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September 13 - September 28, 2001 Dear Friends, We're sailing now, our last night of a passage from Ireland to Portugal. Actually, our first landfall will be on the northwest corner of Spain and from there we'll harbor hop down to Lisbon where new crew will join us. The passage from Ireland across the Bay of Biscay has been smooth as silk. This is not generally the case - it's September now. In Ireland summer is over and the prospect of storms and rain and overcast is very real. We left Ireland a couple days ago, almost on short notice - just up and left. High pressure was coming in . . . good time to go . . . okay, let's go. The high pressure meant we'd have to power a bunch and we didn't know what awaited us once the high pressure moved on -headwinds, most likely. We powered out, hoisted steadying sails and slipped along through a calm sea. It was overcast and then it got sunny and then a little breeze came up so we were able to motor sail more quickly with a sail assist. Today the breeze came up, out of the west, Mr. Bedford was shut down and now we're sailing under course and raffee. We'll be in Spain tomorrow morning. About 500 miles and I haven't even gotten my feet wet. Ireland was the halfway point of this trip, the destination, the reason around which all this traveling was fashioned. So how was it? Pretty good. Here are some of the things that we did. Sugar got to meet Irish relatives whom he'd never known before. Bridget got to watch rugby games (she breathes rugby when she's not on a boat). Chris attended a week-long traditional Irish music festival. He also bought a new violin. Leslie, Jeff, Alyce and Darby flew to Belgium for a week to visit relatives on Leslie's side. The girls got to meet and play with a lot of kids who spoke English. Bridget got her hair blonded and Chris shaved off his beard (each was contingent upon the other apparently. Chris went first.) The boat now has a hand-powered sewing machine. Alcyone had a stylistically bad day (no real damage) going aground during a traditional boat picnic in Baltimore. Sugar has written a full report of that day which is appended to the end of this newsletter, but I need to reference it because I'll write some of the picnic. Let me do the chronology now, from memory, as a first shot at capturing everything. We were last reported in Schull. That's where we sat out a force nine, anchor watch blow uneventfully. From Schull we proceeded to Baltimore. Baltimore is a little port about five miles from a larger market town called Skibbereen. It is set in a deep bay, sheltered by a couple of close-by islands. Bridget spent ten days here five years ago on the Pride of Baltimore. Some people remembered her and her familiarity with the place contributed to our sense of at-homeness. Additionally, Leslie and Sugar's connection with the original Pride and how Alcyone looked at anchor in the bay helped create a welcome for us. There's a "Pride of Baltimore" restaurant and photos of the Pride in Bushes' Pub. Although small (the guidebook says the year-round population is two hundred), the place bustles nautically. A Glenans sailing school (well-known Frenchies) works out of there, as well as another sailing school and a sailing club with an active cadet program. All kinds of small boats with classes sailed around us all day - it felt like a summer camp lake. Nearby Sherkin Island, with a couple of white sand beaches, has ferries running frequently back and forth. There were some shipyards that Sugar went to visit, one in town, one five miles up a river. Fishing boats were tied up to the pier and one was hauled out. Cruising boats - British, German, American - were anchored close in. Additionally, we did our laundry at the local dive shop/hostel that does a booming business taking people out to dive on wrecks in the clear, cold (the divers all wear dry suits) unpolluted Irish waters. At night there were two or three pubs around a little plaza that looked out over the harbor. Nearby was a park with swings and a transient two-person circus with a little tent that camped there over the weekend. The town had one hairdresser (The Baltimore Clipper) a Canadian woman named Lesley Anne who'd sailed her boat over to Ireland. She'd also been harbor master for a while and skippered fishing boats. We stayed a week -- long enough to know our way around and for everything to start to look familiar. The weather was great while we were there. There were blackberries everywhere you looked. Baltimore memories: We ate ashore one evening (late August and the evening twilight lasts till ten o'clock), outside, and Darby recruited a bunch of instant friends to play tag