krista schlyer
conservation writing & photography
The Beginning
Posted on January 17, 2022
I woke this morning at first light and climbed the four steep companionway stairs into the cockpit. I have climbed these stairs 1000 times in the past 18 months.
The boat interior was dark but the sun, still below the mountains to the east, cast a pale light on the clouds in the western sky. Presently it began to rain, a light sprinkle only, and a rainbow appeared, arcing with one foot in the puffy green mounts of St. John, US Virgin Islands, and the other in Tortola, British Virgin Islands.
A narrow channel separates these two island nations, and some 15 years ago Bill and I got in a dinghy in Tortola and motored through its swift currents so we could snorkel in the national park waters of St. John (where we are moored right now), in Waterlemon Bay. This strikes me now as unwise, both because the current can run four knots through here and also because it wasn’t strictly legal.
That trip 15 years ago was a beginning, the spark that set us planning over so many years to save money, buy a boat, learn how to sail and navigate and care for her, and so many other steps that have brought us to this place at this time.
That trip was taken with five other friends on a charter sailboat in the British Virgin Islands. One of those friends, Jeff, we had sailed with for many years on the Chesapeake Bay. Jeff was the first friend I made when I moved to Washington DC more than 20 years ago. Friendship came easy with Jeff, but an added appeal to this friendship was that his dog Cody was the only dog that my dog Maggie respected. I won’t say liked, because she didn’t like dogs. But Cody she respected. And Cody tolerated Maggie. And we had ourselves a friend family.
Many years later when we headed off to the BVIs, it was a dream trip for Jeff and Bill and I, and there was a moment, somewhere between the islands of Virgin Gorda and Anegada, when a new dream took root, the one I find myself living now. We were all sitting in the cockpit and the boat was sailing so beautifully toward the northeast where the shallow passages between islands ended and the Atlantic Ocean began. One of us, Jeff I think, said “Let’s just keep going.” And we all smiled and nodded and agreed that that was where our hearts would go.
We didn’t own that boat. And none of the other friends aboard would have shared our enthusiasm for the wide open Atlantic, not in the least. But for Bill and I, that experience marked the germination of a seed with dogged roots that clung to a dream for all the years between then and now as I sit writing in the small bay we illegally visited in the charter dinghy so long ago.
We are here legally this time.
This morning, during ‘morning time’ (an unspecified amount of time usually before 11am when Bill and I sit in different parts of the boat and read or write or think quietly) I began reading a book I’ve been holding onto for years. Not because I didn’t want to read it. But because I wanted to read it so much that I was saving it for the most perfect time and place. I wanted to be a certain me when I read it. The me that could understand and appreciate it most. Maybe I am that me now because I opened it this morning while sleep still clung to me and the sound of the ocean rustled against the rocky shores of Waterlemon Cay.
Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us was first published in 1951. Today she is known better for Silent Spring, but it was this book that first brought international attention to her work and ideas, which have since altered the neural pathways of the human species.
I just began the first chapter, which is about beginnings. The beginnings of Earth, the moon and of the sea. In a way it is about the concept of time itself, a phenomenon so hard to grasp for such short-lived creatures as ourselves. We wring our hands about so many details of our lives. About this action we or someone else did or didn’t do. About getting to this and that on time, meeting deadlines, making grades, finding purpose, having an impact. Saving the world. But we are so very small. A stardust mote floating through space time. So small we can’t even really understand time, any more than we can understand how a butterfly sees the world.
I think about everything that went into getting Bill and I to this little bay with its clear waters and thousands upon thousands of creatures living their lives beneath the surface. It is nothing in the scale of time. It is everything to us.
Yesterday I spent one long infinity of a moment with an octopus while snorkeling. I myself was utterly changed forever by this vision of a creature so wondrous, so improbable, built cell by cell through an alchemy of ages and ages of Earth. This living, shimmering, thinking, feeling, water-made-flesh flowing through the shallow sea.
The beautiful octopus has perhaps forgotten me already.
I can feel the symmetry of this day of octopus thoughts to that day so long ago with Jeff, so long ago but in the same space on Earth, when we decided we wanted to be…here. Despite so many events, excitements, heartbreaks and stumbles in the intervening years, we have come full circle in a universe of spinning circles hundreds of thousands of millions of years old, embers sparking and glowing and flaming and dying.
