1800 Days – Seg. 6 Ch. 2 Pg. 1-4

Chapter 2 - The Leap of Faith

 

    I can remember so clearly how Nancy told all my doctors at Sun Coast Hospital in Florida in late 1999, when I was trying to recover from such a long and devastating illness, trying to gain enough strength to walk with my portable bottle of oxygen, how they had to make sure that I was strong enough to make the "Leap of Faith" before I could be discharged, and she would explain that, in order to get home, we had to step from the marina dock onto the deck of our boat, and how this was sometimes a long step, even a jump, when the wind was blowing the boat away from the dock. For some reason the doctors, especially Dr. Namey, were captivated by this term, and soon all the nursing staff and all my visitors were aware of Nancy's "Leap of Faith". But as I look back on everything that has transpired I realize that the true "Leap of Faith," the one that was so huge and irreversible, was made by Nancy and me together in that spring of 1996, when Nancy quit her job, we sold almost all we owned at auction, and we moved irrevocably onto our boat Summer School as our only home, to cruise the east coast and follow the seasons for as long as our meager funds and my failing health would last. We did this on Monday, May 13, 1996, almost exactly one year after the day we had left Marathon in the Florida Keys to bring our boat north as part of our move to Easton.

    Following my night at Youell's Oyster House, we were not able to find the time to return to our boat for more than two weeks. Nancy was kept busy with her classes and responsibilities at the college and I continued to work on my one course and see to the remaining tasks involved with our relocation. During these days the weather turned to early fall with the leaves showing the first hints of color. I was reveling in being in the east again in the fall, among the old established towns dotting the picturesque countryside surrounding Easton. We did find enough time to take some drives along some of the small country roads in the area, including the beautiful road that winds next to the Delaware River, in our continuing efforts to get to know the region, and these brief outings were lovely in the early fall weather. But our delight in exploring the land in the color and coolness of fall was to pale in comparison to our reactions to our first fall cruise.

    It was on Friday night, September 29, when we once again drove the 140 miles through the traffic past Philadelphia to our boat at Summit North. Although the weekend saw wonderful fall weather we did not take the boat out because we were busy getting ready for this cruise we were calling our "Inaugural Fall Cruise." Lafayette had a fall break in classes for one week that was scheduled to begin the following weekend and we were planning to take at least a few days to travel somewhere new in the northern part of the Chesapeake. Never before did we have the opportunity to use our boat in the fall, the favorite season for both of us. We began our boating in Cape May in the summer. Our cruise south on the ICW in 1993 was in the middle of the summer with record-breaking heat in the southeast. And of course once in South Florida, the Bahamas and the Florida Keys, it was always summer as far as the temperatures were concerned. Then there was our trip from Marathon to Summit North, again in the summer and with Heat Wave 95 that followed our arrival. The prospects of cruising with cool air in our faces when we might be wearing jackets and the warmth of the sun would be welcome, of sleeping with the boat open and no generator or air conditioner running to spoil the stillness, of waking in the mornings when a warm sweater and hot coffee would be welcome, all of these we eagerly anticipated.

    We occupied the weekend preparing the boat, checking and readying the various systems (batteries, charger, generator, dinghy and outboard, air conditioner, navigation equipment, etc.), shopping for needed provisions and studying our charts. Although we had traveled through the upper Chesapeake numbers of times we had never explored any of the numerous interesting destinations such as Annapolis or St. Michaels, Maryland, which we had recently visited by land and enjoyed so much. At first we decided we would visit Baltimore's inner harbor and stay there a few days, but as we continued to evaluate the various possibilities we opted once again for a less crowded and more remote destination. We decided we would explore the Chester River on the eastern shore. The Chester is the northernmost of the long deep rivers that flow through the rural eastern shore of the bay. We read that it was rich in history and scenic charm and comparatively free of recreational boat traffic. It was supposed to be easily navigable for 28 miles up-river to the small college town of Chestertown. This was farther from Summit North than Baltimore, but it was still within range for a short cruise, and with our love for college towns, how could we resist? Our plans were set and we prayed for good weather.

