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St. Marys River
Cruise
May 30-31, 2003 One Oar in the Water by Brian Forsyth Page 2 |
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! |
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Show-and-Tell Time After Brian beats out Ken with his 4 vs 3 LED head lamp, he proceeds to inflict a coup de grâce with his swinging mountain climbers stove |
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. |
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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. |