with her. They raced among the outdoor tables - maybe twenty, picnic-style tables - becoming more and more giddy and headlong until we took them across the street to a lawn and let them run their lungs out. One night Jeff and Chris played music- first outside, serenading the sunset. Then, when we'd headed into a pub, Chris saw people playing chess and chatted them up. One of them, it turned out, played banjo. He played very well, invitingly, without pretense. We ended up jamming with a lot of energy in one room of Bushes' Pub, drawing a nice crowd. Bridget talked with one of the women of group who kept praising the quality of "crack" you could get in Irish pubs. It took Bridget a while to realize what the lady meant was "craic", the Irish word for good conversation or a good time. The O'Flynns - Gerald and Margo - friends of the Pride of Baltimore, were very hospitable to us. They have a nice house right on the bay where we took showers. Gerald fed us barbecued steak and potatoes on the beach during Alcyone's grounding. The O'Flynn's took Alyce and Darby home for the evening, let them watch movies and they had a cute little dog for Darby to play with. All around, they were a hit. Gerald and Margo and their dog came to dinner aboard Alcyone one evening. It was mostly an occasion for discussing the boat's exploits and showing photo albums, but Gerald told one story off the subject. On the wall chez O'Flynn there was a photo of a group of red-coated equestrians, one of them Gerald. It came from a time when they'd had a farm somewhere in a fox hunting area. Gerald explained that fox hunting came with the territory and modestly answered our horse and hunt related questions till he was reminded of a foal he'd seen out while riding one day. "I'd liked the look of this foal, so I brought an old blacksmith to look him over. 'You'll travel many a mile before you'll upon the likes of another such horse,' he told me. So I bought the foal and trained him and, to make a long story short . . ." I forget exactly WHAT the horse had won, but it was big: the national championship of jumping and conformation and something else. As we were closing our dropped jaws, Gerald finished with a flourish. "And, of course, after that there was nothing for me to do but retire from horse riding." In Baltimore, we (Jeff, Bridget, Sugar) ended up talking casually with the circus people - a Swiss Italian husband and a Czech wife. They had a mini van and little tent that you might squeeze fifty people into. Their show lasted an hour and consisted of juggling, comedy, costumes, dancing, clowning and music (they began and finished their performances marching around, Alberto playing trumpet, Lenka playing a baritone horn). They didn't speak English - their stage patter was mostly in French and Italian. They were a touching, sad-sack pair from a theater background who had been doing their circus for ten years - it allowed them to travel wherever they wanted. They spent three days in Baltimore and they did three afternoon shows. The rest of the time they spent sitting at the park, sketching, writing letters in the sun, doing laundry. They were like gypsies. Talking with them we learned of difficulties of how they lived. People threw rocks through their tent for fun and they had to sew up the holes. Their performance includes d a routine where they juggle and joke with knives, which can get dicey in a small tent if people don't stay put. The night we'd experienced the gale-force winds at anchor in Schull, they'd spent the entire night inside their tent trying to keep it from flying away. We went to see them twice. Darby and Alcye would probably not have thought to do a return visit, but Bridget had so enjoyed the show that it was talked of and described over dinner. It created enough interest to go back. That time they had Jeff do some English translating before the show about where to sit and how to behave in the tent. At the show's end, Alberto got stuck in his bear costume and we helped unstick the zipper with pliers from the minivan. From Baltimore we sailed to Glandore, about forty miles. Glandore showed a difference from the West Ireland we'd seen previously. There were trees and some big fancy-looking estate-like buildings with nice grounds. You could have been in England, and perhaps it was because historically this is where there had been a more Anglo Irish, moneyed influence. There was also a sizable fleet of Dragons, a 29-foot race boat designed in Norway in the 1920's. Leslie and Jeff are familiar with Dragons because a Dragon was the first boat their father bought and raced back in 1963. You don't see them much on the west coast of the U.S. anymore, so it was cool to see ten or