Sunday 19 April 2020
As we approach the final
destination of this delivery job, we wonder what brave new world will greet us
when starship Eleohn lands on Earth where we will have to get off and be ashore
among PEOPLE? We hear from family and
friends about how they are coping with the virus crisis, but it is one thing to
hear about it and another to be IN it. One
family member has the virus. We have
rarely left the protective cocoon of Eleohn this trip since the 20th
of March, and so much has changed since then.
Marina dockhands no long handle the large power cord as a courtesy and
only loop lines over cleats for us before getting away as soon as they
can. We wash hands after plugging in
power and flipping on the pier breaker.
That and a quick no-contact check-in at the office has been the extent
of our human contact at marinas. We
wonder about getting groceries without exposure. Rich is in desperate need of a new pair of glasses
as the two pair he brought are in a sorry state with broken arms and scratched
lenses, and he needs a new refraction for these new glasses. He also needs to get the single molar implant
process completed begun so long ago before anybody ever heard of CV19. Both of us need haircuts. How will all this be taken care of without
exposure? We have no masks or anything
to make them out of aboard and only a few pair of gloves to protect us. We have discussed a lot more use of our own boat
to just get out of the house and breathe some fresh air once in a while. Will this be the new normal for a year or
more? We don’t know. Suffice it to say that despite. A thunderstorm system, an invasion of swallows,
yes, the birds, and a very annoying short period swell on the beam, we survived
the 26.5-hour passage from Bradenton to Carrabelle and moored here without
incident. We apparently blundered across
a swallow migratory flyway, because after we passed through the thunderstorms,
we began to see the little fellows winging by us heading east in ones and
twos. Early on one of them landed on the
bow for a breather before carrying on eastward.
I went below at 1600 to sleep a bit, but I gave it up as a lost cause at
1700 and went back on up to the bridge where I found a Mexican standoff in
progress between Mary who was all the way over on the port side with her big
straw hat in front of her and a swallow perched on a window valance on the opposite
side. Apparently the winged warrior had
flow through the open bridge wing door right after I left, and the two of them
had been chasing each other all over the place up there ever since. It took a bit to corner it, but soon it was
tossed out on its ear. Soon there were
more of them floating around in the air, and another one flew in to roost. After it was likewise unceremoniously evicted,
a sparrow-like bird landed on the binnacle.
OK, enough, we closed the doors and pulled the screens across the
windows until after sunset when we figured they’d quit. As sunset approached, there was a noticeable desperation
as more and more birds were looking for places to alight out of the wind. A scrum began to develop on the boat deck at
the aft starboard corner of the pilothouse as bird after bird settled in to the
pile in an apparent effort to share and conserve body heat. There were about a dozen of them plus others
seeking shelter on the securing ropes of the motorized dinghy and the rowing
dinghy. As the sun rose this morning, we
began to see ones and twos of these little guys winging about in test flights
before returning to a handrail here and there to stretch and preen before
flying off. Looking back at the scrum,
we could see ones and twos stumble out of it like a drowsy person just getting
out of bed. Sadly two were left dead,
but most survived to fly off toward Dog Island as it came into view. After an almost sleepless and rolling night,
the pass between St George Island and Dog Island ever so slowly crawled into
view, and the rolling began to subside. As
daylight returned, the radars were shifted from anti-collision mode to
land-finding mode, and the plotter and computer were shifted from night to dusk
and finally daylight illumination modes.
I wonder how many times and places over the world I have been through
the process of entering port at dawn?
Hundreds maybe? The invigorating
feeling, no matter how tired you are, of entering port after a passage always
carries you through until you are safe alongside the pier and “finished with
engines.” This minor one-month boat
delivery affair certainly pales in comparison to returning from six-month
deployments in my Navy days, but there is an unmistakable cognitive similarity.
Finally, it was time to get up from the
settee where we had been braced while monitoring engine instruments and
electronics all through the rough night watch to stand at the wheel, binoculars
in hand, to visually confirm the possible fiction the electronics were telling
us about the channel markers. It was a
quick hour from Dog Island Pass and up the twisting Carrabelle River channel to
The Moorings of Carrabelle where our pier space was waiting. For the first time in 26.5 hours I touched
the throttle to idle the 300-horse John Deere main engine bringing the, boat to
a sedate pace, and after a short turn, a couple of bursts of bow thruster and a
bit of backing to get Mary in range of the waiting dockhand with her stern
line, we were done. Finished with
engine.
