krista schlyer
conservation writing & photography
Destination Unknown
Posted on June 9, 2021
One year ago today Bill and I woke at dawn in Town Point Marina in Deale, Maryland. As usual the swallows and osprey had beaten the sun awake, and they chattered and fretted as we prepared the boat for its biggest day, the day we would cast off lines from our home port.
Within the hour, as we prepped SV Maggie May and ourselves for departure, some of our friends arrived to bid us fair winds and safe return. We were all wearing masks and keeping our distance, but the connection to these beloved people transcended space and time from that day to this. I can still see them waving goodbye from the docks, two of our friends following us out in their canoe until we passed the jetty into the Chesapeake Bay.
That day I felt only exhilaration. A day we had worked toward for ten+ years, with many stumbles and falls along the way, was finally here. The biggest dream of my life was happening: to sail around the world.
I look back on that day now and think: how was there no apprehension or anxiety or fear in my heart that day? I know the answer. Because I was confused about our destination. I thought “around the world” was our destination. No.
We were not headed to “around the world”. We were headed to the unknown. And we have been spectacularly successful at finding it. This is the great beauty of the unknown. It can be terrifying, but it is very easy to find. And every day you are there, you become changed by it. For Bill and I, any romantic notions we had about ourselves as intrepid explorers have been dashed. We are cowering soft creatures quavering in the power of a world so much more awesome than our minds can even conceive. We have learned to head out on an ocean passage as well prepared as we can possibly be, knowing that it will not be enough if the capriciousness of the ocean and sky do not bend in our favor. When it’s time to pull up anchor and raise the sails we breathe deeply, swallow as much of our fear as we can hold and let the rest ride the wind around the boat.
And in this way we have seen a palette of colored waters defined by the brilliance of the sun and the profundity of the sea. Colors that have made us cry out and catalogue our favorites by depth, and sit and just…stare…agape. We have been able to see some of the smallest creatures under the surface of the sea, some who have never been seen by another human eye and never will and yet their lives must delight the sun and moon and water beyond any of the billions of humans that strut around upon the land as if proprietors of all.
I have learned how to steer a vessel by wind and stars. Not as a true mariner. At this point I would probably end up in Antarctica if I relied solely on my celestial navigation. But I can keep a course this way and am learning more every day.
We have seen every single sunset for 365 days running.
We have also met with grief in all its guises, ever waiting in the unknown.
Today we find ourselves in a country we never meant to visit, planning to stay for longer than we meant to be anywhere. And it is perfect. We spent the past week with a friend, Eladio Fernandez, from the Dominican Republic. But not just any friend, one who knows the animals and plants and people of this island, who is tireless in his efforts to understand and protect the natural world, and who is generous enough to share this with us. We followed Eladio for days as he checked on orchid populations along roadsides and in federal protected areas of the northern dry forests and mountain foothills. Wild orchids sprouting from trees and the earth, painting a masterpiece of beauty solely for the eyes of the animals who pollinate them. Pollinator and orchid have lived in dynamic relationship for eons, each one prodding the other to become what it must in this world. Both molded and goaded by the gods of all things, sun energy and time.
This long stay in the Dominican Republic offers me a chance to fulfill or at least make progress on a dream of my life, to learn Spanish. I have scrabbled by with rudimentary Spanish for a decade of working on the US-Mexico borderlands, always wanting to improve but being so single-minded with my efforts to fight border wall that I didn’t think I could spare the time to really learn the language. Now I have that time.
I have begun to see this voyage not as a single dream of sailing around the world, but as a journey of a thousand dreams. To search for orchids and anoles in the Dominican Republic, to drink from a mountain stream, to swim with sharks and spend time with seahorses, to learn the ukulele and Spanish and sailing and celestial navigation, to spend time just enjoying and experimenting with photography and writing, to become the kind of friend I would like to be to all those I love, and the partner I would wish for Bill.
And maybe above all, to face a journey into the unknown with courage and inquisitiveness and an open heart for whatever may come.
Donuts in the Desert
Posted on November 5, 2020
ST. MARY’S RIVER, 11-5-2020 — Yesterday afternoon we sailed up the St. Mary’s River on a light wind from the southeast. This river, which we have returned to several times over the past months, runs southward from its headwaters to its mouth at the lower stretches of the Potomac. Along the way it twists and turns making for good Maggie May protection from any weather surprises. (As well as some great birding and one of the best bakeries I have ever been to. (ENSO mmmmmm))
The gentle winds of yesterday allowed us to sail into anchor, rather than switching the motor on. Bill handled the helm, steering us into the watery nook where St. Mary’s College is located, nosing Maggie May into the wind, dropping her mainsail, and waiting for the wind to settle the boat’s forward motion. Then, my turn, I dropped the readied anchor. There is such a poetry to floating into anchor, rather than grinding to a halt with the engine. We can’t always do it, but it always feels good.
After checking the anchor and tidying up the boat, I set to trying to capture on video a wondrous event that had, I suspect, happened when we were cowered inside the boat during the frigid gale of a few days past. Some thousands of spider balloons had become entangled in our rigging and now flowed like streamers of pure light from every vertical surface. Their spiders were showing up here and there, but most were utterly unseen, or perhaps had perished in the violent cold.
I became caught up in the life of these spiders for quite some time. At one point I said to Bill, “It’s crazy. I only learned about spider ballooning a few years ago (from Charle’s Darwin’s journal “Voyage of the Beagle”) and now I see them all the time. But my whole life they must have been streaming past me, only my eyes never knew enough to see them.”
There is so very much my eyes don’t know.
Bill and I sat down to some beers and sunset watching, then Bill went downstairs to make dinner. He had recently gathered the ingredients to make his favorite soup, Tofu Kimchi Soup, and was setting to it.
I drank my beer and thought about spiders, elections, and bird migrations. I felt calmed by the sail and the spiders and the loons, surf scoters and mergansers we had seen on the water. But the night was about to take an exciting turn.
“I’m 100% Clean!”
Krista Schlyer
“I’m 100% Clean!”
Such was my declaration to Bill after dinner. He jolted a little. I must have startled him out of some thoughts he was lost in. But the moment called for it. I had just brushed my teeth. As a rule, I don’t consider the brushing of teeth to qualify me for such a strong statement of personal hygiene but this time it followed a bigger deal that had transgressed an hour earlier: I took a shower.
When life is whittled down to the bare elements: heat, food, personal safety, water and health, each comfort that goes beyond this becomes like a gentle rain of donuts from the sky, or a waterfall of donuts in the desert, or something else where donuts are involved.
