in 1961, and the Hyatt seems to date from then. So the elevators have a 15th floor, and my room card said 1510. I stood there pushing the button and needing to get to my room for a matter of urological urgency. Nothing happening. I got off and tried the stairs; locked at the top. Apparently, as a holdover from a now defunct ‘Regency Club’, you have to insert your card in an unmarked slot in the brass plate of the elevator to get to the 15th floor. That I found out by going back down and asking, fighting against a tide of teenagers who were talking and texting in the lobby and twittering on the carpeted stairs. . Turns out this is an annual event involving dramatic arts try outs on this particular weekend. So the 60's style dramatic lobbies and stairs were fully occupied by teens. The usual amazing mix of spindly thirteen year olds in t shirts and tennis shoes, and fully formed adults, also 13, in high fashion. Talking with them, however, is a great leveler; a 13 year old brain is a 13 year old brain. Not an un-interesting one in the bunch, however.
This was a working visit for me as well as for the teens, meeting people and things mostly. The people were of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities and mostly young. The things were of two sorts; a corporation created to offer medical practice management, based on several decades of successful practice in Maryland, and a corporation that develops simulations for training..both military and civilian.
The simulation center, in the Cointelpro building off Connecticut Ave was definitely an eye opener. I had seen earlier versions of all the components, and yet it was impressive to see them all assembled, and in a space more like a sound stage than the usual low ceilinged hospital space. I examined an avatar pregnant patient arriving in the emergency room. I used an X box to perform a virtual bronchoscopy, with coaching on how to find the important landmarks. I manipulated laparoscopic instruments to make a mess out of a gall bladder removal… the spreading red stuff in the simulation was, to me at least, alarming enough to get the adrenaline pumping as it would doing the real thing. Then there are the simulations of cardiac arrests, of massive head trauma, of operations under way when something unexpected happens...in a word, pretty much any simulation you could want. Except for group process…which I don’t expect them to have much of a problem doing.
"They still ask for pigs feet", said our young engineering graduate host. “We have lots of synthetics, and more on the way, but the older surgeons who teach suturing just say 'Give me pigs feet". And so, the simulation lab has all the electronics, and also has a freezer full of pig’s trotters and chicken breasts (to simulate abscesses).
Why simulation? Well, for me it’s an appropriate technology to help people train with less risk to humans or animals. We used to teach physiology by sacrificing dogs. We used to teach intubation by standing next to students when they attempted their first intubation. Now the dog labs are gone, and the students, by using simulators first, at least have the basic hand eye coordination running when they perform their first procedure on a human. Same for drawing blood, starting an IV, or performing a gall bladder surgery.
The weather stayed wonderful through Friday afternoon, although I saw most of it through a car window. Still, it was good to see the various iterations of Old Glory waving over the memorials to George and Thomas and Abraham. The Occupy movement in Wall Street and Frank Ogawa Plaza (aka Oscar Grant Plaza, to remember the black Oakland teen that was shot dead while restrained by police after being confronted for being black while riding rapid transit) seemed distant from the places I was visiting. As they really are, I guess.
We drove an hour down through Maryland and visited a very well designed two story health center in a rural farming and fishing community, a representative sample of what the organization I was there to meet with can do. If they can do this in Palm County Florida, it will make my job of figuring out how to teach clinical medicine without a hospital based academic staff a whole lot easier! I left in a good mood, but no time for local seafood.
And so now its winter in the East Coast, and the Occupy organizers have to rethink their campaigns, as Napoleon should have rethought his march on Moscow. The news says that Scott Olson, with a head injury as a result of police action in Oakland last two days ago, is awake after spending some time unconscious in an ICU. Hopefully, the police are rethinking their winter campaigns as well.
Aloha, Alan
But no, it all worked perfectly, with a hiss and a clunk, and the escalators escalated, the power consumption remained at...hmmm...about 10 Megawatts? Outside, DC is enjoying perhaps its first real winter tantrum...snow possible in some areas.
I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Reston for Thursday and Friday, here to meet people involved in simulations and medical practice management. Reston is a bedroom suburb (aka New City) dreamed up by a man of initials RES, whose still alive and also represented by a life size bronze statue sitting on a bench alongside is beloved Lake Anne. The rest of Reston was planned starting in 1961, and the Hyatt seems to date from then. So the elevators have a 15th floor, and my room card said 1510. I stood there pushing the button and needing to get to my room for a matter of urological urgency. Nothing happening. I got off and tried the stairs; locked at the top. Apparently, as a holdover from a now defunct ‘Regency Club’, you have to insert your card in an unmarked slot in the brass plate of the elevator to get to the 15th floor. That I found out by going back down and asking, fighting against a tide of teenagers who were talking and texting in the lobby and twittering on the carpeted stairs. . Turns out this is an annual event involving dramatic arts try outs on this particular weekend. So the 60's style dramatic lobbies and stairs were fully occupied by teens. The usual amazing mix of spindly thirteen year olds in t shirts and tennis shoes, and fully formed adults, also 13, in high fashion. Talking with them, however, is a great leveler; a 13 year old brain is a 13 year old brain. Not an un-interesting one in the bunch, however.
This was a working visit for me as well as for the teens, meeting people and things mostly. The people were of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities and mostly young. The things were of two sorts; a corporation created to offer medical practice management, based on several decades of successful practice in Maryland, and a corporation that develops simulations for training..both military and civilian.
The simulation center, in the Cointelpro building off Connecticut Ave was definitely an eye opener. I had seen earlier versions of all the components, and yet it was impressive to see them all assembled, and in a space more like a sound stage than the usual low ceilinged hospital space. I examined an avatar pregnant patient arriving in the emergency room. I used an X box to perform a virtual bronchoscopy, with coaching on how to find the important landmarks. I manipulated laparoscopic instruments to make a mess out of a gall bladder removal… the spreading red stuff in the simulation was, to me at least, alarming enough to get the adrenaline pumping as it would doing the real thing. Then there are the simulations of cardiac arrests, of massive head trauma, of operations under way when something unexpected happens...in a word, pretty much any simulation you could want. Except for group process…which I don’t expect them to have much of a problem doing.
"They still ask for pigs feet", said our young engineering graduate host. “We have lots of synthetics, and more on the way, but the older surgeons who teach suturing just say 'Give me pigs feet". And so, the simulation lab has all the electronics, and also has a freezer full of pig’s trotters and chicken breasts (to simulate abscesses).
Why simulation? Well, for me it’s an appropriate technology to help people train with less risk to humans or animals. We used to teach physiology by sacrificing dogs. We used to teach intubation by standing next to students when they attempted their first intubation. Now the dog labs are gone, and the students, by using simulators first, at least have the basic hand eye coordination running when they perform their first procedure on a human. Same for drawing blood, starting an IV, or performing a gall bladder surgery.
The weather stayed wonderful through Friday afternoon, although I saw most of it through a car window. Still, it was good to see the various iterations of Old Glory waving over the memorials to George and Thomas and Abraham. The Occupy movement in Wall Street and Frank Ogawa Plaza (aka Oscar Grant Plaza, to remember the black Oakland teen that was shot dead while restrained by police after being confronted for being black while riding rapid transit) seemed distant from the places I was visiting. As they really are, I guess.
We drove an hour down through Maryland and visited a very well designed two story health center in a rural farming and fishing community, a representative sample of what the organization I was there to meet with can do. If they can do this in Palm County Florida, it will make my job of figuring out how to teach clinical medicine without a hospital based academic staff a whole lot easier! I left in a good mood, but no time for local seafood.
And so now its winter in the East Coast, and the Occupy organizers have to rethink their campaigns, as Napoleon should have rethought his march on Moscow. The news says that Scott Olson, with a head injury as a result of police action in Oakland last two days ago, is awake after spending some time unconscious in an ICU. Hopefully, the police are rethinking their winter campaigns as well.
Aloha, Alan
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Error #7
10-8-11 0705 West End Beach, Naushon, Cape Cod. Sunup , the wind is now blowing 20 for sure, and there are whitecapped waves breaking all over Buzzards Bay. It’s clear as the proverbial bell, with a cloudless sky, quite warm. I am not going to try landing to look for new coyote tracks. Instead, I cook up another bacon and eggs, this time without fireball (less fuel worked!), put in a double reef , which should make the sail manageable in up to 25 mph winds, pull out the stern anchor (satisfactorily difficult) and start the mighty 6 HP engine. By 0800 we are under motor, and after a few hundred yards of safety from the lee shore, I hoist up the double reefed sail and whoa, we are careening along, downwind, back towards Woods Hole.
No thought of trying to go upwind. Instead, I’ll ride the wind along the Buzzards Bay shore to places like West Falmouth, that I go by at about mile 7 on the bike path on the way to work. A perfect day to go, and even with an ebb tide against, we seem to be making good time. There’s a big sea running, waves over 5 feet seems like, but Susie P slides happily along, with little DR, now loaded with flotsam lobster bouys, scampering behind.
As we hit the rip on a point just East NE of Kettle Cove, as Susie P has just reached the bottom of one of those ‘over 5 feet waves’, there is a whole new hisssss kind of sound, and I look back to check DR. No, not down where she should be; now DR is up ABOVE the level of Susie P’s amply chubby and quite high stern, and that ‘hisssss’ is the sound of surfing!!. This is yet another boating error (#5, I think), not restricted to solo sailing, in which the line towing the tender behind is not long enough to keep the tender off a large following sea. And DR, bouys and all, is apparently a pretty good surfer, because it comes hissing right down the wave and smashes into Susie P’s bum , actually getting its bow over the transom, before losing momentum, wallowing in the wake, and then being violently jerked around by the tow line.
I carefully tie in a longer piece of line, using the prescribed knots. There, now DR is on a longer leash; problem solved.
We come up level with Wee Peckets. The wind seems lighter now, maybe we could sail faster with only a single reef, and it’s a good time to practice reefing without using the motor to stabilize the boat. I do a couple of these maneuvers with a lot of slop, and then one good enough to get the sail down. Hove to, Susie P seems content, but DR is kiting around on the end of the long tow line, so I pull it in and re-fasten up short. I take out the second reef, leaving one in, and hoist up the throat and gaff halyards (ropes fastened to the front and back of the piece that supports the top of a gaff rigged sail and passing over pulleys at the top of the mast). Whoa, hmmm, maybe I should have stayed with two reefs. But with more power, it’s easier to come about to a new tack direction. Its only after the second practice tack that I look downwind and see a skiff that someone must have lost floating all by itself about half a mile away. Looks a lot like… Well, apparently that last ‘fasten up short’ I didn’t make two bights on the cleat…or something… Error # 6 maybe, but who’s keeping count? It’s time to practice ‘recovering lost skiff on high seas while sailing single handed”. But at least, having lost DR before, I have a pretty good plan for this, and in a gratifyingly short time we recapture the little runaway and her load of buoys.
With more sail, the restful part of the day turns out to be over. About 10 we pass by Woods Hole, and come in closer near my home beach, Gansett, watching for rocks, and looking for new vistas. The relationship of points that I usually only reach at the end of woodsy roads is quite striking. Things are much closer together than I conjectured. Some houses are much grander that I thought, and some beaches look much prettier from the sea. Sippewissett, which we loved for it’s long rockfree gently shelving white sand and spartina crested sand dunes is, if anything, even more beautiful than my memories. Racing Beach has rocks offshore that would make any race pretty exciting. Gunning Point, which I remember as being desolate, turns out to be full of mansions now.
West Falmouth Harbor has a narrow entrance, kept open by rock jetties on both sides, and is well marked by channel buoys. Full of confidence from the ride downwind, and the rolling waves, I start the motor but keep the sail up. Once inside, the wind is blocked, and with both motor and sail we pick our way down a very narrow winding channel, and then drop the sail and use a lead line to sound out the channel. I like doing this, because electronic depth sounders have made lead lines archaic, but I don’t have a depth sounder, and I like the atavistic image I must be making. However, there aren’t many people around to be reactive. Several small boys are scratching for clams, and a couple of adults are doing things on their boats. I think of hooking up to someone else’s mooring, and actually snag a mooring line with the boathook, but think better of it, and put the boathook down, heave over the Danforth, and anchor. It’s good to rest after the downhill. I admire the harbor full of small boats; lots of fellow catboats, lots of sailboats generally, and someone has lost a boathook, it's floating away. It looks a lot like….. Well, I did put it down, didn’t I? Another error(#7); things are not to be put down in single handed sailing, they are to be PUT BACK!. I guess Sala would be happier if I applied this lesson in shore based life as well. Well, maybe rowing after a runaway boathook in a previously run away dinghy/skiff will finally larn me.
Marmelade, a 25 foot wooden catboat arrives, having sailed from Hyannis..about the same distance but at least half upwind. It would be nice to gam for a while, but actually, if I want to get back in time for dinner, I should get moving.
I’m not going to describe in detail my learning experience of problem #8, which is tying off the halyards to prevent their making clanging noises while you eat lunch and then forgetting it and trying to hoist the sail with same halyards, thus creating complex rope jam while maneuvering around other boats sitting innocently at their moorings. But I can definitely check off that as a lesson practiced, if not learned.
And the trip back was great..not as in great for Fuji, who doesn’t like pots and pans leaping off the stove as the boat comes onto starboard tack, and then the sleeping bag she is snuggling into leaping off onto the pots and pans when the boat comes about onto port. But Fuji isn’t here, and although Sala has emphatic reservations about sailing with the lee rail in the water, I don’t. Because Susie P is short, she’s not fast upwind in a rolling chop, but she’s amazingly predictable. Because she’s fat as well as short, she pitches a lot, kind of like a short roller coaster ride really. And the day is still bright, the air is sparkling and full of the smells of ocean and seaweed, and Mama N has thrown in just enough gull cries and other boats under sail to make it memorable.
By 4 o’clock, we go onto starboard tack off Penzance, and head for The Hole. The solar charger has finally caught up with the iphone, and I checked the current chart during the lunch break, and confirmed the current changed at about 3:45. Meanwhile, the wind has actually INCREASED a bit; later I will find out it was logged at 25 mph. So the single reef is becoming problematic.
What happens when Susie P is carrying too much sail is that it becomes harder and harder to manage her ‘weather helm’. This is the saving grace of the catboat breed; when the wind blows too hard, rather than capsizing, the boat heads up into the wind, thus decreasing pressure on the sail. It’s what makes them so safe.
However, in order to get through The Hole with the current, we need to head downwind now, and that’s NOT something that Susie P is in a mood to let me do. If the wind keeps up like this, as I come into the channel where the current is probably running 3 mph, I will have to jibe the sail, meaning move it from starboard tack to port tack. If I do nothing, the wind itself could cause the jibe, which means the sail, still pretty big with only one reef, will be blown suddenly around the mast, ending with a crunch as it hits the end of the sheet rope, and putting a lot of pressure on the mast itself. This error is called ‘jibe all standing’, and is regarded as one of the basic No-No’s of catboating.
We are making 6 mph, hull speed, and the current adds another several mph, so decisions have to be made. Well, Uncatena island should create a wind shadow over this Western end of The Hole, so with the motor going, and much less wind, I should be OK. Meanwhile, it’s taking all of my strength to pull the tiller against the ‘weather helm’ and even get to The Hole.
At least two of the boats approaching at the same time seem to be under power, but so am I, so right of way is an issue. But look, they are holding back, perhaps out of horror, perhaps courtesy for small fat overpowered sailboats.
The waves have gone away, and just on time, the wind drops. Hooray. With only one medium sized power boat coming the other direction, I jibe the sail, head across the current, and actually make the out of channel but more direct route into Great Harbor.
Well, I think the total error score for this voyage is ONLY 7!, and this time it didn’t include missing the mooring (got it!!) or losing the skiff (two bights on the cleat) or getting hit with the swinging boom (duck!!) or even leaving my shoes on the boat(check twice). Back in time for dinner, with the unexpected lesson from error number #7: put things back, not down, when you have finished using them.
Alan
No thought of trying to go upwind. Instead, I’ll ride the wind along the Buzzards Bay shore to places like West Falmouth, that I go by at about mile 7 on the bike path on the way to work. A perfect day to go, and even with an ebb tide against, we seem to be making good time. There’s a big sea running, waves over 5 feet seems like, but Susie P slides happily along, with little DR, now loaded with flotsam lobster bouys, scampering behind.
As we hit the rip on a point just East NE of Kettle Cove, as Susie P has just reached the bottom of one of those ‘over 5 feet waves’, there is a whole new hisssss kind of sound, and I look back to check DR. No, not down where she should be; now DR is up ABOVE the level of Susie P’s amply chubby and quite high stern, and that ‘hisssss’ is the sound of surfing!!. This is yet another boating error (#5, I think), not restricted to solo sailing, in which the line towing the tender behind is not long enough to keep the tender off a large following sea. And DR, bouys and all, is apparently a pretty good surfer, because it comes hissing right down the wave and smashes into Susie P’s bum , actually getting its bow over the transom, before losing momentum, wallowing in the wake, and then being violently jerked around by the tow line.
I carefully tie in a longer piece of line, using the prescribed knots. There, now DR is on a longer leash; problem solved.
We come up level with Wee Peckets. The wind seems lighter now, maybe we could sail faster with only a single reef, and it’s a good time to practice reefing without using the motor to stabilize the boat. I do a couple of these maneuvers with a lot of slop, and then one good enough to get the sail down. Hove to, Susie P seems content, but DR is kiting around on the end of the long tow line, so I pull it in and re-fasten up short. I take out the second reef, leaving one in, and hoist up the throat and gaff halyards (ropes fastened to the front and back of the piece that supports the top of a gaff rigged sail and passing over pulleys at the top of the mast). Whoa, hmmm, maybe I should have stayed with two reefs. But with more power, it’s easier to come about to a new tack direction. Its only after the second practice tack that I look downwind and see a skiff that someone must have lost floating all by itself about half a mile away. Looks a lot like… Well, apparently that last ‘fasten up short’ I didn’t make two bights on the cleat…or something… Error # 6 maybe, but who’s keeping count? It’s time to practice ‘recovering lost skiff on high seas while sailing single handed”. But at least, having lost DR before, I have a pretty good plan for this, and in a gratifyingly short time we recapture the little runaway and her load of buoys.
With more sail, the restful part of the day turns out to be over. About 10 we pass by Woods Hole, and come in closer near my home beach, Gansett, watching for rocks, and looking for new vistas. The relationship of points that I usually only reach at the end of woodsy roads is quite striking. Things are much closer together than I conjectured. Some houses are much grander that I thought, and some beaches look much prettier from the sea. Sippewissett, which we loved for it’s long rockfree gently shelving white sand and spartina crested sand dunes is, if anything, even more beautiful than my memories. Racing Beach has rocks offshore that would make any race pretty exciting. Gunning Point, which I remember as being desolate, turns out to be full of mansions now.
