IBR + LBD

The crew of First Light was up before first light getting ready for departure. A long day was in the offering and letting daylight dribble away while still at the dock seemed silly. A weather check the night before suggested it would be a perfect day to tackle the south end of the Chesapeake Bay. We have crossed that chunk of water several times and rarely has it been an easy task. But the GRIB files were showing winds calm to less than 10.

Of course they also suggested that all of the rain that came with a cold frontal passage the night before would be offshore come morning. But...come morning it was overcast and foggy. Still, why worry about a little drizzle? It would give me a chance to drive from my inside steering station with windshield wipers thunking away.

Just as we pulled in the last of the lines holding us to the pier, the drizzle turned into pretty heavy rain. Not TRW rain but enough to ruffle up the water and reduce the visibility to about ½ mile. IBR! Instrument Boat Rules! 

It was just as much fun as I thought it would be. A half mile takes 7-1/2 minutes to pass when one is doing about 4 knots. Of course boats coming down the channel will pass faster and required a bit more attention. But the channel is wide and we were hugging our side. Sure enough, a ghostly looking freighter loomed out of the gloom and we passed with no issues. Cool beans. I could learn to like boating in this kind of weather. IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) in an airplane means keeping track of heading, altitude, attitude, navigation, traffic, and communications all while (perhaps) getting bounced all over the sky doing 300 knots. But it the Boat? Speed...4 knots. Attitude and altitude? Not an issue. Navigation? Moving maps and chart plotters. Communications? Not much chatter on channel 16. I was grinning like a kid on Christmas Morning.

The scuzzy weather lasted all the way past the line of Naval Ships and out into the James River. Passing Fort Monroe and turning north into the Chesapeake the sky cleared but the wind picked up. Thus started our LBD...Long Bumpy Day. Every one of the weather sources we normally check got the day wrong. The wind was not light and variable. It was out of the North at 10 to 15, sometimes 20. The current was running north. The two were playing slap and tickle, leaving First Light bashing her way to windward in two to three foot, somewhat confused seas. It was not a pleasant ride for the first 9 and ½ hours of the 10 hour, 51 minute trip. It was enough to take most of the fun out of the day.

The Crew taking a break on the foredeck and yes he has a lifejacket on.

The good news is that all that banging around was a chance to get to know the boat a little better and trust its seaworthiness a little bit more. It would have been an ugly, likely impossible, day up on the fly bridge. But at the lower helm? Okay, not comfortable but not terrible either. On a pretty regular basis the bow would drop hard, shaking the boat and sending a cascade of water up above the anchor. But the shape of the hull tossed it outboard with virtually none of it landing on the foredeck. Some of the hits were pretty loud, but after a while it sounded kind of normal. The worst hit came from a container ship that ran us down from behind. As it closed, we did a lazy, oval shaped, 360 degree turn to starboard and out of the channel to let him pass by. After 270 degrees we straightened up and took his wake bow on. It had to be every bit of 5 feet as it loomed over the anchor roller before First Light powered up the slope and fell into the hole on the back side of the wave. Ouch. But we soldiered on with nothing apparently amiss.

The boat mascots - Teddy, Bean, and
Nutters didn't seem to mind the ride

We plowed through the day with the crew growing every more weary and the boat thumping its way through the whitecaps. Eventually we made it to Fishing Bay near Deltaville, VA and dropped the hook, sharing the anchorage with 3 other boats. It is just about perfect here at the moment. First Light rides easy to 90 feet of chain and the snubber in 16 feet of water, the winds are calm, and the temperature isn't as brutal as it has been. Up in the flybridge it is downright pleasant. As normally happens, a rough trip is nearly forgotten as soon as it is over. We are content with the day's work we put in, satisfied that pushing on was an okay decision. Even more, we are content that the day is over and we are sitting safe and quiet. Assuming the forecasts are getting it right this time, we are likely to be here a couple of days.

Being anchored here for the first time in eight years feels kind of special. We made it here when first starting out on Kintala. In spite of the challenges that came up, we have managed to bounce our way here again on First Light. It hasn't been easy and I think it fair to suggest that we worked for it. But, on the other hand, it has to be admitted that we are among the luckiest people on the planet. Why is that so? I don't think anyone knows.

When a little bad news is pretty good news.

With heat indexes in the 110+ range, two days of thunderstorms in the forecast, short on sleep and even shorter of temper, (that would be just me, by the way) a slight change in plans seemed appropriate. So this afternoon we moved First Light off the free dock and back down the river a couple of hundred yards into a transient slip at the Ocean Yacht Marina. There I made my second successful back-into-the-slip landing. The first order of business after setting lines and fenders was getting the AC running. It took a while as, once again, the inlet was blocked. Not jellyfish this time. Seriously stinky mud that had to come from the Swamp was the culprit. With the aft engine room hatch open to facilitate that repair, Deb noticed a trail of salt water from the aft of the boat down into the port side shaft seal pocket. An observation that did nothing to lengthen my aforementioned short temper. One problem at a time please. Let's get the AC running, then figure out if the boat is sinking. Deb then had a short wrestle since the AC strainer leaked the first time we cranked up the pump. With the strainer leak fixed, the AC went to work on the hot, muggy air in the boat. We went to work tracing down the leak around the shaft seal.

