Crossing the Channel or The Incident at Isles de Blanc
From “Tales of a Youth Well Spent” by Capt. Roy Reed

I first sailed across the English Channel when I was thirteen.  I wasn’t meant to cross it, of course. My family was vacationing on the Isle of Wight. We were staying in a nice hotel and had everything we could possibly desire.  My Dad had rented me a dinghy – a little thing with a single sail – and told me not to venture beyond the local horizon.   I was out at the crack of dawn every day,  sailing it around the island, loving every second. But, by the time I had circumnavigated the island seven times – mastering  the local riptides, and the rockiest outlet in the world (in my young eyes) and sailed through the perilous "Needles" in both directions at high and low water –I was thoroughly bored and ready for new adventures.
	I could see a coastline in the distance.  Ignoring my Dad’s admonition about the distant horizon, I set off for the far shore.  The far shore turned out to be France. Cherbourg. I landed on the beach and wandered ashore. I soon discovered that that I had neither the language capability to carry on any sort of conversation or the local currency required to buy an ice cream. But I was determined to bring something back that would prove that I had made the voyage. That “something” turned out to be a thirteen year old girl named Claudette that I met on the beach who could not stop giggling and smiling at my glorious mispronunciation of the French language. (Sign language is a wonderful thing.)

I was in love. Smiling and laughing we set off back across the English Channel.

My Father had already discovered that I was up to something – since the family had to forgo their dinner, since – planning ahead for my day on the sea –  I had convinced the hotel staff to pack a picnic dinner for six when I set out in the morning.  

By the time I returned and proudly introduced Claudette  to my Father and Mother, I was already in serious trouble. It only got worse. It seems that while Claudette and I were innocently sailing back and forth and enjoying the wonderful picnic lunch, the adult world considered my little excursion as illegal entry to a foreign country and transportation of an illegal alien into England. Violation committee meetings were well underway. Conversations were held between my father and the French Gendarme, the English Consulate, the French Consulate and many other local authorities including England’s finest Bobbies.

Claudette was unceremoniously returned to Cherbourg aboard the ferry. I was devastated – the love of my life was torn from my heart. More importantly, I was relieved of the dinghy, never to sail again for the duration of that vacation.

A few years later, my first love never forgotten, I returned to Cherbourg to find Claudette and ask her to marry me. Her family and her fiancé did not seem to think this was appropriate. Once again, hopes dashed, I returned to England.

The Captain

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Up The Mast (From the First Mate's Log...)

I should have known, really, as I think back on it. It was inevitable that the big round "thing" that was being attached and unattached to the aforementioned (See "Looking Around Corners) web of wires and cables on a regular basis in the recesses of the Captain's office over the Winter months would one day need to be attached to Fedele. [I am informed that the "big round thing" is the radar scanner - but who knew?] It looks like a lifesaver and is about 2.5 feet in diameter, and white, with a red stripe, and maybe a foot deep. It is cumbersome, slippery and reminds me of a big mud-pie. And, I was also informed, it was going up near the top of the tall mast. Somehow.

The tall mast [the forward mast on a ketch] is 65 Feet above the water line on Fedele. That's bad enough. That's the height of a five-and-a-half story building. But on the hard, you have to add another 12 feet from the keel. That makes it 77 feet. The Captain reassured me, "At least it's not swaying to-and-fro like it does on the water." I looked up almost 70 feet in the air and was not impressed by this fact. And said so.

His plan, you see, was to winch me up the mast in a bosun’s chair – holding the radar scanner. When I reached the appointed spot, I would then ratchet it into place. I was having none of it. Aside from a rather healthy dislike for heights – especially ones where I don’t have my feet or hands attached to anything stationary – I am four foot ten. My arms don’t actually go around something a foot deep with a circumference of 2.5 feet. And if somehow I actually managed to carry it up there, just how was I supposed to get a hand free to wield a ratchet? Suggestions related to tying it around my torso were not helpful. All they brought to the discussion were visions of me now hanging upside-down, 70 feet in the air with the scanner dangling from my neck. Did I mention it weighs about 25 pounds?

Last year, this was not a problem. Not only was the old scanner a bit smaller – last year we had Eric. Eric, my son, the former rigging monkey and at-the-time newly returned traveler from abroad with a month to kill before his fiancé returned from Geneva. Agile, unafraid, nimble Eric. He went up the mast while the boat was in the water, perched in the bosun’s chair like it was a two-person recliner. The boat hardly tipped. But this year, Eric is leading the life of a gainfully-employed adult in Manhattan, so the chances of he and his wife making the ten-hour drive just to carry the scanner up the mast were slim-to-none. And while tempting, the possibility of me winching the Captain – all 6’2”, 250 pounds of him – up the mast were equally far-fetched.

Other measures were called-for.

They came in the form of a crane. So without bother, well - except for the Captain being abandoned up the mast while the operator took his mid-morning coffee break - the scanner was hoisted and attached to the main mast. And I was thinking we were making progress. I was mistaken in large part.