West Falmouth Harbor has a narrow entrance, kept open by rock jetties on both sides, and is well marked by channel buoys. Full of confidence from the ride downwind, and the rolling waves, I start the motor but keep the sail up. Once inside, the wind is blocked, and with both motor and sail we pick our way down a very narrow winding channel, and then drop the sail and use a lead line to sound out the channel. I like doing this, because electronic depth sounders have made lead lines archaic, but I don’t have a depth sounder, and I like the atavistic image I must be making. However, there aren’t many people around to be reactive. Several small boys are scratching for clams, and a couple of adults are doing things on their boats. I think of hooking up to someone else’s mooring, and actually snag a mooring line with the boathook, but think better of it, and put the boathook down, heave over the Danforth, and anchor. It’s good to rest after the downhill. I admire the harbor full of small boats; lots of fellow catboats, lots of sailboats generally, and someone has lost a boathook, it's floating away. It looks a lot like….. Well, I did put it down, didn’t I? Another error(#7); things are not to be put down in single handed sailing, they are to be PUT BACK!. I guess Sala would be happier if I applied this lesson in shore based life as well. Well, maybe rowing after a runaway boathook in a previously run away dinghy/skiff will finally larn me.
Marmelade, a 25 foot wooden catboat arrives, having sailed from Hyannis..about the same distance but at least half upwind. It would be nice to gam for a while, but actually, if I want to get back in time for dinner, I should get moving.
I’m not going to describe in detail my learning experience of problem #8, which is tying off the halyards to prevent their making clanging noises while you eat lunch and then forgetting it and trying to hoist the sail with same halyards, thus creating complex rope jam while maneuvering around other boats sitting innocently at their moorings. But I can definitely check off that as a lesson practiced, if not learned.
And the trip back was great..not as in great for Fuji, who doesn’t like pots and pans leaping off the stove as the boat comes onto starboard tack, and then the sleeping bag she is snuggling into leaping off onto the pots and pans when the boat comes about onto port. But Fuji isn’t here, and although Sala has emphatic reservations about sailing with the lee rail in the water, I don’t. Because Susie P is short, she’s not fast upwind in a rolling chop, but she’s amazingly predictable. Because she’s fat as well as short, she pitches a lot, kind of like a short roller coaster ride really. And the day is still bright, the air is sparkling and full of the smells of ocean and seaweed, and Mama N has thrown in just enough gull cries and other boats under sail to make it memorable.
By 4 o’clock, we go onto starboard tack off Penzance, and head for The Hole. The solar charger has finally caught up with the iphone, and I checked the current chart during the lunch break, and confirmed the current changed at about 3:45. Meanwhile, the wind has actually INCREASED a bit; later I will find out it was logged at 25 mph. So the single reef is becoming problematic.
What happens when Susie P is carrying too much sail is that it becomes harder and harder to manage her ‘weather helm’. This is the saving grace of the catboat breed; when the wind blows too hard, rather than capsizing, the boat heads up into the wind, thus decreasing pressure on the sail. It’s what makes them so safe.
However, in order to get through The Hole with the current, we need to head downwind now, and that’s NOT something that Susie P is in a mood to let me do. If the wind keeps up like this, as I come into the channel where the current is probably running 3 mph, I will have to jibe the sail, meaning move it from starboard tack to port tack. If I do nothing, the wind itself could cause the jibe, which means the sail, still pretty big with only one reef, will be blown suddenly around the mast, ending with a crunch as it hits the end of the sheet rope, and putting a lot of pressure on the mast itself. This error is called ‘jibe all standing’, and is regarded as one of the basic No-No’s of catboating.
We are making 6 mph, hull speed, and the current adds another several mph, so decisions have to be made. Well, Uncatena island should create a wind shadow over this Western end of The Hole, so with the motor going, and much less wind, I should be OK. Meanwhile, it’s taking all of my strength to pull the tiller against the ‘weather helm’ and even get to The Hole.
At least two of the boats approaching at the same time seem to be under power, but so am I, so right of way is an issue. But look, they are holding back, perhaps out of horror, perhaps courtesy for small fat overpowered sailboats.
The waves have gone away, and just on time, the wind drops. Hooray. With only one medium sized power boat coming the other direction, I jibe the sail, head across the current, and actually make the out of channel but more direct route into Great Harbor.
Well, I think the total error score for this voyage is ONLY 7!, and this time it didn’t include missing the mooring (got it!!) or losing the skiff (two bights on the cleat) or getting hit with the swinging boom (duck!!) or even leaving my shoes on the boat(check twice). Back in time for dinner, with the unexpected lesson from error number #7: put things back, not down, when you have finished using them.
Alan
A Few Errors on a Calm Day
10-7-11 1045 last Friday, sailing *Susie P* out of Great Harbor towards
Vineyard Sound. No, I am not writing this sitting on the boat, although I
might; the Latitude 2110 runs fine off 12 V DC, charges from a little solar
panel or the 6 horsepower motor. But this trip, I was wavering between kayak
and sailboat all through the morning. 5-10 mph winds were predicted for
today and Saturday, but it was dead calm earlier in the day. Then, sure
enough, some wind waves appeared in Buzzards Bay to the west of the Woods
Hole peninsula. Wind is not that fun in a kayak. And so I bicycled back
home, left the kayak specific camping mattress and the +20 degree sleeping
bag, shoved the bacon, eggs and milk in a bag, (forgetting the tea and the
butter), and biked back to John’s boathouse .
Entrances into familiar places are important to me; I remember a kind of
fear and loathing that developed about going in the door of the Life
Sciences building during my last year as a basic scientist..the work was
technically difficult, hard to reconcile with what I wanted to do as a
teacher, and not as immediate as the bombing of Cambodia. As my bike wheels
bump onto the edge of the wooden ramp leading out to John’s boathouse, my
reaction is antipodean... anticipation and pleasure before anything has even
happened. A corollary of consciousness?
The day is all lit up in sunlight and clarity. The *Diaper Rash*, a tiny
tippy little fiberglass pram, is waiting, and I pile the food and the
supplies into it, along with my kayaking PFD. Since it’s clear that I am
working my way through all the possible errors in single handed sailing, I
don’t want to fall overboard with no life jacket; error #1 in most books. I
cleat the painter (tie on the rope connected to the bow of the boat) of the
*DR* to *Susie P*, unload the stuff, and shake out the single reef in the
big catboat sail..need the full 250 sq ft in light air. Sparkling sunlight,
and clear enough to see houses on Martha’s Vineyard. No Fuji..the little dog
is out West with Sala. Just me, now noodling along in the ebbing current
heading SW along the Vineyard Sound side of Nonamessett. And even with light
winds, a current of 2-3 mph helps, and we are soon past Lackeys Bay and
alongside Naushon. The Laurentian glacier moraine that is the basis of all
these islands is about 40 feet above the tide on the Vineyard side of the
Elizabeth Islands, so the shore is a narrow band of rocks with an eroding
sand bank behind it. There are dips, depressions in the sand bar, and
Tarpaulin Cove was probably where a big hunk of ice melted later than the
rest. On the way there, the boat sails into a place where the current
suddenly reverses. It’s not on the tide charts, but it sure does slow down
progress...as in sometimes sailing backwards. There are also places where
the current boils up due to a change in depth..shoals causing tide rips.
Lots of ‘funny fish’..so called because it’s funny to watch fishermen
chasing them, let along catching them. Unlike schools of bluefish, who
create a carnage of bait body parts and attract gulls and terns from miles,
small tuna (bonita, ‘false’ albacore) are fastidious predators, slashing
into the bait for only a few seconds, and then sounding deep to reappear a
hundred yards away in a seemingly random direction. I’ve never caught one…I
did have one on for a few intense moments years ago, but it broke off. And
today, I am fishing only by eye.
It’s getting on, and the fair tide in Robinsons Hole between Naushon and
Pasque will change at three according to my on-line information about on
Woods Hole. It should be about the same, methinks. So, I bypass Tarpaulin,
sailing right on by the picture perfect white lighthouse with it’s little
red roofed white stucco service building snuggled up alongside. It’s still
lit at night, but I think is privately maintained rather than part of the
Coast Guard system. On summer on a day like today there would be a dozen
boats in with families spread out on the long curving white sand beach.
Today, one boat, with one couple walking slowly along the shore.
The current picks up again in the right direction, and *Susie P* bobs and
burbles along about 200 safe yards off shore. There are occasional solitary
rocks, which generally create a boil in the smooth water that lets you spot
where they are. And because we are running before the wind and with the
current, I have the centerboard ¾ up. Still, I haven’t forgotten the sound
and feel of hitting that rock off Cuttyhunk..another lesson about sailing
that I hope I *have* learned. Now I can see the channel bouy marking the
entrance to Robinsons Hole, and its only 1:30 so I scan the shore, looking
for interesting flotsam, and sail in towards a rocky stretch littered with
stuff. In among the large submerged rocks, looming like elephants or whales
under the boat through the clear water, there’s almost no current; easy to
anchor and row ashore in *DR*. Immediately there are lots of small very
painful flies..no mayflies these, perhaps related to those blackflies in
Alaska, or sandflies on South Island NZ. Swatting pre-emptively, I stay to
take pictures of a great spontaneous sea sculpture composed of 4 or 5
lobster pots hammered together, along with their ropes and bouys, by the
winter storms. And collect some flotsam bright painted bouys for Sala, who
has expressed regret I never bring any home. This time, I fill *DR* with
their damaged and often beautifully oceanized bodies.
It’s warm enough to swim; did I mention that it got down to low 50’s last
night, and the morning started cold? The weather report, in predicting 5-10
mph winds for three days also predicted warmer temperatures tomorrow. That
will be nice.
Now there’s almost no wind, and I’ll be late for the tide at Robinsons. As I
approach this relatively narrow Hole, it’s clear that the tide actually
turns here earlier than at Woods Hole, and is already against me. (Error #2:
get the specific tide for the specific current). So I crank up the 6 HP
Tohatsu, and motor past the people fishing the tide change. There’s West End
Farm on the right, at the end of Naushon. In the late 50’s, it was neglected
and I stealthily explored, and even spent a night on a mousey moldy sofa in
the then disused living room. Now it’s all spiffed up with a deck and
perhaps residents. I sail closer to snap a picture, and then think about
heading SW down Buzzards Bay towards Cuttyhunk.
Now there is really almost no wind. It’s glass calm, and the current is
flooding against a trip the trip I had planned. Over the stern, West End
Beach looks very pleasant as an alternative. Who said sailing has to be
strenuous? It’s generally an error when sailing to set your mind on a
specific place (racing is different, of course). It takes over an hour to
sail/drift the ¾ mile back East to Naushon. Due to the miracle of a cell
phone, I can decline a dinner invitation and work on a patients medical
issues, while accomplishing this. Anchoring off West End, I follow the
suggestion of a fellow catboater, dropping the anchor while sailing
downwind, dragging it briefly to set it in the sand, and then dropping the
sail. Whoo Hoo; error free anchoring!! Anything is possible in light winds.
Just behind most beaches around here, and intimately related to their
existence, there is usually a brackish pond, sometimes fed by springs or a
small creek. This time of year, the reeds and grass are changing to fall
colors, and in the fading sunlight the color variations really require a
painting. Nevertheless, I use up most of the remaining juice in my iphone
for a photo. On the still chilly white sand beach beach, I try to decipher
from the tracks whether it was a dog or a coyote that was running, and
suddenly putting on the brakes to swerve towards the dunes. Maybe coyote;
the tracks don’t leave the beach with the only other human prints.
There’s a little more wind as I light up the alcohol stove, and so I stop to
set a second anchor off the stern, which I hope will prevent some of the
rolling that happened last time I spent the night anchored. Back to lighting
the stove, I create exactly the scary fireball that I did last time. How do
I manage this exciting piece of stage craft? In Ladakh, when this happened
as I was sitting inside the front of our tent with a snowstorm going on
outside, I could just heave the offending stove out into the snow. But here,
any heaving would probably spray burning fuel around the cabin, and also
require diving for the stove afterwards. Luckily, alcohol burns without ash,
and the flame isn’t hot enough to singe the cabin over the stove. Error #3,
is it?
I have better luck with more pumping and less alcohol, and have my
delightful and unhealthy meal of bacon and eggs with NO VEGETABLES, washed
down with neat Jameson’s, and followed by 1/3 of a butterscotch power bar
(sucrose, glucose, fructose and fat flavored with oatmeal). And now I have
time for only a few of A. Damasio’s well written remarks about the nature of
consciousness (‘*Self comes to Mind*’) complete with Sala’s highlighting,
then it’s too dark to read, with a spectacular ¾ moon rising over the
island, and a coruscating multicolored sunset drowning it out to the West
over Rhode Island.
Ah, bliss; a cool evening, lots of sugar to digest along with the well
presented possibility that conscious emanates from sub cortical centers, and
NO ROLLING!!
Well, that lasts until about 11. Now, with the moon riding high
overhead, *Susie
P* is plunging as well as rolling. On deck, practicing how not to commit the
second or third most common solo boating error that causes male sailors to
fall suddenly overboard unzipped, I notice that the wind is definitely close
to or even over 10 mph. By 2:30 there is a new noise. I’ve chosen the “*
reeeeek-eeeeek*” of a rudder straining against a tied off tiller to the” *
bluuunkCLUNK*” of the same rudder bashing its untied self against the
hull…gotten used to that. I am accustomed to the “*burblegurblemurbleburble*”
of the water flowing along the fiberglass soundboard of the hull. But now
there’s something new, a hissing noise followed by a smash! This turns out
to mean the incoming waves driven by the increasing West wind (thus coming
right in on the beach, West End Beach, remember??) are now big enough to
break BEFORE they reach the boat. Will that “smash” be enough to dislodge
the anchor?
In case you wonder, yes; this is another form of the familiar ‘Lee Shore’
error. I can’t check the internet; the phone is out of juice and the new
‘Freeloader’ solar recharger is not recharging fast enough, but I think
‘5-10 mph’ was suppose to be out of the SW, which would make this beach a
place of shelter. Now with the wind driving right in on the boat, if the bow
anchor drags out, *Susie P* will swing around on the stern anchor and
probably go aground. Hmm, let’s see…that will be on a falling tide, and then
if the wind increases we will be pushed on the beach, probably broadside.
Well, it could be worse..at least it’s just sand on this particular lee
shore, but still counts as #4 for this trip.
The moon sinks beyond the rest of the USA by 4 AM, and the rectangle of sky
visible from my bunk lights up with a pitching, rolling and quite beautiful
starscape. How many thousand light years did you say? It does provide a
perspective. Well, the Danforth anchor is known to do well in sand bottoms
like this. And that unknown constellation and high magnitude solitary star
next to it don’t seem to be moving. The “*hisssssssSMASH*” is blending in
with all the eeekingreeking and the other boat noises. And so, yes, I go to
sleep.
Tomorrow, unexpected big wind and hitting the Hole.
aloha
Alan
Vineyard Sound. No, I am not writing this sitting on the boat, although I
might; the Latitude 2110 runs fine off 12 V DC, charges from a little solar
panel or the 6 horsepower motor. But this trip, I was wavering between kayak
and sailboat all through the morning. 5-10 mph winds were predicted for
today and Saturday, but it was dead calm earlier in the day. Then, sure
enough, some wind waves appeared in Buzzards Bay to the west of the Woods
Hole peninsula. Wind is not that fun in a kayak. And so I bicycled back
home, left the kayak specific camping mattress and the +20 degree sleeping
bag, shoved the bacon, eggs and milk in a bag, (forgetting the tea and the
butter), and biked back to John’s boathouse .
Entrances into familiar places are important to me; I remember a kind of
fear and loathing that developed about going in the door of the Life
Sciences building during my last year as a basic scientist..the work was
technically difficult, hard to reconcile with what I wanted to do as a
teacher, and not as immediate as the bombing of Cambodia. As my bike wheels
bump onto the edge of the wooden ramp leading out to John’s boathouse, my
reaction is antipodean... anticipation and pleasure before anything has even
happened. A corollary of consciousness?
The day is all lit up in sunlight and clarity. The *Diaper Rash*, a tiny
tippy little fiberglass pram, is waiting, and I pile the food and the
supplies into it, along with my kayaking PFD. Since it’s clear that I am
working my way through all the possible errors in single handed sailing, I
don’t want to fall overboard with no life jacket; error #1 in most books. I
cleat the painter (tie on the rope connected to the bow of the boat) of the
*DR* to *Susie P*, unload the stuff, and shake out the single reef in the
big catboat sail..need the full 250 sq ft in light air. Sparkling sunlight,
and clear enough to see houses on Martha’s Vineyard. No Fuji..the little dog
is out West with Sala. Just me, now noodling along in the ebbing current
heading SW along the Vineyard Sound side of Nonamessett. And even with light
winds, a current of 2-3 mph helps, and we are soon past Lackeys Bay and
alongside Naushon. The Laurentian glacier moraine that is the basis of all
these islands is about 40 feet above the tide on the Vineyard side of the
Elizabeth Islands, so the shore is a narrow band of rocks with an eroding
sand bank behind it. There are dips, depressions in the sand bar, and
Tarpaulin Cove was probably where a big hunk of ice melted later than the
rest. On the way there, the boat sails into a place where the current
suddenly reverses. It’s not on the tide charts, but it sure does slow down
progress...as in sometimes sailing backwards. There are also places where
the current boils up due to a change in depth..shoals causing tide rips.
Lots of ‘funny fish’..so called because it’s funny to watch fishermen
chasing them, let along catching them. Unlike schools of bluefish, who
create a carnage of bait body parts and attract gulls and terns from miles,
small tuna (bonita, ‘false’ albacore) are fastidious predators, slashing
into the bait for only a few seconds, and then sounding deep to reappear a
hundred yards away in a seemingly random direction. I’ve never caught one…I
did have one on for a few intense moments years ago, but it broke off. And
today, I am fishing only by eye.
It’s getting on, and the fair tide in Robinsons Hole between Naushon and
Pasque will change at three according to my on-line information about on
Woods Hole. It should be about the same, methinks. So, I bypass Tarpaulin,
sailing right on by the picture perfect white lighthouse with it’s little
red roofed white stucco service building snuggled up alongside. It’s still
lit at night, but I think is privately maintained rather than part of the
Coast Guard system. On summer on a day like today there would be a dozen
boats in with families spread out on the long curving white sand beach.
Today, one boat, with one couple walking slowly along the shore.