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    Nancy had no classes on Fridays and she was able to re-arrange her office hours to allow us to leave Easton on Friday morning. We were at the boat by noon, had a quick lunch and left our slip with mounting excitement by 2 p.m. Luckily the tide was almost high and we had no trouble navigating through the shallow marina channel into the C&D Canal. Our luck continued as we found the strong current of the canal running with us, enabling us to make good time despite our late start. I pushed the throttle up to 2000 rpm and the GPS indicated our speed "over the ground" to be 9 knots, which was almost flying for a slow trawler such as Summer School. It was October 6, sunny and quite warm for this early fall day, but with great anticipation we were beginning our "Inaugural Fall Cruise."

    Given our quick pace we reached the western end of the canal where it empties into the Elk River in little more than an hour. Although the Elk River is comparatively narrow the shore afforded more interesting scenery than the dug trench of the canal. We passed Town Point, where the traffic signals for the canal were posted, and then we were opposite the broad mouth of the shallow Bohemia River, a favorite boating destination for dockmaster Doug. We were looking for a place to anchor for the night but decided to continue in the warm late afternoon. In four more miles we passed Turkey Point and entered the Chesapeake Bay proper. The bay is about four miles wide here. We continued to follow the main shipping channel, over 35 feet deep, straight, well-marked by large red and green buoys, and easy. Four more miles brought us opposite Grove Point, which marks the northern mouth of the Sassafras River, here over three miles wide, and we decided to turn into the river. This had been the scene of our very first boating experiences on Summer School when we had stayed upriver on the Sassafras after we purchased the boat in July 1992. Somehow it seemed fitting that we should pick this river for our anchorage on our first exploratory cruise of the Chesapeake more than three years later. We wanted to have adequate shelter in our anchorage in case the winds got up, so we followed the Sassafras upriver for about four more miles until the river narrowed down and we rounded a bend near a narrow spit of beach that projected into the river on the north side. On the opposite side of the river, near the mouth of Turner Creek, the chart showed the water depth to hold to nine feet almost up to the bank, which we could see was relatively high. We crossed the river and cautiously headed toward this high bank until we were well within its shelter and almost a half mile off the main boating channel. Here we dropped our anchor, made sure it was well-set in the soft bottom, and settled in for a quiet dinner and a peaceful night. We had come about 25 miles. It was 5:30 p.m. and a warm 78 degrees, but it promised to be cool enough overnight to allow us to open the boat and sleep without the generator or air conditioner. We were cruising once again.

1800 Days – Seg.5 Ch.1 Pg. 17-23: END OF CHAPTER

    When you have a disease such as leukemia, which, doctors have told you, is incurable, progressively debilitating as it slowly destroys your immune system, and eventually fatal, it is difficult not to make the disease the focus of your life, to worry about it almost to the exclusion of all else. During the years between my initial diagnosis in 1988, and the summer of 1995 when we were at Summit North, I had taken numerous medications to deal with various symptoms. I had undergone two courses of oral chemotherapy and experienced three hospitalizations, the last one of which, in 1993, was long and nearly fatal. But I had learned, through the experience of cruising and living on Summer School with Nancy, especially during our eight month cruise of Florida and the Bahamas in 1994, the importance of looking outside myself and the value of what we came to call a life-centering passion, which, in our case, was living on a small boat. I was now much less preoccupied with my leukemia and I felt healthier and was taking less medication than I had for years. Though I was still taking drugs to control my hypertension, I had even been able to discontinue all medications for my stomach ulcer, something that had been a problem for the previous ten years. I think that perhaps I had become complacent, that I had been feeling so good for more than two years that I did not give my general health the care and attention it needed. Certainly, it seems that with all the boat work I did in the searing heat of that summer, I failed to guard against dehydration.

