Ñandú

How do you survive a summer in Virginia? Easy, you just go somewhere else. There was no consensus whether the heat, the humidity, or the mosquitoes were worse, but when you start thinking of laxatives so that you can spend more time in the boatyard’s air-conditioned restrooms… then it’s patently clear that mid summer in the Chesapeake Bay was not the best time to do boat work. After a week in that inferno, far from any shade, sea breeze or the cooling effect of water, you start hating everybody, including your formerly lovely spouse, especially if you spend any time together tidying stuff up inside a greenhouse-like cockpit.

It was time to abandon ship. Temporarily, that is. We put Oliver and some underwear in a suitcase (ok, two separate suitcases), closed the boat up, and enjoyed a little vacation in California with friends and daughters, which included a side trip to East Oregon to meet the solar eclipse’s path of totality.

To be on the safe side, we came back to Virginia two days after the official end of the summer. In the end the only casualty of our Virginian summer was my crocs. I now have to buy new shoes because the crocs I left in the cockpit got permanently shrank and deformed by the heat.

​It’s daybreak and I feel tired, because I didn’t sleep well. It’s windy outside. The rigs on the boats sound like a concert of clanking bells. Ñandú shudders during the gusts. Oliver is hiding under a cloth. The brisk breeze comes loaded with high humidity. We are getting only the gentlest strokes from hurricane Maria, which is passing a hundred miles off shore. Dominica, Saint Croix and Puerto Rico got the full brunt of her fury and they are in ruins now.

We want to thank all the friends and family who reached to us these past weeks. We are safely tucked in a corner of the Cheasapeake Bay, still on the dry, busy with boat projects. We can’t stop thinking about other friends and all the people that we have met throughout our travels who weren’t so lucky. First Hurricane Harvey in Houston, a city we called home for several years. Then Irma, a huge monster that fed on the warmer than normal Atlantic waters, which devastated the Caribbean and Florida. And now, Maria. Is this sort of violent weather the new normal? Will we have to mourn more loss of life and property in the future?

Mother Earth is hea​t​ing up and speaking loud. Maybe she’s trying to tell us something and we’re too self-centered to hear. I think of my kids and the next generations and ask myself what sort of legacy we are leaving for them. In my darker days I wonder if there will be any legacy.

In the present time there are urgent needs for those who have been in the pass of these super storms and are living a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Juan and I have decided to donate through globalgiving.org and through the group of cruisers (us included) that would have been visiting the British Virgin Islands in November. There was discussion of going there to help, but at this moment a bunch of sailboats arriving at the islands after sailing 1500 miles would be more hindrance than relief.

When we got Ñandú we joked that she was going to be handy for global warming. I imagined a romantic post-apocalyptic time of bobbing around in warm waters swimming and fishing for food. In a way, my naivete reflects in the name of the boat. Ñandú, the Patagonian bird, is a kind of ostrich. Don’t ostriches hide their head in the sand when facing a threat? It’s clear that our planet’s challenges are not trivial. We can’t hide from them anymore.

PS: Ostriches turn their eggs buried in the sand. They are not hiding.

After a year in the water it’s time for Ñandú’s annual maintenance. It’s a cruiser’s life rite we’re not yet intimately familiar with, but we do know it’s not something to look forward to (unless you enjoy sanding and painting).

The first step was to choose a boatyard. It had to have a wide enough boat lift to haul catamarans; it had to allow us to live aboard with the boat on the yard; it had to allow us to do the work ourselves if we chose to; and it had to have experts’ help available if needed. The two cruising couples we’ve been the closest with independently recommended the same place: Stingray Point Boatworks in Deltaville, Virginia, a small town in the Chesapeake Bay that has more boats than people, and more boat yards than all other types of businesses combined. Since we had no reason to do any further research, Deltaville was declared our next destination. It took us five days and a scare or two to get there from Ocracoke.

The first day started with good sailing conditions in the Pamlico Sound. When we entered the narrow, dredged channel in the Roanoke Sound we had a gentle tailwind, so we kept just the head sail up and continued sailing. As we approached the Washington Baum Bridge the sky darkened ominously. We decided to turn the port engine on and furl the jib. A strong and sudden gust hit Ñandú on the port side and pushed her sideways out of the channel. I heard the now familiar beep of the shallow water alarm: 4.5 feet and decreasing, since the rudder wasn’t enough to compensate for the wind. I needed the starboard engine to point the boat against the wind and back to the channel, so I immediately turned it on, even though I was absolutely sure we were going to run aground, because the charts showed a depth of only two feet outside the channel. Then I saw a crab pot buoy right ahead, slightly to starboard. I had to chose between the risks of running aground or a line fouling the propeller. I went for the latter: I revved the engine up and hoped for the best. The buoy disappeared from our view… and seconds later reappeared behind our stern. Whew!