The current picks up again in the right direction, and *Susie P* bobs and
burbles along about 200 safe yards off shore. There are occasional solitary
rocks, which generally create a boil in the smooth water that lets you spot
where they are. And because we are running before the wind and with the
current, I have the centerboard ¾ up. Still, I haven’t forgotten the sound
and feel of hitting that rock off Cuttyhunk..another lesson about sailing
that I hope I *have* learned. Now I can see the channel bouy marking the
entrance to Robinsons Hole, and its only 1:30 so I scan the shore, looking
for interesting flotsam, and sail in towards a rocky stretch littered with
stuff. In among the large submerged rocks, looming like elephants or whales
under the boat through the clear water, there’s almost no current; easy to
anchor and row ashore in *DR*. Immediately there are lots of small very
painful flies..no mayflies these, perhaps related to those blackflies in
Alaska, or sandflies on South Island NZ. Swatting pre-emptively, I stay to
take pictures of a great spontaneous sea sculpture composed of 4 or 5
lobster pots hammered together, along with their ropes and bouys, by the
winter storms. And collect some flotsam bright painted bouys for Sala, who
has expressed regret I never bring any home. This time, I fill *DR* with
their damaged and often beautifully oceanized bodies.
It’s warm enough to swim; did I mention that it got down to low 50’s last
night, and the morning started cold? The weather report, in predicting 5-10
mph winds for three days also predicted warmer temperatures tomorrow. That
will be nice.
Now there’s almost no wind, and I’ll be late for the tide at Robinsons. As I
approach this relatively narrow Hole, it’s clear that the tide actually
turns here earlier than at Woods Hole, and is already against me. (Error #2:
get the specific tide for the specific current). So I crank up the 6 HP
Tohatsu, and motor past the people fishing the tide change. There’s West End
Farm on the right, at the end of Naushon. In the late 50’s, it was neglected
and I stealthily explored, and even spent a night on a mousey moldy sofa in
the then disused living room. Now it’s all spiffed up with a deck and
perhaps residents. I sail closer to snap a picture, and then think about
heading SW down Buzzards Bay towards Cuttyhunk.
Now there is really almost no wind. It’s glass calm, and the current is
flooding against a trip the trip I had planned. Over the stern, West End
Beach looks very pleasant as an alternative. Who said sailing has to be
strenuous? It’s generally an error when sailing to set your mind on a
specific place (racing is different, of course). It takes over an hour to
sail/drift the ¾ mile back East to Naushon. Due to the miracle of a cell
phone, I can decline a dinner invitation and work on a patients medical
issues, while accomplishing this. Anchoring off West End, I follow the
suggestion of a fellow catboater, dropping the anchor while sailing
downwind, dragging it briefly to set it in the sand, and then dropping the
sail. Whoo Hoo; error free anchoring!! Anything is possible in light winds.
Just behind most beaches around here, and intimately related to their
existence, there is usually a brackish pond, sometimes fed by springs or a
small creek. This time of year, the reeds and grass are changing to fall
colors, and in the fading sunlight the color variations really require a
painting. Nevertheless, I use up most of the remaining juice in my iphone
for a photo. On the still chilly white sand beach beach, I try to decipher
from the tracks whether it was a dog or a coyote that was running, and
suddenly putting on the brakes to swerve towards the dunes. Maybe coyote;
the tracks don’t leave the beach with the only other human prints.
There’s a little more wind as I light up the alcohol stove, and so I stop to
set a second anchor off the stern, which I hope will prevent some of the
rolling that happened last time I spent the night anchored. Back to lighting
the stove, I create exactly the scary fireball that I did last time. How do
I manage this exciting piece of stage craft? In Ladakh, when this happened
as I was sitting inside the front of our tent with a snowstorm going on
outside, I could just heave the offending stove out into the snow. But here,
any heaving would probably spray burning fuel around the cabin, and also
require diving for the stove afterwards. Luckily, alcohol burns without ash,
and the flame isn’t hot enough to singe the cabin over the stove. Error #3,
is it?
I have better luck with more pumping and less alcohol, and have my
delightful and unhealthy meal of bacon and eggs with NO VEGETABLES, washed
down with neat Jameson’s, and followed by 1/3 of a butterscotch power bar
(sucrose, glucose, fructose and fat flavored with oatmeal). And now I have
time for only a few of A. Damasio’s well written remarks about the nature of
consciousness (‘*Self comes to Mind*’) complete with Sala’s highlighting,
then it’s too dark to read, with a spectacular ¾ moon rising over the
island, and a coruscating multicolored sunset drowning it out to the West
over Rhode Island.
Ah, bliss; a cool evening, lots of sugar to digest along with the well
presented possibility that conscious emanates from sub cortical centers, and
NO ROLLING!!
Well, that lasts until about 11. Now, with the moon riding high
overhead, *Susie
P* is plunging as well as rolling. On deck, practicing how not to commit the
second or third most common solo boating error that causes male sailors to
fall suddenly overboard unzipped, I notice that the wind is definitely close
to or even over 10 mph. By 2:30 there is a new noise. I’ve chosen the “*
reeeeek-eeeeek*” of a rudder straining against a tied off tiller to the” *
bluuunkCLUNK*” of the same rudder bashing its untied self against the
hull…gotten used to that. I am accustomed to the “*burblegurblemurbleburble*”
of the water flowing along the fiberglass soundboard of the hull. But now
there’s something new, a hissing noise followed by a smash! This turns out
to mean the incoming waves driven by the increasing West wind (thus coming
right in on the beach, West End Beach, remember??) are now big enough to
break BEFORE they reach the boat. Will that “smash” be enough to dislodge
the anchor?
In case you wonder, yes; this is another form of the familiar ‘Lee Shore’
error. I can’t check the internet; the phone is out of juice and the new
‘Freeloader’ solar recharger is not recharging fast enough, but I think
‘5-10 mph’ was suppose to be out of the SW, which would make this beach a
place of shelter. Now with the wind driving right in on the boat, if the bow
anchor drags out, *Susie P* will swing around on the stern anchor and
probably go aground. Hmm, let’s see…that will be on a falling tide, and then
if the wind increases we will be pushed on the beach, probably broadside.
Well, it could be worse..at least it’s just sand on this particular lee
shore, but still counts as #4 for this trip.
The moon sinks beyond the rest of the USA by 4 AM, and the rectangle of sky
visible from my bunk lights up with a pitching, rolling and quite beautiful
starscape. How many thousand light years did you say? It does provide a
perspective. Well, the Danforth anchor is known to do well in sand bottoms
like this. And that unknown constellation and high magnitude solitary star
next to it don’t seem to be moving. The “*hisssssssSMASH*” is blending in
with all the eeekingreeking and the other boat noises. And so, yes, I go to
sleep.
Tomorrow, unexpected big wind and hitting the Hole.
aloha
Alan
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Stripers with Steve
9-25-11 0745
Green House
Stripers with Steve
“Hey Alan, wanna go fishing tomorrow?” A phone call at the end of a rather grey day..spiced with fog during the late morning, and even some spots of sun in the later day. And there was enough wind in the morning to keep me out of the kayak. So who knew about tomorrow? And yet, Steve has some kind of pull with the gods of weather. After all, he does announce it on the local NPR station, WCAI (officially “Cape and Islands”, which Tirien has always identified as the “Capon Islands”). He even hosts a fishing show..no call in’s yet, but perhaps that’s coming.
“Shure thing!” We settled the ‘your boat or mine’ question quickly, since the last trip, early morning with a big bluefish bite, had been in his boat, and I definitely am using up gas at the end of my fishing season, while Steve will be fishing on into the fall.
“How about before 5, say 4:55, at my skiff?”
I woke at about 2:30..my internal clock at 70 is pretty much driven by prostate rather than anxiety… and was pleased to see some stars, and feel no hint of wind to mute the zinging of crickets. Back to sleep with dreams of the boat light wiring project I am working on, and at 3:55 I turned off the alarm and got up in the moonless dark. Made the tea, found the stainless steel long nose pliers that are important for removing hooks, and spent a few minutes rigging the LED’s to power a red/green running light (something that morning fishermen like to pretend they are not required to have), based on a plan that seemed to have originated in the dream. Lots of dew..another sign of a clear night. And no water dripping through the oak leaves of the trees surrounding this clearing in the woods.
It was dark enough to need the headlamp biking downtown. Low tide, so a climb down the ladder to get from seawall to boat, and the current will be just about full force flooding out in The Hole. I had time to jury rig the bow light with duct tape before Steve arrived.
We both rigged up the Estonian poppers. These are lures that are intended to stay on the surface, making a popping splash as you retrieve them..they have the red head and basically white body that has always been a hit with local striped bass and bluefish. And they don’t risk getting stuck on shallow rocks. Plus you can hear them chugging back towards the boat, and thus in the dark figure out when to stop reeling. And finally, when a big hungry fish lunges towards them on the surface, it makes a special noise that electrifies all bait casting fisherpeople.
The surface of Eel Pond was flat calm, shimmering night lights from the institutional buildings, and the bright red of the lights warning us that the drawbridge is closed. At 4 feet bridge to water we have plenty of room. The bow red/green works fine..very little back scatter to dim night vision. And just enough forward light to light up the reflective tape on the navigation bouys marking the channel. Out beyond, there’s the complex winking of bigger bouys that I know are several miles away.
We powered up and out, feeling the current in The Hole coil and twist, giving the boat strange lurches and swerves. Ran SW against the flooding current, and then slowed and worked left into the eddy behind the rockpile and metal marker at the SW end. The ospreys seem to have fledged, flown, and moved away for the winter. Cut the engine and started floating down current over Middle Ledge, casting as we went.
It was dark enough so it was a little hard to be sure that we would miss the day marker, a 12 foot wide stainless steel tripod embedded in rocks at the NE end of Middle Ledge. At current speeds of 6 knots, it creates a significant boiling disruption, white water and noise that seem closer or farther away depending on tiny shifts in the water dynamics. This first run, we sail by a good 4 yards to the West. Steve says he heard one fish go for his lure, but I didn’t even get that. I start the engine again, and, making sure of landmarks I can only barely see, head up current alongside the ledge and we try it again. Lots of burbling warbling splashing, but it’s all just water on rock. After about four of these, perhaps because of overconfidence, sweeping by within 3 feet of the day marker. Coming up against it sideways at this current would not be good. For those of you who have done river rafting, it means we would have to highside immediately, or swamp and turn over. And getting off against the pressure of water would be almost impossible.
“Maybe we should try Red Ledge?”, suggests Steve. It’s light enough now at 5:30 to see things more clearly. Red Ledge has some rocks above the surface..its further to the NE, and just SW of the ship channel that empties Great Harbor into Vineyard Sound.
“Yeah, the book I’m reading, about the guys who begin salt water sport fishing back in the 30’s and 40’s, is full of advice NOT to just stay in one place. If the bite isn’t there, you should move till it is, they say” I reply.
Drifting with the current, we go shooting right by Red Ledge too fast for more than one cast. So, as the sky continues to lighten over the steamship wharf where the Island Home ferry is taking on cars and passengers for the first run of the morning, I nudge the boat, motor running, near to the triangle of rocks where Steve is convinced the fish are waiting.
After a couple warm ups, he makes a perfect cast right into the middle, and with barely any pause, a fish slashes at the Estonian plug..and misses!. But the next cast, another slash and this time I know by the bend of his rod and the singing sound the reel makes when a heavy fish is pulling line against the automatic drag that he’s connected. I shut off the motor, and we drift towards the light, towards the arch of multicolored dawn that is brewing over the sillouettes of houses and trees on Juniper Point..that is, into the steamship channel.
The boat’s turning on the current, and Steve scrambles back and forth to keep his line clear. The ferry is loaded and leaving, and gives a preemptory toot. On the bow, a searchlight comes on, sweeps, spots us and is turned off.
“How’s it feel?” I ask. “I think it’s a keeper bass” replies Steve. Minutes later, with the ferry bearing down, I managed to miss twice with the net, but mama nature is smiling and on the third try I land his striped bass..definitely more than 28 inches, and can start the motor in time to take us out of the ferry’s path.
How much more exciting and beautiful the morning looks with a fish in the boat! We run motor back up, and takes turns catching two smaller bass that leap all the way out of the water, troutlike, and can be returned unharmed. And then, with Steve at the wheel (after all, he built the boat and has a fish already) I cast into the same spot, now more easily seen, a roiling boiling hole in the midst of the rocks, and connect…not quite as large, but still a 29 inch fish , which Steve scoops up. Suddenly, our fishing is over. It’s a little after 6 AM.
Almost magically, the boat drifts into an eddy in the deep water on the East side of the rocks of Red Ledge. We circle slowly in place. The Island Home is long gone around the Great Ledge heading for Vineyard Haven. The sky show colors have blossomed up into oranges and reds, with silvery cloud banks in silver framing the scene. Definitely genesis. And by good fortune, the tea I brought is still unspilled and warm.
I guess we talked. The kind of inconsequential noises that reassure rather than represent. Just being there in the dawn, with Steve and two fish in the boat.
Green House
Stripers with Steve
“Hey Alan, wanna go fishing tomorrow?” A phone call at the end of a rather grey day..spiced with fog during the late morning, and even some spots of sun in the later day. And there was enough wind in the morning to keep me out of the kayak. So who knew about tomorrow? And yet, Steve has some kind of pull with the gods of weather. After all, he does announce it on the local NPR station, WCAI (officially “Cape and Islands”, which Tirien has always identified as the “Capon Islands”). He even hosts a fishing show..no call in’s yet, but perhaps that’s coming.
“Shure thing!” We settled the ‘your boat or mine’ question quickly, since the last trip, early morning with a big bluefish bite, had been in his boat, and I definitely am using up gas at the end of my fishing season, while Steve will be fishing on into the fall.
“How about before 5, say 4:55, at my skiff?”
I woke at about 2:30..my internal clock at 70 is pretty much driven by prostate rather than anxiety… and was pleased to see some stars, and feel no hint of wind to mute the zinging of crickets. Back to sleep with dreams of the boat light wiring project I am working on, and at 3:55 I turned off the alarm and got up in the moonless dark. Made the tea, found the stainless steel long nose pliers that are important for removing hooks, and spent a few minutes rigging the LED’s to power a red/green running light (something that morning fishermen like to pretend they are not required to have), based on a plan that seemed to have originated in the dream. Lots of dew..another sign of a clear night. And no water dripping through the oak leaves of the trees surrounding this clearing in the woods.
It was dark enough to need the headlamp biking downtown. Low tide, so a climb down the ladder to get from seawall to boat, and the current will be just about full force flooding out in The Hole. I had time to jury rig the bow light with duct tape before Steve arrived.
We both rigged up the Estonian poppers. These are lures that are intended to stay on the surface, making a popping splash as you retrieve them..they have the red head and basically white body that has always been a hit with local striped bass and bluefish. And they don’t risk getting stuck on shallow rocks. Plus you can hear them chugging back towards the boat, and thus in the dark figure out when to stop reeling. And finally, when a big hungry fish lunges towards them on the surface, it makes a special noise that electrifies all bait casting fisherpeople.
The surface of Eel Pond was flat calm, shimmering night lights from the institutional buildings, and the bright red of the lights warning us that the drawbridge is closed. At 4 feet bridge to water we have plenty of room. The bow red/green works fine..very little back scatter to dim night vision. And just enough forward light to light up the reflective tape on the navigation bouys marking the channel. Out beyond, there’s the complex winking of bigger bouys that I know are several miles away.
We powered up and out, feeling the current in The Hole coil and twist, giving the boat strange lurches and swerves. Ran SW against the flooding current, and then slowed and worked left into the eddy behind the rockpile and metal marker at the SW end. The ospreys seem to have fledged, flown, and moved away for the winter. Cut the engine and started floating down current over Middle Ledge, casting as we went.
It was dark enough so it was a little hard to be sure that we would miss the day marker, a 12 foot wide stainless steel tripod embedded in rocks at the NE end of Middle Ledge. At current speeds of 6 knots, it creates a significant boiling disruption, white water and noise that seem closer or farther away depending on tiny shifts in the water dynamics. This first run, we sail by a good 4 yards to the West. Steve says he heard one fish go for his lure, but I didn’t even get that. I start the engine again, and, making sure of landmarks I can only barely see, head up current alongside the ledge and we try it again. Lots of burbling warbling splashing, but it’s all just water on rock. After about four of these, perhaps because of overconfidence, sweeping by within 3 feet of the day marker. Coming up against it sideways at this current would not be good. For those of you who have done river rafting, it means we would have to highside immediately, or swamp and turn over. And getting off against the pressure of water would be almost impossible.
“Maybe we should try Red Ledge?”, suggests Steve. It’s light enough now at 5:30 to see things more clearly. Red Ledge has some rocks above the surface..its further to the NE, and just SW of the ship channel that empties Great Harbor into Vineyard Sound.
“Yeah, the book I’m reading, about the guys who begin salt water sport fishing back in the 30’s and 40’s, is full of advice NOT to just stay in one place. If the bite isn’t there, you should move till it is, they say” I reply.
Drifting with the current, we go shooting right by Red Ledge too fast for more than one cast. So, as the sky continues to lighten over the steamship wharf where the Island Home ferry is taking on cars and passengers for the first run of the morning, I nudge the boat, motor running, near to the triangle of rocks where Steve is convinced the fish are waiting.
After a couple warm ups, he makes a perfect cast right into the middle, and with barely any pause, a fish slashes at the Estonian plug..and misses!. But the next cast, another slash and this time I know by the bend of his rod and the singing sound the reel makes when a heavy fish is pulling line against the automatic drag that he’s connected. I shut off the motor, and we drift towards the light, towards the arch of multicolored dawn that is brewing over the sillouettes of houses and trees on Juniper Point..that is, into the steamship channel.
The boat’s turning on the current, and Steve scrambles back and forth to keep his line clear. The ferry is loaded and leaving, and gives a preemptory toot. On the bow, a searchlight comes on, sweeps, spots us and is turned off.
“How’s it feel?” I ask. “I think it’s a keeper bass” replies Steve. Minutes later, with the ferry bearing down, I managed to miss twice with the net, but mama nature is smiling and on the third try I land his striped bass..definitely more than 28 inches, and can start the motor in time to take us out of the ferry’s path.
How much more exciting and beautiful the morning looks with a fish in the boat! We run motor back up, and takes turns catching two smaller bass that leap all the way out of the water, troutlike, and can be returned unharmed. And then, with Steve at the wheel (after all, he built the boat and has a fish already) I cast into the same spot, now more easily seen, a roiling boiling hole in the midst of the rocks, and connect…not quite as large, but still a 29 inch fish , which Steve scoops up. Suddenly, our fishing is over. It’s a little after 6 AM.