    Three days after we returned from St. Michaels I awoke at 2 a.m. on Wednesday morning with severe pain in my lower abdomen. By 4 a.m. the pain had spread to my back and had become much worse. I was vomiting and could no longer walk. Nancy telephoned 911 and I could hear her trying to explain how to find the marina and how to find our boat, which was at a considerable distance from the marina entrance and parking lot. Then she called the overnight security guard at the marina on the VHF radio, using the Coast Guard mandated stand-by channels 16 and 9, to alert him to our emergency and the arrival of the ambulance. I can remember the confusion and noise when the two emergency medical technicians entered the boat and tried to get me out onto the dock, and I can remember being pushed up the dock on the gurney calling for Nancy, every bump giving me a spasm of pain. My one memory of the ambulance ride to the hospital, which was about 25 miles away, was of one of the technicians trying to start an IV, unsuccessfully, and me telling him not to try, that an IV was hard to start on me under the best of conditions.

    Sometime later in the morning I became conscious in a hospital room, an IV needle fastened to my arm, and Nancy sitting beside me. When I had a strong pain she could give me relief with a morphine pump that she could use to inject morphine through the IV tube. She told me that I had been diagnosed with kidney stones, that the diagnosis was confirmed by a CT scan given to me earlier in the morning, that I was being given a lot of liquid intravenously and we were waiting to see if I could pass the stone without using any surgical procedures. Later in the day I met Dr. Mahmood Sadeghee into whose care I had been assigned. He confirmed what Nancy had told me and added that my stone was lodged in the ureter of my left kidney and that, if I could not pass it in about a day, it would have to be removed by ureteroscopy. This procedure was done on Friday morning and I was then able to return to our boat, tender and sore but functional.

    I had to enter the hospital again one week later as a surgical outpatient to have the stent that had been left in the ureter removed. When Dr. Sadeghee tried to do this procedure without general anesthetic, the attempt was unsuccessful and caused extreme pain. Finally, anesthetic was administered, Dr. Sadeghee surgically enlarged the entrance to the urethra to permit the insertion of the ureteroscope, and the stent was removed. For days after this procedure it was difficult and painful to walk, and it would be weeks before I felt recovered.

    I found this whole experience not only painful, but sobering, even a little frightening, in the arbitrary suddenness with which my life had been changed. Now, in addition to the problems of trying to control my hypertension, the possibility of recurrent stomach pain due to my ulcer, or back pain due to my herniated disc, and of course the continued threat posed by the leukemia, I had to worry about continued problems with kidney stones, for I was told that it was likely that they would indeed recur, especially if I failed to consume adequate quantities of water. The whole experience had been so painful that I found the prospect of recurrence to be alarming. But the most disturbing consequence of this experience was not to be revealed until many months later when I discovered that Dr. Sadeghee had neglected to inform me of the most serious condition that was revealed by the CT scan, the existence of a prominent abdominal aortic aneurysm, an omission that could have had fatal results.

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    While I was on the boat recovering from the kidney stone removal we received our telephone call telling us that our furniture would be delivered to our Easton house on Wednesday morning. We had to drive to Easton on Tuesday, supervise the delivery of our belongings on Wednesday, return to the Delaware hospital on Friday morning for the stent removal, and then go back to Easton on the weekend to begin the process of settling into our new home, new town and new life.

