Crossing the Chesapeake Bay: It was a dark and stormy night...

The day after the launch and what was to be the day of our originally scheduled departure, a huge storm blew through. That had to happen, right? Because leaving on time, as planned, and in nice weather would have been way too easy for a first trip.

The morning began with a monsoon-like downpour giving Scotty and I an "extra rinse" on the way back to the boat from the shower house. Because our chances of pulling out of there looked dismal at best, Scotty and I went to the office for a second opinion from the boatyard owner. He confirmed that with strong gusts and rough seas out on the Chesapeake Bay it would be advisable not to leave that day. However, the next day appeared okay, though after that another storm would be moving through. 

So we hunkered down to wait out the storm moving across the Bay. Scotty and I had returned the rental car the night before so we were more or less stuck at the yard. But by early afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out, so my dad and I armed ourselves with a backpack each and set off on foot to the marine supply store and the grocery store. Of course, the longer we waited, the more things I thought of that we might need... (provisioning post to come later!)

Wind-Lass at sunrise in Annapolis ~ March 13, 2013

The next day began clear and calm with almost zero wind: our weather window.

We rushed to get the sails up and leave before 11 a.m. so we wouldn't be charged for yet another night of dockage. At 9:45 a.m. we untied the lines and Scotty motored the Wind-Lass away from the docks. The boatyard was located up a wide creek that led out into the bay and after a quick stop for fuel, we were finally on our way! And it felt so good.

Leaving Annapolis in our wake

It started out clear and sunny, but very cold. Clearly, Spring had not yet come to the Chesapeake.

Zoomed up view of Annapolis skyline

The captain and his dad

Hey! Where is my blue sky going?

Scotty and Larry traded off watch, taking four hours at a time each at the wheel. I kept up with the log book and helped navigate using the paper charts we had purchased in Juneau and suddenly realizing just how helpful all those hours spent at the library had become. Yes, we have modern electronic navigational equipment, but while learning how to use it, current charts help avoid error and can be compared to the equipment's findings. And there's another good reason for being able to navigate the "old-fashioned" way, though perhaps Larry put it best: "If your equipment craps out in the middle of the ocean, you'd damn well better be able to navigate without it." Well said, captain. :)

My permanent perch in the cockpit

As the day went on we all enjoyed being out on the water. I refused to take any seasickness medication to see how I would do crossing that large body of water, but then pretty much planted myself on the cockpit benches for the next eight hours as we motored south down the bay to avoid any weird motion that was going on down below deck. If that's what I have to do to (hopefully) avoid it, so be it. After all, most of our voyages in the future won't be this cold. (And it was really, really cold...)

As the hours went by the clouds grew and the waves picked up, increasing from one to two-foot waves, up to three to five-footers. Though we had the sails ready to go, conditions were never right to make use of them.

Scotty and I stood watch from 6 to 10 p.m. and when Larry got up from a nap to take over the wheel, the seas had become quite rough (these photos were taken before that point). With daylight gone and hours to go heading south across the bay, we would now be navigating by the lights on channel markers. Scotty and Larry had planned for this to happen and to motor all night, a "time-saving" concept I had only grudgingly accepted. Now I saw that there was really no alternative. And when you're out on a large body of water like that and the seas get rough, it's not as simple as just "pulling over".

We all looked for lights flashing at the frequency noted on the paper charts, for example, "Red flashing every ten seconds". Except the charts don't spell that out, just have abbreviations like: "RF "A" 10 sec".

So, I would climb down the companionway, find our current latitude and longitude on the paper chart, find what I thought was the closest light on our bearing, climb back up and let the guys know what to look for. Scotty did plenty of this as well. All the while, the seas were churning, rocking us from side to side so that down below if you looked at a window you would see nothing but waves and the next instant nothing but sky.

Finding the navigation lights proved to be a real challenge, because there weren't just a few to choose from on the horizon, there were hundreds. Somehow, over the years I had cultivated this idea of Norfolk, Virginia (our next stop) as a small, historic, coastal town. As it turns out, Norfolk is both coastal and historic, but it is definitely not small. Norfolk is the second most populated city in Virginia (after Virginia Beach) and includes a major shipping and commercial port, including a large Navy base. Also, it happens to be PETA's headquarters (I may or may not have considered interning there as a college student).

We headed southeast to enter the channel leading to the waterway known as Hampton Roads which we would need to enter to begin traveling down the Intra-Coastal Waterway. This meant negotiating the convergence of several major shipping channels and all the traffic that went with them. This also meant that amid the navigational lights we were trying to locate on the horizon were other lights that moved... tanker lights. And knowing you're not the only one out there in the middle of that inky darkness is not comforting- it just means there are more things to avoid hitting.

Logically, I knew that the night would end, but emotionally it seemed unlikely. The coldness was the worst part for me by far. The hours dragged on, the stress of difficult conditions exacerbated by lack of sleep. Then our heater quit at about two in the morning; I could see my breath when I went below deck. At three thirty, I made the decision to get a few hours of sleep when I realized I was going to be more of a hindrance than a help to the guys as we neared land. They didn't seem to mind and I was glad to be out of the way at that point. 

At five-thirty in the morning we pulled right in to the Tidewater Yacht Marina and tied up at a nice open end dock as if it had been reserved just for us (it hadn't, but we would pay once they opened). Scotty got the heater working again and he and Larry cheered with beers they each only took a few sips of before conking out. The next day we woke up to clear blue skies though it was still only about 45 degrees and windy. Below, the Wind-Lass rests in her primo spot with the skyline of Norfolk across the channel in the background.

More stories of the journey to follow!