Behind The Blog - Handsignals

Not that 42ft is all that far, but it is when the wind is blowing and you’re trying to communicate from one end of the boat to the other while anchoring. Thus we’ve come up with some fairly effective hand signals.

There’s forward (arm bent at elbow and pointed up), neutral (arm straight) and reverse (arm bent and elbow and pointed down), as well as a sign for faster (arm up and circling) and slower (arm down and circling). These are all pretty straight forward. Pat stands on the bow and manages the raising and lowering of the anchor while I steer and shift gears in accordance with the signals. If only it were that simple...

two fingers pointed under two glaring eyes (Pat’s) = stop talking to the kids and focus on me

one finger pointed up(Jo’s) = I am focused on you... it’s called multi-tasking

one arm doing anything (Drew’s or Jake’s or Emily’s) = sure, it looks like a signal, but don’t fall for it... wait for the “captain” to give the real order

signal repeated over and over again with vigor(Pat) = I said "(insert command here)"

two shoulders shrugged in frustration (Jo’s) = yeah, I’m doing that, but it’s not working!!!

The kids seem to prefer verbal signals... much like the ferries that frequent Cape Cod waters use horns to convey their messages.

Ferries:
1 blast = just to let you know, I’m leaving the dock now
2 blasts = you’re in my path; you might want to move
5 blasts = just so you know, I’m going to hit you

The kids have developed a set of similarly escalating signals to help alert Pat to potential threats....

dad, look out = there’s lobster pots on your (left/right)

Dad, dad, come here = I've got a crab, bring the net!

DAD, DAD, I need you! = Can you get the hook out of this fish before it bleeds all over the boat?!!

And my personal favorite...
DAD, DAD, COME HERE NOW = the anchor is up! don’t let mom drive the boat!

I like to join them on this one; it helps break the silence after all those hand signals!


Our favorite “extreme anchoring” observations:

The couple from NJ who were trying to anchor in Cuttyhunk and proceeded to teach everyone within a 1/2-mile radius a few new curse words. She apparently pushed the wrong button on their auto-everything power boat and dropped all their anchor chain in the space of about 3 seconds. About 30 seconds after he hauled it all back in, they left the area... bet is was a long and loud ride home!

The pampered pair from the Grand Caymans who anchored near us in Nantucket. While he and their crew circled a few times to find just the right spot to anchor their mega yacht, she was busy on the upper sundeck working out on a stair stepper!

This just in, more reports from the field.

Reports from the Field: On Assignment in Nantucket

The following stories recap portions of our historical tour of Nantucket.

The Oldest House by Emily

Did you know Mary Gardner and Jethro Coffin got “maryed”?... Their house was bilt in 1686 there were 4 fireplace, 2 rooms up, 3 rooms down and a gardin. There was no water, no lecktiside (electricity), no toilits, a prety big frig (cold room) and a prety big hous for back then.

They took bankcets and a big bench and a big fire to keep worm. They had 10 children too. Mary Coffin was good at painting. (Her pictures are on display at the Nantucket Historical Society.)

The End.

Something I learned: a root cellar is where people stored potatoes back then



The Whaling Museum by Jake

At frist Nantucket whalers were hunting Right whales becuase they were the right whales to hunt. Once they say a spirm whale it turn in to the right whale. And one day a spirm whale whashed up on the beach and it’s bones were took to the museum. And that is how it got started.

You should never go on a whale ship becuase there evil. If you’re a “greeny” (making your first voyage) you would strip and jump in the whales head (to scoop out the oil used to make candles, etc). Your other jobs would be look out and rowing. The Nantucket Sleighride is a ride in a row boat with the whale as your engine pulling you 15 to 20 m.p.h.

The End.

Something I learned: scrimshaw is when you draw pictures on whale teeth


The Old Mill by Drew

The Old Mill was built in 1746 and is 253 years old. It was built by a sailor from Europe. He came to Nantucket and built the mill from drift wood. The only example he had was some sketches he made.

The mill has 3 floors and the 3rd floor moves. The mill is powered by wind and produces corn meal. The leftovers are used for chicken feed. The vanes turn to face the wind and they shortened the sails when the wind picks up. They shortened them from 4 to 2 or 0 and to face the wind, some one has to push it (a beam on wheels coming out the back of the mill which rotates the 3rd floor).

Something I learned: the drift wood used to make the mill came from wrecked ships


Audience Participation Welcome...

Dreams, by Emily

Oh hi, my nam is Emily. Pleas call me Em. Do you have drem’s? I do here they are. At fist I wanted to be a teacher, then I wanted to be a dophin traner, but after thoe 2 dreams I wanted to be a ballet techer, but now I do not know what I whant to be, but I have a bit of time to deside. Putt doun your dream’s and your name.

