October 19th, 2013

Three thousand six hundred and seven days ago we pulled the dock lines onto Kintala's deck, motored away from Oak Creek Marina, and headed out on our cruising adventure. Now, all those days later, First Light is anchored just a couple of hundred feet from those docks. And I swear that the trawler tied to the end pier is the exact same boat, sitting in the exact same place, as the day we first headed out.

It seems surreal to be here again.

The last leg of this part of this particular journey was near perfect. It was a bit after 0700 when we pulled out of Kent Island to take advantage of a day with wind forecasts of light and variable. Grandson Eldest had the helm, backing us out of the slip and out into the river like he had done it 100 times. Just before 1100 the anchor splashed into Rock Creek and settled into the bottom. It will be a quiet couple of days of sitting in a picture perfect and well protected little anchorage while waiting out the holiday weekend. After that, things will get pretty busy with the normal prep work needed to safely leave a boat on the hard for a winter.

I was hoping to never have to do that again. All the work that went into having a boat included getting it near enough to St. Louis to be a regular part of our lives. Pulling the boat when needed for bottom paint, and then only for a few days, was the plan. For the most part it would be just a short drive away, available for weekends, vacation days, and just plain hanging out for fun or when the need to be back on the water grew overwhelming. It will be close to another year before that is the case. Still, we make plans but the universe has veto power. So I will accept this last bit of sitting as a really pleasant way to end what has been a less than stellar summer. Living on a boat at a nice anchorage is, to me anyway, about the perfect vacation spot. So this is a mini vacation before having to get back to work. I intend to enjoy every moment of it. I intend to enjoy every minute of being back in St. Louis with most of the people I love most in the world. And I intend to enjoy being back here next year to splash First Light yet again, and get her “home”.

Dinner Sunset at The Jetty in Kent Island

The anchorage at Oak Harbor Marina

The view from my chair in the cockpit. I need to frame it and
sit it by the couch in the apartment.

Picture Post - Annapolis Naval Academy Museum

Back in 2015 we had the opportunity to tour the Naval Academy grounds, including the chapel and the museum. The part that impressed us the most was the collection of model ships on the second floor of the museum. I took a ton of photos during that trip that you can see at the original post.

This time, since we had already been through the display in 2015, I was fascinated mostly with all of the small details of the models—the figureheads, the lifeboats, all of the filigree details. Ships were the pride and joy of their respective countries and were decorated as such. At some point, though, the bean counters discovered that a whole lot of money was being spent on artistic flair and put a Kabash on the whole thing. Here's the description of the order.

It's unfortunate, because we've lost something in the removal of this art. With the decoration of features from their homeland, there was some sense of the culture they were fighting to preserve. While we have evolved from some of the more socially unacceptable portions of those cultures, the art is still an important look into that portion of history, something I fear we are losing with our dismissal of art in our current culture.

If you ever find yourself in Annapolis, please take an afternoon and visit the Naval Academy. It's free and open to the public and is one of the best kept secrets out there.

Naval Academy Chapel

The famous pipe organ on the balcony

The crypt of John Paul Jones in the basement of the chapel

One of the ships carved out of bone by the French prisoners of war. They carved them from 
bones left from their dinners.

Bone carved ship

Bone carved ship

Bone carving

Bone carved ship

An Ironclad ship

An early submarine

A replica of the famous Iwo Jima statue

Almost there...

After a few enjoyable days of visiting with family we are still in Kent Island waiting out some blustery winds. They are forecast to settle down in a day or two and, when they do, we will head to Oak Harbor Marina. There we will prep First Light for a winter's hibernation, pack up a rental van, and land-motor west toward St. Louis. That trip will take about a week as family stops along the way are not to be missed. Once in St. Louis, Grandson Eldest will be reunited with his Florida-based sailing family, and we will be reunited with the St. Louis clan that have been in my thoughts every day since we first headed East in April.

Our Kent Island extended family

Some additional hardware will be going along on the trip home. A pacemaker for me. A titanium plate and screws for Deb. For all of the thoughts and planning for things that might happen while moving First Light from New Bern to St. Louis, not a single wisp of those possibilities ever came up. We did what we could to plan for catastrophic engine or generator problems, knew for sure there would be mechanical and weather related delays, renewed our towing policy and double checked that our boat insurance was valid for the trip we were planning. But planning two ambulance rides, two trips to the ER, and multiple trips to the OR?—only in the sense that Deb did a lot of work to make sure we had adequate health insurance. But there was no thought such would be the focal point of our summer activities. Life is like that.

There were many things learned on our truncated half-a-great-loop trip in a new-to-us trawler. We really like living on a trawler. We really don't like taking on much weather in a trawler. We always thought that boats with flying bridges were butt ugly. We still do. But that ugly shower cap offers a fantastic view when anchored, tied to a dock, or underway – as long as the water is pretty docile, the temps not too cold, and nothing wet is falling from the sky. Hump up the waves, drop the temp, or throw in some rain, and the lower helm station or hanging out in the salon with its 360 degree view is the place to be. Things not available on Kintala. 

Being able to steer with precision while docking takes a lot of the stress out of traveling on a boat. In fact, docking this thing is actually kind of fun. The exact opposite of trying to get Kintala into a slip. Having a honking big, yet still quiet, generator on board makes living on anchor a whole new, and much more enjoyable, adventure. Routine maintenance does include two engines, a generator, and air conditioning. It does not include running rigging, standing rigging, sails, blocks, winches, masts, and booms. So far it seems First Light is coming out a bit better in the “daily chores” department. An engine room, even a smallish one lacking standing room, is a whole lot better than the disaster that was Kintala's (and many a sailboat I worked on) limited access to the engine.

Five or six knots, mostly in the direction one actually wants to go, is plenty fast enough. Even 50 mile days go by easy. It is true that buying 100 gallons of fuel at a time is an eye watering jolt. But it only happens every couple of weeks. On land buying 20 gallons of fuel happened every couple of days. Our total fuel consumption living on water, even on a 3 m/p/g trawler, appears to be appreciably less than that of living on land. The simple fact is that we travel far fewer miles on the boat than we do in cars on land, yet see far more new and interesting places in the process. (Those living on a go-fast trawler that measures fuel use in gallons per mile might have a different experience at the fuel pump.)

As much as I enjoy living and traveling on a boat, missing family is still an unavoidable downside to the life. When we left to head East last spring there was no thought that it might be the last time I would ever see them, or them me. But that came, literally within a few heart beats, of being the case. It will be good to be home.

Come next Spring it will be good to get back to First Light to finish our half-a-great-loop. I'm sure there will be more new things to learn along the way. But for now, and for all of the challenges and obstacles we faced, it feels like it has been a good summer. We didn't get where we wanted to go. We took some pretty good beatings along the way. But we managed.