Every moment matters so little and so much.
Andiamo’s Gift
Posted on February 12, 2021
Fort Pierce, Florida, Birthplace of Maggie May
Everything tastes so much better when you have reached the far side of an unexpected ordeal. My coffee this morning. The new box of Walkers shortbread I just opened. The breakfast eggs and potatoes Bill made. Some 16 hours ago I thought there would be no more breakfasts on the Maggie May. Just for about 60 seconds, or maybe 10 minutes, it’s hard to gauge this precisely when each second stretches and stretches beyond the theoretical elasticity of that particular unit of time.
We cast off lines in St. Augustine geared up to get south of West Palm, Florida, where we planned to take a relatively short, straight line across the Gulf Stream to reach the Bahamas. But first we would sail offshore to Fort Pierce, then get back on the inland waterway to travel another day south to the Lake Worth inlet. In central Florida the space between the Gulf Stream and land narrows to almost nothing. Fort Pierce was about as far we could go in the ocean before the current would be against us. For a sailboat whose max hull speed is 7.5 knots and average speed of 4-5 knots depends entirely on the generosity of the wind, a 2-4 knot current can send you backwards. So, we planned to go to Fort Pierce offshore, then head in for the last stretch on the Intracoastal Waterway.
When we arrived at the St. Augustine inlet, we started to head out toward the ocean but the narrow channel looked rough. We had timed it for high tide slack, but getting timing right on tide and current, especially in unfamiliar inlets, is one of the biggest challenges we face. If you get it wrong, things can go oh-so-very-wrong. And we haven’t had a lot of experience. We checked tide tables and weather and even asked for advice from a local TowBoat US captain, who said something to the effect of: Its a weird inlet. Days I think it is going to be near impassable and it’s calm as a pond. Other days I think its going to be easy and…
Not super helpful.
We hesitated at the entrance to the inlet, then turned the boat around and went to the mooring field in town. While we were talking over our options, we saw a sailboat about our size moving toward the inlet. We decided to watch them and then hail the boat on the VHF to see if it was a reasonable time to go. I made note of the boat’s name: Andiamo Two.
We followed and watched their passage through the inlet. It looked a bit rough, but they managed it and made it to the ocean side. Meanwhile another sailboat much smaller than ours was also heading out. Bill followed that boat and I hailed Andiamo Two on the VHF. “Andiamo Two, Andiamo Two. This is Maggie May,” I waited for an answer. Repeated. No reply.
We then noticed the smaller sailboat had thought better of the thing and turned about. In a few minutes we saw the wisdom of their choice as there were 6 foot very steep waves that began to crash over Maggie May’s nose. It was too late to turn back without risking a hit broad side and getting knocked down in that narrow space between two jagged rock jetties. The entire space between the jetties consisted of a cement mixer of steep and breaking waves. Wave after wave rushing toward us and on every hit Maggie May’s bow would bury in the chaos. As her nose came up, water would crash over the boat toward the cockpit and over our dodger and bimini (cockpit covering). Maggie May had never taken such a pounding. I just kept my eyes on the waves and on goddam Andiamo Two beyond the chaos. If they could get through…
Finally the waves began to subside a few feet and we began to breath again. We both looked a little bitterly at Andiamo Two, now with her sails happily up and heading south.
“Andiamo. We should have known from the name not to follow them,” Bill said.
“Who is the greater fool: the fool? or the fool who follows him,” I offered, referencing Obi-Wan. “And Andiamo Two? I think we know what happened to Andiamo One.”
With that out of our systems we began raising the sails. The waves were still somewhat steep and unpleasant, and I had gotten a good head start on some seasickness, but with the sails up Maggie May handles these conditions better than under engine. I was, since we had made it through, relieved that Andiamo Two had helped make our decision for us. We might still have been deliberating on the mooring field, or have decided to stay and wait out the cold fronts, or travel the ICW all the way to West Palm, and I was eager to be out on the ocean again.
We started our watch schedule. Two hours at the helm, two hours resting. I took the first turn at the helm.