To be a engnear... Jake

To have a fishing boat... Drew

To see dolphins from alongside our sailboat... Pat

To invent a game with my children (Emily has a great idea for a card game!)... Jo

Matt Goodwine: Skateboarding by Jake, September 2007

Hello, sorry we haven’t done the blog lately. I just wanted to let you know about my cousin Matt the awesome skate boarder/street skater. I got to skate in their half pipe. It was awesome but Drew and I didn’t do the drop in. We were too scared.

My dad couldn’t even stay on the skate board. My cousin Jim is very good too. Check on “you tube” on matt goodwine. Click here for a Matt video. We hung out with them. It was cool to see their broken skate boards, posters, and Jim’s love notes. The End.







Uncle Steve: The Warrior
by Drew, September 2007

My Uncle Steve was in World War 2 and is 93-1/2 years old. He won a bronze star in the Battle of the Bulge for his courage. When he was a kid he played basketball and baseball and went hiking. He also ate very healthy foods. That might be why he has lived so long. He had 6 sisters and 1 brother. One of his sisters is my Aunt Libby the golf champ. My Uncle Steve is very cool because he has lived a long time and has lots of neat stories.

Oh Say Can You See . . .

Yesterday we visited Ft. McHenry, the site of the 1814 Battle of Baltimore and more significantly the site that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen the Defense of Ft. McHenry, better known to most as the Star Spangled Banner. It is an impressive fort that is both a National Park and a National Historic Shrine.

It was a really nice visit to an important historic site and an excellent follow up to our visit to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia the day before. Visiting the location where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were drafted was a great preview to our visit to the site where our national anthem was created.

The icing on the cake to our Ft. McHenry visit was that the kids got to help in the changing of the flag on the 193rd anniversary of the 1814 battle. The flag had to be changed from the storm flag (17 x 25 ft) to a smaller flag due to high winds. Drew just reminded me of this very cool fact: the large flag shown here is small compared to the fort's largest flag which is so big that the flag in our pictures would fit inside the blue field of the largest flag. Hopefully when we sail to Baltimore we'll get to see the biggest flag flying over the fort. Anyway, here are a few shots of the kids at work at Ft. McHenry. Because it was starting to rain, you might see a few raindrops in the pictures.

Kids aloft!

We ran into a small squall the other day on the Chesapeake. Unfortunately we tore the leech line on the main (its a pretty old sail) and it wrapped around the topping lift which required me to cut the line in order to get the sail down. So, long story short, we had to get to the line that was cut and unwrap it from the topping lift. We also lost the halyard for our radar reflector and had to retrieve it from the spreader. So what do you do on our boat when you need to get up into the rigging? You call in the bosun's chair crew and put them to work. Here are a couple of shots of the kids working up high. They're light and a delight to haul up, and they love it.

Emily releases Monarch at Cape May.

This was pretty cool. While we were visiting the Cape May, we stopped into the small wildlife museum at the base of the lighthouse area. Part of the program there is to show the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly which migrates down to Mexico from Cape May and other areas of the east coast. During the course of this year, the museum has raised and released about 20 butterflies. We just happened by at the right time and Emily caught the eye of one of the museum attendants. As a result she was asked to carry a newly hatched Monarch out of its holding tank, it had just come out of its cocoon that afternoon, and place it in the butterfly garden.

Jake seems to be feeling just fine . . .

Just found this picture of Jake jumping off a sand bank in Cape May, NJ. He lost his hat on the way down but he stuck the landing. A number of you have asked about how he is doing since his last surgery and I thought this picture summed it up pretty well. Back in business.

We're trying out some new technology on the boat right now, a Sprint broadband card. It allows us to have 24/7 highspeed internet on the boat anywhere we can get a cellphone signal. We decided to give it a try after our last blog post. Since we hadn't updated the blog for almost a month and then I did that monster post we thought this might work out better. We'll see . . .

WHOA!!! Time to play some catch up on the blog.

My brother pointed out on the phone today that we had not posted anything on the blog since 8/20. Wow that's a long time and we've been doing a lot of moving around in our push south so time for some catch up on where we've been and what we've been up to.

When we last posted we were still in Martha's Vineyard picking up Jake's last supply of medicine. That seems like ages ago. The day after we got the medicine we decided to say good by to the Vineyard and to start heading south. We had initially planned to go further north, at least to Province Town, but the weather wasn't that cooperative and we wanted to start making our way south.

We had thought about revising Block Island on our way out of New England but the wind and seas were favorable for a longer trip and so we went from the Vineyard to Montauk, Long Island, our longest trip so far in a day. Seventy-three miles in about 11.5 hours. The seas were some of the largest our small crew has seen but everyone was safe and it was a relatively easy trip.