fifteen of them on moorings in this nice setting. The day after we arrived in Glandore Leslie, Jeff, Alyce and Darby left for Belgium to visit relatives for a week. The previous afternoon was a whirl of organization, packing and enthusiasm on the parts of Alyce and Darby as they chose what toys, clothes, provisions and books could be crammed into carry-on backpacks. Jeff was less organized, but managed to secure most of what he needed in the hour before departure. We had about four and half hours of bus rides and connections from Leap (near Glandore) to Cork to Limerick (with a little wander to get a snack) to the Shannon airport. From there an hour and a half flight brought us to Belgium where we were welcomed by six relatives who drove us in a couple of cars home to Keerbergen. A blow-by-blow description of how nice our family was to us would be as tedious as vacation slides, but they were nice. The connection goes back to our grandparents who came from Belgium to the United States in 1929. Leslie and I had been there first in 1965, brought by our grandparents. Emotionally it was a little like going back in time, since Leslie and I hadn't seen any of this family in at least fifteen years. We were fed well and taken to see the sights and saw the family all of whom (save one who came from Amsterdam) live within twenty kilometers of Keerbergen, the town which Leslie and I grew up understanding was this place in Europe that we had come from. For Alyce and Darby, it was a balancing act. On the one hand, they were made much of and indulged and entertained by these people whom they had never met. Some of that worked. They had a good time. On the other hand, it was work for them to be in a strange place, away from their boat and their Pa, listening to adults talk in Flemish or oddly cadenced English, being embraced by people they hardly knew. While we were gone Sugar, Chris and Bridget had an adult maintenance period aboard Alcyone. I wasn't there, but I imagine they got to concentrate on tasks without the joys and complications of being part of a larger group. They painted the topsides, dodged rain, and moved the boat from Glandore to Kinsale, our final Irish port. Getting back to the boat was a lot of fun. It's ironic: Here we are on a boat doing a two-year cruise. We go away for a single week and then rush back with such excitement and enthusiasm. You would think seasoned travelers like us would be cooler than that. But we're not. We had to tell about Belgium and show the goodies we'd returned with. Oops. Belgium isn't over with quite yet. A couple of nice things deserve paragraphs of their own. Belgian chocolates. We remembered from our 1965 trip that at Belgian breakfast you could take a piece of bread, spread butter on it and cover it with chocolate sprinkles ("Jimmies" they are called at Elevated Ice Cream in Port Townsend). The passing years haven't enlightened anyone at our aunt Nathalie's house as to how this license is probably the first step on a slippery slope. You can get chocolate sprinkles for breakfast and also at certain light dinners. Also there were familiar sweet breads, biscuits and cookies that are particularly Belgian for Leslie and me. Our last day in Keerbergen, Leslie went provisioning with our Aunt Nathalie and filled the remaining space in our backpacks with Belgian chocolate and cookies. Alyce also brought back a circus toy, called a diabolo, given her by one of her cousins whose family runs a circus school. These kids - Hannah, 13 and Lennardt, 11 - can juggle, unicycle, do trapeze and walk on stilts. Finally, Darby and Alyce brought back a collection of dolls and figurines that they had been given along the way - in part because one of our relatives, Anita, runs a store specializing in sporting stuff and TOYS. Sugar picked us up at Shannon airport in a rental car. We drove to the home of Gar and Orla Flanagan, and their new baby Laoise. Leslie and Sugar had met Gar and Orla cruising the South Pacific five years ago. Gare's name is really John Flanagan, as is Sugar's, so they called each other Cousin Flanagan and Sugar promised one day to visit them in Ireland. They had already visited us on the boat when we were in Dingle and now they offered us their hospitality on our way home from the airport. We spent two nights there, trading cruising stories and memories, Darby paying scrupulous attention to the two-month-old Laoise. We also made off with their hand-powered sewing machine. These were the goodies and stories we returned with, along with a surprise batch of letters for Chris that were included with a package for Jeff from Grandma. We came aboard and unpacked. Alcyone was tied at a dock in Kinsale - easy access on and