Such profound personal and bodily delight from the simplest of things: a hot shower.
It was hot because on the passage from Lower Machadoc Creek on the Virginia side of the Potomac to the St. Mary’s River, on the Maryland side, we had very little wind and it was coming from the wrong direction. (Note: Wrong for us, not wrong in the metaphysical sense.) So for a portion of the trip we had to have the engine on. Thanks to a heat exchanger, our diesel engine quickly heats a tank of very nice hot water.
A hot shower these days does not mean what it used to mean when I lived in a house. Does not mean 10 minutes of luxuriating in a constant stream of heated water, stretching out wherever needed, all soaps, washcloths, shampoos, conditioners, a little combing of my hair, a little humming here and there, perhaps a facial scrub. No. A shower on the boat means a half gallon jug poured in strategic places while sitting naked in the cockpit (unfortunate term in this context), or dinghy, or in the very tiny head where there is barely enough room to stand up and none to stretch an arm or leg in any direction.
Last night, feeling the need for a little extra comfort and cleansing, I showered in the head and used the sink shower-head, which pulls out nicely on a hose. I had to stop and start the water over and over to limit myself to a gallon of water–still an egregious use of water by Maggie May standards.
We have a 110 gallon freshwater tank. We are never more than a day’s sail from refilling the tank at this point, but because we are trying to test out living independently, in case we get to do some long ocean sails or tarry in some remote island chains, we are trying to limit ourselves to 4 gallons a day, TOTAL. One gallon each for drinking, one gallon for cooking and cleaning, and one gallon for miscellaneous uses. ( The average American uses 88 gallons of water per day according to US EPA. In our land-life Bill and I had gotten our daily consumption down to 20 gallons, with much effort.)
So taking a shower that uses 1/4 of our daily water is outrageous. OUTRAAAAYYYGEOUS. Given the events of the past few days, I felt I needed it.
And, given that it had been five days since my previous cleaning, Bill was not complaining.
I blame the long dirty stretch on the divine Zephyrus, god of the west wind. For much of the past five days, 30-50 knot winds from the upper latitudes chilled the region, dropping temperatures inside the boat to 40-55 degrees. This is not showering weather. Thankfully Zephyrus has exhausted itself for the time being and Maggie May’s belly is now ranging from 50-65 degrees Fahrenheit. I call that showertime in the days of plenty.
Self-certified 100% clean, last night I lay down with my sleeping bag, refreshed the election results page, and breathed in some fresh air. Feeling clean, content, and ready to face whatever comes next.
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Some october sights on the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac
Into the Abyss, and other fun things
Posted on October 8, 2020
One of the hardest things about this journey—beyond the heat and cold, the financial stress, fear and self doubt, the trying to live in a confined space with another (albeit lovable) human being, the banging my head on the bulkhead every damn time I go to the aft cabin—has been the absence of a mission. I anticipated that Bill and I would both be challenged living a life without clear purpose—without trying to do something intensely meaningful every day. But I didn’t know or guess what it would feel like, or how long it would last, or how I would plan to get past it.
It feels like this: a void. A hungry void. An airy abyss of emptiness where the idea of food, fullness or sustenance hasn’t any meaning. It feels like a tightness and a looseness at the same time. It disorients, like you are in the middle of a vast body of water with no clue as to where you are or why. Rudderless, Bill says.
Bill had worked for 20 years in the environment and sustainability profession. First he wrote stories about wildlife and wild lands for Defenders of Wildlife and National Parks Conservation Association magazines. Then he built green houses of various hues with a visionary architect, Bill Hutchins. Then he installed solar systems…and finally began a long stint crafting energy and building policy for the city of Washington DC. All his life was geared toward one goal: helping to lighten the footprint of humanity so that other creatures would stand a chance. I did the same in my way.
This gave our lives a rudder, strong and deep. But also heavy. We decided not to have children guided by this same rudder and reason, to lighten the footfalls of humans on this already overburdened planet. Most adult Homo sapiens get much of their meaning and purpose from their kids. We had our own work-rudder-kid, but we dropped it when we stepped onto this boat, just dropped it, on purpose. We know where it is. We can go back and pick it up one day perhaps. But it was becoming too heavy and our souls too tired to carry it. We had a new rudder, hard but light, aiming us toward a new goal to sail around the world. A squirrel, some shysters, and some real bad luck broke that rudder. We may one day repair it, but for the time being we are drifting in the void.
I have days when I feel the hunger as a vibration in my bones, like restless leg syndrome of the soul. Those days I sit on deck all day watching the water, listening to birds and leaves, reading about wind, stars, weather, and meditating on some good old fashioned Mary Oliver: And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire–clearly I’m not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.
And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire–clearly I’m not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.
Mary Oliver, The Buddha’s Last Instruction
This is one of those days. Today the wind approaches with obvious intent from the north, pushing the boat toward a forested shore within a deep cove in the St. Mary’s River, just off the Potomac, near the mouth. Bill sits beside me eating oatmeal while I practice my eagle call, hoping to approach the genius of John McCain’s 2008 rendition. (Sorry, this doesn’t actually sound like an eagle’s cry, but Bill does an imitation of McCain saying Ahmadinejad that sounds exactly like an eagle).
Crows fly out of the forest bluff as a dark cluster, a Gang of 8. Three of them break off and dive swiftly toward the water, then level off a hands-breadth above the sparkling surface. I can only presume they are wanting to feel the wind as it glances off the waves, pressing up against their bellies and shining, sun-warmed black wings. With little fetch the wind can only stir the water into low peaks, but they are insistent and serious as they march toward me, pass by without a glance, and continue ever on toward land. One after another, they take my every thought with them. Sparing only one. That as the juvenile bald eagle circles round and round on thermals that rise along the forest edge, he is engaging in something pointless, perfect, meaningless and a complete distillation of all the meaning the world has ever held: he is practicing his communion with all that is within, and all that is without. He is learning how to soar like only an eagle can.
The Wealth of Time
Posted on September 27, 2020
A friend asked me yesterday what we do with our time now that we live on the boat. I came up with a list of things, awkwardly put together and here expanded:
- (In summer) Priority 1, find shade or a clean-ish place to swim
- Check the anchor
- Check the weather
- Find and fix broken things on boat
- Learn the things we need to know and don’t yet, like how to fix broken things on the boat
- Organize/reorganize
- Clean boat
- (If raining) Clean ourselves
- Feed ourselves
- Explore
- Check the weather
- Check the anchor
- Write
- Read
- Stretch, meditate
- Check the weather
- Go to bed
- Remember to turn on the anchor light
- Check the anchor
- Go back to bed.
