RTW Leg 29: The USA

From St Augustine, Florida to Plymouth, Massachusetts

Read on to find out why Lucy is so excited

Whilst Lucy and I had both been in the USA several times before, nothing nevertheless quite prepares you for the leap into that cultural cul de sac where everything should be familiar, but its not.  Afterall, we watch American TV, eat their food, observe their news, idolize their celebrities and covet their inventions.  And yet its all a bit strange. Everything is bigger and louder and if I’m honest, backward.  For example, I sensed no interest in climate change.  Everyone drives enormous trucks, recycling facilities are scant and I saw little evidence of renewables; hardly a house with a solar panel. Introspection is pervasive with a general disinterest in the goings on beyond their shores.  That said, this is Florida one of fifty states (at the current count) and each and every state has its own individual idiosyncratic character and its this extraordinary diversity which holds much of the appeal to the visitor.  What can not be denied is an overwhelming friendliness and genuine interest in us and our travels.  Lucy and I were  excited for the path ahead.

MAGA cant be escaped, its omnipresent

Another moist eyed adieu, this time to Min and Nico, as Broadsword eased out of the municipal marina and slid under the raised Bridge of Lions spanning the Matanzas River leaving St Augustine receding in our wake. Our plan was to reach New York in time for Lucy’s flight back to the UK, booked for the 27th May which gave fourteen days to make the hard deadline.   We would start in the ICW or the Intercoastal Water Way.  An extraordinary network of connected canals and rivers that runs inland of the coast from Miami, Florida to Norfolk, Virginia.  The advantage would be to make progress if the weather window out at sea was closed.  The disadvantage is that progress is slow, perhaps just fifty or so miles a day as you really cant safely navigate the narrow shallow channels at night.  This would be a little bit like pulling of the motorway in favor of the single track B road in the highlands.  Slow but fulfilling, indulging in landscape.

 The bridges have water level boards, but these are indistinct and inaccurate

The principle challenge of navigating the ICW are the numerous fixed bridges.  Fixed means they don’t open and you have to fit under them.  They are all made to accommodate an air draft (that’s the height of your boat measured from water level to the tip of your mast) of 65 feet at high tide.  Yes; feet.  America is imperial so everything needs converted to metric.  Broadswords air draft is 17.6m or 63’3” in old money.  Not including my antennas.  So up the mast I had to go and measure the height of the antennas, an additional 1’4”.  That makes a total of 64’7” giving just 5” of clearance.  That assumes the bridge height is bang on 65 feet.  Tighter than a nun’s knickers.  To give the comfort of some margin for error, I would need to calculate the tidal heights and pass under, for example, two hours before or two hour after high tide.  With five or six bridges to navigate in a day, all with similar tidal patterns, this was a delicate exercise in pushing the boundaries of my limited maths with Broadsword’s throttle set to Malkie.  Arriving at each limbo bar, we would slow to one or two knots, and creep under, anxiously holding our breath, squinting our eyes aloft but impossible to tell from below how much gap there was above.  Once we got it wrong, and heard our metal VHF antenna scrape along the underside of the concrete bridge.

 It was impossible to tell how much clearance there was as you approached.

North we went within the ICW and when the weather improved after a day and a bit we headed out to sea at Fernandina for 160 nm overnight passage to Charleston where Lucy had arranged to meet…Lucy.  Lucy was an old school friend.  I’m not saying Lucy was old, just that they were old friends. Who had not seen each other since school on account that Lucy, the old friend, who had left Scotland for the colonies shortly after leaving school.  Lets call them Lucy no. 1 (my Lucy) and Lucy no.2 (the old friend).  When Lucy no. 2 arrived on Broadsword and I met her for the first time, I was surprised and delighted to find that despite having lived her entire adult life in America, she had retained her beautiful, slightly public school, British accent with a hint of a Scottish lilt. Marvelous, well done, I thought.  Thus followed a fabulous twenty four hours.  Lucy no.1 and Lucy no. 2 picked up where they left of 40 years ago as if it had only been yesterday that they had last seen each other.  The conversation never missed a beat and they were inseparable, laughing, reminiscing and holding hands.  The holding hands bit started a little into the evening after several negroni’s, but lovely nonetheless. After a fabulous dinner in a pier conversion restaurant, we uber'd back to the boat for nightcaps and bed.

