Five Days in the Exumas!

Clouds on The Passage From Exumas Back to Eleuthera

When you smile with a snorkel mask on your face water trickles in through the wrinkles next to your nose and slowly fills up the mask with water. If you are SCUBA diving this means you have to look up towards the surface and breathe out through your nose to clear the mask of water. The more you smile or laugh the more you clear your mask until, if you are playing underwater backgammon against your friend Benny Urmston, you are stuck in a downwards spiral of dice rolling, hand signals (not always polite), laughing, and mask clearing.

Overall our summer trip was fun and relaxing. We finally got chance to experiment with different sail combinations and pints of sail and found the FHP to a pleasure to sail in relatively light conditions. The weather was HOT and depending on the bugs some of the crew found it nicer to sleep on deck in the breeze.

Nadine On Deck, FHP

The crew was Ashley, our winter trip sailor/blogger extraordinaire, Benny, from The Hass expedition, Nadine, and I. Ashley, as usual, was completely impervious to seasickness and made some delicious curry for dinner. Benny spent as much time in and under the water as possible as he is about to spend the next six months in Antarctica.

Small Key Near Norman's Key

Nadine and Ash in a Sea Cave, Exumas Land and Sea Park

inspiration from new horizons

My favorite parts of the day was watching the sun rise and set.... every day- different and beautiful.  In the midst of challenge and discomfort, the new horizon would calm our spirits assure us of the promise land!   

Eleuthera!

Thank you for all the warm wishes and loving energy everyone sent our way!  The stars aligned as the clouds parted and seas rested- creating the perfect window for us to make our final crossings.  With a steadfast crew of four we were able to not only navigate our way across the Gulf Stream and the Bahamas, but sit on deck and soak up the sun we have been chasing the past 28 days on board.  We are delighted to say that the Fishers Hornpipe is safely resting in ‘Triangle Cut’ near the Island School ready for its next big adventure. 

PS- Stay tuned for more photos! 

The Promised Land - Ashley on the Hornpipe

Even the moon smiles in the Promised Land, I thought to my self sitting on deck looking up at the new moon in the clear sky above the Fishers Hornpipe. The crescent moon rose horizontally, open side up, like a big bright smiley face in the night sky.


We face the south. Every day we move more and more southward, towards the warm air and seas. Every day we leave the north, a little more and a little more. We joke about the idea of the Promised Land. In the Promised Land the wind will be warm and there will be no more rain. We will take off our fat suites: layers of rain proofing, upon layers of wind stopping, upon layers of down insulating our pasty sailor bodies. We will tan our pasty bodies in the sun. The Promised Land is full of majestic creatures like dolphins and manatees and entire islands filled with hundreds of pink flamingos (Rob and Nadine actually claim to have seen the flamingo sight on watch two nights ago, I was sleeping, so I’ll have to take their word for it). When we arrive in the Promised Land we will turn off our constant, twenty four hour a day, orchestra of diesel engine rumble, hum, and growl and put up our sails that will be filled with the breath of the Gods. There will be unicorns; it will be perfect. We will bask in the glory of what has been promised, farther south, somewhere, some day, it will come.

We left Southport, North Carolina with a replaced propeller spinning under our big cement underbelly. We began our longest, most wearisome leg of the journey yet.

A Grateful Hornpipe - Ashley on the Hornpipe

My faith in humanity is restored.

If you do no believe that people are good, if you have lost faith in the—treat others as you would be treated—love thy neighbor mentality—if you think the world is full of people looking out for number one, selfish, driven by their own self-interests, then you need to do what we are doing.

Get yourself on a 75 percent renovated (this is an approximation I heard Rob give the other day) sailboat, in the middle of January, run it night and day, despite sea sickness, despite shallow waters, despite it being so cold that there are no other boats on the water like you, do this until morale is dwindling. Do this: motor, sail, go. Get out into a world where things are likely to break down, where things are likely to become difficult, frustrating, and occasionally, down right impossible to deal with. Do this, like we have, like we are doing, and you will find an incredible, undeniable truth about people:

People are good and kind. People are generous.

