Block Island Redux

I believe this is an aid to navigation, 

but I do not understand the significance of the avian icon

Those of you who are regulars to this site (that would be me) may remember a little trip Deb and I took a while back, one I partially documented here, in a story that actually got published in a local boating magazine. When I say partially, I mean I mostly documented my having forgotten a crucial piece of gear from our sailing inventory, my fanny pack. The rest of the trip was uneventful, if you don’t count the many eventful experiences we had after I was once again in possession of my wallet.

So let’s get a few things out of the way. This time I remembered to clip on the nerd bag. Oh yes sir, I got that part right this time. And this time we never made it to Block Island.

But let’s be fair about this. We all know that cruisers’ plans are writ in Jello, and while it had been some time since we’d been back in the sea saddle, I soon felt the old touch coming back, which comfortable feeling lasted for nearly an hour.

We’d set aside a ten-day period once again to get ourselves out East, have some fun, and get ourselves safely home. Deb had a start date back at work, and I even felt confident enough in my abilities to announce that if some situation, such as equipment failure or the off chance an early tropical storm were to strand us somewhere short of home, I’d get her to the nearest harbor, from which point she could mass-transit herself back to civilization while I displayed my single-handing skills to the admiring water traffic.

The first equipment failure was discovered when I plugged in our chart plotter and proceeded to fixate on a screen that announced the absence of satellites in the sky. Oh great, the entire global positioning system had picked this moment to crap out. I mean, right?

There are Old Salts petrifying in dive bars the oceans over who’d be buying rounds over my predicament, as there’s no place for guys like me in their precious world. If you looked at the road ahead, it was one we’d traveled before, it was protected on either flank by welcoming coastline, it was well patrolled, and positively littered with safe harbors. Furthermore, we had paper charts aboard, and if I really wanted to sissy out, I could just tag along behind any of the myriad boats plying those harbors.

Okay, no idea. 

Instead I considered the only viable alternative for a weak mind. I’d have to use the nav app on my iPhone, a decision I dreaded, since I really need to get a new prescription for my glasses. Hell, I can hardly make a call on the thing. I imagined following a dot on a micro-screen for ten days at sea. No, if we could stumble our way into a modern coastal town, I’d dump a wad on another gizmo. That’s what the wallet was for.

In a panic, I did what any desperate man would do. I took the gizmo apart, looked around, tapped and blew on the little antenna thingie, wiggled the wires attached to it, and put it all back together. And it worked. I’m a regular MacGyver.

Other things went wrong that first day, but I cant remember what, because of the GPS thing, so by the end of the day, when we were almost anchored where we might not get fined for anchoring in an active channel, oh yeah, that was one of the other things, oh yeah, and neither bilge pump worked, those were other things, I was pretty much as pleasant a companion as I was at the beginning of the previous trip.

Remembering how I’d behaved then, and remembering how good a time we had after we’d gotten over that first hiccup, I resolved to pull myself together and deal with whatever happened from there on in. I was further incentivized by Deb’s encouragement, which went something like this: listen, if this isn’t going to be any fun for us (read "her"), we might just as well turn around and go home, and I’ll have my nails done and visit with people in a good mood.

I wish I could say that my resolve was rock steady. We did have lots of fun in the ensuing days. But there is something about me that really dislikes it when things go haywire. And by haywire, I mean something as little as hearing a noise coming from near the alternator that maybe has been there for years and I wasn’t paying attention, I just don’t know, but if this alternator craps out right now in the middle of the Sound, it’s going to be one long ignominious tow to someplace that is still a long way from home.

Oh, did I hear you say aren’t you guys in a sailboat with sails on it and everything? Well sure. But let me tell you something about sailing. When you’re actually looking to get somewhere, sailing isn’t the way to do it. GPS will tell you that, which is why I like GPS. It will tell you that if you turn your engine off and enjoy the blissful stillness of the purity of one of man’s earliest discovery/inventions, you will triple your commute time to that anchorage you were planning on hitting one hour before sunset, just in time for sundowners. I have not yet seen any recipes for “sunuppers” yet. I’m thinking the ingredients would call for some cocoa beans and aspirin.

Red sky at night, sailor's fright?