    It is amazing what a long and complicated and difficult process it is to relocate, especially to a different state in a different area of the country. The college had already arranged for our electricity and water, but we had to get telephone service as soon as possible, then contract with an internet service provider and arrange for cable television service. Of course we had to arrange for mail delivery and change addresses on everything. We had to locate the usual conveniences such as a hardware store, a dry cleaners, a source of computer supplies, furniture and appliance stores (we needed a washer, dryer and refrigerator), the major department stores (Sears we found across the river in Phillipsburg, NJ). We had to arrange for lawn care and find a source for firewood. We had to get fuel oil delivered so that we could have heat in our house when needed. We had to find sources for beer, wine and liquor, and determine what rules and hours applied. There were several chores associated with our cars. We had to have them registered in Pennsylvania and get new plates, but this, we found, could be done only after they passed required safety inspections, which necessitated locating a reliable and trustworthy car service shop (the TransAm failed and thus had to be serviced). Of course we had to get new drivers licenses, which meant, in Pennsylvania, that we had to pass written examinations (unbelievably, I failed mine on the first try). We had to identify a new insurance agent and get new car insurance. And of course I felt that it was important for me, as soon as possible, to find a new family doctor, identify a drug store that could provide my medications using my drug insurance company, and find a new hematologist or oncologist who could follow my leukemia. It took weeks to complete this process that we began on Monday, August 21, when we moved off the boat and into our faculty house.

    We were pleased with this house rented to us by Lafayette. It was a large old brick house, sitting up a steep bank above the street level, with a wonderful covered front porch made of stone, with stone columns supporting the roof. It had old-fashioned hot water heat with radiators in every room, a fireplace in the living room, a formal dining room, a small kitchen, two bathrooms and five other rooms from which we could choose our bedroom and home office. There was a full basement surrounded by walls of stone that formed the foundation (and leaked water during every rain, we discovered), and a shed at the rear of the house that we could use to store our firewood. Best of all was the location on Parsons Street immediately adjacent to the Lafayette campus and only a short walk from the engineering building.

    Within two days after we moved into the house, Nancy became immersed in her new job. I too became focused on working for the college because I had agreed to teach a sophomore course in circuit analysis as an adjunct associate professor. Initially we were both excited to be teaching at Lafayette, which was so completely different from the University of Southern Colorado. Lafayette was a much smaller school in terms of student enrollment, which was near 2000. Yet it was much bigger in terms of endowments and resources. The campus was comprised of about 60 buildings spread over 340 beautiful acres with large old trees and quiet walking paths. The college was founded by the citizens of Easton in 1826 and it had established a long and nationally recognized tradition of excellence, being consistently ranked in the top 2% of the country's independent colleges. There were over 180 full-time faculty, about the same as at USC where the student enrollment was more than twice that of Lafayette, and, in sharp contrast to USC, all the regular faculty held their doctorate degrees. Nancy, with her academic qualifications, fit in easily, but I felt somewhat out of place with only a masters degree, though with only one exception, I seemed to be readily accepted by the engineering faculty in my position as an adjunct professor.

    As we continued to work on the various tasks required to complete the relocation process we quickly fell into a comfortable routine. In the mornings Nancy would walk to her office in the engineering building while I would drive to the nearby health and fitness center where I had taken out membership, determined not to lose the good physical conditioning I had acquired during the past year. We would meet at home for lunch after which Nancy would return to the campus. Since my classes were on Monday and Thursday nights I had the afternoons free to work on domestic chores or perhaps grading papers or class preparations. At night, though Nancy often had work she needed to do, we continued our practice of quitting everything around ten o'clock to share our thoughts and ideas and experiences over nightcaps before bedtime. Even through the early days of our residence in Easton, when so much was new, the subject of much of our talk during these quiet times, was our boat and the life aboard Summer School that we had learned to live.

    On Tuesday, September 12, I found myself in Youell's Oyster House, a good small restaurant on Cattrell Street, the main street on College Hill, which was what locals termed the Lafayette campus and surrounding residential area. The restaurant was only a few blocks from our house. It had excellent food and an intimate and casual atmosphere. On this particular night Nancy was required to participate in a dinner meeting with colleagues and students as part of a "team building" exercise. I used the time over a cocktail waiting for dinner, and over a leisurely coffee afterward, to catch up writing in my journal.

