Concrete Ships Float?

It felt wonderful waking up after a good five hours or so of sleep. The sun was peaking above the horizon and I realize that my life while underway is a cycle of sunrises and sunsets. It’s enjoyable to contemplate the start of each day.

Warmer as You Go

It’s almost 9AM now and as I cruise south down the Atlantic, I’m happy that my nights & days are getting warmer.

Back home in Foxboro the temp hit 70 but the nights are colder due to not being on the water

Flat Ocean is a Happy Ocean

My anchorage was flat water but even now out in the unprotected Atlantic I find it almost as flat.

Italian Yachts

I’m not the only one out here enjoying the flat sea. This sexy Azimut passed me like I was standing still.

Flat like a Bedsheet

As I cruise the sea gets ridiculously flat. I stop to make a video of just how calm it is.

The Atlantic coast of Virginia is looking the pool water

Fisherman’s Island

I’m now rounding Fisherman’s Island on the southern tip of Cape Charles. I glance up at my iPad to see my expected ETA is slipping. I’m fighting the tide which is exiting Chesapeake Channel.

I care about my ETA because I’d like to get on anchor before it’s dark.

I realize that in order to make last light I need to shorten my route or speed up. I decide to “cut the corner” a bit. Cutting the corner can get you in trouble with running aground if you are not careful as depths around inlets are often different than your charts. I cut the corner with a close eye on the trending depths displayed on my instruments.

Careful rounding too close to Fisherman’s Island. It’s low tide and there is a 3.9′ sounding

As I’m rounding the corner, Flipper & friends pay me a visit.

I no sooner round the corner and I’m passing under The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. It is a four-lane 20-mile-long vehicular toll crossing that provides direct access from Southeastern Virginia to the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware plus the Maryland and Virginia Eastern Shore).

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

Passing under the bridges you realize how much work went into their construction.

Concrete Ships Anchorage

The sun has set but my cutting the corner has resulting in Simple Life’s arrival at the Concrete Ships Anchorage before dark. I snap a few pictures of the ships before I lose last light.

As I cruise past, a USCG patrol boat is moving slowly alongside the concrete ships and shining their spotlight into the openings of the ships. I think to myself … “Are people living inside the ships?” Why else would they be so interested in looking inside?

Anchored Fast

I quickly chose a good anchor spot by studying the depths and drop anchor.

There is no wind at all so I backdown at a full 830 RPMs to set the anchor.

Cummins SmartCraft Display shows me my RPM Digitally

A check of my GPS SOG (Speed Over Ground) shows the anchor is not budging.

I snap a quick photo of the sunset over the concrete ships and settle in for the night.

W04L005 67NM route looked something like this…

Who wants a Wallop?

When my youngest sister, Janet & I were acting bad, our Dad would simply state “Who wants a wallop?” My first thought was “What’s a wallop?” Later I learned… It was code for you better starting acting right or Dad’s gonna straighten you out like a piece of wire. Lucky for us, it was rare he ever had to make good on that threat because we knew enough to stop.

You may be thinking… why is he talking about about getting a wallop? Well… ADD aaannnd tonight’s anchorage will be Wallop’s Island. There are not many places to anchor along Virginia’s Atlantic coast but this is one of the few.

Wallop’s Island along Virginia’s Atlantic Coast

Absecon Inlet

I only slept for 2 hours and awoke at first light. It’s amazing how refreshed you feel even after as little as 2 hours sleep. As I look out the pilothouse windows I can see a bright spot of sun on the metal exterior of the 430′ high Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.

As I glance out the other side of the boat I see Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god, has just started his journey across the cloudless sky.

I am not alone. Last night I weaved through three sailboats to find an empty spot to drop my anchor. I wonder if they will even know I was here?

When I finally retrieve my anchor into it’s bow roller I see that it’s covered with sea lettuce. Well I’m sure there is a more technical term but I’m sure the strong current was trapping the lettuce against my anchor chain like lettuce blowing in the wind.

As I look in my review camera I am reminded of how deep Absecon Inlet is.

As deep as it is inside the inlet there is quite a bit of shoaling going on around it’s entrance. The Aqua Maps chart plotter view below shows a few of my past tracks entering and leaving Absecon Inlet. The pink track entering from the left of the picture was my track coming in at 3:11AM on 11/4/20. While the charts show depths like 20′ and 15′, reality was much closer to 9′ as I came across that shoal. Whenever you are navigating inlets your chart depths are not to be trusted. If you have any ocean swell action going on you’ll often see breakers wherever the shoals exist.