Very soon we were in the middle of a full-blown thunderstorm and could barely see ahead of us. We turned around before crossing the bridge to wait out the heavy rain and wind in a section of the channel that had more than two feet of water on the sides. When the visibility improved and the wind died down, we resumed our course and went under the bridge.

It had been a long day and with sunset approaching we dropped the hook at the tip of the Roanoke Island. We could see thunderstorms left and right, and the water was quite agitated. As soon as we finished the anchoring choreography, we heard a call on the VHF radio.

“Sailing vessel Nandu, this is the Coast Guard North Carolina Sector”.

Ouch. Unless I’m on distress, I’d rather not hear the Coast Guard mentioning my boat’s name. Did we anchor in a restricted area? Unlikely, but that was the only reason we could think of they were calling. Exhausted, and with a cold beer waiting, the last thing I wanted was to reanchor. We pondered not answering (“hey, we could have had the radio off, right?”) but then we could be risking a visit in person.

“Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is sailing vessel Ñandú”.

It turns out that people from a nearby house saw us anchoring in that unsettled weather. They have a private dock and they called the coast guard to let us know that we could use their dock if we preferred to spend the night in a more protected place. We declined the offer but went to bed with a warm feeling: people do care for each other.

The next leg was a few miles shorter than planned. We intended to cross the Albermarle Sound to rejoin the Intracoastal Waterway and spend the night at the beginning of the Virginia Cut, but a coughing engine made us seek an anchorage while we still had ample space around us to figure things out. A change of fuel filters appeared to have fixed the problem. At dusk the boat was invaded by a swarm of insects as we had never seen before. At least they didn’t bite, but they took possession of the boat. They covered the boat with little dots of excrement that would turn an intense green, spinach soup-like substance when washed with water. And they just refused to move from their chosen spots, even if you touched them. The next day we tried to suck them with the vacuum cleaner but progress was too slow, so we just waited for them to die, which took about three days.

From then on it was less eventful, except that the weather remained stormy and we continued with intermittent engine problems. In three days we transited the Virginia Cut to the Elizabeth River, followed the river to the Chesapeake Bay, and sailed up the Bay to our new temporary home in Deltaville.

 

The Outer Islands must be spectacular, we said to each other. We couldn’t visit them last year as our goal was to leave the frost of winter behind the Ñandú’s stern. This time with good weather, warm temperatures and time in our pockets we chose to visit Ocracoke Island. Many reasons went into this decision. It was highly recommended by fellow cruisers (always a wise source), it has wild ponies (can’t go wrong with ponies), and it was Blackbeard’s favorite spot (can’t go wrong with pirates).

To reach this windswept paradise we had to play chicken with a ferry in the narrow entrance channel. Past the channel is Silver Lake, a safe harbor conveniently surrounded by the village of Ocracoke. It wasn’t such an easy place to anchor after all. It was crowded with a plethora of boats and the best spots were taken. We had to settle for the leftovers. On our first try, the hook didn’t bite and we started dragging. The second try was fine except that we ended up a bit too close to a dock. The next morning the captain of the historic Wilma Lee asked us politely if we could reanchor farther away. He needed a sort of runaway to enter and exit the dock. We didn’t want to be part of history under 75 foot of wooden boat, so we moved again.

When we made it to land we found a bike rental place that also specialized in producing the most amazing “tacos in a bag“, a first for us.

We planned a biking expedition for the next day to find the famous wild ponies. We imagined the little horses running free on the beach like in a commercial. Early next morning we followed the main—and only—highway. Seven miles later we found the ponies. Sort of. The hard-to-find free and wild ponies of our imagination were neither so free nor so wild. And impossible to miss. They are kept for their own safety in big pens with lovely accommodations and plenty of food. I only glimpsed from the distance a cute foal getting excited at the prospect of fresh grass that a ranger was bringing.

When we turned around we recalled that the taco chef/bike rental owner warned us that the wind could make it hard to pedal back to the village. No wonder it was such an easy ride thus far. As self-proclaimed sailors we should have known better. Juan offered to go first and cut the wind for me. I preferred not to ask if it was an act of chivalry or sheer impatience with my frequent stops to breathe. We made it back and recovered with delicious fish tacos on the road.

Ocracoke was a favorite playground for Blackbeard, also known as Edward Teach. Legend says it was also the place of his final defeat. The pirate vibe is all around town. We found Blackbeard’s lodge, Blackbeard’s jamboree, Teach’s Hole, Blackbeard museum, and lots of fake pirate paraphernalia. I am just happy that the pirate is now more a marketing fixture than a real man. I don’t think Ñandú would have presented a big challenge to a guy who braided his long beard and put lighted fuses under his hat to terrorize his enemies.