    The previous weekend we had stayed on our boat at Summit North, the first time we had been there since moving into our house, and I wrote of our reactions. We both felt such joy and relief to be once again on our boat, going to sleep in our small double bed in the aft cabin. On Saturday we took the boat out for a brief run, the first time we had moved the boat in a month. The feelings of exhilaration continued as we sat up on the bridge, carefully found our way out the shallow entrance channel of the marina and entered the swift current of the canal. We went only as far as Summit Bridge before returning, a round trip distance of only five miles, yet it was enough to bring back a flood of memories of our cruising life. On Sunday we drove the two and a half hours back to our house and jobs in Easton, but our emotional reactions to this weekend were strong and lasting. I wrote that Nancy, especially, was so happy to be once again on the boat, much happier than in her day-to-day life "at home." I wrote that we both felt that our boat was really our true home and that what we needed was to find some way to allow Nancy to retire so that we could live permanently on this wonderful boat of ours. And this was my first hint of the truly fundamental changes that were to come into our lives in the next months.

1800 Days-Seg. 4 Ch1 Pgs. 11-17

    What a strange feeling it was to awake in our aft cabin the morning after we arrived at Summit North and realize that we were no longer cruising, that we did not have to travel on our boat any more, that Summer School was now at a permanent mooring with all that this single fact implied. We awoke early and went about our morning routine as if we were trying to get underway, and then lingered over coffee staring at each other and wondering what we were going to do on this seemingly empty day. We had been traveling since the last day of May, covering almost 1500 miles in 43 days. Since Daytona Beach, Florida, we had cruised every day on our boat except for the break at Beaufort for the July Fourth weekend, cruising with a specific purpose and pushing hard to arrive at this destination. And now what?

    Of course it did not take long for a whole new set of goals to replace our old ones. There was much that needed to be done, and much that we wanted to do before we could occupy our house in Easton in the middle of August. My brother Willie, at whose house we had stored our two cars, lived only about a half hour's drive away, and the day after we arrived he and his wife Marie brought our TransAm to the marina. Now we could do our shopping, get needed provisions and supplies and explore the local area.

    We found that Summit North Marina, with a nominal address in Bear, Delaware, was located in a wooded and rural area. In fact, we discovered that the marina is actually part of the Lums Pond State Park, a large wooded park and recreation area on a hill above the marina and canal, centered around a lake of considerable size. Sharing the marina site was a moderately large boat dealer and marine repair facility. But aside from the marina and boat dealer there was nothing but woods and some rural property within walking or biking distance. Altogether, the marina and surrounding area seemed pastoral and pleasant, but a car was necessary for any shopping.

    A drive of only five miles brought us to Highway 40 in Glasgow, Delaware, where there seemed to be almost unlimited shopping at upscale supermarkets, hardware stores, department stores, even a large boating supply store, which we found to be the very same boating store where we made our first purchases after buying Summer School in the summer of 1992, when we were staying on the Sassafras River in Georgetown, Maryland. Interstate 95 was five miles north of Glasgow. This would be our main route towards Philadelphia and thence to Easton when we finally took up our residence there. Until the development of the interstate system Highway 40 was the main east-west corridor through northern Delaware, and I had a few vague childhood memories of the farmlands and rural countryside along this highway. Now, however, the highway was congested and populated on both sides with various strip malls and shopping centers separated by large suburban housing developments. The whole area, apparently, had become a large bedroom community with the advent of Interstate 95. (We were later to find that to be on the interstate during rush hour was almost suicidal.) However, south of Highway 40 the area quickly reverted to its former rural character complete with roadside vegetable stands, which we were especially delighted to find.