Lake Montauk was one of the shallowest ports that we'd been in and it was a real trick to anchor there. At one point we were almost aground. We only spent the night and left the next day given that the weather was still not great and we had favorable east winds. We went from Montauk to Old Saybrook, Connecticut. We found a beautiful anchorage there and stayed for a couple of days. But while we were there we mostly took care of business instead of kicking back.

Jake needed to get his IV line out and we needed to re-provision and get some more boat supplies. The Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut did a very nice job with Jake's IV and Defender Industries and a couple of other stores did well for the restocking of the boat. We thought about staying a bit longer in CT but our next major stop would be on the Hudson River to see family and so we decided to move on.

From Old Saybrook we crossed the Long Island Sound to Oyster Bay, Long Island. We only had 1-3 miles of visibility. While it was calm and we motored a lot we were happy to have the radar on during the trip. There were a lot of fishing boats along the way and a ferry or two and it was nice to know where they were before we saw them up close and personal. For some pictures of our trip from the Vineyard and down the sound, click right here.

Oyster Bay was another very nice spot. Jake got to swim there for the first time in a month and so did we all. The water was a bit warmer than up north and we spent a couple two days there before moving on.

From Oyster Bay we went to City Island, NY to stage our approach to Hell Gate on the East River. The reputation of Hell Gate is about what you would expect for the name. It is relatively small pinch of water through which Long Island Sound funnels on its way to New York Harbor. You only go through from the north on a ebb tide and you watch out for the current and the HUGE commercial traffic.

We only spent the night at anchor off of City Island but it was pretty cool nonetheless. The kids got a dinghy ride under the Throgs Neck Bridge at dusk and got to see an old military fort. The skyline of New York was seen easily from the boat and everyone was pretty excited for our trip around Manhattan.

It was an amazing contrast to be able to show the kids the island of Manhattan after they'd visited the island of Cuttyhunk. The two places are certainly on the opposite ends of the island spectrum.

The trip around Manhattan was filled with fantastic sights as you would expect. The buildings, bridges, ferries, water taxis, sea planes, helicopters etc. provided a lot of excitement that was capped off by the Statue of Liberty. We tried for a group shot of the family with the statue in the background but the harbor was too rolly to get a good shot. We have plenty more pictures of that leg of the trip. Here are a few, just click here.

Our trip around Manhattan went smoothly and we were making good time so we pressed on up the Hudson River the same day and made it to Haverstraw, NY by the same evening. Anchoring off of Haverstraw was a blast back to the past for me because I grew up here and spent a lot of time on and near the river as a kid.

While in Haverstraw we got to take the kids to see their Uncle Steve who at ninety-three and a half is still going strong. He still drives his car around town, tends a nice garden at his house, visits with his grandkids, and still shovels his own snow in the winter. Hopefully we all have some of his genes. He has some great photos albums and he shared them with us during our visit. The kids even got to see a picture of him receiving the Bronze Star after fighting in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

I also got to take the kids to the house where I grew up and to a few of the places I used to like to go as a kid including Hoyer's Ice Cream stand. Everyone approved of the trip to Hoyer's which has been serving up some mean soft serve since 1933.

After Haverstraw we made it up to Newburgh, NY where we visited with my brother and his family and my cousin Lidwin and her family. It was great to see everyone after a long while. We got to see my nephew Jack and my newest nephew Liam. The kids also got to visit with their cousins Jim and Matt, Lidwin and Jim's son's. For pictures of our trip from Haverstraw to Newburgh, click right here. (Special thanks to our old friend Sgt. F (first picture in this album) for his help when we got to Haverstraw).

Lidwin, Jim, Jim and Matt along with my brother Jeff all like to spend time on the water so we got to do some sailing together, some rafting up of boats, and even a little jet skiing. A GREAT time was had by all. (pictures soon).

We spent about a week on the Hudson and the portion from Haverstraw to Newburgh has to be some of the most scenic of the entire river. Passing West Point and Storm King Mountain is absolutely gorgeous. And the section around Bear Mountain, where we spent the night before heading out, was beautiful as well. We even took a trip into Bear Mountain State park for a walk with the kids around Hessian Lake which was just as nice as it was when I visited there at their age.

After leaving the Hudson we headed back down the river, through New York Harbor, and over to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. We left Sandy Hook before dawn the next day to make the trip to Atlantic City. (Atlantic City, one word, YUCK!!) The only reason for going to AC was to avoid an overnight sail down the New Jersey Coast. We left the next morning and stopped in Cape May, New Jersey. The day and two nights we spent in NJ were really nice. We might have stayed there longer but with Tropical Storm Gabrielle on the way up the coast we moved on up the Delaware Bay, across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and into the Chesapeake.

We're now at anchor at Hopkins Cove on the Middle River which is on Maryland's western shore of the Chesapeake. Here's a Google Map that shows were we are and where we've been.


View Larger Map

There's more to tell but for now that's the most catch up I can do in a single library session. To be continued . . .