Six days before the mast: a seaward journey
By Hamilton Cowie
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Editor’s note: Mr. Cowie was a crew member on a contract voyage to move a sailboat from South Carolina to Maryland, operated by Capt. Michael Miller of NY. This is the first installment of his story.
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DAY 1:
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I arrived at the Charleston airport around 1:45 pm on a Wednesday in April, 2014. This would be my first multi-day offshore sailing voyage.
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After a call from the boat captain, I learned that another member of the crew has arrived, too. His name was Jerry, 39 years old and like me had never been offshore. We met outside and shared a cab to the Cooper River Marina in North Charleston.
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There were some beautiful sailboats there and some not beautiful at all. Southern Accent, a 2006 50′ Beneteau Cyclades was ours. A lot of plastic and fiberglass but it looked mighty, as if it could weather a gale.
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Beneteau Cyclades
The new owner and a delivery skipper were taking it to Annapolis from BVI via Dominican Republic and Miami, but time and weather ran out so here we were going to man it on the last leg.
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Captain Mike Miller (approximately 65 years old, been offshore about a million times) and first mate Rick Takatsch (approximately 54 years old, been offshore about a dozen times, maybe more) were already on the boat. The boat was a mess (like people just sailed it from the BVI and then walked away from it) so we cleaned it and took inventory.
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The dodger was ripped up pretty good. Jerry found duct tape and we mended it the best we could. It looked pretty ghetto on-board but it should hold in a blow.
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John Gauger (75-80 years old, been offshore before but we don’t know how long ago) should have come aboard by now. The contact number he gave Captain Mike went to his house in New Jersey, although he had a cell phone on him. He eventually showed up…three hours later.
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The alternator on the diesel engine needed to have its belt tightened. When fixing it a securing bolt snapped off. The engine can run without it but the batteries wouldn’t recharge. If that happened we wouldn’t have electric (think chart plotter and navigation) or refrigeration (think rotten tuna). We needed a special bolt available at Lowes. Rick noted that alternator was not the one designed to go with this engine. It had been rigged in place which was why the belt was loose in the first place. An item for the Captain’s report.
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We also needed to get the groceries for the next five days’ worth of menus I’d written, me being the chef. And we had to get dinner after a long day of traveling.
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A new cabbie picked us up. We found the necessary bolt at Lowes, ate at a Thai restaurant (cheap and good). We called another cab to take us to the Super Wal-Mart because that was the only grocery store within ten miles, evidently. John told the Captain he was going to pop in to the store after they arrived and so when Captain Mike was paying the bill he told me to go find John. I looked everywhere but no luck. We took the groceries out to the cab and unloaded and he was right there, in the back seat.
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The cabbie–after taking a thousand wrong turns and driving like, as Jerry described it, “a pig”–finally got us to the end of the marina dock with help from our iPhones. Captain Mike, who was originally from Long Island and has the accent and attitude to back that up, tells the cabbie that he thinks his gps was faulty and that it was a good thing he negotiated the cab fare up front. The cabbie dropped us off at the end of the dock and we unloaded the groceries.
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We put the groceries away while John watched. The Captain told him not to just stand there so he started unpacking his duffel bag in his cabin. Rick and Jerry fixed the alternator in about four minutes. We all had a glass of red we found on-board. It was almost 1:00 am–later this morning we set sail.
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DAY 2
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I slept hard and woke at 6:30 am to make breakfast.
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Breakfast: Veggie scramble, bacon, toast, coffee.
I end up making about 90% of the meals for the trip and that was just fine with me because whoever made the meal was exempt from doing the dishes. That’s just a universal truth.
We made last minute preparations and performed a quick scrub down of the deck. Either Rick or the Captain noticed that the anchor windlass wasn’t functional. The anchor chain wouldn’t budge unless we could get the windlass working or the release lever unjammed, but neither happened and there were severed electrical wires so it didn’t look good. Rick searched the lazarette and found a stern anchor but its rode was severely chafed. Rick said he could splice it back to health during the passage. Captain guessed that would have to do. He hoped we didn’t have to throw an anchor while in the harbor for any reason because if we did it probably wouldn’t hold long and tidal currents were swift. Another item for the Captain’s report.
We shove off at 8:30 am. Finally: underway!