Almost magically, the boat drifts into an eddy in the deep water on the East side of the rocks of Red Ledge. We circle slowly in place. The Island Home is long gone around the Great Ledge heading for Vineyard Haven. The sky show colors have blossomed up into oranges and reds, with silvery cloud banks in silver framing the scene. Definitely genesis. And by good fortune, the tea I brought is still unspilled and warm.
I guess we talked. The kind of inconsequential noises that reassure rather than represent. Just being there in the dawn, with Steve and two fish in the boat.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Wee Peckets in the Mist
9-23-11 1550 Green House. Rainy bullets pounding on the porches and the sky is darkening grey. Sixty eight degrees, a summery kind of rain. It was grey earlier, the kind of high stratus grey that lets a lot of light onto the sea. Long wavy lines of reflection, making the view take on immense importance. The seawall forms a kind of extended stage for the grey on grey horizon line. A lobster buoy poking through the shimmery gray in solitary angular splendor centers attention. Far off to stage right, a sailboat under power with bare spars sails out of view.
Yesterday was not so scenic. It was a somehow more oppressive grey, perhaps due to the light rain cum heavy mist, perhaps due to my mood somehow? I managed to get down to the boathouse and out in the Looksha 4 Fiberglas kayak by a little after 10…a virtual meeting at 9, and tea with my sister before that. The ebb tide carrying me smoothly down a beautiful smooth tongue of water pouring out of Great Harbor and South into Buzzards Bay. It was near flat calm, no sea at all running, and the grey made it hard to see the just barely submerged rocks as I paddled along the shore of Uncatena. Without the suns wash of light, the rocks along the shore can’t show their contrasty color and edginess…greys dominate, and in some way the details become less interesting, perhaps as they are less well defined. I paddled along though, still enjoying the paddling, remembering to push as much as pull. Wonder if I remember physically even when I am not remembering mentally. How does that transfer thought to action occur? It’s been known for a time that our brain commences quite a few thousandth of a second before we start to move. We are marvelously slow compared to machines. Moving hydrated salt atoms across cell membranes IS slow…perhaps a literal explanation of the phrase ‘give me time to think!’.
The things I do that I had formal lessons to learn; very few. The things I started doing and then received corrective help; also pretty sparse. The number of things I did, kept doing, and probably have some weird energy inefficient and mentally taxing way of doing; probably huge. Sometimes it becomes clear with practice…I don’t mean improvement, I mean pain. Cocking my right wrist, for example, definitely is where my right ‘golfers elbow’ came from. (‘tennis elbow’ is pain in the lateral (outside) lump at the elbow..the lateral epicondyle of the humerus (upper arm bone), and it’s the extensor carpi radialis brevis muscle which originates there and is involved in lifting with the palm down and, yes, tennis, that is often the culprit. My problem is pain on the inside of the right elbow, the medial epicondyle, which has extensor muscles involved in movements of the hand, such as paddling a kayak). Still, paddling yesterday went well..my shoulders were pretty tired after 6 hours, but it was that kind of Germanic ‘good’ pain.
There were plenty of fish, mostly small to medium striped bass, hanging out near the surface and close to rocks along the shore. You can often see their fins moving slowly through the mirror of the surface. As they become aware, there’s a carangiform spasm of the tail and they’re gone. There’s no current to stimulate them here along Uncatena; perhaps they are meditating. Perhaps they are always meditating. What if Buddha is a porpoise? Or at least, that the historical Buddha achieved nothing more or less than marine mammal brain function? What if whales are so relaxed they are always, well, Buddha? ( Of course, I imagine Sala responding, and you are too!)
However, what often happens to me with attempts at sitting meditation is not enlightenment, but sleep. I have completely fallen asleep paddling in the past, and when I do that I wake up already past the point of saving myself by a quick brace with the paddle..Yesterday was more like those times in the car that I would rather not admit I have. And as in the car, it’s generally enough to motivate a renewed wakefulness. It also helped that the kayak just then went grinding and gritting across a flat barnacle covered rock that was a few inches under the surface..Nothing like the sound of $10 an ounce epoxy gelcoat being macerated to bring skinflints like me to full wakefulness.
Fully awake, I paddled on. Push/pull and push/pull. Let the movements come from the thighs, the hips, the lats and pecs as well as the arms. Let the boat develop a rhythmic sway from side to side..it helps to align the paddle strokes. And let the overall effect be relaxation ( enlightenment wouldn’t be bad either)...and please not sleep!
Uncatena is just a little blip off the Northwest end of Naushon. Naushon is more substantial..about 8 miles long. The shore is mostly granite boulders, and in the water on a clear calm day, many of they are under water, often coated with seaweed; wavery bulky mysteries to the passing kayak. Sometimes there are fishes circling way down under, sometimes it’s just the current coiling around this obstacle, running it’s hands through the seaweed as the tidal flow continues on down Buzzards Bay. The ebbing current lasts will well past noon. Now its suddenly foggy, can barely see the rocks on shore, which are suddenly exciting, the face of an old lover imagined in the crowd. Now it’s misting… such heavy mists that some spoilsports might call it rain. Buttoned up with a waterproof top and a spray skirt, it doesn’t make much difference.
Another mile along, past some very attractive collections of flotsam..plastic fish boxes, fragments of net, and fewer and fewer beer cans and plastic bottles every year…a series of white sand crescent shaped beaches relieve the ongoing boulders and cliffs. Each one has a large sign beginning with PRIVATE PROPERTY. And it is; the whole string of island except for Cuttyhunk at the end is owned by the Forbes Trust. They do allow ‘seasonal visitors’ to land at three of the beaches, though you are not supposed to stay overnight . And it’s OK to land on Wee Peckets island, which is my first scheduled stop.
Wee Peckets is actually three islands. Two are tidal rockpiles, the most southerly is a sand hill with poison ivy and spartina grass, and a rookery for sea gulls in the spring. When I used to work for MBL on the Supply Department crew, we would occasionally have an order for seagull eggs..Dr S. had a special license to work on the (otherwise protected) birds. Those visits, during the hatching season, were merry mayhem; adult gulls shrieking overhead, battering wings when we came too close, already hatched fuzzy chicks running through the little gull paths in the grass, and of course the heavy odor of guano baking in the sun. One year, several weeks after the egg hunting, I took a small power boat to dump all the discarded biological material out in Vineyard Sound. As we arrived at the dumping area, and cut the noisy engine of the boat, it became clear that some of the discarded eggs were hatching…two gull chicks were in fact free of their shells and staggering around in the garbage pail, all bright eyes and optimistic peeping. Against both common sense and legal practice, I took them home, and in that distant and more relaxed era, my mother and younger brother raised the two gulls, named Gulliver (of course) and Blake ( Susie liked his poems). This summer, my brother reminded me of his long ago gullfather summer job, and that one of the gulls made a practice of walking down to town along the road. Eventually, imprinting on my brothers running and flapping, they learned to fly and left us groundlings behind.
There were a few gulls on Wee Peckets white sand beach (most were away at work at the Falmouth dump), and for once it wasn’t too hot. The rains have washed away the gull smells too. There are a few shells, of the subdued New England variety, and a few stray feathers (not the blizzards you encounter during the squabbling and molting of nesting season). Then the misty wisty sky comes back down, and I take refuge in my buttoned up Kayak again.
Later the tide has changed, and I start back with it towards Woods Hole, paddling in open water now. No rocks to avoid and Uncatena is still several miles ahead.
Reflecting on my work in progress; communications between couples. For the first time this summer, I have been able to hear the content of Sala’s reaction to my writing without being swept into some angry wastebasket state by my reaction to her reaction. Constructive criticism is so rarely encountered (even in a hundred thousand million kalpas (as the Buddhist invocation says about enlightment), and so why am I so ungracious about it when offered by the person I can probably trust above all others? Because…well…because of all the rest, years of kitchen table conversation, the fear of rejection, or at least of not succeeding. All the bits and pieces of metaphorical nest making material that form ego. The stuff we never agreed on, public vs. private school for example. The stuff we always agreed on but never discussed; interracial divorces, for example. My preferences for sleeping in strange places, hers for coffee in bed. So, it’s good to think that we are expending the areas where it’s safe to offer a real opinion, rather than a platitude.
Back at the boathouse, the mist is definitely rain, no kidding. On the way to dinner, I bike across the golf course. Here’s this beautiful stretch of grass, so carefully tended, so expensive of space and chemicals, and to ride full speed down a steep green hill, knowing there is no need for caution…in the rain…it’s pretty exciting. I crossed the golf course with Fuji during Hurricane Irene…with seagulls and swallows flying in amazing fast swoops, magical fish swimming in the currents of upended weather. Last night it was quiet in the woods. I guess we were all listening to the raindrops moving through the leaves. Where do the crickets go when it rains?
Alan
Yesterday was not so scenic. It was a somehow more oppressive grey, perhaps due to the light rain cum heavy mist, perhaps due to my mood somehow? I managed to get down to the boathouse and out in the Looksha 4 Fiberglas kayak by a little after 10…a virtual meeting at 9, and tea with my sister before that. The ebb tide carrying me smoothly down a beautiful smooth tongue of water pouring out of Great Harbor and South into Buzzards Bay. It was near flat calm, no sea at all running, and the grey made it hard to see the just barely submerged rocks as I paddled along the shore of Uncatena. Without the suns wash of light, the rocks along the shore can’t show their contrasty color and edginess…greys dominate, and in some way the details become less interesting, perhaps as they are less well defined. I paddled along though, still enjoying the paddling, remembering to push as much as pull. Wonder if I remember physically even when I am not remembering mentally. How does that transfer thought to action occur? It’s been known for a time that our brain commences quite a few thousandth of a second before we start to move. We are marvelously slow compared to machines. Moving hydrated salt atoms across cell membranes IS slow…perhaps a literal explanation of the phrase ‘give me time to think!’.
The things I do that I had formal lessons to learn; very few. The things I started doing and then received corrective help; also pretty sparse. The number of things I did, kept doing, and probably have some weird energy inefficient and mentally taxing way of doing; probably huge. Sometimes it becomes clear with practice…I don’t mean improvement, I mean pain. Cocking my right wrist, for example, definitely is where my right ‘golfers elbow’ came from. (‘tennis elbow’ is pain in the lateral (outside) lump at the elbow..the lateral epicondyle of the humerus (upper arm bone), and it’s the extensor carpi radialis brevis muscle which originates there and is involved in lifting with the palm down and, yes, tennis, that is often the culprit. My problem is pain on the inside of the right elbow, the medial epicondyle, which has extensor muscles involved in movements of the hand, such as paddling a kayak). Still, paddling yesterday went well..my shoulders were pretty tired after 6 hours, but it was that kind of Germanic ‘good’ pain.
There were plenty of fish, mostly small to medium striped bass, hanging out near the surface and close to rocks along the shore. You can often see their fins moving slowly through the mirror of the surface. As they become aware, there’s a carangiform spasm of the tail and they’re gone. There’s no current to stimulate them here along Uncatena; perhaps they are meditating. Perhaps they are always meditating. What if Buddha is a porpoise? Or at least, that the historical Buddha achieved nothing more or less than marine mammal brain function? What if whales are so relaxed they are always, well, Buddha? ( Of course, I imagine Sala responding, and you are too!)
However, what often happens to me with attempts at sitting meditation is not enlightenment, but sleep. I have completely fallen asleep paddling in the past, and when I do that I wake up already past the point of saving myself by a quick brace with the paddle..Yesterday was more like those times in the car that I would rather not admit I have. And as in the car, it’s generally enough to motivate a renewed wakefulness. It also helped that the kayak just then went grinding and gritting across a flat barnacle covered rock that was a few inches under the surface..Nothing like the sound of $10 an ounce epoxy gelcoat being macerated to bring skinflints like me to full wakefulness.
Fully awake, I paddled on. Push/pull and push/pull. Let the movements come from the thighs, the hips, the lats and pecs as well as the arms. Let the boat develop a rhythmic sway from side to side..it helps to align the paddle strokes. And let the overall effect be relaxation ( enlightenment wouldn’t be bad either)...and please not sleep!
Uncatena is just a little blip off the Northwest end of Naushon. Naushon is more substantial..about 8 miles long. The shore is mostly granite boulders, and in the water on a clear calm day, many of they are under water, often coated with seaweed; wavery bulky mysteries to the passing kayak. Sometimes there are fishes circling way down under, sometimes it’s just the current coiling around this obstacle, running it’s hands through the seaweed as the tidal flow continues on down Buzzards Bay. The ebbing current lasts will well past noon. Now its suddenly foggy, can barely see the rocks on shore, which are suddenly exciting, the face of an old lover imagined in the crowd. Now it’s misting… such heavy mists that some spoilsports might call it rain. Buttoned up with a waterproof top and a spray skirt, it doesn’t make much difference.
Another mile along, past some very attractive collections of flotsam..plastic fish boxes, fragments of net, and fewer and fewer beer cans and plastic bottles every year…a series of white sand crescent shaped beaches relieve the ongoing boulders and cliffs. Each one has a large sign beginning with PRIVATE PROPERTY. And it is; the whole string of island except for Cuttyhunk at the end is owned by the Forbes Trust. They do allow ‘seasonal visitors’ to land at three of the beaches, though you are not supposed to stay overnight . And it’s OK to land on Wee Peckets island, which is my first scheduled stop.
Wee Peckets is actually three islands. Two are tidal rockpiles, the most southerly is a sand hill with poison ivy and spartina grass, and a rookery for sea gulls in the spring. When I used to work for MBL on the Supply Department crew, we would occasionally have an order for seagull eggs..Dr S. had a special license to work on the (otherwise protected) birds. Those visits, during the hatching season, were merry mayhem; adult gulls shrieking overhead, battering wings when we came too close, already hatched fuzzy chicks running through the little gull paths in the grass, and of course the heavy odor of guano baking in the sun. One year, several weeks after the egg hunting, I took a small power boat to dump all the discarded biological material out in Vineyard Sound. As we arrived at the dumping area, and cut the noisy engine of the boat, it became clear that some of the discarded eggs were hatching…two gull chicks were in fact free of their shells and staggering around in the garbage pail, all bright eyes and optimistic peeping. Against both common sense and legal practice, I took them home, and in that distant and more relaxed era, my mother and younger brother raised the two gulls, named Gulliver (of course) and Blake ( Susie liked his poems). This summer, my brother reminded me of his long ago gullfather summer job, and that one of the gulls made a practice of walking down to town along the road. Eventually, imprinting on my brothers running and flapping, they learned to fly and left us groundlings behind.
There were a few gulls on Wee Peckets white sand beach (most were away at work at the Falmouth dump), and for once it wasn’t too hot. The rains have washed away the gull smells too. There are a few shells, of the subdued New England variety, and a few stray feathers (not the blizzards you encounter during the squabbling and molting of nesting season). Then the misty wisty sky comes back down, and I take refuge in my buttoned up Kayak again.
Later the tide has changed, and I start back with it towards Woods Hole, paddling in open water now. No rocks to avoid and Uncatena is still several miles ahead.
Reflecting on my work in progress; communications between couples. For the first time this summer, I have been able to hear the content of Sala’s reaction to my writing without being swept into some angry wastebasket state by my reaction to her reaction. Constructive criticism is so rarely encountered (even in a hundred thousand million kalpas (as the Buddhist invocation says about enlightment), and so why am I so ungracious about it when offered by the person I can probably trust above all others? Because…well…because of all the rest, years of kitchen table conversation, the fear of rejection, or at least of not succeeding. All the bits and pieces of metaphorical nest making material that form ego. The stuff we never agreed on, public vs. private school for example. The stuff we always agreed on but never discussed; interracial divorces, for example. My preferences for sleeping in strange places, hers for coffee in bed. So, it’s good to think that we are expending the areas where it’s safe to offer a real opinion, rather than a platitude.
Back at the boathouse, the mist is definitely rain, no kidding. On the way to dinner, I bike across the golf course. Here’s this beautiful stretch of grass, so carefully tended, so expensive of space and chemicals, and to ride full speed down a steep green hill, knowing there is no need for caution…in the rain…it’s pretty exciting. I crossed the golf course with Fuji during Hurricane Irene…with seagulls and swallows flying in amazing fast swoops, magical fish swimming in the currents of upended weather. Last night it was quiet in the woods. I guess we were all listening to the raindrops moving through the leaves. Where do the crickets go when it rains?
Alan
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Fiddler Crabs, Truro, and Edward Hopper
9-10-11. 1605 Green House, Woods Hole, Cape Cod. We didnt go in search of Edward Hopper, but on the way back on South Pamet Rd, we passed under route 6, and were back in telephone land. So it was easy to look up his street address, since there had been a controversy in the last few years over a plan by the new owner to tear down the 840 square foot white cottage and replace it with something...well...more substantial anyway.
The lot in question,25-27 Stevens Way, is off Depot Road in Truro. There is not that much of a there there in Truro, not compared even to Welfleet to the SW, and Provincetown to the NE. Cape Cod's beckoning finger begins to curl Northward at Orleans, and so Welfleet harbor is very sheltered. The very wrap around bony witches tip of the Cape might be trying to wheedle the Gulf Stream closer.* Of course the real 'there' in Truro is what Edward Hopper came for; light.
You become aware of just how well Edward Hopper created his own ' unique experience of nature' ( to paraphrase the explanation of the creative process attributed to him in the 1950's that I found in some biography years ago ) when you get off Route 6 and either turn left down South Pamet road to Balston beach, or right and wander through the dirt roads that actually lead to his house and the other summer cottages. The glacial leavings of sand and granite boulder 'erratics', beset by wind and rain over centuries, and then attacked in the 1820's by human handed saws to feed the furnaces of the Boston and Sandwich Glass Factory that young Deming Jarves built at Sandwich (also the site of the oldest continously held Quaker Meeting in the USA), are naturally a somehow soothing landscape. What Edward Hopper saw was early regrowth. Bayberry, blueberry, baby scrub pine trees, and grasses, spartina and others. The grass and bayberry is still visible, but only where wind and water make any other growth difficult, like near his house. Along the dirt roads he traveled, the land is going through a scrub pine phase, The trees are only 20 feet tall and 6-10 inches in diameter now, but already their needles blanket the ground and keep poison ivy and other shrubs from growing. These were the trees you can see in his backgrounds..a gas station along route 6 for example..and in those places, they have been replaced by the larger oaks that are also the dominant tree here in Woods Hole.
These are the sandy roads and tracks that I remember in the early 50's. During a rain the water sluices and cascades down into depressions that become lakes, and the smaller depressions are then deepened by passing cars until they become potholes. The rains in July and August are warm as the Gulf Stream itself, and my finger tips would be all pruned from the watery labor of engineering the flow into the channels I dug in the road out in front of our house, before being called in for supper.