Oh and also sailing.
Prior to moving onto the boat I had all sorts of ideas for what I was going to do with the immense amount of time I would have on my hands and the tremendous peace of mind I would find being away from work that daily tore me up inside, leaving me so mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end of the day that all I could manage was a few hours of television before laying awake fighting insomnia.
Time gets filled.
There is always something to worry about.
I realized pretty quickly that time would be liberally spent doing things I didn’t need to do when living on land (trying to escape oppressive heat, making sure my home wasn’t floating away toward some shoal or other boat, keeping a constant eye on the weather) or doing things that now take three times as long as they did on land (everything). But, something big has nonetheless shifted. Anxieties are real, related to the well-being of the boat, Bill or myself, in the right now, and these worries must be managed, but they are also manageable in a way that climate change and wildlife extinction are not. Also, I find that when I do have an hour or so free I don’t have to spend as much of it decompressing from nebulous anxiety and can instead spend it diving deep into a single Mary Oliver poem, or jotting down notes for a fiction book, or reading, reading, reading. I’ve read more in the past 5 months than I did in the 5 years leading up to this trip. And this week’s blog is a recap/review of what I’ve read.
First come the books I have already finished. I have limited physical books, because space is so tight, a kindle with many dozens of books, and a good list of audiobooks.
I generally read physical books during daylight hours and listen to audiobooks when I want to fall asleep–it helps to shut out boat noises so I don’t lay awake worrying that each new click or rattle is telling me the boat is sinking.
I’ve enjoyed each of these books in some way… some more than others.
- A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami. Here we have a zany book, part mythology, part slacker comedy. I highly recommend it if you want some light but smart reading from an incredible author.
- Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee. The main character in this book is a creep in the beginning of the book, a creep in the middle, and a creep at the end (spoiler alert). As a reader, there’s something difficult about that, but Coetzee is such a deft writer that the story of this creep’s minor enlightenments is enough to make this book charge forward and stay with you. I continue to ponder the meaning of the word disgrace and conversely the meaning of the word grace, long after closing this book and passing it on to Bill. I recommend Coetzee’s Disgrace for sure, but this is not light reading.
- Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R Tolkien. This should really be first on any list of books for me. I have read it perhaps a dozen times in my life, listened to the audiobooks almost as many times, and seen every LOTR movie ever made more than a few times. Of any single work of story, I have devoted more of my life to Tolkien, than any other creator. And I will never tire of this story or the way Tolkien has told it. Flawless? No, some of the language is stuck hard in the gooey amber of time. But I have read and loved a lot of fantasy books and for me none even comes close to the sincere genius of the LOTR.
- The Witcher series, Andrzej Sapkowski. This is one of those good fantasy series that doesn’t measure up to Tolkien, but I still really like it! I’m listening on Audible to this series. It has elves, dwarves, even halflings, and some interesting conflicts that reflect modern political times.
- The Chosen, Chaim Potok. I read this book in college and just re-read it on the boat. It’s amazing how a few decades changes your perspective on a story. I still love it as a great coming of age story set in the Jewish community of New York City, post World War 2. But there are plot complications I didn’t understand back then, such as the violence that sprang from the formation of the nation of Israel. It is hard to read this book the same way having seen how the world unfolded since it was written in the late 1980s. Still, I recommend it. It is a story well told and gives such an interesting insight into the diversity of the Jewish community/culture.
- The Book of Dust/La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman. This book is a prequel to the Golden Compass series. I don’t think I like it quite as well as the older series of Lyra’s adventures in a twisted world where adults are experimenting on children to see if they can rid the world of Original Sin (a story both unsettlingly familiar and fascinatingly foreign). But I’m a big fan of Pullman and the book fills in some history of Lyra’s story while also telling the story of a plucky young boy with a magical little boat La Belle Sauvage. Pullman recently released another book called The Secret Commonwealth that picks up the story after the events of The Golden Compass. I’m eager to read this one after I re-read the original book series.
- American Gods, Neil Gaiman. I listened to a great audio version of this book. So goooood. I’m not sure I could say what it is about. A guy, a bunch of gods nobody believes in anymore going to war with the new gods of technology and commerce. Heady and ridiculous at the same time.
- The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling). This was another audiobook, not a great choice for listening to at night, too suspenseful to get me sleepy. But if you like mysteries this is a good one and the audiobook is very well done.
- The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith. This is a sweet novel about a woman in Botswana who opens a detective agency. The audiobook is excellent, the story both light and heavy and full of charm. Makes me hope that the Maggie May makes it to Africa someday.
- The Mists of Avalon series, Marion Zimmer Bradley. I am not the biggest fan of this series, but I got sucked in! It is a story of the Arthurian legend but told more from the perspective of the female characters. Zimmer Bradley offers an interesting take on the legend, but some of the things these characters do and say…questionable. Still, it’s light and pretty entertaining and takes a known legend to a different place. And I’m listening to the audiobook, which puts me to sleep nicely.
- The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller. Another excellent audiobook. This book is by the same author as the well-known Circe, and both are fresh reimaginings of characters from Greek mythology. Miller has a clear talent with retellings like this, and Achilles explores the relationship between a Greek demigod and his closest friend/lover Patroclus. Like Circe, Mists of Avalon, and well, most of the books on this list, The Song of Achilles is at its foundations entertainment. But it is also such a well-told love story between two men that it offers a profundity that sneaks up on you. The audiobook is very well done.
Current Reading
My current list includes all of the above titles, as well as a book on tides, and I’m loving them all for different reasons. I am less than halfway through The Writer’s Map, but can already say I highly recommend it. It’s a collection of fictional maps and essays by writers who rely heavily on maps, or who were inspired by other author’s maps. Visually it is fathomless. Each map contains an entire world, from which sprung some of the most inventive stories throughout human recorded history. I am rapt. I read this book in the mornings, after writing in my journal, while drinking coffee, before writing in my fiction journal. I love it so much. And it is a book I never would have picked up over the past 20 years, just because I didn’t have time to let my imagination wander through its pages.
Modern Marine Weather by David Burch is a different animal altogether. This is a book I read for survival. So that when we, s’cuse me, if we get to a place where we don’t have easy access to communications, I can assess what to expect from wind and waves just by looking at a spare surface chart, the barometer, clouds, wind directions and shifts, and sea state. I need to read this book three times to get to the point where I am competent. I’m about halfway through my first reading.
Myths and Legends is basically an illustrated encyclopedia of mythological characters worldwide. I use it as a reference and hope to make it to some of the countries whose myths are contained in the book.
