krista schlyer
conservation writing & photography
Boiling, Guadeloupe
Posted on March 3, 2022
About midway down the western edge of Guadeloupe there is a small bay where the town of Bouillante nestles within the foothills of towering green peaks. Here most of the population speaks French, the air smells strongly of sulfur, and every day, for most of the daylight hours and long into the night, the community gathers in water that pours first out of the mountain in boiling fits, then through a geothermal plant, and finally out of a channel into this bay on the ocean.
It is a lovely scene, the islanders at their ease with neighbors and friends and a few tourists as the sun comes up and passes in and out of the clouds that gather always over these volcanic peaks, and finally settles down over the Caribbean Sea at day’s end. I have felt something here I haven’t felt since the Dominican Republic, a feeling of community, a feeling of home. I am just a bystander, but I feel it in my bones and my mind goes wandering back to Mount Rainier, MD.
Bill and I arrived here just a few days ago after a several months of restless movement, never quite at ease because something important needed doing. When we were back in the Dominican Republic, in October, a leak we had been chasing for years had finally revealed its source. If you have ever had a leaky boat, or even a leaky roof, you know this feeling. Water is coming in. You address one suspect, water is still coming in. Then another and another until you are pretty much ready to just accept the unacceptable fact that you have a leaky boat.
When we finally found the culprit, it was not the worst of all possibilities but it wasn’t good. We had overlooked that the previous owners of Maggie May (then named Vilkas) had done some less-than-stellar work on a thru-hull for one of the cockpit drains. ( A thru-hull is a hole in your boat where water is meant to go out, in the case of drains, or in through a closed circuit and then out again.) The fitting had no backing plate, just a goopy mess of sealant. How had we not noticed this before? By the time we did, the thru-hull moved easily in its bed when we shook the hose, and more water would seep in. If the fiberglass had been compromised, we didn’t know how long the fixture would endure the flexing of a boat pounding to windward for months on end.
From then on Bill would lay awake nights imagining the thru-hull failing altogether and Maggie May sinking to the bottom of wherever we happened to be. Fixing the leak moved from somewhere in the middle of our list of tasks to number 1. But that wouldn’t be so easy because we needed to get the boat out of the water to fix it properly, and we could not do that until at least Puerto Rico. We talked this problem over with several recent sailor acquaintances in Samana, DR, a few of whom who told us, with the bravado of one referring to another person’s boat, “Just go ahead and fix it in the water! All you have to do is back the thru-hull out and jam a bung in there…”
This may have worked. It could also have sunk the boat.
We resolved to get the boat out of the water as soon as that was an option, and came up with an emergency plan in case the thru-hull failed in the interim. There were no travel lifts for sailboats anywhere near where we were, or where were going in the Dominican Republic. So we kept a close eye on the leak and made plans to move on as soon as hurricane season was over. We made passage in late November to Puerto Rico, where we found a travel lift on the southern coast, but boat yard owners there and elsewhere told us they were essentially closed for the holidays from November through February. (This is my kind of country, but that was not very helpful in our situation).
By the time we got to the US Virgin Islands, the leak had not worsened and we didn’t find a good place to haul out, so we waited. Finally in Sint Maarten, we got Maggie May pulled from the water where we could refashion the thru-hull, repaint the bottom and fix some other items that very much wanted fixing. When she was splashed a couple of weeks ago, I felt better about SV Maggie May than I had for some 18-months, since we realized our costly hull repair had utterly failed, then we fouled our prop on a fishing net and a squirrel ate our mainsail.
The past weeks since then have been a journey south past St. Barts, St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat to Guadeloupe, where we are now anchored in one of the loveliest parts of the sailing world. Many of these islands in the eastern Caribbean are dormant or active to semi-active volcanoes. Montserrat is the most clearly active so far, with sulfuric steam pouring from a cone that erupted just a few years ago.
In Guadeloupe, there are no brooding cones to see yet the lie of an Earth at stasis is ever laid bare. When Bill and I jumped into the water to check the anchor upon our arrival, it was some 10 degrees warmer than the bay we had swam in the day before. We snorkeled to shore where the community of Bouillante (boiling in French) seems always to be gathered and soaking in the minerals pouring forth from their mountain. But it isn’t just the humans of this community who are drawn to this wonder. Also gathered are hundreds of fish, sergeant majors, blue tangs, trumpet fish and many more. I wouldn’t expect them to be able to survive the heat and the concentrated salinity of the water pouring out of the mountain. But in truth, water of the bay, and indeed of the ocean, is complex. The hottest water forms a surface layer of surprising current and a dreamy obscurity, but when you dive down to the bottom a colder layer is crystal clear and nearly still. Between them a brief middle ground forms a barrier between the two extremes where the temperatures diverge, and I imagine the chemical make-up also differentiates.
