“Well, John,” said my friend Bobby Truett, trying to explain the facts of life to me in his soft, southern voice, “This is a sailboat after all.” Enveloped in a cold, dense, bulldog stubborn fog off Delmarva Peninsula, I was griping about the fuel capacity, or actually, the lack of fuel capacity. “I know Bobby, and we have been sailing our fannies off, but it just doesn’t make sense to build a beautiful 40-foot cruising boat with a single 40-gallon fuel tank.” Bobby, who is a patient man as well as terrific sailor, just smiled. “Think of it like this, 40 gallons translates into at least 60 hours of motoring at six knots; that’s a 360-mile range; that’s not too bad.” I scoffed at his reasoning, “but it’s a thousand miles up the coast.” “Well John,” he began. “I know, I know,” I interrupted, “It is a sailboat after all.”
We were bobbing, becalmed. An eerie twilight had given way to complete darkness.
It was cold and the incredible damp cut right through my three sweatshirts and foul-weather gear. Eventually Bobby and our other crewmate Lou slipped below for a few uneasy hours of rest. I was on watch. Peering relentlessly into the gloom, I didn’t know if I could see two miles or 50 feet. Considering that the bow was hard to make out, I suspected the latter but tried not to think about it.
I jumped when a deep resonating foghorn pierced the silence like an alarm clock
—unfortunately there was no snooze button. The signal was obviously from a large vessel and sounded like it was coming from ahead.
Two minutes later, another blast
—it was definitely coming from dead ahead and getting closer. Feeling helpless, I broadcast our course and position on my handheld VHF and gave a feeble toot with an air horn, which only succeeded in waking Bobby and Lou.
Five days before we had flown from Ft. Lauderdale to Treasure Cay in the Bahamas.
Secret Passion, a well-equipped Beneteau Oceanus 400 was waiting for us. Her new owners had purchased the boat in Florida and spent a couple of weeks cruising the Abacos.
Now, it was my job to deliver her north to her new homeport, Stamford, CT. A couple of e-mails had secured the crew. Bobby and Lou both deemed that a week at sea was time better spent than a week in the office and hastily rearranged their lives to sign aboard. In classic delivery style, within hours we had familiarized ourselves with the boat, provisioned, and even had lunch. All we had to do was fuel up and shove off.
My intent was to lash several plastic fuel cans along the deck, supplementing the ship’s 40 gallons with another 20 or 30 gallons. Unfortunately it was a Sunday afternoon, and there was nowhere on the island, or in the entire Abacos for that matter, to buy fuel cans. Bahamians simply take Sunday off, which seems quite civilized to me.
I even tried to con a couple jerry cans from another cruising boat without success.
Backing out of the slip, Bobby reassured us, “Hey, this is a sailboat; the wind won’t let us down
—who needs fuel?”
A late April passage up the East Coast is an unpredictable affair at best.
However, we had a decent weather window and with luck we’d steer between two fronts.
The low that was soaking the mid-Atlantic states was forecast to move northeast and out of our way. And, if we made good speed we might just beat the next wave of nastiness that was lingering in the Rockies. The distance from Whale Cay Passage, where we cleared the turquoise shallows of the Bahamas, north to New York Harbor and into Long Island Sound is just over a thousand miles.
A starting point in the Abacos presents something of a navigational puzzle.
The rhumb line course is well east of the Gulf Stream current, forcing you to choose between the direct route and one that angles west, adding miles in an attempt to pick up the favorable current. By closing the coast we would have the option of picking up more fuel. However, stops, even short fuel stops, gobble up time and my instinct was to just shoot straight offshore for New York, intersecting the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras and hope for wind. After all, Bobby seemed certain that wind would not be a problem. Not surprisingly, the wind made the decision for us anyway.
A light north-northwest breezed forced us to harden the sheets and sail northeast, or even farther offshore, through the night. In the early morning the wind clocked to the southeast and went light. We fired up the diesel.
Twenty-four hours out of Treasure Cay we had managed 150 miles along the rhumb line and used 10 hours of our precious fuel supply.
The issue about motoring is one of sailing’s (or I should say cruising’s?) unspoken topics. The sad truth is that many cruisers motor excessively, especially on passages when they do everything possible to limit their exposure to bad weather.
It is much easier to check the oil and turn the key than to set up the asymmetrical chute and con the boat along in light air.
And while I sympathize with our motoring brethren I don’t necessarily agree with them. Of course I sound like a hypocrite, but let me explain.