    As we came to know the marina in the days following our arrival our reactions varied between joy and gratitude for our good fortune in finding such a suitable home for our boat, and consternation and dismay at some of the conditions that existed. The marina itself occupies a basin accessed through a comparatively narrow half-mile long channel off the north shore of the canal about midway through its twelve-mile length. There is no current in the basin, which is a relief after coping with the usual 2-3mph currents in the canal proper. Neither is there much wind since the basin is surrounded by hills that are 50-70ft. high. And the inlet to the basin is sufficiently narrow and long so that the docks are little affected by boats transiting the canal, a fortunate condition since the C&D canal is regularly used by large ships such as tankers and container ships. The marina thus gave excellent protection to moored boats and, we learned, it was a well-known "hurricane hole" throughout the surrounding coastal area. Even the tides posed no problems due to the relatively new system of floating docks, which allowed boats to be tied firmly and securely in their slips. (No slack had to be left in the dock lines to accommodate the rising and falling of the boat relative to the docks since the docks and boats floated on the tides together.) We were very pleased at the security afforded by the marina. Not only would this ease our minds while living more than a hundred miles away, but it would allow us to leave the boat unattended for extended periods of time.

    In contrast to the security, the administration and maintenance of the marina caused us concern and even aggravation. Summit North was a large marina with 250 slips that could accommodate boats up to 125 feet long. The dock structure seemed to be fairly new and well designed. Each slip had full-length finger piers and a lighted service pedestal that included water, a telephone jack and 240/120 volt, 50/30 amp. service. Situated as it was between the Delaware River and Bay on one side of the canal, and the Chesapeake Bay watershed on the other side, the marina was in an ideal position to be a popular and heavily used boating facility, and whoever built it had constructed a first-class structure. Yet when we arrived in mid-July most of the slips were empty. In fact, because the marina had not received necessary periodic dredging, many of the slips were totally useless. I have photographs showing whole docks resting on bare exposed mud at low tide; at high tide the water in their slips was only one to three feet deep. And as we had found, the entrance channel to the marina basin had silted over to the extent that it was barely passable even at high tide with our four-foot draft. Deep draft sailboats would not be able to transit this channel at all, which explained the fact that there were very few sailboats moored at the marina. Evidently some inadequate attempts at dredging had been started before we arrived; there was a small dredge on a raft (too small to be called a barge) anchored near the entrance channel, and pipes were haphazardly piled on the dock nearest the entrance, but we never saw any activity with this equipment despite what Doug had told us when we arrived. It seemed to me that the dredging equipment was much too small to be adequate for the amount of material that had to be removed even from the entrance channel, not to mention all the docking areas that had become useless due to accumulated silt. Rick, the marina manager, seemed to be amazingly unconcerned about these problems. He sat in his large private office wearing his gold chains, flowered shirts and yachting shoes, busy at the keyboard of his computer (he considered himself to be something of an expert), and told me the dredge was broken and they were waiting for parts. Then he told me that they were waiting for a larger dredge to be delivered. Finally, after my repeated inquiries, he told me that I was worrying too much, that the bottom was soft mud and it would not hurt my boat if we had to plow our way through it. It quickly became obvious that nothing was going to change. Nancy and I decided that we would try to keep our heads down and our mouths shut, to be thankful for what we had, and transit the marina entrance only at high tide. In all the time we were at Summit North (almost a complete year as it turned out) no dredging was ever done and most of the slips remained empty.

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    It was relatively easy to keep to ourselves at Summit North because there was much boat work that needed to be done, and our time was thus occupied for most of the month between our arrival at the marina and the move into our house in Easton. Of course, everything had to be thoroughly cleaned from the bilge and the engine room, to the anchor tackle, the decks and the bridge. We cleaned, checked and serviced all engines: the six cylinder Perkins diesel that was the main boat engine, the old, loud and troublesome 7.5 Kw. Onan generator ("Tommy") that was such a source of problems and frustration when we were cruising the Florida Keys the previous year, even the 3 hp. outboard motor that we used for our dinghy Recess, though it was relatively new. When all the immediately necessary work had been completed we began the major project of cleaning and waxing the hull. All boats that cruise for extended time on the ICW acquire an unsightly brown stain on the bow and all along the waterline due to the dissolved tannin in the ICW waters. This had to be removed, and then we applied a layer of protective wax to the entire hull, buffing it to a high polish. The full-length finger pier was especially useful during this work. When we were finished Summer School virtually gleamed and drew numbers of appreciative comments from people passing on the dock.