Last, but certainly not least is The Cloudspotter’s Guide. My friend Edward gave me this book last week to my delight. Last time Bill and I saw him, right after we moved aboard the boat, Edward was telling us about how he had joined the Cloud Appreciation Society and was reading a book by its founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who also wrote a Manifesto about appreciating clouds. Every morning the first thing I do upon waking is to read this book. Every evening Bill and I watch the sunset and practice appreciating clouds, so that one day we may join the society with our heads held high. I love this book. It is, depending on the page, a nutty examination of the history of cloud pornography, a declaration of the oppressive nature of blue-sky thinking, and a serious explanation of the classification and formation of clouds.
Thanks to all who have gifted me books. They guide my life and thinking aboard the boat, help me sleep at night, and shower me with profound riches. Many days this is the only shower I get.
If you have any book recommendations, or comments on the books herein, please leave comments.
The Bluejacket’s Manual
Posted on September 18, 2020
Betwixt wind and water: That portion of the hull that can be above or below water, depending on the angle of heel.
The Bluejacket’s Manual
On Spa Creek in Annapolis, I watch the sun rise and listen to gulls lending their unruly voices to the morning reveille being bugled from the US Naval Academy. Maggie May sways on her mooring ball and I sit with my morning coffee perusing a 1943 edition of The Bluejacket’s Manual, an instructional tome written to orient enlisted sailors for life in the US Navy during the second world war. It belonged to my grandpa.
My brother Nick gave me the book one Christmas after Bill and I announced our plans to sail around the world. Nick had followed in my grandpa’s footsteps, enlisting in the Navy in the late 1980s—serving at a different time, in a different war. I will return the book to him one day after it has been around the world or at least around the sun a few times as part of the orbit of items that live within Maggie May. For now, the book sits in an honored location next to Original Maggie May’s ashes and an angel bookmark that was my granny’s.
This week we have been stationary in Annapolis while Bill studies for the Captain’s exam at the Annapolis School of Seamanship and we get some projects done on MM, including yet another repair to the mainsail. This one, thankfully, is a much smaller rip that happened when the sail got caught on one of the reefing hooks. An unpleasant surprise, but pale in comparison to what has come before.
While Bill is in class all day long, I am working on my own studies and projects and leafing through Grandpa’s manual, written more than 60 years ago, much of it right here in Annapolis. Grandpa died when I was around 10 years old. I still have clear memories of a gentle but orderly man who made duty, responsibility, family and discipline the foundations of his life. I wish I could have known him longer, but reading this manual effectively connects us through time, space and the sea.
The book is more than 1000 pages and it covers every aspect of being a member of this branch of the armed forces, from how to serve with distinction upon the sea, to how to kill and how to avoid being killed. There are sections on duty, discipline, advancement, retirement, hygiene, and seamanship. Some of it reflects a past that, while distant in time, remains all too near in the cultural psyche. All sailors are men, and all men are white. Also, if they are exercising they all wear French cut bikini-briefs.
Germany has a swastika on its flag. The British flag is the flag of empire.
The book is chockablock with information—I learned this term in the definitions section, along with betwixt wind and water and freshen the nip. I plan to work these into casual conversation with Bill, to ascertain whether his Captain’s Class was worth it.
The Bluejacket’s Manual includes this proud fact: “Our Navy is as clean as any navy in the world.” Not the cleanest, but at least as clean. It contains this crucial advice: “The best type of bath is the shower”. Perhaps this bit was intended to help us gain a competitive edge over the other clean navies.
“Our Navy is as clean as any navy in the world.”
The Bluejacket’s Manual
The “Prophylaxis” section begins, “Bad women can ruin your bodily health.” There is no definition for bad woman. I am keenly interested. There is also information on how to chew your food—this topic comes up several times in the manual, which suggests there had been problems. There is a guide for how to fold your clothes the Navy way—this was mandatory with a guide for every type of garment and spot inspections to ensure that clothes were folded properly. Shoreside-me finds this hilarious; boat-me immediately begins planning an implementation strategy, knowing Bill will not buy into it. He will sit by and watch me refolding all my clothes, shaking his head quietly.
The book is filled with lists (daily schedules in 15 minute increments, inventories of mandatory clothing items, procedures for launching the vessel and putting out fires, insight into the Navy’s chain of command). I can fully appreciate these lists, as there are dozens of things to be aware of at any given time when a boat is underway, and forgetting even one could put the boat and crew in jeopardy.
For a sailor, The Bluejacket’s Manual of 1943 remains useful with tips on sail trim, knots, and navigation. Some of the thinking on these things has changed in the past decades, as has the style of underwear men do their calisthenics in, but since I don’t yet know enough to discern, I’ll probably suggest we try these techniques out.
My Grandpa must have read the entire 1145 pages, perhaps more than once. But he only marked one page, one single paragraph. It was about discipline, and said, in part: “A body of men which has good discipline is not subject to panic.” It doesn’t surprise me that if he was going to outline one paragraph, it would be this one. I am only now beginning to understand the critical role of self-discipline in warding off terror and panic. Later on, the manual advises, “It means to restrain your impulses.” For instance, the impulse to dive off the boat screaming when the vessel is bow-down in a 5-foot high breaking wave. I found another quote that is useful in this regard, the 1943 Navy’s definition of courage: “Courage is that quality which enables one to meet danger and difficulties with firmness and with ability unimpaired… It does not mean absence of fear.”
I can appreciate the manual’s advice on many topics, including how to get chocolate out of a uniform, though we don’t carry naphtha or chloroform on the boat, so I can’t actually try it out. I’m less interested in the advice that I should take a cold shower every day. And perhaps this is one bit of advice specific to a boat full of men.
As the sun rises higher in the sky I finish the last of my coffee, lay down my book, and get on with my chores for the day. I start by taking everything out of the V-Berth to find the source of an unpleasant odor. While Bill is at Captain’s Class, I’m working on a list of deeds that need doing to keep the SVMM in ship-shape. In the evenings, Bill tells me what he has learned, I outline what I have accomplished, we eat, head to our cozy berth and lay down betwixt sheet and mattress, betwixt wakefulness and sleep, betwixt gratitude and greasy hair.
ONE LAST THING
One night in Annapolis, we happened to catch the very last race of the Wednesday night summer sailing season out of Spa Creek. Purely by accident we moored our boat right in the middle of one of the craziest sailing spectacles in the country. The boats race on the Chesapeake Bay, but the final race of the night actually ends inside the mooring field in downtown Annapolis.