off, right near the center of a pleasant harbor town (Sugar had described it to us as an Irish Port Townsend). Alyce and Darby were immediately in play mode - crawling over Bridget and Chris, swinging from the rigging, showing off some of the new acquisitions, breaking out the sewing machine. The next three days were, in their way, as easy as it gets aboard Alcyone. There isn't really a name for it. Aboard Alcyone, to varying degrees, you are generally either in a maintenance period or you're underway or, perhaps, you're entertaining guests. But for these three days in Kinsale - the serious work was done and things relaxed. Bridget took me to see a rugby match in Cork. We came back to the boat a little later than expected, and I worried that we may have missed out on contributing to boat stuff but, as Bridget observed, "When Sugar is polishing the salt and pepper shakers, you know there isn't much work left to do." Alyce and Darby met a neighbor live aboard girl, Jessica. She was eight years old; her father is American and her mother Argentine/Irish. She'd lived in the U.S. and South Africa and now was going on three years in Ireland. She played with Darby and Alyce, came over for meals and Saturday and Sunday her mother took all the kids out pony trekking. Late Saturday afternoon some of Sugar's relatives came for a visit. They were Margaret, Sean and their four-year-old daughter, Emily. Kid play and getting to know one another was the order of the evening. They spent the night on board (an exciting prospect for Emily) and the next morning, after sour dough pancakes, we went to play at Charles Fort, built in 1670 and one of the largest military forts in Ireland. For us, the grassy slopes were great for rolling down and the flat areas were excellent for games of tag. That was Sunday. Monday morning we took on fuel and left across the Bay of Biscay. ******** Bonus section: Spain, till now. We came into Camarina, a little port on the northwest corner of Spain, just north of Cape Finesterre. Spain - wow! I like the way that Alcyone goes places and then there is this smooth yet hectic adjustment as Sugar studies the charts and cruising guides and Leslie learns to make meals out of the local provisions and all shake off the trappings of one culture and plunge into another. Nobody really said anything about Spain, but here we are and it is great. People aren't speaking English anymore. While that has its drawbacks, it also has considerable charm - it makes you a different degree of foreigner. New stuff all around. Camarina. We have no guidebooks for Spain so I can't say this with absolute authority, but I'm pretty sure it is known for its lace. We sailed in around noon, got the boat put away and went for a walk in the town. The first thing we came upon were a couple of little girls in front of a lace shop throwing little wooden pegs with thread attached around over a pillow. As we walked through the winding streets of the town, in almost every entry way you saw old women making lace. Lace making. Winding streets. It is a town of about 4,000 people. A lot of fishing boats. We went out that night and at bars watched the first footage we'd seen of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. We'd gotten word of it in emails from friends during our passage from Ireland. A retired man, Manuel, befriended us. Thirty years ago he'd lived in Brooklyn for a while. He talked to us in his forgotten English in the noisy bar, easing our way to order tapas - hors d'ouvres plates of squid, mussels and octopus. Then he showed us the way to the disco, by way of his house, leading us along narrow streets, past stone corn cribs set up on stone legs, past gardens and houses. During the stop at his house he rummaged in the drawer of an armoire, threw a bundle onto his unmade bed and drew forth for us a section of a 1960's book on New York and post cards of where he'd been on his travels (Japan, New Zealand). A formal, friendly old bachelor, he then led us to the two discos in town (side by side) and had a drink with us. The next morning, and every morning here on the west coast of Spain, the amazing thing is the time of day. It starts getting light around 7:30 in the morning. I mean the first lightening of the sky in the east starts around then. If there are any hills to the east, then the sun comes over the local earth around 8:00 or 8:30. The light is magnificent - long, golden and casting lengthy shadows, but your eyes tell you it's about 6:00 in the morning. It is wonderfully disorienting. It doesn't feel as though daytime has seriously kicked in until about 11:00 local time. The final thing about Camarina was it blew like nobody's business, especially where Alcyone was tied stern-to to a floating dock. We'd motored into to Spain, turned a corner into Camarina and the wind picked up. We docked and the breeze freshened even more, sometimes, at least up to thirty knots. In town you didn't notice it so much, but every time you walked out the dock onto Alcyone, there was this wind. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. On the dock stood a fresh water spigot and the ferocious wind was ideal for drying. Leslie, Sugar and Bridget all did loads of laundry. After two days we left and went forty miles down the coast. We anchored off a beach for the afternoon and night. A dry Santa Ana-ish breeze blew and we'd gotten back to warm, shirts-off weather. If you jumped into the 60 degree ocean water you might have second thoughts about that, but still . . . that gorgeous, warming wind. Yum. Sugar, Bridget, Jeff, Alyce and Darby went ashore to the beach. Another change from Ireland - we were all wearing bathing suits. (Another change from Ireland: we were nearly over dressed. As Darby had occasion to say, "Oh NO. There's another naked man!") The white sand was luxurious. Just beyond the beach there were dunes piled up that you could tumble down. On the beach they conducted an engineering experiment, burying Jeff in sand so deep and substantial that, unassisted, he could not get out. There were perhaps twenty people populating three quarters of a mile of beach, some naked, some clothed. Some were surfcasting, and one man pulled out a twenty-pound bass. When we splashed, swam and frolicked, the water was brisk, but tenable. Then next morning, after sunrise (8:00 AM) we left. It was BLOWING. Gusts easily up to force eight. At times water was borne up by the wind and you would see a patch of mist carried along in a big unit over the white caps. Fortunately our course was downwind and a couple of hours took us away to a more reasonable force four breeze. Forty miles brought us to Bayona - a larger port with a nice, big marina where we are now at a mooring. The yacht club here is spectacular. It is settled against the battlements of a big 17th century fortress. The buildings and facilities here are in that massive, big-blocks-of-granite style. Imagine a facility that looks like a castle. The marina office and showers and stuff are in this tunnel that feels somehow medieval. Bayona is cool and exciting for a couple reasons. First, it is the first port any of Columbus' ships returned to after the voyage of discovery in 1492. Martin Alonzo Pinzon sailed the Pinta back here from the New World, landing a couple days before Columbus, in the Nina, got to Lisbon. The first word of the "discovery" of America reached Europe in Bayona. A replica of the Pinta is on prominent display in the harbor here, at the end of a long dock. The other thing is that there are a lot of cruiser kids here - a boat of three Australian children, a boat of two New Zealand kids and a boat of two British kids. Yesterday we had a Tarzan swing party on board and tomorrow we'll head off across the large bay here to a beach where the other cruisers have gathered. By season and geography we're beginning to be funneled into a place where we find English-speaking cruisers headed in our direction, the Caribbean, and that is pleasant, a new, different flavor. (Final emendation. It's been about five days since I finished this. We've stayed in Bayona, having a good time. Most mornings we play basketball with the two or three other English-speaking crews in the harbor -kids and grownups. All of us are sore, in a mostly good way, from the repetitive running around. Then we head back to the boat for lunch, school in the afternoon and kid parties on one of the boats in the early evening. Two days ago there was a big religious festival in the town with lots of food stands and, oddly, many stands run by Andean indigenous people selling sweaters with llamas on them and pan flutes. Yesterday we went to a neighboring large town to do a major Costco-style provisioning. Chris and Sugar and others are reeling off boat projects between basketball matches - painting the engine, cleaning up the standing rigging, tarring the head rig, laundry, rinsing and drying out the survival suits. The weather is turning slowly autumnal - a chill in the morning and evening air. There's a big low off the British Isles that we're watching. And we've discovered a new modern convenience: an ATM-machine-like contrivance that, with a card, enables you to rent from a selection of DVD's at any time of the night and day. Stick in your card, make your choice, a slot opens and there's the DVD you requested. You return them the same way and, according to how long you've kept the entertainment, a