As far as I can tell, Edward Hopper wasn't much drawn to paint weather. Or water. He really liked human constructs, and the play of light on the surfaces they present. Of course the weather is implicit in every painting anyway, because it's the weather that makes those reds redder and that stark line of the shadow against the building against the sky just so very stark. Sala only has a week more here on the Cape for this season, and when we discovered that we had nothing planned for yesterday (Friday), we decided to drive to Welfleet and Truro. During tourist season I wouldn't be tempted to try this, but the people supply turned off, as usual, on last Monday night. Literally the next day Water Street was more or less empty, there was no line for the Vineyard ferry, and year 'round people I hadn't seen all summer were daring to parade in full view.
Although Sala does not appreciate Fuji's sharp little feet stamping all over her lap to try to see out the window, she still would rather ride shotgun than drive. Sala and Fuji do, of course, go through a graceful pas de deux in which Sala (with a considerable weight advantage) lifts Fuji and whirls her towards the gap between the seats while saying "back, good dog, back!". And Fuji, with perfect timing, splays out her little legs and suddenly becomes too wide to fit between the seats, while looking soulfully put upon. It's as much part of our driving ritual as is stopping at antique stores.
The store we happened to stop at was a little before Welfleet. I walked Fuji, and then joined Sala inside. The prices were still summer prices, but books were on sale. Plus Sala found a pair of older clip on sunglasses that just fit her favorite ( round ) prescription frames, and at what she assured me was a great bargain. I picked up a copy of The Old Man and the Sea, and a volume about salt water angling that happened to have a great description from the 1800's of sailing to Cuttyhunk. They also had some Sandwich glass...whale oil lamps as it happens..that was thank goodness too pricy for impulse buying. But beautiful. The guy behind the counter was the one who told me about chopping down the Cape's forests for the firewood. And oh yes, 'A brief history of time", because what library is complete without that basic book, and ours was borrowed some time ago.
We turned left a little further along route 6 and headed for Pleasant Point..who could resist the name? Small cabins with Novelty siding or shingles, screen porches and some retrofitted skylights, and a few new constructions in the same vein. The road turned dirt and meandered around trees. Finally it ended..at a timber retained wall with the sea grass marsh of Welfleet harbor just beyond. Fuji barked to a pleasant faced woman who appeared rather suddenly from the stairs up from the beach next to us, and with the introduction we found that the place to eat was PJ's, at the next large intersection, which, she said, looked like all the other places serving junk but knew how to cook it. Fifty years of eating junk food all up and down the Cape, she said.
So we went to PJ's, ordered a lobster roll with mayo, a cod sandwich with tomato and lettuce, a side of french fries, a root beer float and some water for Fuji. While waiting, I went with the little dog to the nearest walking place, which happened to be a cemetary. Slate tombstones, staggering under the ravages of time, and very few of marble too. The earlierst was 1783, most were from the early part of the nineteenth century. So some of these people probably cut down the trees, made the glass, fished for the cod and the striped bass and started the communities, dealt with the weather the Gulf Stream brought them, and built the structures that attracted Edward Hopper. Or perhaps Josephine?
Back at Pleasant Point, we went down the stairs and traipsed left towards Drummer Cove. The tide was going out, leaving a modest 20 feet of firm clean yellow sand, and then a dense and lovely swale of tall salt grass that bordered the actual water. A few small boats fastened to cement blocks were stranded in the grass until the next tide. And, now scrabbling and hustling to escape into the grass or to herd up against the timbered seawall, there were armies of fiddler crabs, uca pugnax. These fellas are scarce around Woods Hole..they make great bait for catching Blackfish or Tautog..but here there was still hoardes of them. And caught up in the windrows of dead eel grass, many more of the limulus exoskeletons I found at Tarpaulin cove last weekend. Only these were smaller, more delicate, still the same iconic shape.
.
We ate (the lobster roll and fish were all right, the root beer float quite exotic when you are only having one or two spoonfulls), we walked, Fuji leaped into the mud after things she heard or saw (mostly imperceptable to us) and I collected exoskeletons ( you never know when you might need a pristine limulus exoskeleton).We talked to a couple who were wondering if there was a place to swim; they were considering a summer rental on Pleasant Point road. But this part of Welfleet Harbor, Drummer Cove, is very shallow..great for molting limulus and fiddler crabs and shellfish of all kinds, but not so great for washing humans.
Fuji feet were now not only sharp but also covered with marsh mud, and it seemed that Sala had kind of given up on the battle. With Fuji proudly and rendolently rampant on her lap, we forged on to find the Welfleet that I rememberd with some disliking, the downtown Welfleet, comlplete with a residuum of tourists and stores selling T shirts and salt water taffy
.
The North pointing arm of the outer cape is one long beach, beginning down near Chatham and extending all the way up to Ptown. Balslton Beach, where South Pamet now ends, was noisy with Atlantic surf. Probably because of Hurricane Katia about a hundred miles offshore, there was a no swimming advisory, and the water is cold, anyhow. There was a good NE wind blowing, and the combination of big empty beach and moving air is like catnip for our little dog. If we want to play, that's great too, but she's perfectly capable of just racing in circles for the fun of it. And of course, barking at the waves and chasing any available shorebird. Meanwhile, Hopper blue skies and Hopper green grass and yellow sand cliffs..it's all there.
And finally, consulting the iphone to correct course, we were bumping along twisty turney Stevens way, which has probably not changed too much since Edward and Jo Hopper, in a car with better clearance than ours, bumped and swayed this way. We know Edward Hopper liked to paint from his car, and explored the area thoroughly. Some of his views are changed by the regrowth of trees. His house, on the last dune before Massachusetts Bay and overlooking the place where the Pilgrims encountered the Wampanoag, is there. Except I picked the wrong one to take a photograph of..turns out I recognized this house, in a fold of the hills, because he painted it. The studio they built is a bit further along the road. Square, asphalt shingle roof, white walls, facing the sea.
I can see why he came, and came back. Reportedly, he didnt socialize much, but I guess he didnt socialize muich in NY either. And I should know more about Josephine Nivens, his wife, than I do; she was an accomplished painter in her own right. But it's Edward Hopper that holds the stage in my mental museum . Edward Hopper and that amazing light.
Fuji and Sala both slept on the way back. NPR was on the radio. There was very little traffic. Summer is over, I guess. Time for the Hoppers to pack up and head back to NY.
Alan
*( I just had to spend some time with the Gulf Stream on line, and it's more impressive than ever with all the new virtual color maps. Thirty Sverdrups (1 Sverdrup is 30 million cubic meters per second..all of the rivers of the world total 0.6 Sverdrup) of water that flows north from Florida and conditions weather all the way to Scotland. And, not incidentally this time of year, breeds that uniquely American cyclonic storm, sometimes called Hurricane.)
The lot in question,25-27 Stevens Way, is off Depot Road in Truro. There is not that much of a there there in Truro, not compared even to Welfleet to the SW, and Provincetown to the NE. Cape Cod's beckoning finger begins to curl Northward at Orleans, and so Welfleet harbor is very sheltered. The very wrap around bony witches tip of the Cape might be trying to wheedle the Gulf Stream closer.* Of course the real 'there' in Truro is what Edward Hopper came for; light.
You become aware of just how well Edward Hopper created his own ' unique experience of nature' ( to paraphrase the explanation of the creative process attributed to him in the 1950's that I found in some biography years ago ) when you get off Route 6 and either turn left down South Pamet road to Balston beach, or right and wander through the dirt roads that actually lead to his house and the other summer cottages. The glacial leavings of sand and granite boulder 'erratics', beset by wind and rain over centuries, and then attacked in the 1820's by human handed saws to feed the furnaces of the Boston and Sandwich Glass Factory that young Deming Jarves built at Sandwich (also the site of the oldest continously held Quaker Meeting in the USA), are naturally a somehow soothing landscape. What Edward Hopper saw was early regrowth. Bayberry, blueberry, baby scrub pine trees, and grasses, spartina and others. The grass and bayberry is still visible, but only where wind and water make any other growth difficult, like near his house. Along the dirt roads he traveled, the land is going through a scrub pine phase, The trees are only 20 feet tall and 6-10 inches in diameter now, but already their needles blanket the ground and keep poison ivy and other shrubs from growing. These were the trees you can see in his backgrounds..a gas station along route 6 for example..and in those places, they have been replaced by the larger oaks that are also the dominant tree here in Woods Hole.
These are the sandy roads and tracks that I remember in the early 50's. During a rain the water sluices and cascades down into depressions that become lakes, and the smaller depressions are then deepened by passing cars until they become potholes. The rains in July and August are warm as the Gulf Stream itself, and my finger tips would be all pruned from the watery labor of engineering the flow into the channels I dug in the road out in front of our house, before being called in for supper.
As far as I can tell, Edward Hopper wasn't much drawn to paint weather. Or water. He really liked human constructs, and the play of light on the surfaces they present. Of course the weather is implicit in every painting anyway, because it's the weather that makes those reds redder and that stark line of the shadow against the building against the sky just so very stark. Sala only has a week more here on the Cape for this season, and when we discovered that we had nothing planned for yesterday (Friday), we decided to drive to Welfleet and Truro. During tourist season I wouldn't be tempted to try this, but the people supply turned off, as usual, on last Monday night. Literally the next day Water Street was more or less empty, there was no line for the Vineyard ferry, and year 'round people I hadn't seen all summer were daring to parade in full view.
Although Sala does not appreciate Fuji's sharp little feet stamping all over her lap to try to see out the window, she still would rather ride shotgun than drive. Sala and Fuji do, of course, go through a graceful pas de deux in which Sala (with a considerable weight advantage) lifts Fuji and whirls her towards the gap between the seats while saying "back, good dog, back!". And Fuji, with perfect timing, splays out her little legs and suddenly becomes too wide to fit between the seats, while looking soulfully put upon. It's as much part of our driving ritual as is stopping at antique stores.
The store we happened to stop at was a little before Welfleet. I walked Fuji, and then joined Sala inside. The prices were still summer prices, but books were on sale. Plus Sala found a pair of older clip on sunglasses that just fit her favorite ( round ) prescription frames, and at what she assured me was a great bargain. I picked up a copy of The Old Man and the Sea, and a volume about salt water angling that happened to have a great description from the 1800's of sailing to Cuttyhunk. They also had some Sandwich glass...whale oil lamps as it happens..that was thank goodness too pricy for impulse buying. But beautiful. The guy behind the counter was the one who told me about chopping down the Cape's forests for the firewood. And oh yes, 'A brief history of time", because what library is complete without that basic book, and ours was borrowed some time ago.
We turned left a little further along route 6 and headed for Pleasant Point..who could resist the name? Small cabins with Novelty siding or shingles, screen porches and some retrofitted skylights, and a few new constructions in the same vein. The road turned dirt and meandered around trees. Finally it ended..at a timber retained wall with the sea grass marsh of Welfleet harbor just beyond. Fuji barked to a pleasant faced woman who appeared rather suddenly from the stairs up from the beach next to us, and with the introduction we found that the place to eat was PJ's, at the next large intersection, which, she said, looked like all the other places serving junk but knew how to cook it. Fifty years of eating junk food all up and down the Cape, she said.
So we went to PJ's, ordered a lobster roll with mayo, a cod sandwich with tomato and lettuce, a side of french fries, a root beer float and some water for Fuji. While waiting, I went with the little dog to the nearest walking place, which happened to be a cemetary. Slate tombstones, staggering under the ravages of time, and very few of marble too. The earlierst was 1783, most were from the early part of the nineteenth century. So some of these people probably cut down the trees, made the glass, fished for the cod and the striped bass and started the communities, dealt with the weather the Gulf Stream brought them, and built the structures that attracted Edward Hopper. Or perhaps Josephine?
Back at Pleasant Point, we went down the stairs and traipsed left towards Drummer Cove. The tide was going out, leaving a modest 20 feet of firm clean yellow sand, and then a dense and lovely swale of tall salt grass that bordered the actual water. A few small boats fastened to cement blocks were stranded in the grass until the next tide. And, now scrabbling and hustling to escape into the grass or to herd up against the timbered seawall, there were armies of fiddler crabs, uca pugnax. These fellas are scarce around Woods Hole..they make great bait for catching Blackfish or Tautog..but here there was still hoardes of them. And caught up in the windrows of dead eel grass, many more of the limulus exoskeletons I found at Tarpaulin cove last weekend. Only these were smaller, more delicate, still the same iconic shape.
.
We ate (the lobster roll and fish were all right, the root beer float quite exotic when you are only having one or two spoonfulls), we walked, Fuji leaped into the mud after things she heard or saw (mostly imperceptable to us) and I collected exoskeletons ( you never know when you might need a pristine limulus exoskeleton).We talked to a couple who were wondering if there was a place to swim; they were considering a summer rental on Pleasant Point road. But this part of Welfleet Harbor, Drummer Cove, is very shallow..great for molting limulus and fiddler crabs and shellfish of all kinds, but not so great for washing humans.
Fuji feet were now not only sharp but also covered with marsh mud, and it seemed that Sala had kind of given up on the battle. With Fuji proudly and rendolently rampant on her lap, we forged on to find the Welfleet that I rememberd with some disliking, the downtown Welfleet, comlplete with a residuum of tourists and stores selling T shirts and salt water taffy
.
The North pointing arm of the outer cape is one long beach, beginning down near Chatham and extending all the way up to Ptown. Balslton Beach, where South Pamet now ends, was noisy with Atlantic surf. Probably because of Hurricane Katia about a hundred miles offshore, there was a no swimming advisory, and the water is cold, anyhow. There was a good NE wind blowing, and the combination of big empty beach and moving air is like catnip for our little dog. If we want to play, that's great too, but she's perfectly capable of just racing in circles for the fun of it. And of course, barking at the waves and chasing any available shorebird. Meanwhile, Hopper blue skies and Hopper green grass and yellow sand cliffs..it's all there.
And finally, consulting the iphone to correct course, we were bumping along twisty turney Stevens way, which has probably not changed too much since Edward and Jo Hopper, in a car with better clearance than ours, bumped and swayed this way. We know Edward Hopper liked to paint from his car, and explored the area thoroughly. Some of his views are changed by the regrowth of trees. His house, on the last dune before Massachusetts Bay and overlooking the place where the Pilgrims encountered the Wampanoag, is there. Except I picked the wrong one to take a photograph of..turns out I recognized this house, in a fold of the hills, because he painted it. The studio they built is a bit further along the road. Square, asphalt shingle roof, white walls, facing the sea.
I can see why he came, and came back. Reportedly, he didnt socialize much, but I guess he didnt socialize muich in NY either. And I should know more about Josephine Nivens, his wife, than I do; she was an accomplished painter in her own right. But it's Edward Hopper that holds the stage in my mental museum . Edward Hopper and that amazing light.
Fuji and Sala both slept on the way back. NPR was on the radio. There was very little traffic. Summer is over, I guess. Time for the Hoppers to pack up and head back to NY.
Alan
*( I just had to spend some time with the Gulf Stream on line, and it's more impressive than ever with all the new virtual color maps. Thirty Sverdrups (1 Sverdrup is 30 million cubic meters per second..all of the rivers of the world total 0.6 Sverdrup) of water that flows north from Florida and conditions weather all the way to Scotland. And, not incidentally this time of year, breeds that uniquely American cyclonic storm, sometimes called Hurricane.)
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Day 3 Penikese to Woods Hole
Day 3 Dinoflagelates, docks, and damn good coffee on the way home to
Woods Hole.
9-6-11 1035 Green House. Being in a tubby catboat tied to a dock is very different than the same boat on an anchor line. Among the positives, no rocking and rolling with every passing wavelet, and no worry about dragging and a bad lee shore experience. Among the negatives; changes in wind direction and getting chewed up by the dock. On Saturday night at Penikese, after bluefish, broccoli, and the previously un-noticed dog kibble for dinner in the gathering dark, I set out an anchor to the side of the boat to hold her away from the doc, and we went happily to bed. About a half hour later, the rising tide changed our relationship to the doc, and I got up to change the lines. By 11, the moon was down and the bumping against the doc more insistant. But it was warm and windless, and the waters were twinkling with startlight..and more! With Fuji watching disapprovingly, I went over the side and into that paradise of light that is commonly called phosphoresence. In this case, probably Noctiluca scintillans, the sea sparkle. It's brilliant greenish light in response to water movement means that your hands, feet and,yes, any body part you chose to move, is surrounded by a layer of flashing light. Warm velvet water, halo's of energy, a great reward for being up at odd hours.
About 1 AM the wind came up out of the SE,which meant that Susie P began to have a serious fight with the dock. I set a second anchor, but eventually around 4, had to recognize it was time to move. I used both of the anchor lines, and figured out how to push the boat out and around the end of the dock to hang off the other side..and managed to get it done without losing Susie P or causing serious damage to myself. Time for one more submergence into the sea of sleep, rocked by the sleeping sea. And then the sun was hinting,whispering, calling, speaking, shouting up into the eastern sky, back towards Woods Hole, and it was time to get up. Went for a walk with the little dog, on a leash because of the birds, along the rough mown paths to the old rainwater cistern, to the leprosarium bathhouse, and finally to the north end and the cemetary, where those who died during the 20 years, up to the 1920's, are buried. Back at the boat, we were sitting down to our regular kibble, bacon and eggs breakfast when Chuck, with Deb's two kids, came down to bathe, meaning swing excitingly out on the crane used to life heavy baggage to land from the supply boat, and then let go!. Chuck worked at the Penikese School. He's a chemist become molecular biologist become healer become teacher of delinquent boys. A full sized bearded friendly faced guy guy. Fuji and I walked back through the sunny windy morning with him, and hung out in the main room of the main building while he brewed coffee and Deb made pancakes. Debs day jobs center around body work these days, with a history of social work, along with raising the kids who seem bright and sparkly. Deb has one of those 'light up the whole face' smiles The room, virtually unchanged during my years of visiting, has that patina of a well used group kitchen. A mixture of rules and accepted anarchy. Wooden counters coated with the finish of many hands, many meals, and perhaps a few butts in blue jeans. Photographs, artefacts, and of most interst to me several faded and smoky fish prints in rough frames..one huge flounder, and one small black sea bass. The windows look out towards the North, and you can imagine the remanded boys, city dwellers set down in such a rural spot, watching the sea for the appearance of the supply boat. Eating Deb's pancakes and drinking the damm good coffee, we talk of schools, of drug and alcohol treatment possibilities, of whether the sea is boiling hot, and how the pig died, still without wings. Fuji hopes for more bacon, but its all gone, and time for us to go, too
Hmm, still a double reef day, with the wind now blowing straight back towards Woods Hole. I had thought to sail south through Sow and Pigs shoal and perhaps off towards Nomans, but with this wind that seems difficult. We untie, motor out, head up and hoist our reefed sail, and slam off across the wind on starboard tack towards the Canapitsit channel between Nashawena and Cuttyhunk. Penikese, as the adventure novels relate, disappears in the wake.