Conditions were not what we had hoped. The forecast called for wind going east, but it stayed north/northeast. Since we were headed south, that meant we were near dead downwind much of the time with waves frequently rocking the boat side-to-side as well as hobby horsing us when the wind would slacken. The wind was also lighter than expected, 5-10 knots rather than 10-15, which makes a big difference for a boat like Maggie May when running downwind. With so little wind to fill the sails, and with the main often blocking wind from getting to the genoa (that’s the big sail at the front of the boat), the genoa would frequently flap around wildly. The waves were disrupting the angle of the wind on the sails, making the boat want to jibe wantonly. We had a preventer rigged to keep the main from jibing accidentally, but the genoa was a wild card, herking-jerking with ill timed wind and wave. At one point the unpredictable motion knocked Bill against a teak corner down below, hurting his back. Had it not been for that we would have used our new gib pole, designed to make the genoa behave in just such conditions. But it takes some effort to set up and Bill’s back together with my seasickness made us disinclined to tackle this.
Sometimes sailing can be the most beautiful, peaceful thing. Wind, sails, hull and waves in perfect connection. The best feeling, flying over the ocean quietly, as a living part of it, rather than as a machine plowing through.
This was not that feeling.
When you need to go one way and the wind strongly suggests you go another, you may be able to do what you want, but wind and water will make sure you suffer for it. We had to go our way. The wind wanted us to head toward the Gulf Stream, with a cold front blowing in from the north. That is the worst possible scenario. We were not going there. So we sailed on as best we could until the wind wandered off altogether. We also needed to get where we were going at a certain time. Inlets are often challenging for boats, as evidenced by our exit from St. Augustine. We hoped to time our arrival at the Fort Pierce inlet for slack tide the next afternoon, so we wouldn’t be facing the rage of an outgoing current against a wind coming from the east, or heading into the unfamiliar inlet in the dark. Rather than toss around on the ocean until the wind returned we switched on the engine. There was an upside to this. With just an hour of daylight left, I spotted a dolphin near the bow, and then another and another. They were following the boat, surfing our bow wake. I scrambled up to watch them darting in and out of our wake, a confluence of effortless power, speed and grace. Like creatures built of nothing but water and light, chaperoning Maggie May into the night.
When the dolphins moved on I suggested to Bill that he go rest his back, while I take back-to-back watches. He protested. But I reminded him that he had done that for me on the last passage and it was my turn.
I was on watch when the sun went down behind the Florida coast and shortly afterward, when Sirius and Orion became visible on the southeastern horizon. These two guided the boat through much of the night, with a third companion surfacing from the east shortly thereafter. It appeared first as a strange irregular orange pinpoint on the horizon. Earlier Bill had pointed out an endless line of cumulus clouds to the east and said, “I bet that’s the Gulf Stream.” That white band had become a dark band and within it was a strange orange glow, not very large, which I mistook for the light of a ship. Then it dawned, no, that’s the moon mostly hidden within a wall of moisture risen from the world’s largest ocean current. I felt a sharp pang in my chest. On reflection, it brings tears to my eyes. We haven’t come that far, relative to our initial goal, but every inch was hard won physically and emotionally and this sight is a dream.
I hadn’t expected the moon to rise quite so soon and before long it had risen above the cumulus wall and was fully visible, deep orange and enormous. Just a tad waning but fully gibbous. My mind went immediately to a memory from 25 years past of my boyfriend Dan telling me about the moon illusion. We had seen a full moon rise over Tucson, Arizona, a giant of moons it seemed. He explained how its apparent size was a trick of perception because in fact the moon remains the same size and can even be measured to show it occupies the same space regardless of where it is in the sky, but our eyes cannot see it as the same size. “You can take your finger and cover the moon from view on the horizon. Then take the same finger at the same distance from your eye and cover the moon anywhere in the sky. It is the same relative size. But your eyes see something different,” he said in awe. There are many hypotheses as to what causes this illusion, but it remains somewhat mysterious, he told me.
What a gift to have such a moon bookending memories throughout a lifetime. Dan has been gone for more than 20 years now, cancer took him from my life and the world at age 28, but he was so present with me as the moon ascended, chasing Canus Major westward across the sky.