    Ordinarily we enjoyed working together on our boat, but the work we did that summer became somewhat onerous due to what became known as Heat Wave 95. Almost every day, 20 days out of our first 21 days at Summit North, the temperature was well into the nineties and the heat index was above 100. There were many record-breaking temperatures in the area during this time. On July 15, for example, we had a high temperature of 103 with a heat index of 129. Many were dying in the urban areas of the eastern cities. By the end of July, Heat Wave 95 was the lead story on the evening news. The city of Philadelphia was giving away free fans. On August 2 the death toll was reported to be 57.

    On what was to be the last day of the heat wave, we had one notable diversion from our boat work, and that was a visit to St. Michaels, Maryland, during the annual Crabfest celebration. Everyone we met at Summit North, it seemed, asked us if we had been to St. Michaels and recommended that we go there. This small old waterman's town on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, in the middle region of the bay, had become a very popular boating destination. We had read about it in our cruising guides and were attracted by its old maritime history (about 300 years), but we had avoided going there by boat just as we had avoided visiting other popular, and therefore crowded destinations such as Annapolis and the Baltimore inner harbor. But St. Michaels was only about 75 miles by highway from the C&D Canal and we had a pleasant drive through the Delaware and Maryland countryside. Upon arrival we found St. Michaels had a charm that, in our eyes, exceeded its various descriptions. There were old attractive houses lining small streets clustered around a picturesque little harbor complete with swans and a dinghy dock for the convenience of boats anchored nearby. Despite the heat we thoroughly enjoyed walking around the town. Best of all for us was the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum located on Navy Point on the north shore of the harbor. The museum was interesting in its own right, but it was also the center of the Crabfest activities. We enjoyed crab cake sandwiches and crab meat potato skins washed down with cold beer. Inside the museum we found that a well-known Chesapeake Bay author was conducting a book-signing. I talked with Larry Chowning at some length and bought a copy of his book, Barcat Skipper, which is comprised of the tales of a Tangier Island waterman. This was of great interest to me because, in my various readings, I had become fascinated with Tangier Island, a remote island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, accessible only by water, where there was a small population that still derived its livelihood from the bay, where people could trace their residency on the island back for generations, and where, supposedly, people still spoke with the accents and inflections that were prevalent hundreds of years ago. Someday, I hoped, Nancy and I could go there in Summer School.

    After our trip to St. Michaels, which we made on August 5, our attentions became progressively more focused on our new land home in Easton. The person at Lafayette responsible for faculty house rentals had assured us that our house would be ready for occupancy by August 15. Accordingly we had contacted our mover in Colorado to make arrangements for our furniture to be delivered. We had a telephone on our boat (another amenity at Summit North) and the mover agreed to have the van driver call us a day or two before delivery so that we could drive to Easton and be at the house when the moving van arrived. This seemed a simple and straightforward arrangement but it was to become difficult and complicated to a degree that we little imagined.

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Carrot Island in Beaufort, NC. The Beach and the Anchorage (with "Banker Pony")

1800 Days – Seg. 3 Ch. 1 Pg. 8-11

    Beaufort and Morehead City are sister-cities that lie on either side of the approach to Beaufort Inlet, one of only two reliable deep water inlets on the North Carolina Coast. (The other is the mouth of the Cape Fear River.) We had bypassed Beaufort on our way south in 1993 because it would have required a detour off the ICW, which passes instead through Morehead City. But we had read about the charm of Beaufort and its history as an old seaside resort, how its waterfront area had been restored, how it had become a hub for local, coastal and world-class blue-water cruisers, and we eagerly anticipated the opportunity to spend some time there. We were not disappointed. The five days that we stayed at Beaufort were the highlight of the entire cruise north.