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Through Charleston Harbor we saw freighters, aircraft carriers, Coast Guard helicopters, the old town, derelict schooners, etc. All very nice.
That first day was motoring with only a jib out, heading due East toward the Gulf Stream, where we would be able to pick up three or four knots for our trip northeast. There was little wind. Our watches were either two or four hour shifts and included:
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ensuring that the auto-pilot was holding its programmed heading.
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maintaining our speed (it’s a delivery on a time table, not a pleasure sail)
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checking depth (we should know when we’ve hit the Gulf Stream when the depth gauge could no longer get a reading (it has a max depth of 600′, but “The Stream”, as Captain calls it, is several thousand feet deep)
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scanning the horizon for other vessels every ten minutes or so. If another vessel was on a constant bearing-decreasing range then we were on a collision course and needed to take evasive action before it became a problem
The steering wheels (there were two on this boat model, both in the stern, one to port and one to starboard) were difficult to turn. Don’t know if it was a cable problem, something wedged between the rudder and hull, or what. It was about three times as hard to turn the wheel on this boat as it is on a boat with a well-functioning wheel. No one was sure what it’s all about, but we can deal with it.
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We caught two fish within three hours of hitting The Stream about 80 miles out. The first–a bonito–Rick and Jerry immediately fileted and given to me. I took it down to the galley and Captain and I made a plate of sashimi. We squirted it with fresh lime and sprinkled with crushed sea salt. He found a lonely Bud Light in the cooler so he cracked it open and we all enjoyed a few cold hits of beer with our freshest fresh fish. Except for John. John didn’t like raw fish.
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Rick Takatsch, Jerry, Captain Mike Miller
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We had plenty of fish meat now (in addition to the groceries) and Captain said if we catch another to throw it back unless it was a Mahi. The second fish caught was an Albacore Tuna. We didn’t need another fish, and I didn’t know we even had the line out, but this one got reeled in and one of the many hooks on the lure had messed up its eye beyond repair. Once on board it looked like a crime scene there was so much blood. Rick performed a mercy killing and I suggested that we not let the line out again. Captain cut off a chunk of flesh and instructed me to boil it while Rick and Jerry cleaned up the blood. Captain said it would make the best tuna fish sandwiches you have ever eaten. So I boiled it and the stink in the cabin was worse than a fish shack dumpster. Well, maybe not that intense. I threw the boiled fish into the refrigerator and that was all I can smell for the rest of the trip whenever anyone opened it up. Even after I made the tuna fish sandwiches a few days later I would smell it, mocking me.
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Lunch that day: Veggie pasta salad, peanut butter pretzels.
Dinner: Jambalaya.
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Night came down on us slowly. First night at sea…no anchor, no shore to run to, no escape. It was here. We were in it. It was not as intimidating as I thought it would be since there were experienced sailors with me, but still the sun went down and and I couldn’t do anything about it. Darkness would set in soon. This was something I’ve wanted to see for a long, long time now. I mentioned to everyone at the cockpit table, where we were eating our Jambalaya, about the ‘green flash’. Legend says it happens once in a great while the millisecond the top of the sun disappears behind the horizon.
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Myself, Rick, Jerry, John
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Captain said, “I’ll tell you something about the green flash: it’s a bunch of horseshit. It doesn’t exist.” That’s what I thought, too, but still it was fun to bring up ghostly things at eerie moments like that. It was a light red sky that night. If the saying was true, we sailors (motorers) should have a slightly delightful time of it. Getting to sleep was tough because of boat motion and the strange watch hours. My night watch was from 4 am to 8 am the next day–the sunrise watch. I couldn’t fall asleep, but resting my eyes would surely help. Occasionally I got fed up with trying to sleep and stepped up through the companionway into the cockpit to absorb the surreal feeling of night sailing, the cool air, the stars, the moon, the motion of the boat (enjoyable out there, but not down here).
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Visit Chef Cowie’s blog at: http://thehobbyhound.blogspot.com/
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To be continued in the next episode…
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Hamilton Cowie is a professional chef taking the year 2014 off for adventures on land and sea before it’s too late. Originally from Florida he moved to Colorado in 1996. His fearless grandmother taught him how to sail when he was a boy. She also taught him to always say “yes”. He can’t say he always does.
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