Most of the sailboats coming our way are running on motor under bare spars. The few going downwind are flying along on jib only. With the double reef, Susie P chuckles and gurgles and sails herself..I can literally let go of the tiller and she just sails steadily along on a easy beat upwind. We duck in close to Nashawena, come about, and are back across towards Cuttyhunk, and so on and forth until we're rounding up under the lee of Barge Beach. So called because it was constructed out of wooden railway barges towed up from New York and sunk to create a sand trap. Perhaps one day they will rot and the sea will break through and flood Cuttyhunk Pond, but for now its a wonderfully sheltered harbor. We drop the sail, tie it up the the boom, pull up the centerboard and motor towards the channel entrance. A madwoman/merwoman standing on the fore deck of an approaching 32 foot sailboat draws our attention. She's gesticulating, flailing her arms, shouting something. What, give way?? What, rocks ahead? What, cosmic bad hair day? Oh, it's Bronwen, Bronwen from Woods Hole, and she's just to saying hello!!.
Susie P follows 'Remembrance', Simon (and thus Bronwen's) boat up the channel, past the decomissioned lifeboat station, and into the harbor/pond. Most of the $35 a night moorings are taken, some huge motor yachts are backing and filling around the fuel dock, and Labor Day is clearly already in full swing. We put- put around gawking, but no real desire to go ashore. So we raft up with Remembrance, drink chocolate milk and eat cookies, and read some more of Anne Patchett while S and B head into shore to look for breakfast.
Now its after noon, and time to move on. The wind is still out of the southeast, and still pretty strong, but what the heck, we've got two reefs in. So we cast off, motor out, put up the sail and, whoops, are away downwind at a terrific pace. Against the tide and all, we must be making a full 7 knots through the water and about 5 on land. Nashawena, the beach where we have anchored in the past, the beach where the Highland cattle sniffed me awake one morning several years ago, and all the rest of its beautiful rock bound shore glides by. This is almost straight downwind, with surging waves that lift Susie's little haunches and surf her down into the next valley, and the next wave. No real danger, just the thrill of feeling the boat, all tons of her, take off on the back of a wave and act like a surfboard. Fuji does not appreciate my undivided attention on steering, and spends most of her time under the cockpit benchseat, or down in the cabin. We race by Nashawena, across the mouth of Robinsons (waves, but nothing like the day before) past Pasque, and angle a bit upwind to the right towards West End Beach on the end of Naushon.
It's bright sun and some clouds passing, lighting up the white sand beach with its green woodlands rising behind. The wind is about 15 with gusts to 20, and we come into West End beach cautiously under motor. A couple of Tupperware motor boats are anchored on double anchors near the beach, and there's a 2 foot wave running right up to the beach. But we anchor without any problem, and the big Danforth seems to hold agianst the tossing of the boat. We also put out a second anchor, to stop Susie P from swinging around on the main anchor, and after waitig ot be sure, load Fuji into the Diaper Rash and row for shore. The people from the two boats are one extended family, and no wusses either. In the continuing wind, they are broiling hamburgers and offering beer. Their black lab is happy to see us. Labs are so rewarding that way. Fuji wants to play chase, excited by the moving air. But the lab is a little old for chasing. Instead, Fuji goes wild in the little fresh water stream that has helped create this beach. Tiny troutlets in the water. Wrack and weeds from Irene's recent incursion. Spartina and other grasses, and behind it all the endless green of catbriar and poison ivy.We share a beer with the uncles and cousins, and then get our butts a little wet inthe shore break getting into the Diaper Rash to row back out to Susie P. Once there, we feast on ham and turkey sandwiches, and some more Ann Patchett. She's left Manaus now, and with the mysterious scientist are heading for what sounds like a New World version of Heart of Darkness. I know its not gonna be Platoon or Apocalypse Now, because Sala doesnt finish books like that, walks out of the movies, too.
Now its coming on 5 PM and the picnic group is rounding up coolers and kids, getting them out to the Tupperwares, starting motors, and pulling anchors. I think about spending the night here, which had been Plan A, But with the low tide, aobut 3 feet of water under us, the wind shows no sign of abating, and the 2 foot waves are starting to break before they get to us. I imagine the night ahead, the darkness, the pitching and rolling, and the worry about the anchor dragging, the sickening noises Susie P's hull will make as it grinds on the rocks. Nope, time to move on.
Two reefs are still best, and sure enough, we whirl out of the shallow bay and are careening North once agian, this time towards Kettle Cove, the next anchorage. It's only a few moments away at this speed, and clearly has the same size waves crashing on its white sand beach. Hmmm...well, two hours of light left, and perhaps it will be better in the lee of Wee Peckets. So we move on, big swoops and swooshes, constant noise of water moving, of the propellor of the motor spinning in neutral, of the breaking waves around us. The wind is if anything a little higher, and so I scandalize the sail...which means slacking the top halyard to decrease the efficiency of the sail even more. That seems to work, now I can hold a course towards Wee Peckets, whereas a few moments ago, the boat would come down a wave and fight against the rudder to head off the wind and to the right, towards the shore.
About a mile north of the passage between Wee Peckets and Naushon, the wind suddenly shifts to the SW, and I have to change tacks. Rather than jibing at this speed with this kind of following wave, I decide to come about. Whoa, that was exciting...big noises of rattling pulleys and other gear, big wallowing and rolling, and an exciting armount of flying spray as we head back out for sea room before coming about again to resume our trip. This is a little like doing a right and two lefts to negotiate a no left turn, but seems safer. And soon we are through the channel, and come about again to head left over to the downwind of Wee Peckets.
Wee Peckets is really three islands, and now a breeding ground for gulls. Once it was the main target for bombing practice for war planes flying out of Otis Airr base, which is now a military reservation. .Sometimes on a South wind there is a good lee onthe North of the main island, But not today. A 60 foot square rigger is sitting in the only real out of the wind spot. And so I imagine the night...fear of collisions added to fear of anchor dragging...about 45 minutes of daylight...and hoist sail again, to head on downwind towards the only really safe harbor for miles...Woods Hole!!
So we came flying along past Uncatena, upwind slightly to catch the current that I was convinced would be there to sweep us through the Hole and into Great Harbor.
Ooops!, Little miscalculation. The current had turned an hour earlier, and is ebbing, thus AGAINST us.
Well, nothing to lose. If we can't make it, we can always run down to Quissett, and perhaps tie up next to John's boat 'Limulus' for the night. But we might as well try.
That big wind pushed us right along into the Hole,and once there,I turned up the little engine, and we were making it. Big swirls and boils, but all familiar from early morning fishing trips. Now the current is a little stronger, and we are just about holding steady. And is the wind shifting further west? Are we gonna suddenly jibe, lose power, and start going backwards?
At that point, a strange sound., a little like the jangle of a bicycle hand bell. From behind us. I turn to look, and whoa, about 20 feet away, dead slow and right behind us, her two hulls looming on either sides of a tunnel that looks ready to swallow us up, is the Fast Ferry Catamaran!! That sorta friendly alert noise is the alternative to their air horn, which is definitly capable of causing heart attacks when heard in this situation.
The guy on the side of the wheelhouse of the Fast Ferry holds both arms out, hands up, clearly asking me what I am doing. I wave, point ot the sail, hold my own hands up; sorry, doing the best I can.
It took a very very long 5 minutes to make headway, avoid a jibe, and ease over to let the Fast Ferry by. As it did so, and gathered speed again working up to its usual blindingly fast 30 mph or so, an amplified voice said said 'Nice sailing'. Best news I have ever received from an electronic voice.
And so we got through the Hole, jibed and ran into Great Harbor, headed up, took down the sail, motored to the mooring and in the fading light, now overcast with clouds that adumbrated rain, called Sala with the last of the cell phone to say we had finished our cruise to Penikese.
Alan
Woods Hole.
9-6-11 1035 Green House. Being in a tubby catboat tied to a dock is very different than the same boat on an anchor line. Among the positives, no rocking and rolling with every passing wavelet, and no worry about dragging and a bad lee shore experience. Among the negatives; changes in wind direction and getting chewed up by the dock. On Saturday night at Penikese, after bluefish, broccoli, and the previously un-noticed dog kibble for dinner in the gathering dark, I set out an anchor to the side of the boat to hold her away from the doc, and we went happily to bed. About a half hour later, the rising tide changed our relationship to the doc, and I got up to change the lines. By 11, the moon was down and the bumping against the doc more insistant. But it was warm and windless, and the waters were twinkling with startlight..and more! With Fuji watching disapprovingly, I went over the side and into that paradise of light that is commonly called phosphoresence. In this case, probably Noctiluca scintillans, the sea sparkle. It's brilliant greenish light in response to water movement means that your hands, feet and,yes, any body part you chose to move, is surrounded by a layer of flashing light. Warm velvet water, halo's of energy, a great reward for being up at odd hours.
About 1 AM the wind came up out of the SE,which meant that Susie P began to have a serious fight with the dock. I set a second anchor, but eventually around 4, had to recognize it was time to move. I used both of the anchor lines, and figured out how to push the boat out and around the end of the dock to hang off the other side..and managed to get it done without losing Susie P or causing serious damage to myself. Time for one more submergence into the sea of sleep, rocked by the sleeping sea. And then the sun was hinting,whispering, calling, speaking, shouting up into the eastern sky, back towards Woods Hole, and it was time to get up. Went for a walk with the little dog, on a leash because of the birds, along the rough mown paths to the old rainwater cistern, to the leprosarium bathhouse, and finally to the north end and the cemetary, where those who died during the 20 years, up to the 1920's, are buried. Back at the boat, we were sitting down to our regular kibble, bacon and eggs breakfast when Chuck, with Deb's two kids, came down to bathe, meaning swing excitingly out on the crane used to life heavy baggage to land from the supply boat, and then let go!. Chuck worked at the Penikese School. He's a chemist become molecular biologist become healer become teacher of delinquent boys. A full sized bearded friendly faced guy guy. Fuji and I walked back through the sunny windy morning with him, and hung out in the main room of the main building while he brewed coffee and Deb made pancakes. Debs day jobs center around body work these days, with a history of social work, along with raising the kids who seem bright and sparkly. Deb has one of those 'light up the whole face' smiles The room, virtually unchanged during my years of visiting, has that patina of a well used group kitchen. A mixture of rules and accepted anarchy. Wooden counters coated with the finish of many hands, many meals, and perhaps a few butts in blue jeans. Photographs, artefacts, and of most interst to me several faded and smoky fish prints in rough frames..one huge flounder, and one small black sea bass. The windows look out towards the North, and you can imagine the remanded boys, city dwellers set down in such a rural spot, watching the sea for the appearance of the supply boat. Eating Deb's pancakes and drinking the damm good coffee, we talk of schools, of drug and alcohol treatment possibilities, of whether the sea is boiling hot, and how the pig died, still without wings. Fuji hopes for more bacon, but its all gone, and time for us to go, too
Hmm, still a double reef day, with the wind now blowing straight back towards Woods Hole. I had thought to sail south through Sow and Pigs shoal and perhaps off towards Nomans, but with this wind that seems difficult. We untie, motor out, head up and hoist our reefed sail, and slam off across the wind on starboard tack towards the Canapitsit channel between Nashawena and Cuttyhunk. Penikese, as the adventure novels relate, disappears in the wake.
Most of the sailboats coming our way are running on motor under bare spars. The few going downwind are flying along on jib only. With the double reef, Susie P chuckles and gurgles and sails herself..I can literally let go of the tiller and she just sails steadily along on a easy beat upwind. We duck in close to Nashawena, come about, and are back across towards Cuttyhunk, and so on and forth until we're rounding up under the lee of Barge Beach. So called because it was constructed out of wooden railway barges towed up from New York and sunk to create a sand trap. Perhaps one day they will rot and the sea will break through and flood Cuttyhunk Pond, but for now its a wonderfully sheltered harbor. We drop the sail, tie it up the the boom, pull up the centerboard and motor towards the channel entrance. A madwoman/merwoman standing on the fore deck of an approaching 32 foot sailboat draws our attention. She's gesticulating, flailing her arms, shouting something. What, give way?? What, rocks ahead? What, cosmic bad hair day? Oh, it's Bronwen, Bronwen from Woods Hole, and she's just to saying hello!!.
Susie P follows 'Remembrance', Simon (and thus Bronwen's) boat up the channel, past the decomissioned lifeboat station, and into the harbor/pond. Most of the $35 a night moorings are taken, some huge motor yachts are backing and filling around the fuel dock, and Labor Day is clearly already in full swing. We put- put around gawking, but no real desire to go ashore. So we raft up with Remembrance, drink chocolate milk and eat cookies, and read some more of Anne Patchett while S and B head into shore to look for breakfast.
Now its after noon, and time to move on. The wind is still out of the southeast, and still pretty strong, but what the heck, we've got two reefs in. So we cast off, motor out, put up the sail and, whoops, are away downwind at a terrific pace. Against the tide and all, we must be making a full 7 knots through the water and about 5 on land. Nashawena, the beach where we have anchored in the past, the beach where the Highland cattle sniffed me awake one morning several years ago, and all the rest of its beautiful rock bound shore glides by. This is almost straight downwind, with surging waves that lift Susie's little haunches and surf her down into the next valley, and the next wave. No real danger, just the thrill of feeling the boat, all tons of her, take off on the back of a wave and act like a surfboard. Fuji does not appreciate my undivided attention on steering, and spends most of her time under the cockpit benchseat, or down in the cabin. We race by Nashawena, across the mouth of Robinsons (waves, but nothing like the day before) past Pasque, and angle a bit upwind to the right towards West End Beach on the end of Naushon.
It's bright sun and some clouds passing, lighting up the white sand beach with its green woodlands rising behind. The wind is about 15 with gusts to 20, and we come into West End beach cautiously under motor. A couple of Tupperware motor boats are anchored on double anchors near the beach, and there's a 2 foot wave running right up to the beach. But we anchor without any problem, and the big Danforth seems to hold agianst the tossing of the boat. We also put out a second anchor, to stop Susie P from swinging around on the main anchor, and after waitig ot be sure, load Fuji into the Diaper Rash and row for shore. The people from the two boats are one extended family, and no wusses either. In the continuing wind, they are broiling hamburgers and offering beer. Their black lab is happy to see us. Labs are so rewarding that way. Fuji wants to play chase, excited by the moving air. But the lab is a little old for chasing. Instead, Fuji goes wild in the little fresh water stream that has helped create this beach. Tiny troutlets in the water. Wrack and weeds from Irene's recent incursion. Spartina and other grasses, and behind it all the endless green of catbriar and poison ivy.We share a beer with the uncles and cousins, and then get our butts a little wet inthe shore break getting into the Diaper Rash to row back out to Susie P. Once there, we feast on ham and turkey sandwiches, and some more Ann Patchett. She's left Manaus now, and with the mysterious scientist are heading for what sounds like a New World version of Heart of Darkness. I know its not gonna be Platoon or Apocalypse Now, because Sala doesnt finish books like that, walks out of the movies, too.
Now its coming on 5 PM and the picnic group is rounding up coolers and kids, getting them out to the Tupperwares, starting motors, and pulling anchors. I think about spending the night here, which had been Plan A, But with the low tide, aobut 3 feet of water under us, the wind shows no sign of abating, and the 2 foot waves are starting to break before they get to us. I imagine the night ahead, the darkness, the pitching and rolling, and the worry about the anchor dragging, the sickening noises Susie P's hull will make as it grinds on the rocks. Nope, time to move on.
Two reefs are still best, and sure enough, we whirl out of the shallow bay and are careening North once agian, this time towards Kettle Cove, the next anchorage. It's only a few moments away at this speed, and clearly has the same size waves crashing on its white sand beach. Hmmm...well, two hours of light left, and perhaps it will be better in the lee of Wee Peckets. So we move on, big swoops and swooshes, constant noise of water moving, of the propellor of the motor spinning in neutral, of the breaking waves around us. The wind is if anything a little higher, and so I scandalize the sail...which means slacking the top halyard to decrease the efficiency of the sail even more. That seems to work, now I can hold a course towards Wee Peckets, whereas a few moments ago, the boat would come down a wave and fight against the rudder to head off the wind and to the right, towards the shore.
About a mile north of the passage between Wee Peckets and Naushon, the wind suddenly shifts to the SW, and I have to change tacks. Rather than jibing at this speed with this kind of following wave, I decide to come about. Whoa, that was exciting...big noises of rattling pulleys and other gear, big wallowing and rolling, and an exciting armount of flying spray as we head back out for sea room before coming about again to resume our trip. This is a little like doing a right and two lefts to negotiate a no left turn, but seems safer. And soon we are through the channel, and come about again to head left over to the downwind of Wee Peckets.
Wee Peckets is really three islands, and now a breeding ground for gulls. Once it was the main target for bombing practice for war planes flying out of Otis Airr base, which is now a military reservation. .Sometimes on a South wind there is a good lee onthe North of the main island, But not today. A 60 foot square rigger is sitting in the only real out of the wind spot. And so I imagine the night...fear of collisions added to fear of anchor dragging...about 45 minutes of daylight...and hoist sail again, to head on downwind towards the only really safe harbor for miles...Woods Hole!!
So we came flying along past Uncatena, upwind slightly to catch the current that I was convinced would be there to sweep us through the Hole and into Great Harbor.
Ooops!, Little miscalculation. The current had turned an hour earlier, and is ebbing, thus AGAINST us.
Well, nothing to lose. If we can't make it, we can always run down to Quissett, and perhaps tie up next to John's boat 'Limulus' for the night. But we might as well try.
That big wind pushed us right along into the Hole,and once there,I turned up the little engine, and we were making it. Big swirls and boils, but all familiar from early morning fishing trips. Now the current is a little stronger, and we are just about holding steady. And is the wind shifting further west? Are we gonna suddenly jibe, lose power, and start going backwards?
At that point, a strange sound., a little like the jangle of a bicycle hand bell. From behind us. I turn to look, and whoa, about 20 feet away, dead slow and right behind us, her two hulls looming on either sides of a tunnel that looks ready to swallow us up, is the Fast Ferry Catamaran!! That sorta friendly alert noise is the alternative to their air horn, which is definitly capable of causing heart attacks when heard in this situation.
The guy on the side of the wheelhouse of the Fast Ferry holds both arms out, hands up, clearly asking me what I am doing. I wave, point ot the sail, hold my own hands up; sorry, doing the best I can.
