Sailing School

To address some recent comments: We're planning to start a basic beginner's course to be taught from 9 a.m. until noon on two consecutive mornings. The first hour of the first day will be in the classroom. The rest of the course will be aboard our 24' Rainbow sloop. There'll be a minimum of two and maximum of five students per class.
The introductory tuition is $150. I'm aware of the need for sailboat rentals here but at present am unfortunately not prepared to meet that need. My goal for the course is to take total beginners to the point where they can single hand a vessel of this size in reasonable conditions. For that reason, the schedule will be largely determined by weather.

BLACK SCHOONER NAUTICAL SHOP

On Saturday, April 16th, my wife Sundae plans to launch her latest enterprise, the Black Schooner Nautical Shop in the old Williams House at the foot of our dock in the Community Square. As she summarized in our new rack card:

"This old island home houses a treasure trove of nautical gifts and décor right on the water in the heart of Ocracoke village. Artwork, ropework, scrimshaw, jewelry, reclaimed sail bags, and handcrafted items from the nautical tradition harken back to the days of wooden ships and iron men. Here you can find great gifts for sailors, master mariners, or anyone who hears the call of the sea."

For the past few weeks I've felt like a kid on Christmas morning, opening various shipments of the kind of stuff I love to browse through in places like Mystic Seaport. And, for awhile at least, it's MINE!

In addition to new gift items, the shop features a number of souvenir items made from salvaged parts of our old schooner such as the hand-crafted tote bags Amy Howard has made out of our old sails and beautiful half-models mounted on the original mahogany hatches made by our friend Jim Goodwin. Next time you're on the island, come check it out!

Plures Naves Quam Mentes

Some time back, my wife bought me a T-shirt in Maine with that phrase on the back. if I correctly recall my Latin from 48 years ago, it means somehing like: "More boats than sense." (If I don't then, obviously, it means something else!) Anyway, the phrase came to mind a couple of days ago when I agreed to sell my 15' fiberglass canoe to a seasonal visitor who wants to get on the water to take some photos.

The canoe has been in my back yard for quite some time, neatly stacked on my 10' Whitehall sailing dinghy.

"How long have you owned the canoe?" the buyer asked me. After thinking for a minute I said, "I think about eight years."

"When did you use it last?" he then asked and after a bit of thought I said, "I guess about eight years ago."

We were at a potluck dinner and my wife chimed in, "That's when we bought the Honda Odyssey with the roof rack so you could carry the canoe down to Florida and back every year. After the first year we left the canoe at home and rented whenever we wanted to go canoeing. I always hated that car."

I am making headway, though. Last year, after replacing my 57' schooner Windfall with the 40' schooner Windfall II, I managed to sell the 8' Trinka that used to hang from the stern in davits.

And, although I don't feel quite ready to part with the 10' inflatable I bought the last year we were in Florida, the 18' Herreschoff America catboat on a trailer in my driveway is seriously for sale.

I need that space for the 24' Rainbow sloop I'm in the process of buying to teach sailing lessons.

21st Annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race

Friends Philip, Frank and Steve joined my son Emmet and me once again this month for the GCBSR. This is the same terrific crew I had two years ago on my original Windfall. It was a great cruise to Baltimore and back with lots of fun and excitement even though gale force winds off the mouth of the Potomac caused us retire from the race and use the engine to reduce sail so as not to risk damage to sails and rigging. We still managed to continue to Portsmouth for the festivities there.

Frank brought the only camera so I'll post some of his photos.

OCRACOKE DODGES ANOTHER BULLET

Well, Hurricane Earl has come and gone with no damage to Ocracoke other than to the first part of our Labor Day weekend business (which, of course, is nothing to sneeze at). It could have been much, much worse. The storm served as a drill opportunity for the inevitable "Big One." It gave us a chance to put our new schooner into hurricane prep mode (see photo). The family was originally planning to ride it out at home, but when school was cancelled until after the holiday, we began to see it as a chance to have a last bit of summer fun somewhere else.

We ended up driving to Raleigh, checking into a hotel for 3 nights and taking the kids to the museums. On Friday evening we went over to Chapel Hill where we had dinner with other Ocracoke refugee friends and my old UNC roommate and his wife. Then we all took in a great puppet show at the Forrest Theatre. It was called Islands Unknown by a talented group known as Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Four-year-old Mariah loved it even though the social commentary was a bit over her head.

We returned Saturday afternoon via Cedar Island and had a full sunset cruise Sunday evening.

It's great to be back under sail!

BAHAMAS ANYONE?

It’s not easy sitting here in the Outer Banks when the autumn breeze starts to brisk up and all the birds start flying south. It’s even worse when everyone I know with a boat is talking about sailing to the Bahamas in November. I mentioned as much to my “admiral” the other day and to my surprise she said, “Go for it.”