certain amount of money is taken off your account. It's like, over here's the Pinta and over HERE'S the future.) Fair winds, the Alcyone crew A Day Off It was a beautiful day to take off and go play with some local traditional boats and people. A group of boats and people planned to gather off Hare Island, about a 2-mile motorboat ride. We got under way a couple of hours before high tide to take a short cut to the island. After closer examination it looked like the passage to the island might be blocked by some 18-meter high wires. (We later learned the wires were taken down 2 years ago.) Jeff zoomed off and found a set of wires that might block our passage(a different passage) so we took the long way and were soon sailing along nicely. Chris gave Alyce a music lesson on deck while we jibed lazily down wind. With the gentle breeze I decided it would be nice to show off Alcyone and sail around and up to the anchor. Because of our detour the tide had peaked and was on its way down. We sailed past the anchored boats, tacked around off their sterns and were falling off to a pre-chosen spot where there was enough water to sit out low tide. Before we had picked up much speed there was a thump on the bottom. Because we had sail on we heeled a little more and drove on a little more, then the boat slowly came to a halt. The engine came to life trying to back us off. Dories shifted to port were filled with water, main boom wung out with everyone out at the end, no joy. Sails came down and were quickly stowed. I threw on a thin short wet suit, grabbed a mask and snorkel and jumped in to see what we were on. A fairly level rock ledge about 9 feet down. With 7 more feet to drop it looked like an interesting day off was shaping up. Darby headed off to the beach to play with some friends; Alyce, more worried, stuck around to help and eventually headed ashore when she thought we had everything under control Lots of boats came around to help but there wasn't a lot to be done. Leslie started taking covers off mattresses for buffers between the reef and us. We had our close-cell foam deck cushions and an excess of fenders from the Panama Canal. A boat came up and I asked him if he could get some tires. They would be easy to position and tough enough for the job. He came back with three large tractor tires. Now this was starting to look better. Then the Baltimore Lifeboat came over to see if they could help. Again I asked for tires and they said they'd be back in a half hour. At first I was worried we would be bilge down soon but it took hours for that to happen, which seemed even longer because I was spending all my time in the water. Jeff jumped in to help with the tires, first without a wet suit then with Alyce's. Then we started hauling fenders under the bilge with ropes under the keel. Chris traded off with Jeff and got to get chilled too. About this time the Baltimore Lifeboat came back with its donation of tires. At the top of the pile were 2 large Boeing airplane tires. (Thank you Boeing, and the Lifeboat). They were over 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide -- really heavy but a little buoyant once in the water so we could place them where we wanted them against the hull with lines around the keel. They also brought 8 more regular tires, which, with the tractor tires, we piled under the spots the Boeing tires would settle on. With 13 tires appropriately placed and 2 large fenders dragged under, it turned into a waiting game. Some divers in dry suits asked if they could help. I told them they could check out the placement of the tires, my teeth were chattering at this point. They came back up mildly impressed on how good a job we had done and said it looked good. Leslie, Bridget and Jeff headed off to join the girls and make the best of the get together. Chris and I hung out to yell at passing boats to slow down and tried to make a no wake zone. Because of Alcyone's draft and narrowness it took around 4 hours for her to rest down on her side. After that she was 2 hours on her bilge, then it took about 5 hours for her to float back up. It seemed to take 2 weeks. I checked the tire placement a number of times before and after we rested and it looked good. Nothing but rubber was touching the wood and that was on the 2 Boeing tires. It was a little spooky diving under through the kelp and feeling around below the turn of the bilge. It was pitch black and I had to slither through the kelp alongside the keel, but it was better than worrying about it. The other impressive thing was the angle of heel. At around 20 degrees Alcyone's scuppers are at the water's edge and she's a happy boat. At 30 degrees we're doing something wrong and it's time to