People ask me a lot if I want to go cruising full time again. And I think, sure. Sure I do. I want to live that poster/meme/daily affirmation: “Life begins outside your comfort zone”/“There is no growth in the comfort zone”/“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
Et cetera.
I mean, who wants to feel that stepping outside your comfort zone means checking the hot option on your vegetarian vindaloo takeout order? Choosing the steamship color of grout over silver shadow for the bathroom remodel? Mowing the lawn in a stripes pattern versus checkerboard?
Limitless hot water, flush toilets, and fast takeout notwithstanding, domestic bliss can leave one…yearning. Sailing can be an act of rebellion against the banal, and this is one reason the idea of cruising draws people in. And why, at least in part, we’d been sailing easily and fast under a single-reefed main and reefed jib in a strong west-southwesterly that had sling-shotted us up the Chesapeake since shortly after daybreak.
It’s not that we wanted to leave the anchorage in a favorite river so early; far from it. But I’d been checking windy.com regularly for a couple of days—OK, obsessively—because I’ve found the app to be remarkably accurate in terms of timing and windspeed on the Bay. And while for whatever reason NOAA wasn’t saying much about Sunday afternoon getting kind of nautical—just that a dry cold front would be arriving by evening—windy.com had consistently been showing the breeze steadily clocking and building from the southwest to west and then making an abrupt jump into the northwest at a solid 20 knots at about 1 p.m.
West-northwest was where we would have to sail to get back to the dock by the end of the weekend, so this had my attention. True, our Peterson 34 designed for the long defunct IOR can go upwind like a rocket, and if we were racing with six meaty guys on the rail then bring it on. But we weren’t racing with six meaty guys; my husband and I were cruising with an old dog. She really wasn’t into the sporty upwind thing all that much, and since we followed her wisdom in so many ways, we decided an early departure might be the better part of valor to get us back to Baltimore before the cold front arrived.
And the plan was working beautifully. The morning sail had been perfect—flat and fast and filled with soft light. As we approached the Patapsco River’s mouth the wind started dropping and we discussed shaking out the reef. Good thing all we did was discuss it. Instead, Johnny went below to check something, and I was enjoying the quietude of the helm when two little headers in succession—two little flutters of weird air straight out of the northwest—reminded me that the only constant is change. And there in the distance across the river, the water was turning from early-morning silver to midnight black, and I knew we’d run out the clock.
Not surprisingly, the river’s geographic orientation, its funneling effect, and the rabid leading edge of the cold front made even windy.com’s predicted 20 knots laughable. The gusts were throwing spray off the quickly building waves, and we were now fighting to stay high enough to clear the mark denoting a shoal before we could make for the creek. A second reef in the main would have been great, but making that happen would have meant giving up distance to weather, and we were so close to home we decided to just punch through it. Which meant the inevitable tack away from home base and a long beat in the wrong but necessary direction.
When we did tack back, we were taking solid spray over the cabinhouse. The old dog, shivering on her bed in the cockpit under the tiller, was deeply displeased. When we eventually cleared the mark outside the creek’s entrance and barreled into the suddenly flat, protected water, she stood up, shook the water off, and side-eyed me balefully. What’s so wrong, she seemed to be asking, with nice green lawns that don’t move? Is your comfort zone really needing that much adjustment?
I didn’t know how to answer her, other than to rub her with a towel and apologize for the dousing. We dropped the sails, made up the lines, and headed home. That evening, I made it a point to check the hot option on the vindaloo. When it comes to domestic bliss, you gotta draw a line somewhere.
Keep on sailing,
Wendy
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