I almost went down and woke Bill so he could see it, twice I got up to do so, but figured he should rest. After the moon had fully risen and shrunk to half its size in my eyes, he came up the companionway stairs.
“You can still rest, I’m doing fine,” I said.
“I can’t sleep, I may as well be on watch.”
So I went down to record my watch log (weather, lat/lon position, sea state, observations, etc) and then climbed into my sea berth. (This is a special bed with high sides, or in this case a lee cloth, to keep one from tumbling out as the boat rocks and rolls.) It took a while to fall asleep, and as soon as I did, it seemed, Bill was shaking my shoulder gently. I looked up at him, “My turn?”
I gathered my stuff under a red night vision light. When I climbed up the companionway into the cockpit, it seemed like a pale blue version of daylight had descended. The moon was now nearly overhead, just to port of the mast. On the starboard side, off the bow, Sirius and Orion. This orientation guided me throughout the watch. My seasickness had now ebbed almost completely. In the moonlight I could always keep sight of the horizon. I can see why so many sailors are inclined to start a passage on a full moon. The full dark can be so disorienting until you get accustomed to it. With the moon I could see everything I needed. Maggie May continued to be bounced by the ocean swell, but we were on motor through the night so at least the sails weren’t banging and thrashing with every wave. I dislike the sound of the engine, there is something troubling and tiring about the grind and vibration of it, so we try to sail at every possible moment. But if we missed our chance to enter the Fort Pierce inlet at slack tide the following day, we risked be caught outside the inlet for days without a safe window to enter. Such was the doom of the weather forecast.
Bill and I traded watches through the night and at dawn I rose and made myself some tea before taking over. When I got on deck there was already a faint glow to the east and a strange line of shadows all along the horizon, very near. The sight took me aback. For a moment I was sure I saw an impossible dark forest stretching the length of the Atlantic Ocean, with the sun about to rise behind it. In fact, while I slept we had come to our closest approach to the Gulf Stream.
“Wow, the Gulf Stream is so close!”
Before long the sun had broken the cloud forest spectacularly, the clouds fracturing its piercing rays into diffuse beams of yellow and orange. For the rest of the morning Bill and I sat watch together. When we were about 2 hours from Fort Pierce, the wind began to pick up so we were able to turn the motor off and sail the last stretch. The wind continued to increase to a steady 20 knots and we arrived early to the inlet, about 2 pm, with low tide forecast to be 3:08. We needed slack water, so we turned around and headed back out for 45 minutes before turning around again and sailing back in.
At this point we should have hailed the Coast Guard on the VHF and inquired about timing on entering the inlet. With the strengthening wind, the ocean was beginning to heave. We were torn between getting through the inlet before it got worse, or making sure the ebb current had gone fully slack. We each had read that the number one thing is not to go into an inlet when there is a current opposing wind, especially the ebb current (the current created by the tide going out). But it can be hard to judge when the current will shift in inlets, and we did not know these waters. We waited until 3:25, thinking the tidal current had surely slackened or reversed at that point since we were well past low tide. But we had seen no other boats going in the inlet, a sign it was not yet a good idea. Just then, several boats arrived and appeared to enter successfully. (Though we were still a mile out and couldn’t see the details).
We started our approach. Another boat, which seemed to have been playing the same waiting game, was following about 10 minutes behind us.
At first it seemed all was fine. We had about 3-5 foot ocean swell behind us, but it was manageable. I took the binoculars and looked at the inlet, rough, but it didn’t seem worse than what we were in. We continued on past the outer channel markers. I looked again through the binoculars at the narrow channel between the jetties. There were waves crashing occasionally against the rocks but the conditions in the channel appeared to be about what we were experiencing, I thought. I said as much to Bill. But doubt nagged me. Who am I to say? I don’t know what it should look like through binoculars. I know I’m looking at a distortion but is the real better than the distortion or worse? And if we wait does this get even worse and so is this our chance?
Bill interrupted my inner dispute. “Keep a lookout behind me for big waves on the stern. I can’t see them and a big one could cause a broach.”
I looked behind him and the waves were not large but one hit us on the port quarter and threw MM’s nose to port.
“Like that one,” Bill commented.