There were hundreds of sailboats, small and huge, all heading straight for us at full speed, then dodging our boat on last-minute tacks, racing to the finish line a hundred yards away. The sun was just about to set, lighting this magical moment with golden hue as Bill and I watched open-mouthed and breathless. It was some of the most incredible maneuvering either of us had ever witnessed so incredibly close. Bills summary: “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.” It was a good reminder, not all unforeseen events are bad. The future also holds unimagined and unimaginable surprise.
Thank you so very much to all of you who responded to my donation link on my last blog. And all of you who have supported this journey in any way. It is one of those unforeseen serendipities to find so much love and support in the world, my heart is chockablock.
Barnacle: An animal that is inclined to stick to a boat’s underside.
–The Bluejacket’s Manual
A Chesapeake Summer
Posted on August 27, 2020
Summer on the Chesapeake Bay, in five lines:
Hot, humid, thunderstorm.
Bald eagle tries to steal fish from osprey. Osprey crying out indignantly, loses fish.
Great blue heron barks at both of them, at no-one, at everyone and the general effrontery of the world.
Hot, humid, storm.
Jellyfish.
In a few more lines
Several days ago, at anchor near the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge, dusk was quietly descending when Bill said, “Is there bioluminescence in the Bay?”
There wasn’t as far as I knew, but I went up on deck to see what he was seeing. A pale orange reflection of the dusky sky lay upon otherwise dark water. We watched and waited and presently there appeared a blue light. Then quick as a heartbeat it was gone. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it.
“Am I seeing things?” Bill said.
If so we are having the same delusion, I thought. We kept on watching as dusk faded to dark. There was another pulse of blue light, floating along the side of Maggie May, and another, and another. Disks of pale blue, about the size of my open hand, drifting along with the tidal current, turning on, turning off. Bill and I sat in rapt audience.
We were the only boat in sight near the wildlife refuge, where wetlands and coastal forest cover the land and protect the water community, offering a haven to bald eagles, herons, gulls and terns, little snakes, blue crabs, and apparently bioluminescent jellyfish. This was my guess, as I had read somewhere that some jellyfish could illuminate in this way. The lights seemed to move in the manner of a jelly, kind of haphazard, without any apparent intention other than as a silent passenger upon the prevailing current. Utterly without aspiration they seem, like a dimly lit shadow of some listless being, but also radiating a profound passive grace. And full of blue surprise.
Bill looked up “bioluminescence” and “Chesapeake Bay”, and sure enough, there are several forms these watery lights can take, from the bacteria that lights the water itself at certain times and in certain places, to jellyfish.
Osprey on an abandonner sailboat in Swan Creek.
Living on a boat in summer in the Chesapeake, one hopes for such gentle wonder to distract from the heat, flies, not nearly enough wind for sailing or far too much from frequent storms. And the pollution.
The Chesapeake has made great improvement in the past decades, thanks to efforts by thousands of individuals and organizations and regulations that are leading us toward the right track. But it is still a deeply wounded ecosystem, as is its sub watershed the Anacostia River, and for many of the same reasons. Reasons that date back to Captain John Smith, herald of environmental and cultural woe for the Bay 400 years past.
When we decided to stay in the Chesapeake through hurricane season, I did some research into the healthiest waters of the bay, hoping to find someplace we could swim and cool off without worrying too much about one of us getting another skin infection, or worse. Such info is not easy to find. There are sites that list which beaches generally pass water quality tests that indicate the water is healthy enough to swim in. But even these waters after a rain and through much of the summer can carry dangerous bacteria and viruses. The ecology of the bay has been too deeply eroded over too long a period.
I found a site created by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources that mapped the state’s “Tier 2” waters. This Orwellian term is the official designation for the 253 relatively healthy streams, many of which lie within the greater Chesapeake Bay watershed. Most of these are not on the bay itself, but up in the smaller creeks. By the time their waters reach the bay, they have mixed with the foul runoff from farms, roads, and cities with antiquated sewer and stormwater systems. As a rule, healthier waters are not accessible by a sailboat. Most are nestled in some swath of natural land that has escaped the fate of most of the Mid-Atlantic region: becoming a shopping mall, housing development, urban area, agricultural or industrial development, or sporting complex.
Fishing boat in the Chester River.
The reality is, for hundreds of years we have treated this precious estuary, the largest in North America, as a tool for transportation, commerce and human recreation. The Chesapeake’s intrinsic value and its essential value to thousands of other species has escaped us.
Maryland’s environmental department estimates that 20 percent of the land in Maryland can be classified as a Tier 2 Watershed. This is much more than I would have imagined. But one-quarter of that is in danger of development or other harm. And fully 80 percent does not qualify as healthy watershed. With the large majority of the state’s landmass considered to be unhealthy for its waters, we have a long way to go. Still, 50 years ago, a healthy bay wasn’t even much of a consideration. Today it is, and tomorrow it will be more so if history is any guide. There is reasonable hope that one day the heroic efforts of every riverkeeper, watershed organization, motivated public servant and responsible citizen, will lead us closer to the state of grace the Chesapeake existed in once upon a time.
The Eastern Neck, much of which is healthy forested land, is one of those rare places in Maryland that offer a vision of what was and could be again. On the passage to our anchorage we saw skates sailing through the water, blue crabs, schools of fish attended by hungry gulls and terns, and many jellyfish. ( Generally this last item is met with groans, as swimming with them is just slightly less desirable than splashing around in E. coli. But the light show off Eastern Neck has given us a new appreciation. ) And over the past month living on the Bay aboard Maggie May, we have encountered enough wild surprise to imagine how a resilient watershed could rebound if we humans could learn to love the land just a little more.
As for Bill and I, we are currently in Rock Hall again, doing what I hope will be the last of the boat repairs for at least a little while. We are back at Haven Harbour Marina, which has truly been a haven for us through some emotional, financial and literal storms (this is where we weathered Tropical Storm Isiais.) Looks like we are back just in time. Hurricane Laura may be on its way to the Chesapeake.
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Confronting the Inner Squirrel with Farm Girl Grit
Posted on August 5, 2020
After Isaias
One of our first big weather events is behind us. Maggie May made it through Tropical Storm Isaias virtually unscathed.
We spent the day of the storm on high alert, as the wind forecasts were constantly changing. This uncertainty was the greater part of why we decided to go to a marina rather than ride the storm out in a hurricane hole in the Chester River. It was a good decision. I don’t think we were in the best mental state to weather near 50 knots at anchor. The past weeks since I last posted have been difficult– Coming to terms with the likely end of our long-planned circumnavigation, trying to adjust to a new outlook, and facing a near constant set of new challenges.
