by Alyse Liebowitz
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Day 1
Where to start? The litany of disasters is getting hard to keep up with. Today, we had a great sunset sail and docked beautifully. Everything had gone well. I knew then we should be afraid; very afraid. As soon as we stepped off the boat, the back of the boom crashed down into the cockpit. The topping lift, a piece of line that runs from the top of the mast to the back of the boom to hold it up, had finally chafed through. Luckily no one was in the cockpit when the boom fell. Unluckily, the topping lift broke off from the boom end and managed to slingshot itself UP to the top of the mast where it hung in a knotted mess, 30 feet up. Hugh, the marina owner, agreed to climb to the top of a ladder attached to his boat lift the next morning to cut it down. Bright and early, we motored the boat over to the lift and Hugh went up the ladder. Just before he cut the line, he said he couldn't reach the very top and would it be okay to leave a few feet hanging off the mast? We said sure, it won't interfere with anything. Ha!! Fate was tempted and everything went downhill from there.
We motored back to our slip and began a futile attempt to recreate a new topping lift. We decided to attach a piece of wire from the back of the boom to the backstay and use a swage to clamp the new wire. Too bad we didn't have a swaging tool, but Home Depot did. We bought a swage at West Marine to use for clamping the wires together, but after getting it back to the boat, we discovered it was too small to fit over the turnbuckle at the bottom of the backstay. No problem, back to West Marine to get a bigger swage. This one fit over the turnbuckle just fine, but was too big for the swaging tool. OK, trip number 4, back to West Marine to buy a larger swaging tool than Home Depot had.
While I was gone, my father sat in the cockpit holding on to the loose backstay when the boat was suddenly rocked by a large wave. He fell over in the cockpit, and let go of the backstay, which swung wildly toward the mast. It hit the mast, and with precision accuracy, knocked out the sail stop that held up the mainsail. He got up in time to hear a "clink" and a splash as the sail stop fell into the water. It was like hitting the moon with a golf ball. Then one of our guests for the day showed up. My father asked Randy to go over to Boat US and make sure I picked up a new sail stop along with the swaging tool. A good plan, but I had gone to West Marine, not Boat US. Our Keystone Kops routine was in full swing now. When Randy couldn't find me at Boat US, she decided to buy 3 sail stops in assorted sizes while she was there. She got back to the boat at the same time I did, after I had bought the swaging tool and 2 more sail stops. We cleared out the inventory of sail stops in both stores. We also discovered that the bigger swaging tool still couldn't clamp the larger swage piece onto the backstay. By this time our other guest had shown up. We decided to tie the wire from the end of the boom to the backstay and use a small hose clamp to keep it there. Of course we didn't have the right size hose clamp. Back to Home Depot, then back to the marina, where we discovered that we did indeed have the right size clamp already, buried in our toolbox. The clamp wasn't quite small enough though, so a little duct tape was used to hold up the whole mess. We decided to head out for a sail before our fix-it routine caused any more damage.
Once we tried to raise the mainsail, we realized that the two-foot piece of topping lift still at the top of the mast was tangled in the main halyard and prevented the mainsail from being raised. By now, any rational human being would have just called it a day and gone home to collapse, but nothing is more fun in searing 95 degree heat than perseverance. We raised the jib alone. We sailed along the north side of the river and got a close up view of the beautiful houses....a very close view. Much too close. As we drifted toward the edge of the river, a man sitting on his dock drinking a beer began looking at us in alarm. By the time we tried to turn away into deeper water, it was too late. We slowly but surely crashed into the piling at the edge of the dock while the man with the beer jumped up and ran away. The jib managed to get wrapped around the piling just as we got the motor started. The jib was almost torn off as we headed into deeper water. The crew and guests threatened mutiny, so it was back to the dock.
Day 2
The next morning we admitted defeat with the topping lift and called a nearby marina for repair. We motored over and left the Dot Calm overnight. The topping lift was fixed for $40, which was considerably less than the $95 in useless gear that we'd bought ourselves, and which I promptly returned to all three stores. Motoring back to our marina the day after the repair was made, Fred and I nearly crashed into the Mantoloking Bridge after approaching at a slightly faster speed horizontally than the bridge was going up vertically. The engine throttle was barely responding. I slammed the engine into reverse, revved up the throttle, and then slammed it forward and revved it again. We barely made it under the bridge and realized that now the throttle was no longer responding. We putt-putted all the way home and managed to dock. It turned out that somehow the throttle cable had come loose.
Day 3
The next day we attempted another of our infamous work-arounds, as we had more guests to entertain. They all seemed far more amused by the misadventures on board than the actual sailing. With the throttle out of commission, we took the cover off the motor and manipulated the carburetor by pushing a small lever by hand. Not a permanent solution, but a quick fix to get us going. Randy and Chris joined us, and off we went. I held the carburetor open with my finger while we motored down the river toward the bay. Within a few minutes, I learned why the owner's manual emphasized never to put one's hands near a running engine. My attention drifted for a moment, and my finger drifted into the flywheel, a piece of metal spinning at 7000 rpm. I yelled, and looked at my finger, which thankfully was all in one piece, but had a big bloody gash in it. Luckily Randy, a dental hygienist, put her medical training to work. My finger was cleaned and wrapped up and we survived the day with that being the only incident. This was a bad omen for the next day.
Day 4
June 30 - It was just my father and I on board today. While he CAREFULLY held the carburetor open with an improvised string arrangement, we made it under the Mantoloking Bridge and into Barnegat Bay. After we raised the mainsail, I saw our new topping lift had come loose from its new fitting and swung itself about 5 feet off the starboard side. My father grabbed it and we secured it with a good old bungee cord. Something else to fix - later. After sailing around the bay in strong winds for a few hours, we tried to start up the motor and head home. The motor decided she'd suffered enough indignities lately and refused to start. We had already dropped the jib and somehow the mainsail became wrapped around a spreader and we lost steerage. We began drifting toward land. We briefly considered abandoning ship, when the motor came back to life. As we headed back to our marina, I commented that the lifelines looked like they would need to be replaced in the coming winter. My father said they looked just fine the way they were. Back at the dock, as we were covering the mainsail, I looked up and noticed the lifeline at the bow had fallen off and was hanging in the water. We decided to get the heck off the boat before we were struck by lightning, or a plague of locusts.
So far, the boat has lived up to her slogan - The Dot Calm...Anything But!
Alyse, along with her co-captain father Dave, has been sailing their 22' Wellcraft Starwind, The Dot Calm
, since 2001. They are members of the Shrewsbury, NJ chapter of the Power Squadrons (http://www.usps.org/localusps/shrews/). The home range for the boat and crew is the Metedeconk River and Barnegat Bay, which is "down the shore" in central New Jersey.
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