The water under the shaft seal appeared to have its headwater around the starboard side rudder post. I dried it off and watched while Deb worked the rudders stop to stop. No more water. We went about cleaning everything up, finishing about the time the diver showed. We explained the bump and the vibration. My thought was that a) the rudder took a jolt that unseated its shaft seal for a bit, allowing a good squirt of water ingress and b) the jolt also left us with a bent prop tip. All just a guess of course, but that seemed the most likely explanation for what we had felt during and after the event. And, as it turned out, that is exactly what the diver found. No damage to the rudder and a bent prop tip. A little bit of bad news that is pretty good news.

The diver offered that he knew a guy that could pull the prop, have it repaired, and put it back on without lifting the boat out of the water. The whole process would take “just a couple of days”. Not saying that I didn't believe that but, well, I didn't. The boat is not hurt. A slightly bent prop tip isn't going to do much except save us some gas by having us slow down. The boat is already scheduled to come out of the water for the winter around Oct 1st. So we intend to drive on. But first I'm going to catch up on sleep, food, and music playing while waiting out a couple of days of storms.

I stand corrected from my correction...

We left the Dismal Swamp Visitors Center this morning. The trick was to time the bridge / lock opening so as not to miss it or to spend too much time holding station waiting for it to open. The other trick was to move at a speed appropriate for the conditions; ie SLOW. Upon pushing off of the dock it was clear that we were in a different Dismal Swamp than the one from the day before. This one was was truly dismal. 

The water was scummed over making it that much more difficult to spot floating debris and logs. The channel was narrower, shallower, and had tree branches just shy of brushing the boat. The water itself was full of branches with fallen trees tied up to signs and shore in attempts to keep the waterway navigable.

Within minutes we heard the first “thunk” of something getting stirred up off the bottom and chewed up in the prop. We moved along at less than 5 knots doing our best to avoid more thumps while still moving fast enough for the rudders to steer the boat. But it was impossible. Each thump caused the crew to jump a little but it appeared that nothing was being damaged...until the very last one before we got to the bridge.

A hard thunk scared everyone and a noticeable vibration off the starboard side engine scared everyone even more. Dropping the revs eased the shaking. I tried neutral, a few moments in low reverse, and back to forward. It eased the shake a tiny bit but did not eliminate it. Clearly we took some kind of damaging hit. A check of the engine room showed no leaking around the seals and no vibration in the shaft. Which was all good news. Other than a minor shake nothing else seemed amiss. After a bit of debate we elected to keep going. Truth to tell I'm not sure there was another option. Before anything could be done we had to get out of the swamp. We cleared the last lock and limped on.

Once clear of the swamp I played with the power settings. Revs that would get us a touch over 5 knots were fine. Anything more and the shake was too noticeable to be comfortable. My best guess is that we bent a prop blade a little. Not a major concern, but a concern nonetheless. We stopped at a small marina called Top Rack for fuel, a desperately needed pumpout, and to ask about a diver. Fuel and a pumpout they had, but no diver to recommend. So we pressed on to the free docks in the heart of Portsmouth. Kind of a cool place this. Well, not cool as it is something like 102 degrees. But there are big ships all around, ferry boats coming and going, the Navel Shipyard museum is literally a few steps off our starboard side, and we are sitting in the middle of a big city in our boat. A bit of a change since we have been more or less off the grid for much of the last few days. 

Weather forecasts suggests we will be here for a a day or so waiting out some potentially serious storms. We are hoping to get a diver on the boat today or tomorrow just to be careful. We have full water tanks and an empty holding tank, but the fridge is getting bare after days off grid, so a provisioning run is also in the plan. There is some concern about hanging around this spot to wait out the weather. After the sun went down last night the ambiance surrounding the boat took a decided turn. At one point a land side wanderer started shouting at me as I closed up the fly bridge for the night. He wasn't being particularly coherent and I wasn't particularly interested in engaging in conversation with him. Something to which he seemed to take offense as his side of the conversation deteriorated into shouts, insults, and threats to return to teach me some kind of lesson. I have some experience in those kinds of lessons, wasn't particularly concerned, and let him sputter off without returning any comment. But, having some experience in those kinds of lessons, I spent most of the night on "anchor watch" with phone close at hand and 911 ready on the speed dial. Still, this is a well protected place to ride out storms which, seems to me anyway, are the bigger hazard at the moment.

Difficult as it has been, it feels good to be out of the ICW. These past few months have been some of the most challenging Deb and I have faced for a long, long, (long) time. I am both thankful that we managed and relieved to be this far north. Limping along? Maybe. Heading in the right direction? So far so good. But I've had my fill of the Dismal Swamp. I am (depending on how broken we are) sort of glad we went this way once. But I can't imagine I'll ever take the risk of doing it again. Nor would I ever suggest anyone else go this way by choice, at least not in a boat like First Light. The channel is simply too narrow, too shallow, and too full of things that can break a boat. This boat is still struggling through this shake down cruise.  It doesn't need any help getting broke.

Dismal Swamp slime

Finally a new state

It's steaming hot