Page 2 - St. Marys River

Little Wing was running along in the westerly breeze, everything was right with my universe. Tacking out of the creek, I’d gotten over my single handing anxiety, getting into the rhythm of helm to leeward, bow board up, new leeboard down, weather board up, bow board down, settle in and trim the sails. I spotted the other boats in the river and we wordlessly began converging. As we got closer together, we all came up on FRS channel 6-0 and decided that lunch was the next event. We all pulled behind a small point on the west bank of the river, relatively out of the breeze, and decided that Terrapin would drop anchor and Sanity and Little Wing would raft to either side. At that point, we were only about 10 feet apart, but I let Little Wing start drifting back into the river proper as I furled sail, rigged fenders, and generally tidied ship. When I regained situational awareness, I was a little surprised to see the other boats about 100 yards away and that I was definitely out of the protection of the point. I unshipped the S & Ts and began rowing back to the raft, but quickly figured out that this wasn’t working too well. The boat was weathercocking 90 degrees to where I wanted to go, so I decided to lower the rudder and lash the helm to counter this. I slid off the rowing seat, got the rudder down and lashed and returned to my oar. Wait a minute! I could have sworn there were two of these things a minute ago! One of my oars had snuck out its oarport. I spotted it floating awash about 15 feet to windward and I was moving away rapidly. After quickly (and wisely) deciding not to hold swim call to retrieve the pricey plank, I realized for the second time that day that I was in a SAILBOAT and the wind was blowing!

In my haste to get underway I WHOMPED my head on the gallows, the padded top of Tilley softening the blow but still drawing blood. At this point I was about 500 yards away from the raft so the other boats probably didn’t hear my colorful summarization of the situation. Being in the aviation business, I know the priorities when things start to go south: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. Marinized that translated to: get the boat underway and under control, get pointed where I needed to go, then let the others know what on earth I was doing out in the middle of the river. I did a few quick square searches looking for my wayward oar to no avail and then sailed back to the raft. They had all finished chowing down by the time I arrived, and after I gave the short version of my tale of woe, Ken quickly motored off in search of the lost lumber. I wasn’t too optimistic, the river being more than a mile wide at this point and opening up into the very wide mouth of the Potomac. As I had some lunch, John, Norm and I discussed wind, current, tides, how relatively big needles in haystacks were, Chinese butterflies flapping their wings, etc.. John then proposed raising the hook and drifting to see if maybe this wouldn’t best put us onto the timber’s track. Honestly, I was less swayed by the nautical common sense or even the Zen of this approach, than by the low energy it required. I needed a few deep breaths, a little attitude adjustment, and a couple minutes to notice again that this surely was one of the most beautiful days of the year. We drifted slowly diagonally southeast across the river towards the Coast Guard Station and the Navy test facilities at St. Inigoes. After about 45 minutes, Terrapin was about 500 yards abeam and nearing the far shore first. I was reluctant to continue the search as I knew Norm had only limited sailing time that afternoon. I figured the oar would wash up on the east bank somewhere and wouldn’t be a hazard to navigation. In my mind I practiced the phone call to Maine (“Ya say ya only want one oah?”). I called Terrapin and recommended we bag the search and enjoy some sailing. The reply came over the FRS about 60 seconds later. “WE’VE GOT THE OAR!.” John said the shiny yellow varnish really made the oar stand out in the water. Terrapin came along side, the oar was stowed in its bungees on Little Wing, and promises of Fosters were made to the salty rescuers.

Terrapin in the early morning light

The rest of the afternoon was some of the best sailing I can remember. Terrapin went back to Dennis Point to drop off Norm, Sanity went searching for a cove for the night to better accommodate my “engined yet engineless” Dovekie, and I sailed up past St. Marys College where I was to pick up my crew that evening. I anchored for a while and continued my motor experiments and found that I could reliably start it if I set the throttle at about three quarters on (instead of the recommended “start idle” position) and held my mouth a certain way while facing North. Just takes a while to figure some of this stuff out.