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.
We passed though North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and crossed the border to Florida on Friday the 4th. We pushed forward, always south. Though sometimes east and west in serpentine, circumnavigated courses, especially in Georgia where the waterway is anything but direct. We looped around this way and that, following our watery road always forward, eventually south. We motored through four states without stopping, twenty four hours a day, three nights and four days. We elongated our watch shifts to three hours at a time, one new person rotating in every hour and a half, in order to maximize sleep periods. Three hours on, four and a half hours off. Twenty four hours a day, for four days. Ninety six hours. We stopped to re-fuel, otherwise we did not stop.

Except when we ran aground.

We ran aground a lot. Daily. In fact, we have run aground at least once everyday—sometimes twice or more—since that day we left Southport. The Intracoastal Waterway varies in depth and width, from small slinky river-like sections, to wide lake-like sections, to marshy swamplands with only a small and barely deeply enough dredged channel, to deep shipping channels, to wide wavy ocean inlets. The Waterway is tidal. This means that sometimes we will be traveling in a section that is measured to be around 8 feet deep and because the draw of the FHP is 7 feet, and because it is high tide, we are safe. Sometimes we are in a section measured to be around 8 feet deep and it is low tide which means that—“ca thunk!” says the bow, as we lurch up and forward, coming to an unsettling rest in the sandy bottom of the Intracoastal Waterway. Everyone knows, on cue, what that means: “All hands on deck!” yells Rob, or anyone else who might be on watch at the time. Or, if it is the middle of the night, maybe the two people on watch attempt to un-ground the ship on their own while the crew tries to sleep a few hours before it is their turn to take over watch and goddamn run aground, again.

Getting the FHP’s cement underbelly dislodged from the tickling silt below her is an exercise in patience and creativity. It is a ramshackle orchestra. It looks like this:

Step 1: First, Rob (sometimes Tracy) takes over the helm and tries to drive her off of the patch, the possibly only small ridge of sand that she is stuck in. He throddles up, throddles down, in forward, in reverse, gauging her response: are we spinning? swaying? moving at all? Nope. (this rarely works)

Step 2: (my favorite step): We try to rock her out. With the force of our bodies running from starboard to bow, bow to starboard, each of us a little weighted pendulum working collectively to shift the FHP from side to side. We all start at the same side and on someone’s count, run to the other side as fast as we can without throwing ourselves overboard, or tripping on a line, or a boom, or a mast, and as we reach the opposite side we stop as quickly as we can and lean our weight over the railing. We watch to see if she reacts: are we spinning? swaying? moving at all? Maybe. (this works more often than you would think). She sways from side to side as we run from side to side. A dislodging wiggle. We can almost always get her rocking, but sometimes it is not enough to wiggle her free. So…

Step 3: (may involve any number or series of the following techniques)

The manual depth sounding: (not always conducted, generally only if we are unsure what the deepest course is to take, once we manage to unground ourselves. This is a precautionary step; it does not work to free us, but informs the decisions we make thereafter.) Jonny and Rob pioneered this maneuver, but since, each of us has had the opportunity to perform this duty. Two people get in the dingy, one drives, the other uses our boat hook—which extends to 7 feet (just the length of our draw) to poke at the bottom of the Waterway. We drive and drive and drive the dingy, deliberately around the FHP, while we poke and poke and poke for the bottom. It the boathook meets the ground and Jonny’s hand holds the handle just at water level, we might make it out that way. If his hand, arm, or shoulder is in the water as the boathook meets with the sandy bottom below, then it is a good bet, definitely deep enough. Keep in mind that it is cold, really cold, and it sucks to be in a dingy, arms wet, poking for the tricky miserable bottom of the Waterway.

The David vs. Goliath: This is when we use the dingy to try to dislodge the FHP by brute dingy force. A couple of crew members, maybe with a rope, maybe just with their hands, try to pull and push the FHP this way and that, seeing if the big boat is only so stuck that a tiny boat’s force can free it. (often times this is used in conjunction with Step 2). This occasionally works and only if the dingy is running well enough to handle this laborious task.

The Anchor Leverage Pull: Two people take the dingy out toward the direction that we would like to be pulled toward. They drop an anchor, attached to a line, attached to the boat, running through a winch. We wind and wind the winch. Crew members take turns with the winch, struggling, pulling and winding up the line. We sweat deeply in our four layers of foul weather gear as we physically exert ourselves, all of a sudden, intensely. We sweat like we haven’t sweated in months. The angle of the line and the direction of the anchor causes the FHP to swing around slowly and eventually, the tension on the winch dwindles and we reel ourselves in toward the anchor like a twenty-three ton fish on a line. We pull up anchor and are on our way. This one works almost every time, but is the most laborious, time consuming and complicated of all techniques.

The Final Resort: Wait for the tide to come up. Buckle down, break out the backgammon board, make some lunch, and wait for high tide. In order to pull of this maneuver successfully, we must first be in spirits good and humble enough to entertain the idea of patience. Sometimes getting her out RIGHT NOW is the only thing that the crew can collectively set our minds on. Waiting for the tide is like choosing to meditate in rush hour traffic instead of scream and honk at the car in front of you.

Now, this detailed synopsis of our approach to running aground obviously means one thing: we ran aground a lot. If we have created an entire protocol system for approaches to dislodging, it suggests the necessity for such.

Now, combine this constant worry and anxiety that around each and every turn, a little nearer to the portside, maybe just on the other side of that day marker, we might have to deal with running aground, combine that state of mind with 96 hours straight of sailing, and combine that with constant rain and cold. We traveled through four southern states, four states known for being mild and pleasant during the winter, and faced the same miserable constant: cloudy, cold, foggy, drizzling conditions. Combine this with the intense pressure of our time constraints: we have to be at Island School in 10 days, 8 days, one week!...

Combine all of these factors and you get some pretty low morale among the crew.

This is how we rolled in to northern Florida. This was the peak of our weariness. We were treated, in the grand tradition of people bestowing generous help and support to us, to free dockage and a key to the marina showers and laundry by an especially benevolent marina staff member. Later that night, before getting together with CJ Easton, another F10 Island School student, and his family for dinner, we had a crew meeting. Rob said what we were all feeling: we needed to stop the mad miserable dash down the coast, and take the time to enjoy ourselves. We could slow the pace down. We could give ourselves the gift of grace and do our best to make it to IS in time. Do our best. Patience. Meditate in rush hour traffic. Be joyful. The rest of the evening was filled with merriment, in fact, each passing day since this rock bottom of exhaustion has been better and better.

Every mile that we drove deeper and farther south in Florida brought us closer and closer to the ever elusive Promised Land.

And here, finally, we are! Sunshine and dolphins and sunbathing on the bow. We glide over crystal blue waters where fish fly (really, flying fish) and watch armies of man o’ war jellyfish pass harmlessly in the foaming waters below us. The moon still smiles each night, and each morning we wake to a brighter shade of blue. Monday Nadine complained about being too hot. Too hot! Seriously. And yesterday, we made the big crossing over to The Pajamas (as Rob likes to call them). We checked into customs this morning from the westernmost marina of Grand Bahama Island. We are right on track to make it to Island School on time, and we are bathed in the warm glory of our success. Hooray! I only wish Jonny and Matt (who had to depart the crew recently, at different times, to attend to other obligations) could feel the redemption and rejuvenation of cutting through the blue Bahamian waters with the ice sheets of Rhode Island seeming thousands of miles away.

We made it! Wish us luck as we embark on our final little leg of the journey from Grand Bahama to South Eleuthera.