“That didn’t look large, but ok,” I said.
The waves remained constant for the 8-10 minutes it took to get the second set of red and green channel markers. It was clear the ebb current was still running against us, but so far it was only a knot or two. I could see the other boat behind us at the entrance to the channel, pacing back and forth indecisively, perhaps watching to see how we fared. And then I saw the wave sets between us begin to grow measurably, 5-6 feet now and increasing speed.
“You have a bigger one coming on,” I said to Bill. It lifted Maggie May and twisted us about. “And another one.” Bill struggled to keep the boat straight. Thankfully, just behind us there was a lull, the waves 4 feet and not as steep but also not relenting.
“You have a little breather, no big ones just now.”
His face was focused, intent.
Ahead of us the sea was heaping upon itself, marching in relentless battle-formation battalions toward the beach that lay south of the port side jetty. In the channel ahead, a melee of whitewater peaks and valleys awaited. The water broke violently over land and rocks. Perhaps 50-100 people were gathered on the jetty, fishing, wind surfing and perhaps as spectating at the inlet coliseum. We were still 500-1000 yards from the worst of it. I knew it was going to be hairy based on two things: the current was now 3.5 knots against us, and the waves were mounding up in front of us in a way that made our bow look improbably small. But it wasn’t until I turned around that I realized hairy didn’t begin to cover it. The lull had given way to 7-8 foot and higher waves as far as my eyes could see.
Every soft thing inside my ribcage lurched and then plunged into a bottomless pit. I looked at Bill, steadied my voice and said, “You’ve got some big ones coming. Not too big, but bigger.” This was a lie. They were too big, but that didn’t seem like helpful information.
When the first one hit it twisted Maggie May 40 degrees to port while pushing the whole boat some 10-20 feet to starboard. There were buoys marking the channel and wave after wave was tossing us to starboard and toward the red buoy and the rock jetty beyond. To compensate Bill would turn the helm to port and then starboard, the big danger being that every turn put us for a moment at least partially beam-to the waves and a direct hit broadside could knock us down or pull us under. Not compensating was not an option. Timing was everything and it was going to have to be impeccable if we were going to get through this.
I looked forward and saw massive waves, lines of them mounded higher than our decks and heads, ceaselessly breaking from the weight of themselves. This was beyond my capacity to process. I’ve never wanted to not go somewhere so much in all my life. (This is saying something, because I’ve had to go many places I really did not want to go.) But options were limited to one. There was no way out but through. Beyond the middle of the jetty the water calmed to such an extent that there were people in small skiffs fishing peacefully. But I had almost no hope at that point that we could arrive there safely. I was certain that, if not this wave then the next, would hit us just wrong, sending the SVMM hurdling out of control and that here, the very place we bought Maggie May (then known as Vilkas) 7 years ago, was where she would end. I could above all else feel my heart pounding within my chest, or stomach or somewhere, trying to pump wave upon wave of blood, trying to keep pace with the angry ocean. I looked back at the waves charging behind us, thrashing against stern and beam and I looked at Bill, fierce determination, concentration, or was it blankness? This could be the beginnings of catatonia. Or, he is in that place of focus where it’s just him and the boat and the water. I hoped for the latter. I had stopped telling him about the giants behind. It seemed redundant.
At one point, at the crest of a wave, I saw that the sailboat behind had followed us. This answered my question about the distorted image one sees from afar. Definitely worse. I wanted to hail them and say ‘don’t do it!’ but just then I could not move. I noticed then that the waves behind us were slightly smaller. I wanted to tell Bill but I didn’t know if it would last and didn’t want to break his focus. I looked ahead to an unbroken line of wave that reminded me of a hydraulic in a class 5 rapid. We entered, and when it spit us out, we were out, just like that, the end. But thankfully not The End.
I looked back at Bill and gave a little whimper before turning back forward as we passed a man in a small skiff serenely willing a fish to bite his line.
We headed to the nearest anchorage, watching the sailboat behind us navigate the inlet, ready to call the Coast Guard if need be. When the boat was safely inside it pulled past us as we were anchoring. Bill read the name on the stern aloud “Andiamo Two.”