On deliveries, when schedules need to be met and time translates directly into dollars, I don’t hesitate to motor to keep the boat moving. This is how I make my living, and I can justify a healthy reliance on internal combustion.
However, when I am sailing my own boat I simply hate to fire up the noisemaker, or as a German skipper I know calls it, the ice machine, and will do so only as a last resort.
I cherish the quiet and the pure satisfaction that comes with actually “sailing” to a distant anchorage. The best sailing of all just may be those peaceful hours gliding along at four knots and those hours, sadly, are what you exchange by impatiently cranking up the engine. Also, when I am at sea, I don’t necessarily feel exposed, I actually like it and often find that I am in no hurry to make landfall.
We worked our way north.
Although we didn’t find the main body of the Gulf Steam, a favorable one-knot current gave us a welcome boost.
The wind was light and we flew the spinnaker by day and motored by night. Life was good. The boat handled well and all the gadgets, the autopilot, chartplotter, sailing instruments, etc., worked.
The watch schedule of three hours on and six hours off meant that we were well rested. Lou made sure there was no unnecessary weight loss on the voyage as he turned out delicious meals every evening.
Bobby filled me in on the details of his sailing voyage in Alaska and along the Pacific Coast. My only concern was the little needle on the fuel gauge, which by now was leaning hard to the left.
Then the wind completely abandoned us. We were about 100 miles off the North Carolina coast when the engine rumbled to life.
By the time I pulled the kill switch 30 hours later the fuel needle was hovering on the E and we were sitting becalmed off the coast of Delaware.
This is where my Global Star satellite phone, which I recently purchased, came into play. This amazing gizmo works brilliantly, better than my cell phone, allowing us to communicate with family every day. And that, like the issue of motoring, is a mixed blessing. There is no disputing the safety factor of instant communication: Global Star even has a 911 for mariners. And, I confess, I loved hearing my children tell me about their days and giving them our position to plot on the map at home. Still, the splendid isolation, one of my favorites aspects of an offshore passage, seemed to be missing. Here I go again with the hypocrite role, since of course, I was the one calling.
As it turns out we learned on that call that we Lou's dad up in Rhode Island, who was ailing, had his condition seriously deteriorate. Lou needed to get to Providence fast. So we made the decision to head for Atlantic City, although that didn’t mean we were actually heading there; in fact, we weren’t heading anywhere. We were sitting becalmed, saving our precious last drops of fuel to motor into port. After the third blast of the foghorn, I decided we needed to use our fuel to move out of harm’s way. I cranked the engine and steered east, in what I hoped was a right angle course away from the oncoming ship. I broadcast our course and speed change on VHF. The skipper of the commercial vessel, a tug with a tow, finally responded and told me he had us on radar and had been planning to pass a few hundred yards off our port side.
The fog persisted through the night before finally blowing off in the early morning. The wind returned with an attitude as a cold front swept through. Naturally the stiff, Force-Six breeze was out of the north-northwest, the exact direction we needed sail. Frustrated, I took the helm and drove the boat hard on wind all day. It felt good to steer, even the occasional cold slaps of gray New Jersey ocean to the face felt good and I stayed with it for hours. Secret Passion seemed to respond to human hands on the helm and performed well with a reefed main and shortened roller genoa as we short tacked our way to Atlantic City. We sailed all the way to the inlet before powering to the Trump Marina.
Within an hour of tying up, Lou was on his way. Bobby and I showered up and made our way to the casino.
The lights, noises, and crowds were a jarring and not very appealing contrast to the last six days at sea.
We didn’t spend a dime and hastily retreated back to the boat. The last couple of days had reminded me how hard I work for my money, I didn’t need to throw it away at a black jack table, hell, I think it would be better spent pitched into the sea to appease Neptune. Of course, ‘The Donald’ always makes money, the marina charged us $120 for what amounted to 12 hours alongside a bird drop covered dock.
We filled our tank to the brim the next morning and steamed up the coast.
We arrived off Sandy Hook just before dark.
Negotiating New York Harbor and the East River in the dark was exciting. The advantages of a helm mounted, color chart plotter became obvious. Bobby steered while I confirmed nav aids with the spotlight. We flew through Hell’s Gate on the flood tide and sped into Long Island sound.
Another calm morning greeted us and I asked Bobby if he wanted to can the engine and put up the spinnaker, “After all,” I added, “this is a sailboat.”
He smiled and pushed the throttle forward.
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