We have had a rough stretch over the past few days. Saturday morning, during my normal "walk around" inspection, I noticed our roller-furling line was nearly severed. It was hanging on by one or two threads. The good news was that it did not part while I was winching in the huge genoa sail in the mist, rain, gusts and seas as the sky was turning to dusk. The bad news was I did not have a 75 foot line of the same diameter to replace it. I can't really deploy the genoa without a reasonable plan to get it rolled back in. Most of the "pull" from our sailplan comes from that big 155% genoa sail. As they say - necessity is a real mother. Or something like that. I eventually figured out that I could cut the furling line at the break, remove the fitting from the furling spool, re-thread the good end of the long piece of the line into the spool, and tie the short piece back onto the tattered end of the long piece. It worked, and we are still using that arrangement just fine. Then I discovered my VHF radio mic at the helm had gotten wet in the downpour and had stopped working.
Saturday it blew southeasterly again. 20 to 25 knots again. Big ugly choppy 4 to 7 foot seas. Heeling big and pounding hard all day - again. We put in at Atlantic City and found an anchorage in a protected cove. It was a good thing, because the wind actually continued at 20 to 25 all night. Senara was bucking against the anchor rode as her standing rigging was whistling in the wind. Not much sleep. We started the day on Sunday by overflowing our septing holding tank. If you pump the potty hard enough you can push sewage out of an overly full tank - around the rubber gasket on the emergency access port. This then requires no less than two to three hours of clean-up, including removal of sailbags, diving equipment, and other sewage tainted stuff from the storage area around the tank, scrubbing everything, pouring gallons of our precious fresh water around the tank and down into the hull which runs back into the sump at the lowest part of the hull. Scrub, pour, repeat.
Battered by two days of tough sailing and stretched to our last nerve by sewage cleanup and little sleep, we decided to just do a short 6 mile hop down to Ocean City NJ yesterday, get a slip at a marina for a pump out and to get ourselves together. As always when entering a new harbor we consulted our chart, plotted our course on the GPS, and started looking for entrance channel markers. Nothing made sense. Approaching Ocean City we followed what appeared to be the obvious channel on the chart. But where are the channel markers? We cannot see bouys or day-markers anywhere. Our doubt made us turn around - twice - and re-approach at different angles so that we could read the depths on our sounder and match the readings up with the chart. On the second try we were convinced that we had it right. Then a gust of wind blew our rug (drying on deck as a result of previous cleanup) and a cushion into the ocean. We tacked, backwinded the sails, tacked again, and finally was able to save the cushion. Rug gone. Now exhausted we went back to the business of trying to get into the harbor from the ocean. We were now at a different angle and noticed the swells were getting steeper. Off in the distance they were breaking! This cannot be right! Suddenly a large swell lifted Senara and dropped her hard bow first on a sandbar. The sound was sickening. A big BOOM as the leading edge of the keel slammed into the sand followed by another THUD when the bottom of the keel, and the rudder, bounced again. Stuff flew everywhere. For a terrible moment I feared we had ripped the keel and were going down. I spun the wheel, tested the engine - thank God it started right up as always - and we found deeper, safer water further out. I went below and tore everything out of the storage areas again to look at the hull - no leaks. No sign of water coming in anywhere. We are OK for now. We headed back out to sea and moved further south - finally a green can bouy showed up, and a red one in the distance. But if I follow this path of bouys, my GPS (and chart) shows that I will cross a three-foot shoal! K called a marina in the harbor and pleaded for some local knowledge - how the hell does anyone get into this place? Nothing matches up. The guy says "oh yeah, we had it dredged this year and the location of the channel has changed. There's now a sand bar over there where you were." Really.
After finally getting tied up at the marina I donned my dive gear and went down for a look at the keel and the hull. She had hit hard, but other than a forced sandblasting of the area of impact - now with no bottom paint - the hull and keel were sound. She's a tough old girl. But as I was coming up the swimladder I noticed a crack in the very tip of the rudder. I dropped back in the water and found a two foot long split straight down the end of the rudder. Not good. Apparently the impact just popped it. So this morning, after the grocery store, I mixed some epoxy putty that sets underwater, went back down the swimladder and jammed the putty in the crack. It set hard. I am soooo glad I read about that stuff in Sail Magazine. Even gladder that I actually bought some and had it onboard. It will be fine until we get home in a few weeks.
This brings me back to the beginning. We needed a day like today. New groceries, clean clothes, a perfect sail, and a beautiful sunset over Cape May to top it off. Oh, and my VHF radio mic dried out and now works fine! Today felt like a new start and made the last three days seem like a bad dream.
Sunset over Cape May harbor
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