Lucy and Lucy catching up after a forty year separation

The next day Lucy no.2 drove us to Drayton Hall, the oldest preserved plantation house in America.  Whilst in the Lowcountry, I wanted to understand more about slavery and in light hearted preparation had read James by Percival Everett.  Can we call it a “black comedy”?  Charleston was the dominant North American port in the trans Atlantic slave trade and plantations like Drayton, which owned some 78 slaves, were common producing  crops such as rice on an industrial scale.  Drayton is unique in that the house was never developed by successive generations and never benefited from electricity, plumbing or refrigeration.  It stands today, as it did when it was built in 1752, but now an empty shell bereft of furniture or decoration.  This stunning authenticity made the experience all the more emotional as our guide Autumn, would, for example, point to a child’s finger print in a clay brick set into a fire place.  The 250 year old finger print of a slave child whose job it was to turn the bricks in the heat of the sun to bake them dry.  What I found more disturbing than the slavery itself, was the complete lack of contrition or even just recognition of this dark chapter in American history.  No monuments, no memorials, no discussion.  Have a look at the Drayton web site and see how hard it is to find any reference to slavery. Memory has been methodically whitewashed.  I asked Autumn about this, adding context that in Britain monuments to philanthropists linked to the slave trade have been re interpreted.  Autumn depressingly reflected that the debate on how to remember slavery and its legacy had made progress over recent years, but that progress had been reversed by the MAGA movement.

Drayton Hall and a clay brick with a slave child's finger print

Lucy no.1 and no. 2 and I left in reflective moods to find somewhere for lunch.  It was then time to say good bye and with lumps in throats and long tight hugs we parted company with promises not to wait another 40 years. We very much enjoyed Charleston and appreciated its charm and authenticity.  It was effortlessly interesting and characterful.

The weather was poor with strong winds and high seas and staying within the embrace of the ICW seemed sensible. We continued north for three days and enjoyed contrasting sections where one day it was more Miami Vice, the banks a succession of million dollar pavilions with extravagant docks and fast boats reaching over the marshes into the river. And the next day, we were in Heart of Darkness surrounded by wild jungle, crocodiles swimming in our path, Kurtz perhaps waiting round the next bend.  Broadsword elected to venture back out to sea at Cape Fear.  As there was a strong sea breeze from the east, counter intuitively, we would need to leave on a flood tide.  Had we left on the ebb, we would have suffered a boiling, turbulent and dangerous sea.  Our objective, New York, lay five hundred miles and three days north.

On the ICW, one day it would be this....

...and the next it would be this

Lucy and I knew what lay ahead would be a challenging passage and without doubt boarder line high risk.  Cape Hatteras needed to be rounded and is nicknamed “Graveyard of the Atlantic” for good reason.  The cold Labrador current from the north meets and mixes with the warm Gulf Stream from the south resulting in treacherous currents and violent localized un forecasted weather events.  Rule no. 1 was not to go near the north flowing Gulf Stream unless the wind was in the south.  Rule no. 2, give Hatteras a wide berth.  With rules no. 1 and 2 closely observed, we sailed deep into the Gulf Stream and jumped on the watery conveyor belt delivering an additional and welcome four knots.  But that night, events took a turn for the worse.  The CAPE forecast (Convective Available Potential Energy) was high.  This predicts thunderstorms and lightning and that night it was going to be a stonker.  Laptops, phones and tablets were deposited in our built in Faraday cage, AKA the oven. Radar turned on to spot the incoming thunderstorms.  And wait. Then it unfolded, slow at first, a distant flash here, a crack there.  But it built and built until we were surrounded by the breathtaking and terrifying proximity of it all.  As if all around, batteries of cannon were firing at us, blinding flashes from the muzzles, thunderous detonations .  It endured most of the night.  And it seemed a miracle that we were not hit.  Many yachts are hit by lightning, and the consequences are unimaginable from loss of all electronics and a huge repair bill to instant fire and sinking.  That’s the thought that keeps you up at night during a lighting storm on a boat!