The cumulative effect has been a gnawing, fraying self-doubt, an inner squirrel sitting prettily on a shredded confidence nest in each of our psyches. Open water is no place for such nagging uncertainty, a fact brought home to us every few days on the Maggie May.
A few days before Isaias, we were sailing from Still Pond in the northern Chesapeake to Rock Hall, Maryland, where we planned to re-provision before heading back into the Chester River for a while. The storm predictions at that point were mild for the Chester, and there were several protected anchorages we wanted to explore. We were sailing 15-20 knots, a good wind speed for Maggie May, but we were head to wind and the Bay was rough with unusually steep waves. We decided to forego the genoa (the large sail at the bow of the boat) and use our solent stay and a smaller sail we got for heavier weather. Bill was hanking on the sail, I was driving, and as he started to trim the sheet, CRACK!, the sheet snapped and started whipping around the deck, lashing hard against the dodger (the covering over the cockpit), out into the angry air beyond the boat, and back SLAM! onto the dodger, over and over…and over. The boat was being jerked by waves and tossed and pulled by wind.
Bill said “We need to take the sail back down.” We didn’t have an extra sheet on hand to replace the broken one. Good to know. And the flailing spasms of the sail were dangerous. “Lower the halyard to me when I get to the bow.”
Bill wrestled with the wild sail as the boat tossed about, I tried to keep us on the smoothest course, then put the helm on auto and went forward to help him stuff the sail down below. Once it was stowed, we rolled out the genoa and continued sailing through the rough bay waters.
This is not an unusual intense moment on a sailboat. A year ago it could have happened and not rattled me much. I might have even found it exhilarating. But that day it stuck with me, along with the nausea and fatigue I always get from rough days on the water. Bill took the helm most of the day, and I tried to steady my wavering heart and belly. We arrived in Swan Creek near Rock Hall, anchored, and I retreated into my thoughts.
Thunderstorm approaching Cape May
So much has happened with Maggie May over the past 7 years, so much in the past year, in the few months since we moved aboard. I feel at this point as if I am always teetering off balance, waiting for the next thing to happen that will push me down again. Bill and I each have a constant inner monologue going, whatever we are doing, about what could possibly go wrong next. Though as the squirrel demonstrated, some challenges are just beyond the realm of imagination.
I consider myself a pretty tough person, but I am confronted by fear in a way I never have been before, on a sailboat or otherwise. I’ve spent a lot of time recently telling myself, ‘You are not equal to this task. You’re not strong enough, mentally or physically. You’re too old. I’ll luck has beaten you.” But my heart holds fast to everything I had hoped for in this journey, and I think about all that has come before, so many challenges met and made into memory all the way back to ancestral memory from the early 1900s in rural Kansas.
First the recent past.
The morning after the squirrel chewed up our sail Bill woke with a fever and aches and pains. His doctor set him up with a test for Covid 19. My mind reeled over the absolute worst that could happen. He got the test the following morning. As we waited for the test results a new friend at the marina came over to say goodbye, expecting we were heading out, and I told him about Bill’s illness. He already knew about the squirrel, and barnacles, osmotic blisters, faulty bottom job and numerous other challenges we had faced over the past years.
“Did you guys do a renaming ceremony for the boat?” he asked with some concern, the idea of very bad luck being written upon our lives. I told him we had done a nice blessing of the boat when we launched. His eyebrows knitted. Then he told me what he did when he renamed his boat, based on a lot of research into how you rename a boat. “I have a friend who renamed his boat without taking the proper steps and he has had all sorts of ill luck.”
Libations for Poseidon
Burning all evidence of Kahouteck
I chuckled a bit, assuming he was at least partly joking, and thinking ‘Sailors, superstitious bunch.’ But after he left, I immediately went to look it up on the internet. I found one million entries about how exactly you rename a boat without incurring Poseidon’s wrath.
I started following the procedure to the letter. Renaming a boat requires taking all reference to the former boat name off the boat. I scoured every crevice and cranny aboard. Went through every binder and book. There were several Vilkas items, the wolf blanket and a key chain, and I even found one piece of paper that had the name of the boat two owners ago – Kahouteck (which sounds like an Aztec curse, but is actually the name of an astronomical phenomenon ). This occupied me for hours, but Bill was in bed with a fever waiting for test results, so I had some time on my hands.
The renaming ceremony requires writing the old name of the boat on a piece of metal with water soluble ink, which you will drop in the water. I didn’t have a metal name plate, so I wrote Vilkas on a potato chip in pencil, and Kahouteck on a Ritz cracker. I worried about not following proper procedure, but I figured if it was an item of great value it would work just as well, and dissolve all the faster. Poseidon would be pleased, and Vilkas and Kahouteck would give some “nourishment” to the fish.
You also have to take off any reference to the new name, prior to the ceremony. I gathered all this up, including Original Maggie May’s ashes, which sit in a central spot on the boat. We put all of this Maggie May gear on the dock. I covered the stern with a scarf, because Maggie May has her name there. Once all this was done, I waited til Bill was feeling a bit better and then roused him from his sick bed. We carried out the ritual, using the prescribed plea to Poseidon to vanquish the names of Vilkas and Kahouteck from his records, and to add Maggie May and watch over her.
I also said the proper prayer to the four winds and added in a plea to every sea god I could find in my book of world mythology.
We made ourselves right with the gods. Bill went back to bed and I figured whatever happens next is well beyond our control.
The next morning Bill got a call that his test was negative for Covid. He was in bed for another day, but felt good enough to head out the following day. So it worked! Well, not if the past few weeks are any guide, during which we have run aground twice (once was our fault), gotten stung by jellyfish, had a staff infection, run over a crab trap which got stuck in our prop and damaged our rudder and cutlass bearing, and snapped a sheet. These things are all par for the course on a sailing adventure, but happening on the heels of everything else, they knocked us down to the ground every time. The crab trap in the prop happened near Cape May, where we were planning to jump off north toward Maine. In Cape May, getting the prop untangled and assessed, we decided that we needed to instead head back to the Chesapeake Bay, stay good and safe during the storm season, work on our sailing skills, (an unlucky sailor has to be extra prepared) and regain our trust in ourselves and the future of this journey. 
A tropical storm followed us here, and regaining my confidence has been a daily affair. Recently, my mind has turned often to the boat’s namesake, once removed. Not Original Maggie May, but the woman Maggie was named after, my granny. Her name was Pauline Margaret, and she went by Pauline all her life, but told me one day a few years before she died that she always wanted to be called Maggie. My granny was a tough woman. She grew up on a farm in Kansas and lived through two world wars, Spanish Flu, the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. She kept that farm girl fortitude all her life. She was also terrified of water and storms and mayonnaise and untidiness. But she kept her chin up, always. Now, when my heart begins to cower, I think of her, ball up my fist like she taught me, and carry on.
