I sailed out of Newport, VA on a Monday. I made it beyond the Bay Bridge Tunnell and out of the south end of the Chessapeak that night. Winds were strong and there was some chop, but things went pretty well until the storm sail blew out in the channell through the Bridge Tunnell. I continued through under the jib alone, then continued out a few miles to where I felt safe from grounding.
I found that Lady Grace would hold her course to the wind if I set her on a reach under the jib alone and that the course was pretty good for my trip plan, so I left her to her own devices and furled the blown out main.
I spent until thursday too far offshore for the cell phone, so out of touch with My Lady. :^(
Winds were rarely usable. I was effectively in doldrums, with occasional bursts of thirty knots that never amounted to more than a couple of housr in a day. One of the breezes found me adventurous and impatient and I mannaged to sink the starboard rail for a while, a first for me. That was pretty exciting, but a lot of work.
By the end of Thursday, I was certain that I would not make it to Boston in any reasonable time. My vacation time was nearly exhausted and I had only gone about one hundred miles of a more than three hundred mile trip. I decided to head in to a port and hire a truck to transport our home the rest of the way.
By late friday afternoon I had tied up in Ocean City, MD at a marina. I was referred to a sailboat guy, Bob Brenner. Bob is all heart and full of energy. He seams to live for helping out people.
Bob convinced me to hire a crew to sail Lady Grace home for us. The cost would reun about a thousand dollars and it would take a week or so. Relieved and tired, I headded back to Boston.
Bob and his people got the inboard started and asked me to pay to have the boat hauled out so they could clear the propeller. While it was out they painted the hull. It was beautiful!
After a month and three thousand dollars, the crew we hired gave up their efforts and told me to pick up our boat in Mystic, Ct. They had been fraught with unfavorable weather and an inability to keep the inboard Atomic 4 running. I headded down to meet them on a Friday afternoon.
Grace was able to find us a sailing captain willing to come over to the marina the prior crew had tied up in and chat with me about how to move on from there.
Keith Chmura showed up and looked over my predicament. He drove me around to get fuel for the outboard and food for the trip. He agreed to sail with me the next morning to get me through the channel at Fisher's Island that could be pretty onerous, then as far as we could comfortably get that day. He left me with instructions to get the outboard running and have a go at the inboard.
I got the outboard running easily, then turned to the Atomic 4.
When the crew left me, they took their protable fuel tanks and their batteries, but did not return our batteries, nor reconnect the main fuel tank. I found our spare gell cells which I had bought second hand before leaving VA and started trying to sort out fuel hoses and electric wires. I thought I would never sort it out, but mannaged to get most of the loose stuff hooked up to something and went up to the cockpit. I put the key into the switch and pulled the choke cable out of the pannell. Ugh. one more thing I would have to figure out.
I gave up and decided that the crew had been right and the inboard was hopeless. In frustration, I turned the key and pushed the throttle. The motor started right away and idled happily. Reverse would not engage, just grinding as if the control cable were misadjusted, but forward pushed against the mooring lines just fine. I was relieved and dumfounded.
*note: I broke out the service manual some time after this post and found that the transmission is right. Atomic fours make grinding or whining noise in reverse and are reduced two to one beyond foreward, so I would not feel her pull in reverse at the same engine speed she pulls in foreward, also, there is no detent in reverse. Funkey little rig.
The next morning Keith boarded and we motored out through the channel and sailed to Westport, MA with the motor pushing us along the whole way. Keith hopped off in Westport and I motored through the night through the Cape Cod Canal and on into Plymough, MA where I napped for a little over an hour, then pushed on up the coast and into Boston Sunday afternoon. The trip from Mystic took about thirty hours under power and partly with sails too. The weather was cold and often rainy. By the time I got to Boston there was fog reducing visibility to about half a mile.
Cold, tired and wet, I walked to the subway station and headed beck to see my Grace again.
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