The Eye of The Needle

New Bern, NC
35 05.91 N 077 01.95 W

The news from Vermont and New York is sobering.  Lake Champlain is flooding at record high levels.  It is about 11 feet higher than its normal summer level.   Not only that, it is very stormy up there and high winds continue to churn the lake into a tempest.

The rivers and creeks are also very inhospitable to boats right now.  Swelled with flood waters, the currents rage, the high levels prevent docks from deployment and the waters are full of floating debris.

Even here in the Carolinas, we arrived a mere week after the passage of one of the most destructive spring cold fronts ever that spawned many hundreds of tornadoes. Hopefully, we've seen that last of those as spring weather transitions to summer weather..

On the southern end of our sandbox, hurricane season starts in just three weeks.   It is yet to be seen what that brings.

While all this is going on to the north and south, we continue to enjoy splendid balmy weather.  Not violent, not cold, not hot.

I've blogged before about how we pace our migrations so as to avoid bad weather to the north and the south.  This year seems to illustrate that point to the extreme.   We are threading the eye of the needle weather wise.  It reminds me of what my friend Bob on Carpe Diem says, "We don't live in a boat, we live on a boat."  That expresses it very well.  

Part of the great pleasures of this life style is that we live out in the weather than "ordinary" people.  When it is nice, we enjoy it more.  We avoid bad weather, but when it comes we live more at risk.  I'm pretty sure that gets to the core of the attractive appeal of cruising to some people, and to the fear and repulsion of other people.

Master Of His Domain

New Bern, NC
35 05.91 N 077 01.95 W

Today we were out day sailing on the Neuse River with Nick.  At one point we passed by a day marker on a piling.  On top of the piling was an osprey nest.  Earlier in the week Dave and I passed the same nest and the mother osprey screamed at us for being too close to her nest.

We love ospreys.  They are grand birds of prey and marvelous fishermen.  We see them all over from Vermont and Maine down to southern Florida.    Of course they are most numerous in Chesapeake Bay where every piling in the water seems to have an osprey nest on board.

Back to the story.  A few minutes later I saw the father osprey.   He was flying just inches above the surface and he was carrying a huge fish.   I yelled at Nick to look.  We both watched the rest of the story.

The fish was really big.  It might have weighed more than 10 pounds.  The osprey was large but he proabaly didn't weigh more than a pound or two.   The fish probably weighed more than the osprey's whole family.   Several times before I've seen osprey trying to fly with too big a fish and being forced to drop the fish to keep from crashing.  That's what I thought would happen this time.

The osprey pounded his wings furiously.   He was so low that the fish's tail dragged in the water and the osprey's wing tips touched the water each flap. He was taking advantage of ground effect.  Flying for a plane or a bird is easier when flying lower than one wing's span to the ground. He'll never be able to fly higher I though.  Wrong.  As he came within 50 feet of the nest, the osprey reared back, stopped flapping and flared his wings.  He lifted.  The nest was only 8 feet above the water.   Up up he glided, losing speed every second.   Finally, he soared just above the nest at the same time his wings stalled and the father and the fish dropped neatly into the nest.

What a master of his domain.  That osprey knew exactly what he was doing and how to go about it and he executed that delicate maneuver perfectly.   We were honored to have witnessed it.

Andrea Ross captured an award winning photo of what I'm talking about (except that the fish we saw was much bigger)  See it here.

Climate Change

New Bern, NC
35 05.91 N 077 01.95 W

We have been asked if we've seen the effects of climate change in the last six years of cruising. The short answer is no.

A more thoughtful answer is that it takes many years to become completely acclimated to the climate variations of a single location.  (Interesting word acclimated huh?)   Now we travel so much that I don't think we'll ever again be able to claim expertise in the climate of any location at all.

So what notable changes have we seen?   We've experienced fewer gales in recent years. I suspect though that is because we've learned to avoid migration mid-October to November, abd March to mid-April.  Not global warming.

2005, our first year cuising was a really big year for hurricanes (including Katrina and Wilma).  Since then there have been almost none on the east coast.  I doubt that is due to climate change.

In 2009/2010 we experienced a really frigid winter in Florida.   However, I'm told that such winters occur there once every 20-25 years.  It's unusual but nothing new and not a sign of climate change.

I saw a Canada Goose in southern Florida for the first time this year, but a single goose can not prove global trends.

So, the long answer is no.  We can't claim to have observed any climate change.   Most notable is how we've changed our habits to adapt to the climate in our cruising areas.

Wind In Her Teeth

New Bern, NC
35 05.91 N 077 01.95 W

I ran across this picture. I don't think it has ever been on the blog before. The picture was taken from the deck of a Westsail 43 sailing beside us off the coast of Florida, April 26, 2010. It happened to be the start of Tarwathie's finest day so far -- 180 nautical miles in 24 hours. She does indeed look happy and splendid.

Back In The Saddle

New Bern, NC
35 05.91 N 077 01.95 W

Well we had a good week.   For five days, we hung out with family in Fayetteville, NC (Fort Bragg) and at Dave & Cathy's new house in Zebulon, NC.  We never did get in to Raleigh.  

Monday/Tuesday this week, Dave brought us back to New Bern.  Then, we let Libby take Dave's car while Dave and I enjoyed day sailing on the Nuese River.  We made it a short course on sailing and boat operations.   I think that Dave is ready to take Tarwathie out on his own with friends or family whenever he wants to.

Tuesday was an outstanding day for sailing.  We had 15-20 knots on the beam.  It was ideal.  We practiced with several sail combinations, both too much and too little sail for conditions.  Still, we were able to do up to 7 knots with all those combinations.  It was an excellent demonstration that more sail does not make you go faster.  

We pulled into Hancock Creek and dropped the hook for lunch.  By coincidence we were right next to Calpyso, the W32 that belongs to our friends Jeff & Wendy.  They weren't there, too bad.   We had a nice lunch and planned to have a nice nap, when extremely noisy Harrier jets started flying over low.  Well, Hancock Creek happens to be on the property of Cherry Point Marine Air Station.  That makes it nice to visit, but not nice for napping.

What now?  Well, there are more opportunities for family contacts this month.  Well, we'll learn more about the New Bern area, which seems very nice.  In addition, I have engine maintenance projects, and interior varnish, and repainting the interior of the dinghy, projects to do.  (This rare hiatus with a whole month at the dock, provides the ideal situation to work on the dinghy.)

Anybody who thinks that cruising is nothing other than enjoyment and fun, think again.   The list of maintenance projects is never ending.   After all, we use the few things we have intensely, so it should be expected that we wear them out fast.   Long before cruising, I recall telling friends, "If you don't enjoy working on the boat, you have the wrong hobby."   That's very true.  Fortunately, we don't mind doing our maintenance work at all.