I have been reading lately of the global currents that govern much of Earth’s climate. How the Gulf Stream, a warm water current, rides swiftly above a colder water current that runs in places at a different speed and even in the opposite direction of the Gulf Stream! There is so much going on under the surface of things and all around us. Here in Bouillante one can feel the power of that unseen and unimaginable energy circulating through air, water and earth. And also get a really damn good baguette.
Many many thanks to all those of you who have supported this journey and blog.
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.
A Very Pungo Thanksgiving
Posted on November 26, 2020
A bald eagle perched in a long dead conifer has been witness to a spectacular procession of light-on-water these past 12 hours. He and Bill and I. We are all in the upper stretches of the Pungo River, near the point where the Alligator River – Pungo Canal reaches its southern terminus in North Carolina.
This canal was cut through land to create an inland connection between the Pamlico and Albamarle sounds and thereby facilitate safer boat passage along the Eastern Seaboard. It is one of many canals along the Intracoastal Waterway (known as the ICW), which connects New Jersey to Florida through an inland water route.
Yesterday Maggie May transited this canal. Yes, we have officially left our home waters on the Chesapeake Bay, as of November 19. After all that has befallen this boat and crew in the past seven months (not nearly the half of it is told in previous blogs) our departure from Norfolk on the ICW was more momentous than we had imagined it would be. The mechanical, electrical, structural, financial and emotional issues that led us to set aside our original dream of sailing around the world have not really ceased. But we have new goals. To learn Spanish and ukulele, to find clear water where we can see life below. To conquer our fears and learn to be kind to each other, even when we are afraid. And of course, the goal of all goals, to not have to have goals.
Today we find ourselves in the Pungo River watching the tail end of a rainbow alight on our bald eagle neighbor in its snaggy tree. It is coincidentally, Thanksgiving Day, my own favorite holiday. For the food. (Our propane is gone so we will be eating rice today.) For the resilience of this holiday against the ever-expanding consumerist takeover of holidays. (Not counting Black Friday because it comes after.) But mostly I love Thanksgiving for what it it celebrates. Not the part about Europeans coming to conquer and take this land for themselves, for profit, for religious expansionism. I wish that history had gone differently. I can imagine a different present day if those who carved European history into this land had held a different view of themselves and others and the land itself. To love Thanksgiving I accept its disastrous historical beginnings with a heavy heart, and look beyond to the feeling that prompted the first observance. A feeling universal in all creatures in some fashion. Gratitude. An overwhelming feeling of humble appreciation that through hardship and struggle, even at times near unto death, we live …for now …with the eagle in the tree, and our next door neighbors, and best friends and family (be they near or far), and our most beloved of fellow creatures. We can see and listen and be awed by this beautiful world. By rafts of arctic birds resting out the winter on the Chesapeake Bay. By the sight of raindrops pregnant with sunlight falling from the boom. By the sound of loons calling through fog. By the sight of my sleeping bag and pillow fluffed up and laid out with care by Bill on the coldest of nights, and the knowledge that in a little while I will be warm and safe and have some time for blessed rest.
As I write a steady rain begins to fall. I sit in our protected cockpit looking out on the world, listening to the rain tap and patter against the canvas that shelters me. The temperature this morning has risen to the mid-60s, giving a welcome reprieve from near freezing temps much of the past week. The eagle has left its tree in search of a more protected perch. My mind lingers on the sunset of yesterday. Around 4:00pm we had just anchored and I bid Bill to make haste so we could watch the sun go down. I had a feeling about this one. The sky was getting ready to share some secrets. I set out some pillows on deck and we sat for an hour as a parade of light and cloud and watery reflection marched across the horizon and consumed our every emotion and thought. Perched in a tree behind us, the eagle had also watched the scene unfold. We three watched and watched until the darkness was full upon us.
I don’ know how eagles are with the giving of thanks, but Bill and I gave all we had. For this moment and the last, and any future moments we may be privileged to have. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
I’m so grateful to all of you who have supported this journey. My thoughts are with you today and always.
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.
Setting Sail
Posted on June 6, 2020
Our planned route. Just run that US East Coast line a little further north, and hopefully it won’t change much. PHOTO: Margaret Boozer-Strother
Launch is imminent. Destination flexible.
So much has changed from when we first started planning this voyage 15 years ago, even in the past few months, right down to the direction we will be going. Our hope had been to travel southward along the Intercoastal Waterway to South Carolina, then head out into the Atlantic to the Bahamas, then following a westerly route through the Panama Canal and around the world back home again. That may still happen but Covid-19 has shut down most of the countries we were planning on visiting, including our first stop outside the United States. A few countries are opening, but tentatively, and it is very uncertain how their residents feel about sailors coming to their lands from far away, especially Covid hotspots like the United States. This may change in time, but hurricane season is looming—three named storms already, which means it is likely to be a bumpy summer in the hurricane belt.