It took a very very long 5 minutes to make headway, avoid a jibe, and ease over to let the Fast Ferry by. As it did so, and gathered speed again working up to its usual blindingly fast 30 mph or so, an amplified voice said said 'Nice sailing'. Best news I have ever received from an electronic voice.
And so we got through the Hole, jibed and ran into Great Harbor, headed up, took down the sail, motored to the mooring and in the fading light, now overcast with clouds that adumbrated rain, called Sala with the last of the cell phone to say we had finished our cruise to Penikese.
Alan
Day 2 Tarpaulin Cove to Penikese
Subject: Day 2: Penikese by way of Vineyard Sound and Quicks Hole
9-5-11 0710 Woods Hole, The Green House. Well, Fuji and I clambered into the starboard berth of Susie P's cabin at about 8:30 PM last Thursday. Fuji had been taking refuge there many times during the day, curling up on top of the poupourri of clothes and sleeping bag. We both settled in with a sign of expected relief. Well, and also after 400 mg of ibuprofen in my case; otherwise the the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and living to be 70 otherwise wake me up too often. The annoying ringing noise that halyard ropes running up the mast otherwise make was stilled by tie-offs to the forestay. The worst of the squarking that the rudder makes was abated by other tie-offs for the tiller. The sail was stopped to the mast by sail ties. The metal centerboard hoisted up into it's well, to diminish its dull clanking. And the growing night was gorgeous; the big dipper visible through the open hatchway, and when the boat swung on the anchor, the milky way just coming into view. A very small and mousily tentative new moon making its and discrete visit in the southwestern sky. The lighthouses...nearby on the high point, beyond at Gay Head (now called Acquinnah), and on East Chop at the other end of the island all visible, along with assorted lighted navigation aids winking frostily out in the Sound. The lapping of little waves on the shore 25 yards away. Perfect.
Actually, Susie P rocks vigorously from side to side in a not quite regular series of lurches. This happens in the very slightest of oncoming waves. This isnt a lulling soothing movement, it's more like a seatmate who is large and afflicted with sleep apnea, so that every breathing movement and breath holding event causes a lurching shove against your shoulder. And of course, with the lurches comes some amount of squeeking squarking banging clunking noise from the various tied off but still not silent rigging. And of course, after a few rounds of this, a bigger wave train comes along and sets off an even bigger set of lurches, enough to dislodge me slightly from the thinnnish foam mattress that felt so soft a few minutes ago, and cause me to join the lurching.
How did I forget about this? How am I going to get any sleep? I get it, the physics of this; the mast up in the air and not stabilized by air pressure on the sail makes a counterweight to the round tubby bottom of the boat...a pendulum mechanism, with all the moments of inertia we learned about in HS physics. If the boat was facing perfectly into the waves, it would be different, but that's not possible. Now the stars are becoming sparkly annoyances and the moon: way to bright!! The wave noise has an annoying slapping quality. And Fuji's modest body weight on my feet is unbearable.
Well, I thought of chemical solutions; yes doctor, you do have the pain pills and the sleepers in that little bottle. And then it occurred to me that this was perhaps just the right time to practice being in the moment. When I had trouble with monkey mind while trying to sit, I found it much easier to let my thoughts go while running. As if the physical challenge of that coordinated series of jumps we call a run was just enough more demanding to attach my attention to the moment more securely than possible in the relative comfort of sitting. In any case, instead of trying to escape, I tried joining the whole event, clanks,clunks, lurches, squeals, and starting over again, tried not expecting an end, just being there. And of course, was asleep within minutes.
I woke, but without rancor, about every hour. To pee,to drink, to check the anchor, to look at the stars, to appreciate the navigation lights, and to feel the gentle and slightly cool touch of the night breeze. And the rocking and rolling continued, and became a part of whatever dreams I had, and when the light came up in the East over the headland to the North of Tarpaulin, I felt well rested and able to give Fuji her morning scratch with a clear head.
When I first got Susie P I bought an alchohol stove on EBay. Propane is not well thought of by most boaters, because if it gets loose it flows to the bottom of the boat and explodes, whereas alcohol vapor rises. The stove is cheerily noisy, once you finish the dangerous ritual of flooding in a little puddle of alcohol and making that loud 'WHUFF!' as it lights. Unfortunately, it makes a very similar noise when it has blown out and is just flooding again. Luckily the flame does not create a black ash, as gasoline does, so my flaring mistakes didn't leave any permanent scars. I made tea, and then took Fuji back on shore for her morning run.
The beach was all firm clean smooth sand from the high tide during the night, with just enough sprinkling of shells. Crepidula fornicata, the boat shell that deputizes one male in the whole family of females...the smallest one on the end. Pecten sp, the small Bay Scallop...delicious but oh so many for a mouthful. Calinectes..or at least bits of blue crab shell washed up by the storm. And jingle shells, anomia simplex, sometimes called mermaids toenails, all shades of butter yellow and metalic orange. And at the far end, wads and windrows and hills and mountains of dead, brown, blown ashore eel grass. The best compost ever, and nary a garden for miles! Fuji treated it like snow, leaping and porpoising through it, snorting and snapping at it. And mixed in, the limulus polyphemus exoskeletons, with their complex and ancient spines and smooth roundnesses, and the beautiful polyhedrons pseudopupils of their complex spider eyes.
Well, the wind was still out of the Northwest, and made me think about a second reef. This makes the sail about half its usual 250 square feet. But I could see white capped waves all over the Sound, and I remembered the three laws. We had bacon and eggs for breakfast, mixed with some kibble for Fuji and some toast for me. Ran the mental checklist for leaving, put away the loose stuff below, and puttered out to put up the sail. The sail immediately filled, the engine was stopped, and we swooped out of Tarpaulin, headed out across the Sound again. It was blue and sparkling, a solid wind to push us against the flooding current heading Northeast. This time, I could tie down the tiller and let Susie P sail heself, and so made some headway in "State of Wonder", recommended by Sala and by it's setting: I visited Manaus in 1967, and have my own memories of the smell of the meat market, and the black vultures perched like gargoyles on the wraught iron posts overhead. And our research location was, like the memorable Doctor in Anne Patchetts book, on the Rio Negro...only quite a bit further out..it took 3 days for the boat to get back to Manaus when we left our station.
We passed over middle ground and Hey!, Presto!!, another bluefish. By this time Fuji is an old hand at fishing from the sail boat, saving her barks for when the fish is actually in the dinghy. And the whole process of making fillets on the beach, which gives her a chance to run has worked out well. Washed out the Diaper Rash ( it's about as big as a bathtub), and decided to head back across the Sound to Naushon. Still sailing against the tide,but even with the double reef, Susie P made good time, and we came up on Robinson's Hole by about noon. Not as many other boats as I would have expected for t he start of Labor Day..presumably Irene disrupted some plans. The current was still running strongly against us at Robinsons,which is the Hole between Naushon and the next island, Pasque. It's pretty narrow,and no possiblity of us sailing through until the change, which was due in about 2 hours. So we sailed on in the Sound, along the East Shore of Pasque. It was time for Fuji to be ashore for a while, and with the wind still out of the North, there was a nice looking little bay, albeit with a rocky shore. As we got closer, I could see large erratics, the boulders left by the Laurentian Glaciation, appearing as vague blue brown shapes under the clear water. But Susie P draws only 21 inches with her centerboad up, so we anchored without diffiiculty.
It was hot, and the wind blowing over the land was gentle here. However,it was plenty enough to catch the Diaper Rash and start it moving away from Susie P's stern when I accidentally dropped the tow line. In fact, in the several seconds since I realized what I had done, the little dinghy, light as an eggshell, was picking up speed and already beyond reach.
This probably makes the 3rd or 4th rendition of this little puzzle. Do you jump after the boat...or figure out how to retrieve by other means? The last performance, in the Pacific off Muir Beach, I had bailed out of my kayak, towed it to a nearby rock, poured the water out, set it down rightside up, and thought I had hold of the bow line when I turned away to size up the situation. By the time I turned back, the kayak was on its way towards the Farralones, and moving faster than I thought I could swim. That time, it took several hours to recover the boat, which had drifted beyond sight. This time, I suppose I thought about how longit would take to get the anchor up, and what a hassle that would be, and whether the boat would lodge in some downwind rocks, etc, but in real time, I jammed both hands into the pockets of my shorts, pulled them out holding whatever I could grab, dropped it on the seat, and dove in, hat, sunnies, and all. Worked fine, and after I had swum the dinghy back and fastened it to the Susie P (with Fuji looking on and wagging her tail, assuming this was some new game whose point might or might not ever be evident), I discovered that it was possible, as I had hoped, to squirm in over the stern of the dinghy without totally swamping the boat, and thus get enough of a platform to get back in the Susie P.
Imagine these people who sail single handed around the world. Every day must have many such little puzzles, any one of which could come to grief. There is no changing channels. No one has inspected the roller coaster. There is no one to sue if the ride goes awry.. I guess thats why I generally avoid amusement parks and like being outdoors alone. 'Because it is there', as I believe Mallory said. There is no there there in an amusement park, or a water slide.
Refreshed by the swimming, and the exploration of the foreshore of Pasque, we returned to the Susie P. The hurricane had herded all the wrecked lobster pots, longline bouys, and assorted flipflops and beer cans into an absolute battlement of wrack and ruin, and there was plenty to look at,and smell if you have a Fuji level smeller. About 10 beaches south on Pasque, we passed the beach where I was more of less driven ashore in my kayak several years ago, blinded by fog and beset by rolling waves coming in past Nomans Land from the open Atlantic. This time, on the lee side with a wind that was still pretty much out of the Northeast, the beach looked hot and a little desolate. And it was 3:30, the current had turned, and was ebbing out through the larger Hole between Pasque and Nashawena, known as Quick's Hole.
Quick's Hole is nice and wide, and mostly East/West. The wind seemed to have shifted a little West, but it should sitll be possible to make a single starboard tack (wind coming from the right side of the boat, remember?) and with the current behind us, shoot right through. I headed for the space between the red and green channel markers, just like the book says. And then I looked up ahead. The horizon was no longer flat. Stretching across most of the space between the islands, the line between sea and the distant blue hazed land of Rhode Island had become a jagged band of white.
Now sometimes a line like that means just a bunch of 6 inch wavelets. Sometimes it's a very shallow reef. Depends on the current, the wind. But in this case, and seen at a half mile distance, it probably meant that there was a pretty big tide rip with current opposing wind, waiting for us at the end of Quicks Hole. That's about 6 minutes at our combined water and wind speed. And short tubby boats are not the best conveyance to take into a tide rip.
However, this was a catboat situation. Catboats originated in Buzzards Bay, the body of water we were approaching. Susie P would do fine, as long as I didnt do something stupid. Hmm, about 3 minutes now...smooth sailing as we zipped past the foaming and gurgling red channel marker on our right. Fuji, perhaps sensing something, retired to the cabin and made a bed in my sweatshirt. In another few hundred yards, we came out of the lee of Pasque, now to the North and fading East, and got a taste of what the North wind had been up to as it came those miles down Buzzards Bay. The waves ahead were making that kind of ripping noise I associate with big rapids. And it seemed that the wind has shifted a few more degrees to the West, giving us even less power. The logical thing to do is called 'heading off' (which I know form experience means nothing to intelligent non sailors like Sala when I scream it without explanation..I mean heading the boat more downwind, to pick up more wind on the sail). But that meant heading to the left, and right there, edging closer, was the shore of Nashawena, complete with a giant erratic boulder, big as a house, reaching out ahead of us. We couldn't head off.
Those of you who read nautical books,or sail yourselves, will recognize what was happening as yet another version of a 'lee shore' experience. It happens when you are close to land, and the wind is driving you ever closer. Without sufficient speed, or space to turn and gather speed, you cannot bring the boat about. For example :
"In 1898, the four masted schooner, Lunet, loaded with coal, anchored here (in Tarpaulin Cove) to wait out a Southwesterly gale. The next day, the winds changed direction to Northeasterly, and the hurricane force winds were accompanied by a blinding blizzard. Unable to escape, and now on a lee shore, Lunet was lost when her anchor parted and she sank in 60 feet of water with all 200 persons onboard. It was one of the worst disasters in New England shipping history." (http://www.setauketyc.com/CruiseGuide/tarpaulincove/index.htm )
And then we hit the waves. Hmm, bigger than I thought. Oh well, I can start the engine. Meanwhile, Susie P has started a combination of pitching up and pounding down, which is what 18 foot boats do when they encounter a 6 foot chop. As I finally got the engine running, there is a loud noise from down in the cabin; the cooler has leaped off its bench and was down on the deck. Thankfully, it is also wedged semi shut, so the color of the water flooding out isn'tcolored milk mixed with fishblood , at least not yet. From the security of her nest, Fuji looks wistful, perhaps wishing me well. Nah, dog's don't worry about lee shores. Meanwhile, the engine, trying hard, is alternately racing and bogging, as the propellor lifted out of the water or the boat pitched out of the trought between waves. The sail is making those machine gun snapping noises that sails make in high wind conditions trying to sail too close hauled.
Hmm, indeed!!
Of such situations are religious converts made. With the combination of motor and sail, Susie P maintained just enough seaway to stay clear of the lee shore, and make it out through the tide rip to the relatively safe yet white capped rollers of Buzzards Bay. Clear of the North tip of Nashawena and it's waiting boulders, we were able to head off a bit, and pick up speed. A few minutes more, engine no longer needed, we were rolling down wind towards our destination, Penikese Island.
Penikese lies to the West off Cuttyhunk Island, which is the Southern most of the Elizabeths. You can read about its history as a leprosarium,and about the New York sporting bankers and their Cuttyhunk Fishing Club. Both are public land, and their own county ( Gosnold). Nashawena is Forbes owned, with some beautiful houses and a very protected little bay about half way along (visitors not really welcome). A fair number of reddish shaggy Highland cattle,and even some sheep I think. It's the same grey to reddish granite rocks and sloping green covered un farmed land that I find so attractive all along these islands. We jammed along, downwind and down waves now, and steering again required constant attention to avoid jibing. Jibing is where rather than turning into the wind and through it, to sail the other direction upwind, you turn further downwind and then try to bring the sail gently around before the wind, now from the other side of the boat, blows the boom violently around and bonks someone on the head or shakes the mast loose when it hits the end of its travel. It's easier to avoid unintentional jibes with a reefed sail, which ours was. Thank you, three laws of catboat sailing!
About half mile offshore between Penikese and the end of Nashawena lies Gull Island, really just a bunch of rocks and sand washed by the tide, Once on a long ago kayak trip I tried to stay there, and was evicted by the constant noise and smell of the seagulls. The sandbar is where wailing seals haul out to get warm...I think I mentioned that in a dispatch several years ago. The official channel into Cuttyhunk lies to the Northeast of Gull Island. I wanted to go the more direct route, between Gull and Penikese, Hmm, the old chart has several "x" marks, which means single rocks. But I should be able to see those within three feet of the surface, so with the centerboard up, I should be fine.
Well, when you have two foot waves at low tide, it means that a barely seen rock at peak of a wave becomes a sure thing direct hit at the trough, Plus I had not counted on the sun, reflecting off the water as it began to set in the Southwest, directly ahead. Actually, when I hit the rock, the centerboard was down about 6 inches, but slanted backwards, so it was just a loud clunk. A heart attack clunk! I pulled the board the rest of the way up,and then jumped up onto the seat,trying to keep us on course with one foot on the tiller, Nothing dead ahead; ominous blue brown shapes underwater to both sides. And a lobster pot dead ahead. No problem, we'll just sail over it. Wait a moment, whats a lobster pot doing here? Quick course correction, and then, way too late to have avoided it, the rock that was marked by the informal lobster pot bouy went boiling by on the left, and ahead the water looked clear and blue green.
We rounded up into the little semi protected harbor at Penikese, Two kids were playing with plastic floaties on the pier used by the boat that brings supplies to the Penikese School, which has operated as an alternative to prison for juvenile boys over the past several decades. I had heard it had closed for lack of funding, and that volunteers were 'island sitting' to maintain a watch over the facilities. My plan was to anchor up in the shallows of the harbor. With the sail down, we puttered around for a few minutes, but the entire upper harbor was a weedbed of eelgrass. The kind of anchor I have ( a Danforth) is a beautiful design for sand or gravel, but slips right through weeds. The kids, and a bearded adult, had left the pier by now, and so I changed plans, and puttered in to the dock. With the north wind blowing, Susie P hung nicely clear of the dock on a bow and stern line, and Fuji gladly leaped ashore, ready to chase anything in sight.
Actually, Penikese is public land and a bird sanctuary; the school has some caretaker arrangement with the state and Audubon. It's a nesting spot for roseate terns and a special shearwater that returns to one specific wall near the main building every year, So...no free ranging birc chasing attidogs. We climbed over the tangle of weed and lobster pots deposited by Irene, marveling at the disappearance of most of the sandy beach since we were here last year. The small roads, suitable for tractor or ATV's only, are very familiar. I came here first after the last private enterprise lobster and farming scheme had failed, and before the school was begun. During the school years, I went inside only once, for some minor medical issue one of the boys had, This time, Chuck was out on the porch tending to the grill, and Deb emerged a few moments later. They and Deb's kids were there for 4 days island sitting. No other boats were expected, and it was fine with them if I tied up to the dock for the night. At about that time, two guinea fowl came around the corner of a shed and noticed Fuji about the same time as she noticed them. They had been quietly discussing the weather and the state of the universe, but noticing Fuji broke into that gratingly shriekingly loud cxpletive amazement that guinea fowl specialize in. Fuji, hampered by the leash, was unable to deal with this noise as she wanted to. In fact, we took it as a good time to go back to the Susie P.
Take one cold bluefish fillet, and slice the meat thin, discarding the skin as biodegradable, while braising broccoli florets in white wine diluted with water and flavored with salt and pepper. When the broccoli is al dente, remove into the only bowl., having forgotten most of the kitchen and eating ware back at home. Reserve the reduction sauce in the green plastic cup, which probably contained the last of the morning tea. Add butter to the pan, get the durned alcohol stove going again, wait for the fireball of extra alchohol to abate, and then fry the bluefish slices for a few seconds on each side, add back the reduction, cook for enough time to fill Fuji's bowl with the kibble she doesnt like but will eat if hungry enough, and then put on the water for tea, take the cooling pan of fish and added broccoli back up to the cockpit bench. Feel the fading North wind coming across the tip of the island. Smells of seaweed, iodinated and tangy. Take a gander at them stars emerging, at the glow over the island to the Wes, at the shy new moon quietly asserting it's presence over the lights of Gosnold town on Cuttyhunkt. Lookie at them clouds, definitly animals tonight, and scooting right along towards the Vineyard and Nantucket beyond. Listen to the wavelets providing backup for the crickets in the catbrier and bayberry tangles at the base of the pier. And most of all, do NOT worry about the anchor! Eat and enjoy.