get rid of sail. Now, at 45 degrees, things seemed really strange. Getting around the boat was hard work. The crew came back at around 1800 hours. Alyce and Darby went over to the O'Flynns house for a sleep over. The waiting game was half over. At around 1900 we started lifting back up. In hindsight we were very lucky: we were in a very protected anchorage and the wind stayed down. With the help of the tires we couldn't even tell when we came to rest on the bilge and, though it seemed like a long time, we weren't sitting on the bilge for that long. The Boeing tires were the godsend; they were impressive pieces of rubber just about perfect for the job. The Baltimore Lifeboat had a rowing race to stand by over at Schull Harbor, so after dropping off the tires they headed over there for the afternoon. The local Coast Guard station asked that I contact them hourly and, when Alyce and Darby headed off to stay at the O'Flynn's, I told Alyce I'd keep in touch with her. Alyce took our hand-held VHF and I called the Good Ship Alyce at 8, 9 and 1000 hrs. I am impressed with how mature a sailor Alyce is these days, still a kid but serious and very aware as a hand aboard the boat. The hourly communications with Alyce and the Coast Guard Station helped the time go by. At around 1830 hours the Baltimore Lifeboat came by and dropped off 2 crew and a bilge pump just in case we'd need them (we fed them chocolate chip cookies, and we fired up the pump and pumped out the bulwarks for a while). The lifeboat said they'd be back around 2230 hours if we needed a pull off the rocks. After the turn of bilge had lifted a few feet we started clearing away the buffer zone between the rocks and us. Luckily all the tires had polypropylene line tied to them so they were easily retrieved. We hauled the Boeing tires aboard with the doryfalls. Sometime around now Chris and I went down to work on Mr. Bedford. The Murphy switches shut Him down soon after the grounding when the water intake had come clear of the water. We pulled off the Jabsco Pump plate and made sure the impeller was happy. Also one of his fuel lines had come adrift with the high RPMS so we put a new fuel olive on and when the water was high enough we fired up and to make sure he was happy. While we did this the Leslie, Bridget, Jeff and the lifeboat crew piled the tires to port and put a dory on top to fill with water. Then another dory was hung off the falls and filled. The main and fore booms were swung out. Three buckets of water were hung from the yard and the final phase of the waiting game was here. Around 2230 the Baltimore Lifeboat came back. Alyce called up and said her and Darby were going to sleep. High tide was at 2350 hours. At 2300 we started backing down. We started off with most of our crew piled out on the end of the boom, then the somewhat skeptical lifeboat crew piled out. At around 2330 hours, after pondering the thought of what we would have to do if we didn't get off this tide, we called the lifeboat over. They passed over a 1-inch nylon rode and I took a round turn around the mains'l sheet horse then made fast to a cleat. Later on I found out they had an 800 horsepower Detroit diesel and they throttled up to maybe a third. They were very good about slowly throttling up. Right before we were jerked free I was part way out the boom and had to run back in to stop our sternway progress. Wow, were we happy. It was not by any means worth the grounding and the work and worry that followed it, but our sigh of relief was impressive. Then there was the cheering from the other boats, some anchored and others just out for the spectacle, and a group up on the hill making sure they were heard. The lifeboat asked if we wanted to follow them back to Baltimore Harbor, which we did. Before heading out we returned the 3 tractor tires to the their owner who came out to watch us get off; then we gave the Lifeboat back her tires. As I tagged along behind the lifeboat, the crew put Alcyone back together and by the time we dropped anchor she was looking pretty good. The bilge was its normal self, making about a gallon a day, and the thought of needing an immediate haul-out went away. The next morning I jumped in to take a good look. Except for a crease in one of the cedar planks that said raeydooG from the tires and a little paint chipped off near by things looked normal. I couldn't tell where the ballast keel had hit the rocks. The long-term effects will be in my head, though not at all life threatening or boat threatening, it was a very sobering event. Not enough to keep me off the highways, but maybe driving more conservatively. For us Alcyone is more than a boat or a home she's part of the family. Sorry Alcyone. |