Note to friends:
I thank all of you for your care, kindness and support. We are ok. We’ve spent some hard days and done some reckoning and are at peace with looking at this journey in another way, waking each day and seeing what it brings, doing our best to live life ever present and appreciative.
Upon much reflection I can see very clearly that the leap of faith we took 15 years ago and every day since, the intension that brought us to this place was not in vain. For the idea was never truly to make miles across the ocean, but to learn how to live again. To set ourselves in the crucible of nature and see what its foundational motion made of us. To let go of whatever the waves erode, whatever gravity wears down, whatever the salted water scrubs away. To hold on to what the winds bear up, and whatever remains at the end of this adventure. I still believe we will be the better for it.
And I wish each of you courage in the challenges that come your way, and a stout heart in these uncertain times.
Fate Turns on a Squirrel’s Teeth
Posted on July 12, 2020
On the morning of July 9 my journal entry began, Setting off again this morning at high tide. We’ll see what transgresses. Headed to Maine.
It was to be our second attempt at a launch, but it followed the fifth or sixth major named storm in the life of our circumnavigation dreams. Still, we were both hopeful. We had no beautiful friends to wave goodbye to on the docks, and no champagne to sprinkle on the bow, but the day was calm as we pulled out of our slip and made our way to the mouth of Swan Creek and into the Chesapeake Bay. I’m not going to relay what happened next, it was the scariest moment I’ve ever had on a boat, but it’s a long, and in the end, humorous story that will wait for a book’s telling one day. This blog focuses on what happened afterward, which was not so humorous, despite the lead photo in this blog. 
About an hour after we entered the bay, we still had no wind and were motoring along, which often makes me sleepy. So I laid my head down on Bill’s lap and looked up at the mast towering into the cloud-tufted blue sky. After a while, I asked Bill, “Can you still see the Bay Bridge?”.
“Just barely,” he replied.
So I sat up and scanned the horizon to the hazy south. I couldn’t see the bridge until Bill pointed. It was barely visible in the thick summer air, and I marked it in my mind, the Bay Bridge is behind us.
Just then the wind started to pick up and Bill got excited to raise the main sail. We had only sailed once in the month since we left our home port in Deale. So I took over the wheel and Bill went forward to prep and raise the halyard. As the sail was going up, suddenly Bill stopped and his face fell. All he said was “No. No.”
I saw a cascade of white feathers, or something light like that, scatter onto the deck and float back along the starboard side of the boat. I thought a bird had nested in the sail, or been killed by a predator and left in the sail. But then I saw Bill sink to the deck on all fours, so I knew it was something much worse. I steadied the boat and went up to the mast. There was a gaping hole in the sail, which, as it gently flapped in the mild breeze rained a shower of feather-light dacron onto the deck. Two feet of sail had been chewed away. Our brand new sail.
We had waited years to get that sail, wanting to spare ourselves the huge expense of it until we were ready to head out on the trip. It was ruined. It took a moment to make sense of it, but suddenly I remembered earlier that day I had seen squirrel footprints on our hatch and heard soft footfalls on the deck. Knowing how important a nest is to a creature, I went to scan the sail bag and sure enough, there was a terrified squirrel crouching at the back of the boom.
Bill and I were silent for a long time. Then a period ensued that I cannot recount here except to say that Bill turned the boat around, back toward the marina at Haven Harbour, and when I coaxed him into unfurling the only in-tact sail we had left, it was because I believed it would be the last sail we ever had and I wanted to remember it.
Two days later, we ushered the squirrel from the boat and have had the sail repaired as best as it can be. It will never be fully strong again, but it may last a while. We have decided that we can no longer believe in the circumnavigation dream. We can’t even expect we will get to Maine at this point. Or out of the Chesapeake Bay. But we have provisions for several months on the boat, and many, many books we want to read and some songs we want to learn and sunsets to see and squirrels to forgive.
We hope to head out again in a day or two with the only intention being to follow where the wind leads us, take what challenges arise, care for the boat as best we can, and love each other better than we ever have.
Thank you all for following along on this journey, wherever it may lead.
Gratitude, Maryland
Posted on July 2, 2020
Where to start? 
Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland…all places I wasn’t expecting or hoping to to blog about at the end of June 2020, but that is the way of adventures.
I’m writing from the dining room table of my good friends, the Goods, who have kindly and warmly welcomed Bill and I to stay with them while the Maggie May is, again, being repaired.
After seven years of fixing up an old boat you might expect there would be nothing left to fix, at least for a while. But sometimes you have to fix the thing that a contractor just did a terrible job fixing, so bad that it failed utterly within a few weeks. (This is not the first time this exact thing has happened with the Maggie May.) And sometimes that thing that was fixed and failed is the bottom of the boat, arguably the most important part if you fancy staying dry.
This is a long tale in full, and one that could benefit from a longer format and some emotional distance by the author, but in short, we had the boat hull completely redone over the past few months in Deale, Maryland, spent about three-quarters of a year’s boat-living budget, and within a week of setting out found that Maggie May’s bottom was covered with a half-inch or more of barnacles that could only be removed by power sanding the bottom of the boat and repainting.
This was the failure of the paint we chose, or possibly the marine contractor who applied it. Or both to some extent. Or us for choosing the wrong contractor and/or paint. So far neither business is taking responsibility. So we are left holding a heaping handful of slimy barnacles (no offense barnacles, you are actually slimy in the literal sense), and the loss of another half-year boat budget, several weeks of time, and our crushed hearts.
The added loss of savings may ultimately have the effect of ending our dream of a sailing circumnavigation. That is a hard pill to swallow after dreaming and planning for 15 years. But it’s possible that the global pandemic already ended that dream and we just don’t know it yet.