The top image shows Cape Hatteras. I've plotted the outer limits of the Gulf Stream with Green way points. Note the wind speed at 39.9 kts, a Force 8 Gale. A Severe Gale Force 9 starts at 41 knots. The bottom image shows the approaching band of thunderstorms. Note our speed of 9.5 kts aided by the Gulf Stream current.

The whole ink black sky would be illuminated as the storm approaches

The morning after the night before there was a blissful calm with not a ripple in the water. The clarity for the water made this dolphin visit all the more stunning. Atlantic White-Sided dolphins.

We emerged through the other end relieved and exhausted in equal measure, just wanting to reach New York for regenerative sleep.  We would arrive at 0300 in the morning and I rejigged the watch so I would helm Broadsword in and rouse Lucy just before the anchorage.  It was a beautiful still night with wisps of fog hovering over the black water like wool snagged on barbed wire.  The auburn glow of the sky scape offering a tantalising hint of what lay ahead. As we rounded Brooklyn to starboard, The Statue of Liberty appeared into view with Manhattan reaching high for the stars behind.  Time to get Lucy.  Cue “Let the River Run” by Carly Simon from Working Girl.  Full volume.  Lucy’s emerged from the companion way with an ear to ear smile, her favorite song from her favorite film to welcome her to Manhattan.  Anchor was dropped 300m from feet of Lady Liberty.  I retreated to bed.  Lucy stayed up to photograph the dawn.

Our anchorage on arrival. Lucy really caught the atmosphere with this photo as the dawn broke through the haze of the fog.

There was precious little respite.  We had to navigate north up the East River at the end of which sat Hells Gate, a narrowing of the channel which results in formidable currents of six knots or more.  Hitting Hells Gate at the sweet spot, towards the end of the flood before the slack, was important and to do that, we had to pass Battery Point on the south tip of Manhattan at 0800.  And so it was, we sailed under Brooklyn Bridge, up the East River with Manhattan to port and Brooklyn to starboard, in perfect weather affording a vista like none other.  As arrivals to new ports went, it did not get much better.  An hour or so later, we reached Port Washington in Manhasset Bay where Broadsword would be moored for the next two weeks.  At last, we could relax and commend ourselves for job well done.

 Passing under the Brooklyn Bridge. In the back ground you could see the Mexican Navy training ship Cuauhtémoc. Later that day she would crash into the bridge with tragic consequences.

In three days, Lucy would fly back to the UK for a week to take care of family commitments and we decided to use the time memorably.  We booked into the very lovely Evelyn Hotel, an art deco beauty on 7 E 27th St.  If you’ve been to New York, you will know exactly where that is. If you haven’t, you wont have a scoobie.  It’s a cool spot mid town where pretty much everything worth seeing is within walking distance.  And walking, we did a lot of, too much perhaps, as I had forgotten that the only footwear I had worn since January were flip flops and in my sockless deck shoes, quickly accumulated an irritating collection of painful blisters.   Galleries, walking, museums, walking, Broadway show, walking, restaurants, walking, shopping, and yes, more walking.  John Goes Boating, a highlight, but perhaps the highlight of highlights was meeting Tom Cruise.  At the end of the three days Lucy was popped on a train at Penn Station for Newark and I jumped on my train back to Port Washington and  Broadsword.