    However, since our stay in Beaufort was one of our typical "shore leaves," it was busy with errands and boating chores that become necessary when cruising. Summer School was encrusted with salt and covered with mud left over from our anchoring. One of the first things we did was to thoroughly wash and clean our boat inside and out, including the bilge. It was also time to carefully inspect both the generator and the engine, and to change oils and filters (we were carrying the necessary supplies). We did not need to take on diesel fuel but we did need to fill our 150-gallon water tanks that had become nearly empty. We found that there was a laundry facility just across the street from the marina, which made it especially convenient to wash our clothes, most of which were dirty by this time. To our great delight the marina also provided a courtesy car for boaters to use, which made it easy to do a major reprovisioning of food and other supplies at the various stores and supermarkets located six to ten blocks from the waterfront along Highway 70. It seemed to us that Beaufort Docks made special efforts to provide convenient services for its patrons.

    Interspersed with our necessary boating activities we of course took time to explore the town and become acquainted with its attractions. The Beaufort waterfront, including Beaufort Docks, some restaurants and other marine facilities, lies along the southern side of Front Street and looks out over Taylor Creek where we found many boats to be anchored, both cruising boats and what appeared to be local boats on moorings. The other side of Taylor Creek is bounded by Carrot Island and Town Marsh. These areas are undeveloped and protected. We had read about the herd of wild horses that inhabited Carrot Island and we were thrilled when we awoke on our first morning, looked out over Taylor Creek and saw some of these horses wandering along the beach. We took several extensive walks through the central area of town, known as the downtown historic district. The shady streets were lined with elegant old houses, which reminded us of Cape May, New Jersey where Nancy and I began our boating experiences. We visited the Beaufort Historical Society Museum on Turner Street, and the North Carolina Maritime Museum. On Monday, July 3, we even took our eight foot inflatable dinghy, Recess, across Taylor Creek for a picnic on a beautiful small beach on the inlet side of the island. On our way back to our boat we were lucky enough to have a close view of one of the wild horses on the beach.

    Although we stayed in Beaufort for five days we knew we were only able to obtain a passing acquaintance with some of the highlights of the town. There were many more restaurants to try and many more facilities to explore in depth. But we had to continue our cruise north without lingering too long. We left early on the morning of July 5, never dreaming that in less than a year and half we would return to live on our boat in this interesting and charming town.

    After our Beaufort interlude we again pressed to the northward trying to make as rapid progress as we could. We traveled for eight consecutive days, most of the time anchoring at night, staying in marinas only at Coinjock, North Carolina, where we filled our diesel fuel tanks, and Portsmouth, Virginia, Mile Zero of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. There were no more "shore leaves." We were lucky enough to cover the entire 250 miles from Portsmouth, through the length of Chesapeake Bay and through most of the C&D Canal in four days with no delays due to weather or equipment problems.

    We arrived at Summit North Marina at about 10:30am on Wednesday, July 12, went to the fuel dock to fill our tanks once again, and met Doug, the dockmaster. There seemed to be many empty slips. Everything looked good, we told him, except the entrance channel where we had read a depth of only six feet even though we came in at high tide. He explained that there had been a delay in the dredging operation, but that it was soon to be resumed. We thought it unlikely that we would be taking out the boat in the near future anyway so we agreed to take a slip. I met Rick Keener, the new marina manager, and signed the papers for a year's lease. Doug helped us into our chosen slip where docking was particularly easy due to the floating docks and full-length finger pier, just as advertised. We were immensely pleased and greatly relieved to be there. We had found a new permanent home for Summer School. Or so we thought.

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Summer School at Summit North Marina on the C&D Canal

Up Chesapeake Bay with Nancy at the Helm (Bay Bridge in Background)