This voyage has always been about finding some peace and beauty and getting to know the world in a deeper way. Foisting ourselves upon wary islanders during intense weather seasons just doesn’t fit that goal. So we are heading….north! We’ll stay in the United States for the hurricane season and reassess in November. For now, starting at any moment when all of our final projects come together and we have all provisioning and life-ordering finished, we aim toward Maine. We’ll stop at National Wildlife Refuges, National Seashores and other natural places along the way, taking our time, listening to the sounds of the water and the life that is ever drawn to it.
As promised in my last blog, here is a tour of the SV Maggie May.
And here’s a special musical treat from our friends Blue Plains, apropos for this moment. They played this song at our going away party in February, just weeks before the world shut down. So glad we got to see so many shining, beautiful faces that day. We carry you with us.
If you’d like to follow Maggie May as she travels, follow this blog and check out our Maggie May tracking map.
At Home With the Gods of the Chesapeake
Posted on May 22, 2020
We made it. After 15 years of planning, 7 years of working on the boat, 2 months of pandemic lockdown, we are finally moving aboard Maggie May. Bill and I have spent the past few days carting carloads of stuff from our home basement and our friend Dave’s home, (where we were staying for the past few months), to the boat in Deale, Maryland.
Bill and I have a bet as to how many carloads it will take to get it all here, and also whether there is any chance it will all fit aboard. I guessed 10 trips, Bill guessed 6. We are on 6 now, with at least 1 more to go. This is one bet I was hoping Bill would win.
Our final trip from Dave’s house. Bill said we couldn’t get it all in one load. I begged to differ. As my reward I got to spend 45 minutes on the passenger side floor fighting off car sickness. Hooray.
Glad we were able to fit that sponge.
So far everything is fitting nicely on the boat, but we are already making some sacrifices, books, clothes (we won’t need those), backpacks, some tools and other things we can do without.
The process of trying to organize a small amount of space to contain enough food, water, clothes, gear, cleaning supplies, tools, sails, spare boat parts, medical supplies, charts and everything else we need for 3 years uses a part of my brain that I rarely access. But I find it liberating rather than constraining to think about what I actually need to be safe and happy. It’s not much really.
The stuff we have on this boat represents about 10% of the stuff we had in our 700 square foot house. But it still seems like a lot right now.
The V Berth will be my office as well as guest quarters, sail storage, and scuba center.
One of the inspirations for this trip was to put myself in a situation where by necessity I had to live as simply as possible. I try to do this anyway, but it’s easy to be lazy about resource conservation when all the energy, water, space, and food you could want is a drive, walk or phone call away. And all of the waste from that way of living is carted away every week so I don’t have to look at it. On the boat, there is limited energy, water, space, food and everything that is a byproduct of my life—plastic, paper, metal, food scraps, human waste. Well now it’s all mine to deal with in a responsible way. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years thinking about how to do this. I’ll share some of this over the coming years.
Dinner our first night aboard.
Yesterday the wind blew across Rockhold Creek with gale force. I’ve experienced gale force winds before, even on the boat while sailing. But never while living on a boat and it struck me yesterday as the angry wind howled around the mast, that this force will be ruling my life over the next few years. The wind is nothing to be trifled with.
We live our lives generally with the wind as an afterthought. If it’s windy we may fly a kite, or maybe some of us get our energy now from wind power, or maybe it musses our hair, or cools us down on a hot summer day. But it doesn’t really play much of a conscious role in our lives. Yet, the wind is a god of this planet—a conductor of weather, a circulator of energy and moisture around Earth, a force as big as the oceans in the life that is lived all over the globe. I’m going to spend the coming years honoring this god like I never have before. My heart skips a beat at the thought of being enveloped in its power and spending every day thinking about what the wind is planning for the world at this moment, and how to I need to behave to live in concert with its whims, and what exactly will happen if I don’t. I’m already awestruck and no small amount scared. But also thrilled to my marrow.
Another impetus for this journey was exactly this. To immerse myself in the natural world. Our species, (I can say our, because if you’re reading this, you probably are a member of that party) lost our humility in the face of nature ages ago, back when we decided to throw over the nature gods of early myth in exchange for ones that looked like us. And we have grown more and more estranged as industry and technology have further elevated our perception of ourselves. I have swallowed a sickening sense of this year after year as I watch more and more of the natural world succumb to our hubris and excess. It has been a poisoning of the soul to see this everywhere I look. And this journey is designed to extract that poison, even if it means cutting some deep wounds to get to that toxin. For me this means humbling myself to the elements, wind, water, sun, earth.
The first night on the boat after we moved in I couldn’t sleep. Excitement, anticipation, wonder over reaching this state of living after so much time and effort. I lay awake in the stern cabin, with less than an inch of fiberglass between me and the Chesapeake, listening to the gentle water slap against the boat. Living in the waters of Earth, this is what I have needed.
I am awash in gratitude, relief and contentment.
Coming up in my next blog, a tour of the Maggie May.
krista schlyer 
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