People want to help you, despite the dire, ridiculous absurdities of your situation, despite the fact that you willingly put yourself in these conditions. People want to make you dinner. People want to buy you groceries. They want to drive you around until you find what you need, or call their uncle, their friend, the guy they know who has just what you have been looking for, who knows everything about the thing you need to know about. They want to give and give. They jump at you from out the woodwork. Unexpected. Everywhere. Because you need help and they want to help, they will help you.

This is what I have learned in my first three weeks on the Fishers Hornpipe.

We arrived in Southport, North Carolina late in the afternoon of Friday the 28th. Just past Cape Fear we re-entered the Intracoastal Waterway after 26 hours on the open ocean.

Ashley on the Hornpipe - Life on the Hornpipe

“Shore leave!” Yell Joe and Tracy, just about every time we get off the boat. It’s a little nautical joke, something sailors would yell after months at sea, heading into town lookin’ for women and booze. Shore leave means that we have been given permission to pursue to luxuries of life, not usually afforded to the endless blue days of a sailor. Shore leave means that, for a short precious time, for those sea-sick or just plain sea-weary, life will goddamn stay steady, stop moving: stop lurching us forward, jamming us backward, against walls, against counters, against every square inch of the boat, back and forth and back and forth, legs wobbly and stomach tumbling. Shore leave means land, and all of the comforts and indulgences that go with it.

Monday the 17th, for the first time, we motored through the night. Together in shifts, working as a crew, six people, in two pairs, staggered every two hours, we managed to drive continually south for twenty-eight consecutive hours. This is what it took for the Hornpipe to blow its way down Long Island Sound, past Connecticut, past New York, and land safely in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. From just after sunrise that Monday morning, until long after sunset, the Sound staged a mad battle between wind and current. The war was waged in the waves below us and the sufferers fell to the battle blows of sea-sickness. By the end of

Breaking the Ice!

Ashley on the Hornpipe

Monday – January 10, 2010
I have never sailed a boat. I have barely ever even been on a sailboat. From my perspective a “rig” is something you drive, a “boom” is something that happens when you fall down. I don’t know my stern from my bow. If you are looking for technical knowledge of the Fishers Hornpipe (FHP), nautical terminology, or anything resembling the sea diaries of a serious sailor, you will be sorely disappointed with my perspective. Everyone who knows anything about sailing or the FHP is busy preparing for our departure. Everyone else is too busy rigging stuff and figuring out why the engine keeps flooding to sit down and write a blog. That said, I am learning. And yesterday, I did a pretty decent job of helping the crew fit a frozen, stubborn, non-elastic biminy to the cockpit. (…If that sounded like pretty decent usage of sailing jargon, I must admit that I had to ask Nadine what each of these things were called: “Nadine, what do you call that hood-tingum that we put on yesterday? (biminy). Nadine, is there a word for the place that you sit and steer on a boat?” (cockpit). ) With my sincerest apologies for not being the most knowledgeable about what it is that we are currently doing, and what exactly we are about to embark on, I hope to occasionally share with you my humble perspective of our voyage on the Fishers Hornpipe.

This Thursday, January the 13th a crew of five Island School teachers: Rob, Nadine, Jonny, Matt and Ashley (me) and two other crew: Rob’s brother Joe, and Joe’s long time friend Tracy, will setting sail on a voyage of great magnitude. Over the next month

In the water!

 

As we prepare for our snowy departure, many of our friends and family have stopped by to visit or lend a helping hand.  Ted, Ned and Lucy(the youngest yet to be on board) inspected our safety systems and gave us a thumbs up!

 In the water she goes!  It was exciting to watch the lift carry our 23 ton boat across the yard and lower her into the water.  Before she went in we applied a final coat of bottom paint and double checked all the seacocks.  Our nerves eased when she was in the water and floating.... yes, a cement boat can float! 

First night in the water at the Wickford Cove Marina.  She looks great!