Dispatch from Little Nowhere (somewhere in Southwestern Jersey)

Trip log

Days underway: 5
States covered: 4
Nautical miles travelled: 252
Grog consumed: all of it
Purchases made: 15 gallons of fuel
Known songs modified so as to mock the dog'a newfound southern obesity: 27
Foil birthday balloons sighted: 5
Panamanian tanker ships with grandiose names: 3
Drops of valerian tincture administered to frantic seadog: 72
Top speed: 10.8 mph
Tiny boats crafted from food stuffs: one avocado shell, one sardine can, one Napa cabbage leaf
Current condition of hair (my own): one massive tangle
Record days passed without stepping foot on shore: 3
Natural phenomena observed: orange marbled clay beach, fish that are jumping, barn swallows attempting to nest onboard, tiny snake swimming just off the stern
Unnatural phenomena observed: rude, drunk jerkoffs in ugly powerboats (too many to count); waking to the national anthem at full blast in stereo drowning out all birdsong and all sense and echoing out from a deserted beachfront in Maryland

Postscript
Upon exiting the offending beachfront, crew glanced astern and grew more cognizant of surroundings than previous evening's fatigued travel mind had allowed. This new awareness came with the realization that said deserted beachfront abutted a powerful
military air base. What the crew could not SEE by dawn's early light was most certainly heard.

Shakedown

Not only did we leave on the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, but we left on a Friday, which is completely taboo in the ultra superstitious world a sailor inhabits. Really outdoing ourselves, in this case, we departed on Friday the 13th. Our friend who saw us off from his long and blustery pier suggested, that, as Julep was largely untested under current ownership, that this first day would be just a trial run, a shakedown. We were underway all day, as off in the distance those glaring white sea birds called gannets dive bombed into shallow Chesapeake waters, firing off little watery explosions now and then all along the surface of the Bay.

The first night we spent anchored in a pleasant upscale neighborhood inlet, and first morning found us out on the main watery passages and heading north for the first time. As I write this, we are still going, past the cheerily stalwart freestanding lighthouses, past someone's deflated foil birthday balloon, past tugs keeping barges about their business and now, in the dark, the astonished lighted suburbia of a cruise ship, stacked and glittering a few miles away. It was naive of me to think that I would read on this trip, or even tell you all that I wanted to in these snaking lines. There is nothing to do, nothing that can be done but sail and navigate and remark upon the most trivial things and the most crucial ones.

We are small little things out here, dreaming of our beautiful friends and the excitement that awaits us, dreaming each moment into being, and continually astonished by the suddenness of living in the great unknown.

Wind Delay

Soon and soon and stare and stare, the sun and warm gentle air seem forever until soon and stare, the cold and the winds move in and take over... 

Our big departure date has come and gone and we are still sitting here on the Severn River at the end of a very long pier, anxious to get underway. We're kept back by a few final preparatory details, but mostly by the western wind, which is gusting up to 35 miles an hour. 

It's probably a good thing that we didn't leave yesterday, on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's big sojourn out into the icy Atlantic (although we may very well leave four days later, on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's fatal rendezvous with that iceberg). 

 Luckily, we are not too big to fail or unsinkable, and there's plenty of room for all of Julep's passengers on our most luxurious of lifeboats.
  

                               

                           In the meantime, I wander the country lanes and tidal flats 

 

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees. 

 

-Adrienne Rich

Farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia

The pollen comes down in thick and lazy drifts from the pine trees. An unabashed yellow from a Third World preschool. A dull, pasty yellow that clings to everything. I find it on the door knob to the rusty marina bathroom, staining the dog's paws, swirling in puddles after storms, and stealthily topping each layer of paint I apply to the boat. We are unpacking and repacking: taking all our things out, and laying them one by one along the dock to sift through, even as the pines let down their bright dust, slowly and incrementally, to yellow the ground and all our earthly possessions.

It is April, and next week, as we set sail in our 26 foot sloop named Julep, we follow the spring up the coast. It is April, and it is Easter and it is the second anniversary of my little sister's death. When we leave, I will scatter some of her ashes here too, another place I have lived where I have loved and missed her.

We have readied for our voyage by bringing Julep around to a long pier out on the Severn River. Down the pier, where our friends run a boat carpentry operation and informal cat rehabilitation center, all is still. The earth is so flat that a topography of birds emerges. Little flighty bug eaters stalk and skim along the shortcut marsh grasses; crows flap past and into the trees; gulls, vultures and osprey send down shadows at this land's end. Out on the river, it is scarcely ever still, and we are kept up most of the night by the wild rocking of our little home and the ceaseless whine of the bumpers protecting the hull. 

Our days are blurry and shifting, chicken scratch lists on paper and orange violet moods: the thrill of imminent departure and the weight of a thousand chores.

We came to the Chesapeake in December with promises of work and a winter sail. Julep, a Maine-born vessel, had been languishing here for years. We arrived during the run up to Christmas, to a boat suffering the beginnings of mildew and rot, to a season of little work and we watched our trip funds dwindle and in February we came to terms with this being our winter destination. And so we made do with bloody marys on Sundays and slow cooked dinners and lately with the brilliant forest tapestries of flowering trees.

But this is a farewell song.  We've come to take Julep home. To return to our land of plenty.

Farewell Virginia, I see you in your closeup, I do not see you at all. 

My eyes are trained on northern nautical miles, on near and distant lands that do not bear your name. 

Farewell again, to my bright love, my fairy girl. 
Let us meet again someday on that warm and distant shore.