Breakfast the next morning offered time for calm reflection. We did not arrive at Fort Pierce unprepared. We did our best to find the right information. But local knowledge is key to inlet passage, and we didn’t have all the information we needed. We know now what more we should have done, including more in-depth research into tide and current stations for this inlet and more voices giving us local insight. We won’t make the same mistakes again. But having faced the worst conditions we have yet encountered with Maggie May, we have a confidence we would not have otherwise attained. Bill has some experience at the helm in handling seas that one hopes to never have to handle. His mind went to focus, not panic. For that alone the experience was priceless. And we were never truly in danger, with so many people and the Coast Guard nearby for a rescue. But the boat and this dream was.
Less tangibly, the passage at Fort Pierce gave us this: fear, want… these emotions connect us to all living things, and to the hardships that forged us each to our own kind. Challenge, terror and survival seem to pluck a string that resonates those universal tones, making colors seem brighter, food taste tastier, each breath seem sweeter. This is what adventure gives us that a vacation does not. Not just a rest from hard work or the usual sights and sounds of life, but a passage beyond the safety and security we intentionally build around ourselves, a fortress with no visible boundaries but which makes life smaller somehow. Longer, but smaller. I’m not a person who craves danger, I do my very best to avoid it. But having lived with death or danger nearby on many occasions in life—some inadvertently sought and some that came barreling over me unawares—I understand what nearness to this threshold offers the creaturely mind. Ineffable awe for the mere fact of being alive with lungs for breathing, hands for holding a coffee cup, and taste buds that spring to life for a cookie.
We now plan to savor this life for a while in the land of manatees before crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. There is a tricky dance we will need to do in order to align the demands of Covid restrictions with the implacable force of the Gulf Stream and ill-tempered winter weather. We will wait out the worst of the cold front season in Cape Canaveral, lessening at least one of the trifecta of hurdles between us and the Exhumas.
The Longest Night
Posted on December 29, 2020
At 2:00 am I look up from my book to see Bill sleeping deeply, his sleeping bag gripped tightly around him against the cold. The dim blue light cast by a night vision night light pulls his face out of utter darkness. He’s just a face and a cocoon of maroon puffs of sleeping bag. It’s his turn to keep watch, but these may be the only moments of peace he gets on the Waccamaw. I go back to my book and work to keep my eyes open.
Bill had spotted the Waccamaw River in South Carolina on a satellite map when we were still in the Chesapeake Bay. It looked to be a rare island of wildness in a sea of East Coast humanity. You can’t see wildness very well on nautical charts, which focus on the water depth and landmarks useful to navigation, and hazards like shipwrecks. But a satellite view shows either pale land crisscrossed by lines and little boxes and wires and all the things that humans contrive to make our lives easy; or the deep, unbroken green of forest and unblemished beige of winter wetlands. And in the Waccamaw River, the breadth of the unbroken land was almost too good to be believed. Almost 55,000 acres of this watershed are protected as a National Wildlife Refuge, making for one of the largest continuous wildlife habitats in the southern coastal plain.
We didn’t plan to go to the Waccamaw, having grown quite shy of planning. Any expectation can be dashed. Any plan can be thwarted by the unexpected crab pot, or cold front or mechanical failure or squirrel. But we very much hoped to make it to Waccamaw. We had just traveled through Myrtle Beach where the Intracoastal Waterway is lined with new made mansions and forests about to be felled for new made mansions.
It felt like a weight had been lifted when we entered the land of living trees in the Waccamaw wildlife refuge. Breath became easy and deep. We pulled into a watery tunnel of cypress called Prince Creek just as the sun was setting on December 8.
So this blog is not about the winter solstice as the title might suggest. It is about a different long, dark night.
Clouds had covered the sky all day, casting a cold pall on our journey. But just as we were about to set anchor the sun made a brief appearance, creating the most perfect possible moment, casting the light of a photographer’s dream. As has been the case on this whole journey, (something I did not foresee in my decade of daydreamings), my first mate’s duties took precedence over all else. I took two minutes to have my breath taken away by the beauty of sun on cypress, snapped a couple of pictures, then worked with Bill to set the anchor, and then, for the first time, to set a second anchor.