I didn’t want to write this blog, have been putting it off, hoping we’d be back on the boat already and I could write with optimistic hindsight, with the perspective of someone on the ocean, looking back. (With any luck that will be the next blog.) So much of what I have worked on over the past decade (see the Borderlands Project ) has been sad or at least tinged with grief in some way. I liked the feeling of offering only hope in this blog, a documentation of discovery and joy. But the world is filled with sorrows much deeper than the travails of Maggie May, and resilience and gratitude are good offerings too so I’ll finish on this note…
A day or two after we found out that the hull paint had totally failed, Bill was feeling especially low, and we were talking about our options, when suddenly a Carolina wren started singing. If you know this little bird, you know that it has incredible pipes, certainly some of the strongest per-ounce in the bird world. But this was the loudest I had ever heard a wren sing. It was not because this particular bird was so especially loud, but because it was so extremely near. Bill looked up the companionway stairs and saw the wren perched on our main sheet. About 5 feet away, the bird was belting out the sweetest, most determined song. It brought tears to Bill’s eyes and prompted him to say, “Ok, I get it buddy, message delivered.” Then, about five minutes after that, Bill got a text from our friend Maribeth who was asking how his back was (she had read my previous blog). Bill explained what was happening with the boat and Maribeth replied with a Mary Oliver poem, Just As the Calendar Began to Say Summer, about going to nature to unlearn society’s obsession with success, machines, oil and money.
The poem ends with these lines:
By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember
the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,
the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny
in the bank,
the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.
Youghiogheny River in Western Pennsylvania, rolling its way to the Mississippi River and onto the Gulf of Mexico. We hope to meet these waters again one day far downstream in the SV Maggie May.
It’s impossible to say what will happen with this adventure. We hope to be back on the boat by next week and will proceed with a new dream of taking the journey as it comes, resting tired spirits and cherishing each moment for what it brings. It is a helpful reminder that the boatyard where Maggie May currently resides is just down the road from Gratitude, Maryland.
Garter snake in Ohiopyle State Park, PA
So far the past week’s detour has brought many things, including:
- Moments on the Youghiogheny, Potomac and beloved Anacostia rivers, watching them rolling their pebbles, smoothing all hard edges as they make their water-way to the sea
- A chance to hand off our car to Bill’s mom via his sister Laurie and her beau Bill on a country road in Ohio (Thanks Laurie and Bill!)
- Bill’s back fully healed!
- A visit to the Double R creamery nearish to Cleveland for perhaps the best chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream I have ever had
- A discovery of some weird larvae living inside a pitcher plant in an Ohio bog
- A flock of cedar waxwings in a serviceberry tree
- A visit to the largest remaining expanse of old growth hemlock in Maryland
Wild turkey in Garrett State Forest, PA
- An opportunity to grill asparagus 20-feet in the air overlooking the Haven Harbour gravel boatyard
- The best cherry pie I’ve ever had, made by the clever hands of Michele Good
- A chance to spend some time getting to know the nearly 1 year old Henry Good–oh boy what a charmer.
The Voyage Has Begun
Posted on June 16, 2020
Chesapeake Bay: Rockhold Creek to Chester River
6-14-2020
Last Tuesday, June 8, 2020 we cast off lines at Town Point Marina in Deale, Maryland, and headed out into the Chesapeake Bay for what we hope is a 3-year voyage around the world. Dear friends began arriving around 8 am and we said a few words, read a poem of blessing, and sprinkled some champaign on Maggie May’s bow. The surge of emotion that accompanied all of this, caught me off guard. There are just some times in life when you have worked so hard on something, given everything you possibly have to make a dream become a reality (or stave off some catastrophe), when past, present and future well up together for a moment. All this to say, I barely got my words out, they were choked and garbled with raw relief, joy, apprehension and possibility. I think my friends understood. Here is the poem in full:
blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
Several friends sent this poem to me over the past few months, knowing our departure was imminent. It is so perfect in so many ways.
I looked back for a long time at my friends Margaret, Valerie, Dave and Anne waving goodbye from the dock where we spent so much time preparing Maggie May, and at our friends Tom and Emily who had brought their canoe to see us beyond the jetty. I looked back as long as I could, to remember that moment forever, to feel that love and the waves of gratitude for the life we have lived up to now. When I turned finally towards the bay, I turned to the great unknown I have longed for for all these many years, through so much grief, anxiety and inner turmoil. I turned toward fear and wonder and adventure and a life scoured to its barest elements.
The first leg of this voyage will be northerly so we headed the boat up the Bay towards the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The wind was light, 5-7 knots, but we managed to sail most of the way up to the bridge. I’d never passed under this immense span before. I’m not one to find awe in infrastructure, given all the damage it does ecologically, but passing under the Bay Bridge was something to remember, in part because of its mammoth imposition on the entire viewscape, and also because it was further than I had ever taken Maggie May to the north.
Beyond the bridge we made straight for the Chester River, where we planned to anchor for the night. This river, the longest navigable waterway on the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay, is home to the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge, where we hoped to spend most of our time for the next days. But the wind was not favorable for an anchorage near the refuge, and the wind decides and we abide, so we headed deeper into the river to a little cove near the Comegys Bight. It was a good thing we did, because the weather grew nasty over the next few days.
Before the storm we had a few trips out in the dinghy to explore the nearby wetlands, beach and forest, finding many surprises, including the largest concentration of brown water snakes I have ever seen. Bill, terrified of snakes, vowed he would never set foot in this water after we made this discovery. We poled the dinghy into a shallow stream through thick wetlands and on the way out I noticed a little snake face staring out at us from the reeds. And then another and another and then, when we reached the mouth of the stream, a snake swam in right front of the dinghy with a fat, pale yellow fish with bewildered eyes, clamped in the snakes satisfied but anxious maw. The fish was easily three times the size of the snake’s head. I didn’t know they hunted for fish, and it was incredible to see this in action.
Bill did not experience the same delight over this discovery as I did.
As we got back to the Maggie May Bill was trying to secure the dinghy (Minnie May) and he wrenched his back painfully. His back had been bothering him for weeks, but I think the terror over the snakes and the jolting movement of the boat pushed him over an edge. And he probably had not been allowing his body to rest over the past weeks leading up to launch. Now his back has said, you will stay put for a while. So we have stayed anchored in this same Chester River spot for many days longer than we would have. Storms rolled over us and rolled on. Weekend boaters tubed in circles around us, their wakes tossing Maggie May about. Sun set and rose, casting its light and darkness upon the world. 
I am content, wherever we are. I’ve spent the past 5 days learning how to live this life. I have learned many things, some important and some not so much. Here are 5:
- Clothes are a nuisance, I shan’t be deploying them very often.
- Peeing over the side of the boat (with the assistance of a she-wee, a tinkle-belle or other device) is liberating. Women of the wild, you must get one of these if you have not already.
- Flies are obnoxious on land, intolerable on a boat.
- Beer tastes delicious on land, on a boat the trumpets sound and the angels sing.
- Being able to produce all of one’s own energy without dirty fossil fuels or industrial scale renewable energy is one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. (I’ll do a blog on our systems one of these days.) We have met or exceeded our energy needs for the past 5 days with our solar panels and wind generator.
krista schlyer 
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