“But I’ve got bills to pay and some things to catch up on,” I protested. “Maybe I should put it off until next year.”

“I don’t think you should put it off,” she said.

“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked suspiciously. “You been talking to my doctor?”

Well the upshot of it all is that I’m seriously contemplating an early November departure for the Abacos and it would assuage my conscience if I could take on a few paying passengers to justify the expense.

Over the years, many of my day passengers have commented that they would like to make such a voyage in whole or in part, so I’m putting this out there in case any such folks are reading this blog and might be serious about such a venture. I’d be leaving Ocracoke during the first week of November and heading down the coast to Ft. Pierce or West Palm (which can take between one and two weeks depending on weather and fitness of the crew for offshore passage-making). The next several days would be spent crossing the Gulf Stream and island-hopping to Green Turtle Cay, Great Guana Cay or Man-o-war Cay where we’d leave the boat and fly back in order to be home for Thanksgiving.

The schooner, while rather small, has most of the amenities generally found on cruising boats: hot shower, refrigerator/freezer, Bimini awning, cockpit table, autopilot, chart plotter, 10’ inflatable dinghy with outboard. While there are numerous larger charter boats available for such a cruise, only a very few have skippers with as much experience.

I’ve been cruising between N.C. and South Florida since 1974, made my first of many crossings to the Bahamas in 1979 and have held a U.S.C.G. captain’s license since 1978.

I’ve made well over fifty passages through the Intracoastal Waterway during that time and consider myself as knowledgeable a tour guide as any.

The ideal passenger for this trip would be someone who has long been contemplating a trip like this on their own vessel and wants to learn as much as possible about sailing and cruising beforehand.

If interested, send me an e-mail and we’ll explore the possibilities further.

INDEPENDENCE DAY 2010

JULY 4, 2010

Independence Day, 2010 will be over now in forty minutes. My wife and daughters are in Ohio visiting family so Emmet, my 15-year-old son, and I have been roughing it for a couple of weeks. The girls should be back Tuesday.

It’s the first July 4 we’ve ever spent here without the whole family being here, but Sundae’s mom passed away suddenly on March 2 and there were some things she had to take care of. We did a lot of the things we always do on the fourth: went and looked at the antique cars on the Pony Island Motel lawn. Turned out we were too late to see the sky divers who’d already landed safely by the time we got there. Never made it out to the beach to see the sand sculptures. And, since 4-year-old Mariah Daisy wasn’t here, we didn’t even bother to go see the wild ponies.

I even broke a long-standing tradition and took a couple of sailing tours out on my new schooner. My policy, since about 13 years ago has been to take the 4th off. Seems like half the people who signed up to sail with us in those days didn’t show up and the half that did were so wasted that I wished they hadn’t! “If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em” became my Independence Day motto.

Yesterday afternoon, Emmet and his buddy Andrew woke me up from my afternoon nap and said they had an idea for a float for the parade. “The deadline has already passed for registering,” I told them.

“Call Tom and see if we can still enter,” they pleaded.

I did and Tom said, “Heck with the deadline! The more the merrier. Make sure your float is at the Sweet Tooth by 2 p.m.”

I drove the boys to the dump in the Ford pickup truck I own a third of and we rounded up lots of cardboard then stopped by the hardware store for duct tape, paint, sharpie markers and candy. Back at the house we cut up an old sail from the original schooner Windfall.
By supper time the truck was sporting a gaff schooner rig complete with the helm, hatch cover and side lights of my old girl.

This morning, after finishing his bussing job at one of the restaurants, Emmet donned my pirate suit and rounded up a couple of saucy young pirate wenches to join him on the truck throwing candy, gold coins and Windfall tattoos to the crowds. I drove and my left leg is still killing me from riding the clutch!

The good news is that we won the prize for Best Business Float. The $50 check might possibly cover our expenses!

When Emmet strolled in at 11 p.m. as agreed, I showed him a passage from a book I’d picked up at the library used book sale yesterday. It was a brief contribution by Raymond Carver called, “My Boat.” He read it, handed it back to me and said, “Yeah.”

I told him there’s something about sailing that’s wildly addictive and that that passage sort of described it. I said it’s what keeps me doing what I do and that on tonight’s trip I felt like a little of it got communicated to the folks we had on board. Four of the six of them had sailed on the older schooner and confided upon leaving that they’d liked this one better. Emmet said, “I know what you’re talking about and I get it when we’re cruising more than I do on our short trips.”

I thought of Lord Nelson’s final words at Trafalgar: “Thank God, I have done my duty!”

Happy Independence Day!