In the Chesapeake Bay, in almost every case, a boater can rely on a single good anchor, and for the past six years of boating on the Bay, we did. There is very little tidal change or current and there are so many protected anchorages that one gets very spoiled with the ease of anchoring.
We had decided on Prince Creek, a narrow tributary of the Waccamaw River, because we knew a cold front was looming and we wanted to be in a tight place without too much fetch (the distance that allows waves to build with wind). But there’s tight, and there’s tight, and Prince Creek is really tight, only about 200 feet across. That would be fine in calm conditions, but the creek has a fairly strong current that shifts with the tide, which was likely to be exacerbated by the wind—forecast for near gale force. We knew this would be tricky, and so decided to set an anchor off the stern of the boat along with the one off the bow.
We made two attempts to set the stern anchor until it held, or so it seemed, then watched what remained of the sun’s last magnificent rays and went below to make dinner. The wind was starting to toss Maggie May about, so after dinner we decided to start an anchor watch schedule. Not tired, I took the first watch while Bill rested. It was only about an hour into my watch when I checked the chart on the iPad for the 10th time and our boat icon was suddenly perilously close to the shore. I thought it might be a GPS glitch so I went on deck. Stocking feet, no coat, temperatures in the 30s with the gusting wind funneling down the creek.
I walked on deck in the dark and turned on the spotlight, which illuminated the bony arm of a tree reaching so near the starboard side of the stern I could almost have touched it. It was likely 15 feet away. Everything looks closer at night in a gale. Regardless, it was way too close. And on a shore we did not expect to be anywhere near. We had started 100 feet away from this shore and should not have swung this wide unless our stern anchor dragged, and possibly the bow anchor as well.
I ran down and roused sleepy Bill.
“Whaaaaassit?”
“Something’s not right.” Understated as always. “You should come look.”
Once on deck Bill agreed, not good. We tried to shorten the stern anchor line and pull ourselves off the shore, but it was under immense load trying to hold 20,000 lbs of Maggie May against 30 knots of wind ganging up with the current of a heavy tide. I brought the bow anchor line in about 5 feet, just what I could get by tugging at the snubber line (this is a line that attaches to the anchor chain to take the shock off the windlass (the machine that raises and lowers the anchor)).
We were still too close. The boat was nearly beam to the wind, waves and current, suspended by two anchors off a mess of cypress knees, snags and limbs that would gash the hull and tangle the mast. Throughout the past few days we had seen boats wrecked all along our route, including several nearby in the Waccamaw. These visions were ever present as we decided what to do next.
Bill was able to loosen the stern anchor line when the wind rested, and switch it from the port aft cleat to the starboard aft cleat, which had the effect of shifting Maggie May more downstream, more bow to wind and current, and further away from the shore that had us in its grips. Then we deliberated in the icy darkness while the wind howled and waves smacked the boat around. We could let loose the stern anchor all together, with a float attached, and go back and get it once the conditions calmed. This could get us further downstream and mid-channel, but if the main anchor didn’t hold we were in trouble. We could tighten the bow anchor so we were not so close to the shore, but that would increase the likelihood that the bow anchor would drag. We considered several other options that each had their dangers and decided to snug the bow up a bit, just shortening the snubber line, not the anchor chain, and see how we did. That was about 11:30 pm.
Bill said he would stay up as long as he could and keep watch. We set up beds in the main salon—Bill on port, me on starboard. I tried to sleep, unsuccessfully for the most part but I drifted off at some point and woke at 1:30 am to find Bill fighting off sleep.
“I don’t think I can stay awake” he said.
“I’m not sure I can either, but I’ll try.”
I woke surprisingly well and read for a while from a fantasy novel about sailing that my friend Cat had gifted me. The Girl From Everywheretook my mind off the trouble at hand and kept me awake. Around 3:00 the wind began gusting and I checked the digital chart. AlarmAlarmAlarm. Maggie May was now on the opposite side of the creek, almost within the shoal line. Inconceivable. GPS glitch? I ran on deck, shined the spotlight on bony cypress fingers straining to touch the port stern. Disoriented in the dark, I had to walk around the boat shining the light to figure out that we were truly where the GPS had placed us, and in a place we did not want to be, about 5-10 feet from lodging hard aground at the edge of the forest. The stern anchor must have flipped over and was just coasting along the bottom, and the primary anchor must have traveled some too. I woke Bill. More rapid deliberations. We pulled the bow snubber as close in as we could to gain some distance from the shore. Then we put the stern anchor line on a winch and cranked it in with much effort. At this point the anchor was not helping and might be weakening the primary anchor with its wanderings. When we hauled the anchor up on deck, we found a tree stump attached to it.