Once down the mast again, the next task was to run all the wires. I have discovered that moving any single piece of wood on a boat reveals one of four things: 1) A compact storage space crammed full of potentially useful items that leap out at you when you open it, expanding to twice their inert size and defying reinsertion. 2) The bilges - a place where you never, ever, want to be which is inevitably the first place anything needing fixing happens. 3) The engine compartment which is 90% engine, 5% batteries, 3% hoses and 2% work space, all cleverly laid out so that no normal human body will fit without surgery to remove extra ribs or serious physical contortion. Or 4) A maze of wires and fuses. It was that last one that we were now going to explore.

I am used to wires and fuses - being an advocate of living in old houses in need of restoration. But even in old houses, the wires - while almost uniformly unmarked - are usually laid out in some pattern that made sense to the original builder. And - again with the exception of supplemental work done by well-meaning renovators who insert barriers like walls and eight inches of insulation over them - can be accessed with only a modicum of pain and agony. And there is always the "breaker box" which has inevitably been updated at some point so you have a chance of inserting a new wire without too many acrobatics. However, on a boat, the logic is always "How much can I squeeze into this space"?, and given that answer, add another 20% and make it work. So wiring on a boat is always in small tiny spaces and has layers and layers of wires and cables - covering up a bank of fuses.

On Fedele, it sits behind the wheel in a small – 12’X2” – cabinet. Right down on the deck (of course). So to get at this, you have to dismantle the auto-pilot, take the wheel off, and then get down on all fours to peer in. The Captain is nothing, if not organized – so at least he has tagged the myriad of wires that are crammed into this little space. But nothing he can do prevents the tedious search for the specific wire that has the right tag on it. It is like weaving your way through a healthy clump of grass, looking for the one with the lady bug on it – one spear at a time. Even once in a while you find it, it hides again the moment you look away to reach for a tool.

And - given the physical location and position of the box, you cannot hold on to it while reaching. Again, the Captain has made this task as easy as he can.when he finds the wire, he attaches a crocodile clip to it. The wire still slips back into the jungle of fellow wires, but the clip sticks out like a sore thumb. Thank heaven for small mercies. And we will need them. Once we have found the wire, we need to pull it out and feed the new wire into its place. If I had done this on my own, I would have pulled it free and then discovered that I would have had to dismantle a major portion of the deck to find the hole into which the new wire had to run. The Captain, however, wisely taped the end of the old wire to the end of the new wire and accomplished both the removal and insertion in one fell swoop.errr.pull. He was kind enough to suggest that he had made the mistake I was about to make sometime in his childhood. Obviously I led a more sheltered existence than he.or at least one devoid of wiring boats.

Once the wire was through, we had to cut it and attach the wire connectors to it. Now, in a house, you could give yourself a little slack to do the work and then just "stuff" the extra wire into the box or pull it out the top. Not so on a boat; have to remember that "too much into not enough room" axiom. So, you cut the wire as near to the exact length you need, and then turn yourself upside-down to get the darn thing on and attached to the correct terminal. It looks beautifully exact once it is done, but the doing is enough to put you in a back brace for the rest of your natural life. The good news is that the Radar Scanner is up the mast and the wires are all attached. All we need to do now is to run wire from the radar to the chart plotter and the auto pilot.

I feel the need to wash my kitchen floor coming on. I will leave it to the Captain.

Fair Winds and Following Seas...

The First Mate

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Looking Around Corners

I spent many of this past winter’s dark days browsing the internet in search of electronic equipment that would be appropriate for a wooden boat! Not as easy a task as I first thought, but an absolutely necessary one. Living on the coast of Maine often leaves the navigator stranded in fog – sometimes for up to a week! I am used to fog, coming as I do from "Merry old England", but it burns off occasionally across the pond. One isn't left for days on end wondering if they have entered the Twilight Zone. And besides, a 40 foot boat gets pretty small after a couple of days with nothing to look at but each other’s smiling faces. At the Captain’s home we have the 3 day fish rule for guests: the first day you're fresh! The second day the fish you're OK-ish! The 3rd day there’s an odor in the air and outside you go! You can pop into any local marine store and see a wonderful preponderance of gadgets and electronics of every conceivable type on display and readily available. Genteel conversation with any over-zealous sales person, however, reveals that you will need to surpass even the most generous of budgetary constraints first conceived.

[Just because we have a BOAT does not mean we can break out another two or three thousand dollars every time.] I had first planned on upgrading the RADAR [Radio Detection and Ranging], but upon discovering that a decent unit started at over $4,000, follow-on conversations with the first mate rapidly sent me scurrying back to the chart table to fully consider alternative options! The goal was to obtain a solution that would provide a safe, reliable, and practical sailing environment with up-to-date equipment. The issue was to do so within reasonable budgetary limits. Additional requirements for safety, integration, reliability, endurance, practicality and ease of use readily came to mind. I continued browsing the web for possible solutions, but answers were not coming easily to hand. In the end, my answer was found by going back to the basics of Fedele's existing equipment. We already had the RaymarineT (Click here to visit their website.) range of wind, depth, speed, compass and auto-pilot software. So instead of starting over, we decided to expand on their range of equipment. The choice eventually came down to a selection between the RaymarineT C and E Series.