Tomorrow, swimming with diatoms, how to move an 18 foot boat at 4 AM, breakfast with Chuck, and reflections on relationhip, all on the way home.
Alan
9-5-11 0710 Woods Hole, The Green House. Well, Fuji and I clambered into the starboard berth of Susie P's cabin at about 8:30 PM last Thursday. Fuji had been taking refuge there many times during the day, curling up on top of the poupourri of clothes and sleeping bag. We both settled in with a sign of expected relief. Well, and also after 400 mg of ibuprofen in my case; otherwise the the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and living to be 70 otherwise wake me up too often. The annoying ringing noise that halyard ropes running up the mast otherwise make was stilled by tie-offs to the forestay. The worst of the squarking that the rudder makes was abated by other tie-offs for the tiller. The sail was stopped to the mast by sail ties. The metal centerboard hoisted up into it's well, to diminish its dull clanking. And the growing night was gorgeous; the big dipper visible through the open hatchway, and when the boat swung on the anchor, the milky way just coming into view. A very small and mousily tentative new moon making its and discrete visit in the southwestern sky. The lighthouses...nearby on the high point, beyond at Gay Head (now called Acquinnah), and on East Chop at the other end of the island all visible, along with assorted lighted navigation aids winking frostily out in the Sound. The lapping of little waves on the shore 25 yards away. Perfect.
Actually, Susie P rocks vigorously from side to side in a not quite regular series of lurches. This happens in the very slightest of oncoming waves. This isnt a lulling soothing movement, it's more like a seatmate who is large and afflicted with sleep apnea, so that every breathing movement and breath holding event causes a lurching shove against your shoulder. And of course, with the lurches comes some amount of squeeking squarking banging clunking noise from the various tied off but still not silent rigging. And of course, after a few rounds of this, a bigger wave train comes along and sets off an even bigger set of lurches, enough to dislodge me slightly from the thinnnish foam mattress that felt so soft a few minutes ago, and cause me to join the lurching.
How did I forget about this? How am I going to get any sleep? I get it, the physics of this; the mast up in the air and not stabilized by air pressure on the sail makes a counterweight to the round tubby bottom of the boat...a pendulum mechanism, with all the moments of inertia we learned about in HS physics. If the boat was facing perfectly into the waves, it would be different, but that's not possible. Now the stars are becoming sparkly annoyances and the moon: way to bright!! The wave noise has an annoying slapping quality. And Fuji's modest body weight on my feet is unbearable.
Well, I thought of chemical solutions; yes doctor, you do have the pain pills and the sleepers in that little bottle. And then it occurred to me that this was perhaps just the right time to practice being in the moment. When I had trouble with monkey mind while trying to sit, I found it much easier to let my thoughts go while running. As if the physical challenge of that coordinated series of jumps we call a run was just enough more demanding to attach my attention to the moment more securely than possible in the relative comfort of sitting. In any case, instead of trying to escape, I tried joining the whole event, clanks,clunks, lurches, squeals, and starting over again, tried not expecting an end, just being there. And of course, was asleep within minutes.
I woke, but without rancor, about every hour. To pee,to drink, to check the anchor, to look at the stars, to appreciate the navigation lights, and to feel the gentle and slightly cool touch of the night breeze. And the rocking and rolling continued, and became a part of whatever dreams I had, and when the light came up in the East over the headland to the North of Tarpaulin, I felt well rested and able to give Fuji her morning scratch with a clear head.
When I first got Susie P I bought an alchohol stove on EBay. Propane is not well thought of by most boaters, because if it gets loose it flows to the bottom of the boat and explodes, whereas alcohol vapor rises. The stove is cheerily noisy, once you finish the dangerous ritual of flooding in a little puddle of alcohol and making that loud 'WHUFF!' as it lights. Unfortunately, it makes a very similar noise when it has blown out and is just flooding again. Luckily the flame does not create a black ash, as gasoline does, so my flaring mistakes didn't leave any permanent scars. I made tea, and then took Fuji back on shore for her morning run.
The beach was all firm clean smooth sand from the high tide during the night, with just enough sprinkling of shells. Crepidula fornicata, the boat shell that deputizes one male in the whole family of females...the smallest one on the end. Pecten sp, the small Bay Scallop...delicious but oh so many for a mouthful. Calinectes..or at least bits of blue crab shell washed up by the storm. And jingle shells, anomia simplex, sometimes called mermaids toenails, all shades of butter yellow and metalic orange. And at the far end, wads and windrows and hills and mountains of dead, brown, blown ashore eel grass. The best compost ever, and nary a garden for miles! Fuji treated it like snow, leaping and porpoising through it, snorting and snapping at it. And mixed in, the limulus polyphemus exoskeletons, with their complex and ancient spines and smooth roundnesses, and the beautiful polyhedrons pseudopupils of their complex spider eyes.
Well, the wind was still out of the Northwest, and made me think about a second reef. This makes the sail about half its usual 250 square feet. But I could see white capped waves all over the Sound, and I remembered the three laws. We had bacon and eggs for breakfast, mixed with some kibble for Fuji and some toast for me. Ran the mental checklist for leaving, put away the loose stuff below, and puttered out to put up the sail. The sail immediately filled, the engine was stopped, and we swooped out of Tarpaulin, headed out across the Sound again. It was blue and sparkling, a solid wind to push us against the flooding current heading Northeast. This time, I could tie down the tiller and let Susie P sail heself, and so made some headway in "State of Wonder", recommended by Sala and by it's setting: I visited Manaus in 1967, and have my own memories of the smell of the meat market, and the black vultures perched like gargoyles on the wraught iron posts overhead. And our research location was, like the memorable Doctor in Anne Patchetts book, on the Rio Negro...only quite a bit further out..it took 3 days for the boat to get back to Manaus when we left our station.
We passed over middle ground and Hey!, Presto!!, another bluefish. By this time Fuji is an old hand at fishing from the sail boat, saving her barks for when the fish is actually in the dinghy. And the whole process of making fillets on the beach, which gives her a chance to run has worked out well. Washed out the Diaper Rash ( it's about as big as a bathtub), and decided to head back across the Sound to Naushon. Still sailing against the tide,but even with the double reef, Susie P made good time, and we came up on Robinson's Hole by about noon. Not as many other boats as I would have expected for t he start of Labor Day..presumably Irene disrupted some plans. The current was still running strongly against us at Robinsons,which is the Hole between Naushon and the next island, Pasque. It's pretty narrow,and no possiblity of us sailing through until the change, which was due in about 2 hours. So we sailed on in the Sound, along the East Shore of Pasque. It was time for Fuji to be ashore for a while, and with the wind still out of the North, there was a nice looking little bay, albeit with a rocky shore. As we got closer, I could see large erratics, the boulders left by the Laurentian Glaciation, appearing as vague blue brown shapes under the clear water. But Susie P draws only 21 inches with her centerboad up, so we anchored without diffiiculty.
It was hot, and the wind blowing over the land was gentle here. However,it was plenty enough to catch the Diaper Rash and start it moving away from Susie P's stern when I accidentally dropped the tow line. In fact, in the several seconds since I realized what I had done, the little dinghy, light as an eggshell, was picking up speed and already beyond reach.
This probably makes the 3rd or 4th rendition of this little puzzle. Do you jump after the boat...or figure out how to retrieve by other means? The last performance, in the Pacific off Muir Beach, I had bailed out of my kayak, towed it to a nearby rock, poured the water out, set it down rightside up, and thought I had hold of the bow line when I turned away to size up the situation. By the time I turned back, the kayak was on its way towards the Farralones, and moving faster than I thought I could swim. That time, it took several hours to recover the boat, which had drifted beyond sight. This time, I suppose I thought about how longit would take to get the anchor up, and what a hassle that would be, and whether the boat would lodge in some downwind rocks, etc, but in real time, I jammed both hands into the pockets of my shorts, pulled them out holding whatever I could grab, dropped it on the seat, and dove in, hat, sunnies, and all. Worked fine, and after I had swum the dinghy back and fastened it to the Susie P (with Fuji looking on and wagging her tail, assuming this was some new game whose point might or might not ever be evident), I discovered that it was possible, as I had hoped, to squirm in over the stern of the dinghy without totally swamping the boat, and thus get enough of a platform to get back in the Susie P.
Imagine these people who sail single handed around the world. Every day must have many such little puzzles, any one of which could come to grief. There is no changing channels. No one has inspected the roller coaster. There is no one to sue if the ride goes awry.. I guess thats why I generally avoid amusement parks and like being outdoors alone. 'Because it is there', as I believe Mallory said. There is no there there in an amusement park, or a water slide.
Refreshed by the swimming, and the exploration of the foreshore of Pasque, we returned to the Susie P. The hurricane had herded all the wrecked lobster pots, longline bouys, and assorted flipflops and beer cans into an absolute battlement of wrack and ruin, and there was plenty to look at,and smell if you have a Fuji level smeller. About 10 beaches south on Pasque, we passed the beach where I was more of less driven ashore in my kayak several years ago, blinded by fog and beset by rolling waves coming in past Nomans Land from the open Atlantic. This time, on the lee side with a wind that was still pretty much out of the Northeast, the beach looked hot and a little desolate. And it was 3:30, the current had turned, and was ebbing out through the larger Hole between Pasque and Nashawena, known as Quick's Hole.
Quick's Hole is nice and wide, and mostly East/West. The wind seemed to have shifted a little West, but it should sitll be possible to make a single starboard tack (wind coming from the right side of the boat, remember?) and with the current behind us, shoot right through. I headed for the space between the red and green channel markers, just like the book says. And then I looked up ahead. The horizon was no longer flat. Stretching across most of the space between the islands, the line between sea and the distant blue hazed land of Rhode Island had become a jagged band of white.
Now sometimes a line like that means just a bunch of 6 inch wavelets. Sometimes it's a very shallow reef. Depends on the current, the wind. But in this case, and seen at a half mile distance, it probably meant that there was a pretty big tide rip with current opposing wind, waiting for us at the end of Quicks Hole. That's about 6 minutes at our combined water and wind speed. And short tubby boats are not the best conveyance to take into a tide rip.
However, this was a catboat situation. Catboats originated in Buzzards Bay, the body of water we were approaching. Susie P would do fine, as long as I didnt do something stupid. Hmm, about 3 minutes now...smooth sailing as we zipped past the foaming and gurgling red channel marker on our right. Fuji, perhaps sensing something, retired to the cabin and made a bed in my sweatshirt. In another few hundred yards, we came out of the lee of Pasque, now to the North and fading East, and got a taste of what the North wind had been up to as it came those miles down Buzzards Bay. The waves ahead were making that kind of ripping noise I associate with big rapids. And it seemed that the wind has shifted a few more degrees to the West, giving us even less power. The logical thing to do is called 'heading off' (which I know form experience means nothing to intelligent non sailors like Sala when I scream it without explanation..I mean heading the boat more downwind, to pick up more wind on the sail). But that meant heading to the left, and right there, edging closer, was the shore of Nashawena, complete with a giant erratic boulder, big as a house, reaching out ahead of us. We couldn't head off.
Those of you who read nautical books,or sail yourselves, will recognize what was happening as yet another version of a 'lee shore' experience. It happens when you are close to land, and the wind is driving you ever closer. Without sufficient speed, or space to turn and gather speed, you cannot bring the boat about. For example :
"In 1898, the four masted schooner, Lunet, loaded with coal, anchored here (in Tarpaulin Cove) to wait out a Southwesterly gale. The next day, the winds changed direction to Northeasterly, and the hurricane force winds were accompanied by a blinding blizzard. Unable to escape, and now on a lee shore, Lunet was lost when her anchor parted and she sank in 60 feet of water with all 200 persons onboard. It was one of the worst disasters in New England shipping history." (http://www.setauketyc.com/CruiseGuide/tarpaulincove/index.htm )
And then we hit the waves. Hmm, bigger than I thought. Oh well, I can start the engine. Meanwhile, Susie P has started a combination of pitching up and pounding down, which is what 18 foot boats do when they encounter a 6 foot chop. As I finally got the engine running, there is a loud noise from down in the cabin; the cooler has leaped off its bench and was down on the deck. Thankfully, it is also wedged semi shut, so the color of the water flooding out isn'tcolored milk mixed with fishblood , at least not yet. From the security of her nest, Fuji looks wistful, perhaps wishing me well. Nah, dog's don't worry about lee shores. Meanwhile, the engine, trying hard, is alternately racing and bogging, as the propellor lifted out of the water or the boat pitched out of the trought between waves. The sail is making those machine gun snapping noises that sails make in high wind conditions trying to sail too close hauled.
Hmm, indeed!!
Of such situations are religious converts made. With the combination of motor and sail, Susie P maintained just enough seaway to stay clear of the lee shore, and make it out through the tide rip to the relatively safe yet white capped rollers of Buzzards Bay. Clear of the North tip of Nashawena and it's waiting boulders, we were able to head off a bit, and pick up speed. A few minutes more, engine no longer needed, we were rolling down wind towards our destination, Penikese Island.
Penikese lies to the West off Cuttyhunk Island, which is the Southern most of the Elizabeths. You can read about its history as a leprosarium,and about the New York sporting bankers and their Cuttyhunk Fishing Club. Both are public land, and their own county ( Gosnold). Nashawena is Forbes owned, with some beautiful houses and a very protected little bay about half way along (visitors not really welcome). A fair number of reddish shaggy Highland cattle,and even some sheep I think. It's the same grey to reddish granite rocks and sloping green covered un farmed land that I find so attractive all along these islands. We jammed along, downwind and down waves now, and steering again required constant attention to avoid jibing. Jibing is where rather than turning into the wind and through it, to sail the other direction upwind, you turn further downwind and then try to bring the sail gently around before the wind, now from the other side of the boat, blows the boom violently around and bonks someone on the head or shakes the mast loose when it hits the end of its travel. It's easier to avoid unintentional jibes with a reefed sail, which ours was. Thank you, three laws of catboat sailing!
About half mile offshore between Penikese and the end of Nashawena lies Gull Island, really just a bunch of rocks and sand washed by the tide, Once on a long ago kayak trip I tried to stay there, and was evicted by the constant noise and smell of the seagulls. The sandbar is where wailing seals haul out to get warm...I think I mentioned that in a dispatch several years ago. The official channel into Cuttyhunk lies to the Northeast of Gull Island. I wanted to go the more direct route, between Gull and Penikese, Hmm, the old chart has several "x" marks, which means single rocks. But I should be able to see those within three feet of the surface, so with the centerboard up, I should be fine.
Well, when you have two foot waves at low tide, it means that a barely seen rock at peak of a wave becomes a sure thing direct hit at the trough, Plus I had not counted on the sun, reflecting off the water as it began to set in the Southwest, directly ahead. Actually, when I hit the rock, the centerboard was down about 6 inches, but slanted backwards, so it was just a loud clunk. A heart attack clunk! I pulled the board the rest of the way up,and then jumped up onto the seat,trying to keep us on course with one foot on the tiller, Nothing dead ahead; ominous blue brown shapes underwater to both sides. And a lobster pot dead ahead. No problem, we'll just sail over it. Wait a moment, whats a lobster pot doing here? Quick course correction, and then, way too late to have avoided it, the rock that was marked by the informal lobster pot bouy went boiling by on the left, and ahead the water looked clear and blue green.
We rounded up into the little semi protected harbor at Penikese, Two kids were playing with plastic floaties on the pier used by the boat that brings supplies to the Penikese School, which has operated as an alternative to prison for juvenile boys over the past several decades. I had heard it had closed for lack of funding, and that volunteers were 'island sitting' to maintain a watch over the facilities. My plan was to anchor up in the shallows of the harbor. With the sail down, we puttered around for a few minutes, but the entire upper harbor was a weedbed of eelgrass. The kind of anchor I have ( a Danforth) is a beautiful design for sand or gravel, but slips right through weeds. The kids, and a bearded adult, had left the pier by now, and so I changed plans, and puttered in to the dock. With the north wind blowing, Susie P hung nicely clear of the dock on a bow and stern line, and Fuji gladly leaped ashore, ready to chase anything in sight.
Actually, Penikese is public land and a bird sanctuary; the school has some caretaker arrangement with the state and Audubon. It's a nesting spot for roseate terns and a special shearwater that returns to one specific wall near the main building every year, So...no free ranging birc chasing attidogs. We climbed over the tangle of weed and lobster pots deposited by Irene, marveling at the disappearance of most of the sandy beach since we were here last year. The small roads, suitable for tractor or ATV's only, are very familiar. I came here first after the last private enterprise lobster and farming scheme had failed, and before the school was begun. During the school years, I went inside only once, for some minor medical issue one of the boys had, This time, Chuck was out on the porch tending to the grill, and Deb emerged a few moments later. They and Deb's kids were there for 4 days island sitting. No other boats were expected, and it was fine with them if I tied up to the dock for the night. At about that time, two guinea fowl came around the corner of a shed and noticed Fuji about the same time as she noticed them. They had been quietly discussing the weather and the state of the universe, but noticing Fuji broke into that gratingly shriekingly loud cxpletive amazement that guinea fowl specialize in. Fuji, hampered by the leash, was unable to deal with this noise as she wanted to. In fact, we took it as a good time to go back to the Susie P.
Take one cold bluefish fillet, and slice the meat thin, discarding the skin as biodegradable, while braising broccoli florets in white wine diluted with water and flavored with salt and pepper. When the broccoli is al dente, remove into the only bowl., having forgotten most of the kitchen and eating ware back at home. Reserve the reduction sauce in the green plastic cup, which probably contained the last of the morning tea. Add butter to the pan, get the durned alcohol stove going again, wait for the fireball of extra alchohol to abate, and then fry the bluefish slices for a few seconds on each side, add back the reduction, cook for enough time to fill Fuji's bowl with the kibble she doesnt like but will eat if hungry enough, and then put on the water for tea, take the cooling pan of fish and added broccoli back up to the cockpit bench. Feel the fading North wind coming across the tip of the island. Smells of seaweed, iodinated and tangy. Take a gander at them stars emerging, at the glow over the island to the Wes, at the shy new moon quietly asserting it's presence over the lights of Gosnold town on Cuttyhunkt. Lookie at them clouds, definitly animals tonight, and scooting right along towards the Vineyard and Nantucket beyond. Listen to the wavelets providing backup for the crickets in the catbrier and bayberry tangles at the base of the pier. And most of all, do NOT worry about the anchor! Eat and enjoy.
Tomorrow, swimming with diatoms, how to move an 18 foot boat at 4 AM, breakfast with Chuck, and reflections on relationhip, all on the way home.
Alan
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