After the secondary anchor was free, we floated even closer to the shore. Decision time. Stay and hope for the best? (Do not trust to hope it has abandoned these lands). Re-anchor in the center of the creek with a shorter chain scope and hope the primary anchor holds? Leave and head to the mouth of the creek in the dark? Or, turn this movie off and go back to bed?
Finding the center of the creek in the dark proved difficult so Bill declared: I want to go to the mouth.
One thing you have to accept on a boat when you are first mate is that when the captain makes a declaration you accept it, even if you don’t agree.
No moon. No light. Sub-freezing wind chill now at 20-25 knots, I went on the bow and shined the spotlight to starboard, to port, to center, then back to starboard…. When Bill got too close to the forest on either side, I’d say, “Turn to port” or “Turn to starboard”, guiding him for the mile of this narrow winding creek back to the entrance on the Waccamaw. For the first time in this trip we employed the headsets Bill’s family had gifted to us the Christmas before, so we could speak in calm voices and hear each other just fine, though he was in the warm, toasty, probably 40 degree cockpit enclosure and I was on the bow in the 20s. In my haste I had not donned my foul weather gear, just a thin fleece, but I had at least put on shoes. The ride seemed an infinity of time, slow motion through the biting dark. Occasionally the spotlight would fall on a great blue heron roosting on a cypress branch. Heads tucked tight against their feathers, the birds would turn their bodies from the blinding light, too annoyed and cold to even chastise me. (This is quite unusual and speaks to the unpleasant conditions. Herons will always make time to chastise.)
Around 4:00 am we arrived at the mouth, some 50 feet wider than the creek; we anchored toward the middle, set the snubber, and went below into our beds and sleeping bags in the main salon. Neither of us slept until close to 5:00. I set an alarm for 6, slept a bit, woke and checked location, slept a bit, checked location, slept. When the alarm went off, I set it for 7. We got up at that alarm because the sun was beginning to rise. I made hot almond milk and we had some warm granola for breakfast, then tidied the deck and praised the sun, took up anchor and headed out to find a better spot by the light of day.
The wind had calmed somewhat as we headed up nearby Bull Creek, found a wide spot, about 400 feet, and set the bow anchor, before laying down on the hard wooden benches of the cockpit and resting in grateful peace under the warm gaze of the sun.
This was as good a day as any to give thanks, so when we felt rested, we began cooking our belated Thanksgiving Dinner, delayed because we had no propane on actual Thanksgiving. It tasted like the best meal we had ever eaten.
That afternoon we watched the light dim on forest and creek. As the sun went down we heard a strange noise, like a frog or some weird reptile. Finally we looked near the shore and in a tree was an anhinga! Our first truly southern bird. Such a weird call, such a weird bird. Anhinga are like weird cormorants, and cormorants are already weird. Like a snake and a cormorant made a baby. When they swim, sometimes their whole body is beneath the surface, so it appears a snake is swimming vertically through the water. Outrageous.
Bill did the dinner dishes and arranged our real bed in the aft cabin just the way I like it, all to make up for me having to stand on the bow in the biting wind. I was asleep by 7 pm. I had set an alarm on the chartplotter to alert us if we drifted toward shallow water, and though we both woke several times in the night to check our position, we slept blissfully until sunrise.
As the sun ascended, I sat on the frosty deck in my warmest clothes and watched the mist travel across Bull Creek; watched several river otters scramble into the water and swim downstream; watched a young beaver swim through the golden water; watched our anhinga wake from its perch in the southern forest of red leaf and reaching arms draped with Spanish moss, all a safe 150 feet away.
Happy New Year all. I hope your 2021 is filled with peace, rest, and just the right amount of adventure.
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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.
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
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.
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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