krista schlyer
conservation writing & photography
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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