It Ain't Easy (Sometimes)

And the power of whales to shift perspective...

Dawn south of NYC

Laughing Gull is on a mooring in Mattapoisett, and I am about to head to Newport to sail with Dr. Yang on his Swan 44 MkII in the Newport-Bermuda Race. When I get back in a little over a week, the Summer 24 explorations will truly begin. Last year, I undertook a nostalgia tour through Buzzards Bay, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. This summer I want to immerse myself in Maine and Nova Scotia. On the way, I will check out some ports I have never visited: Boston, Marblehead, Rockport, and Portsmouth. I won’t be back in this area anytime soon after this summer, since I plan to sail to Ireland from Bermuda next June. So it is the last chance for a while to see what I can see.

The solo sail from Cape May to Newport was oddly challenging. It is just a 36-hour hop, and I was finally able to sail more than motor. But that stretch of water between New Jersey and Long Island, which includes the shipping channels into New York, is anything but relaxing. There was a very mixed sea state, which pushed LG around in a very unfriendly way. Fishing boats were everywhere, many without AIS. There was also (not surprisingly) a lot of big shipping to contend with. For added entertainment, a vang block exploded at 3 am, prompting a sleepy scramble to rig up a substitute before anything else broke.

All the churn turned a short hop into an exhausting grind. I slept very little, and by the time I was approaching the tip of Long Island I was desperately tired, and desperate to get to an anchorage and sleep. If I pressed on all the way to Newport I would arrive around 3 am, against the tide, and fumble my way into the anchorage. If instead I stopped in Block Island, whose anchorage I know a bit, I could have the hook down around 10 pm and sleep the deep sleep of the righteous…and arrived. There was no real debate. Block Island it would be. The thought alone was was a decision.

Better times in Buzzards Bay, passing a wind turbine on its way to assembly and deployment.

The final few hours were agonizing. It was dead downwind, in fading winds. My arrival time kept slipping, and I was too close to the coast, with too many boats around me, to relax enough to sleep even 20 minutes. I can’t remember feeling so sleep deprived. My mood was black as a squall. I was cursing every dip in speed, and completely absorbed in my own dramas and frustrations.

A whoosh of air to my left interrupted my self-pity. An enormous, glistening back with a small fin breached the choppy water just 50 feet off my port side. It submerged, and a large, perfectly curved tail was raised gracefully toward the blue sky. It remained poised in the air for a beat, and then slipped beneath the surface, leaving swirls and ripples behind. I stopped my mutterings and moanings, and simply stared. My cramped and miserable mindset was swamped by the curiosity and awe that came flooding in. I scanned the waves, and saw another spout, and then another. I was in the midst of a pod of humpback whales—I counted at least 8—swimming slowly past Montauk. I was too entranced to film much, but I did catch this one quick clip.

In the thousands of miles I had sailed in the past year I had seen lots of dolphins and not a single whale. Now, at a bleak moment, they had arrived to reassure me. The flip in my mood was astonishing in its speed and intensity, and a reminder of why I am out here. Seeing the natural world and its amazing denizens from the deck of a sailboat brings joy and hope, two emotions that can only make the world a better place. I watched until the humpbacks disappeared again, and went back to tending Laughing Gull with the peace of wild things restored in my soul, and a smile on my face. In the end, the anchor was down by 10 pm after all, and I was sound asleep at 11. Happy to have completed the long passage north and dreaming of whales.

Mattapoisett mooring. As solid and beefy as it gets.

Addenda:

1. If you find humpbacks (and all great whales) enthralling and worthy of moral consideration from humanity, consider the impact fishing entanglements have on their well-being and survival. This is some B-roll collected by NOAA.

2. Ship strikes are also a grave threat to whale populations. Most of those ships are rushing back and forth between continents, carrying the endless stuff we think a convenient and modern lifestyle demands. All that stuff comes with a cost to whales and the planet (in recent years there have been many ship strikes in the waters off NYC and Long Island that I just crossed, and where this pod of humpbacks was swimming). Patagonia has a firm take on all this cheap crap, which they call The Shitthropocene. One of the best parts of living on a boat is that you simply can’t consume wantonly. There is no storage for anything that isn’t both useful and long-lasting. Ignore all the marketing. Buy less, save more.

May you, too, dream of whales. ’ll be back after the Newport-Bermuda Race.

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