For those of you who are like-minded, here is a schematic of the integrated system. If you would actually like to be able to read the fine print, click on the picture and it will take you to the page at the Raymarine site.]

I accepted the challenge, and without divulging my secrets and strategies, I will just say that we procured all the equipment necessary. I have just completed all the bench testing and will start installing the equipment as soon as the weather clears.  

~ The Captain ~

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When First I Met Fedele (From the First Mate's Log)

My crocus have come up, opening purple and white faces to the sun. That means it is time to start the yearly pre-launch work on our wooden ketch.

We stripped off her cover sheets this past weekend and she is now basking in Spring sunshine - a fat, grumpy fish out of water, waiting for her yearly refurbishing. As I stood there, mentally listing things that needed doing, I thought back to when I first met her.

Her name was Fedele, and talk about fish out of water. She had been on the hard for over 2 years and showed it. Her planking was dry, her paint almost non-existant, her rigging tangled and twisted, and her brightwork pitted. Her former owner - no offense to the man - had taken her on a "swan-song" voyage on which he died and left her waiting at the dock for a Captain who would never come aboard again.

She was eventually piloted home by a hired hand and left to languish in the back row of a Marina in Newburyport, MA. "Unloved, unwanted, and uncared-for" would have been an apt description. She looked an old, worn-out boat. She did not look like anything I wanted to sail on. Or sleep on. Or venture into the ocean on.

But her future Captain (with three circumnavigations under his belt) saw what others did not. He saw good bones and a majestic bearing. (I still saw only the old, worn-out boat. But that is largely why he is Captain and I am First Mate.) By the time I was formally introduced, he had already spent three winter months working on her below-decks by the heat of an old cast-iron wood stove. I cannot think of a task that requires more "plain old faith" (except perhaps parenthood) than huddling below decks in January and February working on teak and tinware by the light of a Coleman Lantern. Or maybe it just takes a good measure of insanity. (Which would also apply to raising children...) It was a measure of the man and the boat that they both survived and flourished.

Spring and Summer found the work transferred from inside to outside. But for all our labor, she hardly saw the water at all that year. Most hot sunny days were spent sanding and painting and sanding and painting or painting and sanding and...well, you get the picture. Occasionally, we took a break and redid deck fasteners or strung new rigging, or polished brightwork - a chore which I personally think should be relegated to stow-aways and least-liked relations - but I digress. Somewhere between June and July, a miracle started to unfold and by mid-August, she actually looked like a wooden yacht. In Mid-August, the Captain allowed as how she could launch as long as she was used lightly.

I had instant visions of Gin-and-Tonics and lazy ocean breezes. But you don't just push a 20 ton boat into the water. You especially don't just push a 20 ton wooden boat into the water. Not if you don't want her to sink, anyway. First you spend days - literally, days - spraying her down with water. You fill up her hull with water and watch it run out through the seams. And you spray her some more. And you keep filling and spraying until she starts to stop leaking. And slowly she will swell until the water you fill her up with stays put. Then, of course, you have to pump it all out. I was beginning to feel like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill over and over again, until one fine August morning I was rewarded (and reassured) when she was loaded onto the boat lift.

I suppose all you old boat-hands out there have seen these lift machines, but I had not and I do not mind admitting I was impressed. They are huge. They loaded our "baby" into the slings - being careful to support the keel which if unsupported would rip the entire bottom of the hull out - and backed her into the water. And there she sat - in the slings - for 24 hours to make sure she was not going to spring unfound leaks. This was - after all - the first time she had seen water for 2.5 years. When everyone was convinced she was sound, they loosened the slings and she geacefully floated free.

The Captain started her Ford Lehman engine and she turned into the tide to find her mooring. Even though she was only in the water about 6 weeks, she was the "Belle of the Ball" for that year's Lighted Boat Parade - the first one in Newburyport. When she came ashore again, she no longer sat in the back row, but proudly stood near the front - a beautifully restored wooden boat. She enjoyed a much longer season the next summer, and in September of that year, she sailed NorthEast to be with us in our new Searsport home and to become the Flagship of Searsport Charters, LLC.

She is stately and graceful, our Fedele. Heavy and broad enough to waltz through seas that have other boats bobbing about like corks in a barrel, she will motor head-on into 8 foot seas with self-confidence. She is also fast under sail and agile under the hand of her Captain. I - who did not like boats despite having grown up a stone's throw away from Pine Point and spending nearly every waking moment of my childhood in or around water - was determined not to like this one either. But she has charmed me with her polite ways and steadfast dependability.

And when the wind swirls around her rigging and the moon is high, you can hear her sing for joy. I guess that is what made me love her - the way she sings her way through the sea.

OK - so I am in love with a boat! And with her Captain. But I try not to let it show very often. And I really must start making that list of "Stuff that Needs Doing" before all this mud I am standing in squishes up over the top of my low boots. This blog will be an amusing [I hope!], insightful [On good days!], and educational [I am still learning every day!] look at being on the water in a wooden boat on Penobscot Bay and running a charter business. And like any good New England venture, it will be sprinkled throughout with thoughts and musings about life in general and Maine in particular. So...

Fair winds and following seas...",

The First Mate. 

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