Broadway, Gatsby Restaurant, Chrysler Building lobby, Katz (for that Harry met Sally scene), our hotel, ??, Subway, Jack Goes Boating (a favorite of ours), The Memorial Pools

We heard this hullabaloo and followed our ears to find an excitable crowd. Tom Cruise came out and I was such an amateur, had the camera on a crazy setting and as a result, the top picture is all blurred. Except the phone just in front of me, which was in perfect focus. You can just about see him. He's the short one!

My week boat alone in Manhasset Bay was productive, numerous jobs on Broadsword and I went into Manhattan twice more to visit a few more galleries.  Edward Hopper is a particular favorite of mine and I was truly excited in anticipation to see some of his more famous paintings  at the Whitney Museum, where they have 3151 (I checked before I went) of his works. I arrived, bought my ticket and then asked the lovely lady, “On what floor are the Edward Hoppers please”.  To which she replied “Sir, none of his works are on display right now”. I was crest fallen.

 Whilst there was crushing disappointment at the Whitney Museum, there was a fine consolation at the Museum of Modern Art. "Gas", 1940.

Lucy returned, shattered, and without pausing for breath, leapt on the weather window to make way up Long Island Sound where we would stay with two sets of friends. Firstly, Sean and Nicole in Darrien, then Libby in Stonington, both in Connecticut.  Sean and I were friends from business in Scotland and he moved to New York over twenty years ago.  We had a fabulous night in their most beautiful home and treated to a spectacular meal after which I found myself, not a lot sober, shooting hoops in the yard with his boys Charlie and Liam aged eleven and eight respectively.  I’ll give you three guesses who won.

 Hard to believe, but I was actually in the school basket ball team. I learnt early that if you chose a sport that no one else did, it was easier to get in the team. I was also in the athletics team for pole vaulting.

Libby had arranged our mooring ball in Stonington harbor so arrival was effortless and a joy to see her when we made it ashore.  Libby, American of Finnish descent, visited the Isle of Coll a few years ago, fell in love with the place and bought a small packet of land to plonk a shepherds hut.  Libby is a firm favorite in the community and always fun have a glass of wine with. Long walks of local Stonington highlights and catching up with island gossip was the order of the day and it did not take much persuasion to invite Libby for brunch on Broadsword the next day before we left.

 At Libby's beautiful home. Substantially more spacious than her shepherds hut on Coll.

Our penultimate stop in America would be Martha’s Vineyard, where as luck would have it, they were celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Jaws.  Yes, the fictious island of Amity is based on Martha’s Vineyard and its here that the film was shot.  A little know fact: In 1975 when the film was released, I was eleven and my friend Barry's 18 year old elder  brother Jeff took us both to see it.  Without telling my mum, we jumped on the bus, went into Glasgow, saw the film and came back again.  And all the while my mum thought I was playing in the garden.  Through this parental neglect, I have ever since suffered nightmares and continue to see bleached heads dropping from holes in the hulls of derelict boats. Martha’s Vineyard had a good vibe, the main town quaint, perhaps a little too chocolaty boxity with gift shops, gallery’s and tourist tat a plenty.  With great relief we found a marvelous pub, The Black Dog, where we had dinner and then back again for lunch the next day, served by the very lovely Gretschen from Prince Edward Island.

 Iconic

We chose to leave American shores from where 102 Pilgrims on the Mayflower had arrived 395 years previously; Plymouth in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  An early start from Marthas Vineyard and a long day sail navigating the Cape Cod Canal north into Cape Cod Bay finishing with an intricate approach through the channels in the shallows to our anchorage.  The next day a visit to the replica Mayflower 2 was rewarded with new knowledge; why loos on a boat are called “The Heads”.  400 years ago, a lack of plumbing required your business to avail of a bucket.  The bucket would then be taken to the bow or "head" of the ship where a hatch was opened for contents to be discharged.  Hence, “The Heads”.   With this fact reverberating in my empty skull, we set course for Lunenberg in Nova Scotia 350 miles north east.  This American leg had without doubt been one of the most enjoyable and memorable.  Thank you and god bless America, as they like to say.

A stunning dawn