Brigantine Bay anchorage on left, Absecon anchorage in middle and Farley State Marina on the right

As I make my way out of the inlet I am bucking the incoming tide and it slows my normal 6.5 kt speed down to a plodding 4.6kts.

Atlantic City Architecture

As I leave Atlantic City I look back at both the 710′ high Ocean Casino Resort and The Wheel @ Steel Pier (227′ high). Both of these object are lit up at night and can be seen for miles as you approach on a dark night. The ball at the top of the Ocean Casino Resort (The former Revel Casino Hotel) glows with changing colors.

Digital Selective Calling

The next hours many hours were spent cruising the coast with hardly a boat to be found. Then suddenly the VHF radio sprang to life.

Me ACK’ing a DSC distress message with no LAT/LON or nature of distress info in the message

VHF radios have evolved to use DSC or Digital Selective Calling which allows for making calls to select individuals or groups using their MMSI number (Maritime Mobile Service Identity). DSC also allows for making a digital distress call like the one I received. After ACK’ing the call I received, I immediately entered the boat’s MMSI number and called them back directly. No response! I tried several times for about 30 minutes while I scanned the horizon with my binoculars for any signs of boats or activity. Nothing. Other boaters have told me stories about how the distress button gets accidentally pushed on radios and when someone calls back the people won’t answer your call. Often after you accidentally push the distress button, many boaters attempt to call you back and having to repeatedly tell each of them that you accidentally pushed the button can be a humiliating experience.

Learn From My Mistakes

All that said… I still wish I had notified the USCG.

At the time I thought… there was no location or nature of distress information included in the DSC message. So I would simply be telling them that I received a message with no other info. BTW, the location information is probably one of the greatest reasons for DSC distress in the first place. You simply hookup a NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) data wire from your Chartplotter/GPS to your VHF and the VHF automatically sends your LAT & LON coordinates as part of the digital distress message. Had the location info been sent I could have gone to the location given.

Even though I know…

Buttons get pushed by accident
I could see no boats or activity
Whomever pushed the button never answered my reply

I realize it was a mistake not to inform the Coast Guard that I received a message. Next time, I will be prepared on how to handle this situation. Boating is a learning experience. I make mistakes and I learn everyday.

Night Approaches

The sun was setting. I settled back into my captain’s chair and prepared for dark. There was a half moon tonight but moonrise would not occur until around 8PM. I let the flybridge lights so that I would be seen by others and between radar and occasionally spotlighting I felt good as I cruised on into the night.

Tonight’s sunset behind Fenwick Island near Ocean City, MD

I adjusted the brightness of my chart plotter & instruments as well as set dark mode on my iPads. Nothing can be seen outside but the reflection of my instruments in the pilothouse windows.

I arrived at Wallop’s Island around midnight. It was a long 17 hours at the helm. I’ll be up at first light but I’m sure I won’t have any issues getting to sleep tonight!

Winter 2020 – 115NM Leg 004 looked something like this…

We Anchored on MARS!

Sitting here on anchor at Wallops Island you can’t help but look out at the few structures on shore. I thought they looked kind of “military” and figured Norfolk Naval base is just a bit South down the coast. However, after pulling up Google Maps you find MARS! OK it’s the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

I now see we are anchored off a Virginia space center with a rocket launch pad. Vector Space Systems has teamed up with MARS and is comprised of many folks from both the aerospace (SpaceX cofounders) and tech industries (Shaun Coleman – VMWare VDI/View & Cofounder of CloudVolumes)

vector_at_mars640 — Vector Systems Vector-R Launch Vehicle

I think we may have missed an earlier rocket launch on Nov 11th. Too bad, We would have stuck around to watch that. Kelly & I talk quite a bit about the cosmos and we both believe that the human race’s primary purpose should be to explore the cosmos.

We are all conscious (some more than others). Last night standing in the cockpit and looking up at the stars you can’t help but feel small. My visual view of the world is centered from inside my own head. We are all aware that we walk (or boat) the surface of this planet with other conscious beings who are centered in their own heads. Many of them are kind souls who find a purpose in helping others in need. However like many others, I am sometimes bothered by the human need to fight with one another instead of seek intelligent life as well as a second habitable planet for plan B. This planet has a few people that I hope don’t make the trip to Earth 2.0. The Kepler space telescope has now found ..”219 planets, 10 are thought to host conditions similar to Earth”…

So WHEN DO WE LEAVE and Who wants to come?

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994