PAGE 7

                                                                  ASPERIDA

                                                         PAGE 7

Conclusion

How did I get myself into this situation? I guess if you are invited onto an incredible trip, a sail on the ocean to the Island of Tortola, which would have been pretty exciting in the very least, it is difficult to refuse. Well I bit the bait ‘A sail to Tortola’. I myself who is attracted to a life of adventure and excitement, this trip seemed to fit the ticket.

  If I look back into the near past, this is not the first time that this has happened to me. A year ago I was invited to sail in the ‘Marion to Bermuda’ race. Again I was immediately interested. So the Captain of that boat sends me a survey of his boat indicating how great of shape the boat was in. I go to visit the boat, and found it to be a disaster case. The life lines were full of rust and sagging, cotter pins missing, the forestay had a rusted ring clip holding it in place. So feeling that I was going to be involved in this race  I immediately starting working on the boat in order to get it ready. It turns out that the boat was in so bad of shape that the race committee failed it on two inspections. The captain, he was a pretty nice guy, unfortuatully though with not much In the way of common sense, was still determined to enter the race. So he leaves his port in Connecticut to sail to the start line of the race in Marion, Mass.. BTW the originally crew of three all dropped out for various reasons. I was the only make up crew. Anyway as we are sailing out of the Long Island Sound the boat is literally falling apart underneath us. After about 6 or so hours of sailing I tell the Captain that his boat was not going to make it. At this point he believes me and we sail it into a near by port.

     A mistake I made with this captain, and also the captain of ASPERIDA is that in both cases I asked them to take the boat out beforehand to get an idea of performance, you know how it sails, In both cases the captains had an excuse as to how they were not able to do that. Either because of a lack of time or in the case of  ASPERIDA, once he got it out of the marina he would not be able to get it back. I believed that. But, you know, he could of sailed it out of the marina on the Toms River and only returned it to the front of the marina and anchored there. He could of used his dinghy to transport people and supplies back and forth. In this way we might have had an idea of how the boat performed. Actually though, If the trials runs were not done at night we would not of had the full impact of the boat’s short comings.

    Another thing, which is equally as important as the condition of the boat, is the personality of the captain. A short cruise with this person beforehand hand, maybe, could  tell you  of what you might be able to expect from him. The hint to me was when I had put myself on the boat permanently. It was at that time that the captain turned out to be not so pleasant. A funny thing though, for the two weeks before he was pretty nice, pretty friendly. Also just about any suggestion that I made to him, with respect to  getting the boat ready, he accepted.
  They say that a Sailing trip is not about getting from one point to another, It is about what happens along the way. Honestly I am happy that I went through this experience. Just like the one that I referred to from the year before. I learned a lot. About boats, about people..

                                                                        PAGE 6   

   At 2PM we start releasing the docking lines to the boat. The boat is actually too large for this marina and so a lot of help was needed to get it on its way. There were two guys placed at the ‘boat lift dock’ with a line to the stern of the boat. The boat is put into reverse and backs to its port, see YouTube video

[ youtu.be/q41Gnu1GNGc ]. The guys with the stern line pull the boat stern over to port so that the boat can be turned around. The move was a little hairy, as we start to go ahead we almost crash into a boat dock  ahead of us. Fortunately the boat had a bow thruster, and the captain is able to swing the boat over. Anyway I am at the bow of the boat, and trying to give directions, and sometimes getting my port and starboard sides confused. . At one point I ask Jerry if he can direct Walter, who was steering, around the markers at the entrance to the marina. It could be very easy to run aground at this point. ( see next video) [ youtu.be/SHKQhFjTU1s ]

    Finally we are clear of the marina and headed down the Toms River. Walter steered the boat until we rounded the end of the river and were headed down Barnegat Bay. At that point the steering was handed over to someone else, I think Jerry. As we are going down the bay we would smell exhaust fumes in the cockpit. Walter goes below to see if there was a leak in the engine room. He finds nothing. I tell him that I think the fumes are a result of the ‘Station Wagon Effect’   that is:  there is a vacuum created by the open companionway door and the fumes are being sucked past us and into the cabin. I tell him to open a forward hatch. After a while we still smell the exhaust fumes. I look forward and notice the forward hatch is only opened about an inch. I tell him that he has to open it much wider. He does. After a while the fumes are still there. I look below and notice that a door is closed between that front hatch and the main cabin. I tell him to open it. He does. The fumes go away.

    We all took turns steering the boat through the bay. What we noticed about the steering is that there was a ‘Dead Band’ of about 8 turns in the course of trying to turn the boat from the right to the left. If there was a bias on the boat i.e.: some outside force trying to turn the boat in one direction, then all you had to do was to hold the wheel to one side to counter the bias and all was OK. No further turning was necessary. But if all is normal, no outside forces, and  you are trying to go straight ahead, the boat would, as is  normal, go a little off course. So say the boat is, on its own, turning to  the right. You would turn the wheel counter clock wise thorough the 8 turns to start the boat turning to the left, but now the boat would keep turning to the left, so you would have to turn the wheel clockwise 8 turns to nudge it to the right. This process never ended. You were continually turning the wheel from one side to the other. We mentioned this to Walter, like “What in the hell is going on here”, and his reply is that it is normal with Hydraulic steering. So let me think about this out loud “My car has hydraulic steering, and I do not recall having any type of a problem like that with it”. Lol

     As we are motoring through the bay we learn that both the depth gauge and boat speed gauge are not working. Also I bring to Walters attention that his main boom is tied off to a starboard shroud with a piece of string no thicker then a shoe lace. I tell him that if it breaks loose that someone is going to get hurt. He looks at it and then just turns around, no comment. I look around and locate a short length of ½ “  line and tie it off.

    So we continue down Barnegat Bay until we get to Oyster Creek Channel at that point Walter takes over the steering. It is somewhere around 4PM, and the current is running pretty fast through here. Actually 4 PM should be high tide and we expected that the current would be more like slack. Anyway we are all on look out spotting the buoys as we proceed through it. It is a hairy channel and one slip up while going through it could result in a grounding.  We get through it without any problems all the way up to Barnegat light. We make the turn out of the channel toward the light, Walter veers off toward the left, he should not of, and “BAM’ were grounded. He is trying to move the boat off, but to no avail. I ask him what gear he is in? He responds “reverse”. I tell him to put it in forward and steer to port. He does and with the help of a strong outgoing current we break free.

***************************************************************************************

      Now it is time to go out the inlet. Realize that there is a strong outgoing current, with a pretty good NE wind against it. I go to the Bow, clip on, and hold on for dear life. It was pretty rough as anyone who is familiar with this inlet would know. For myself, as the boat would drop I would bend my knees and then straighten them as the boat came up, so, for me it was not that bad of a ride. As we cleared the inlet jetties Jerry would start yelling for Walter to turn south and we all put up the sail. I yell to Walter to steer straight for the Barnegat Inlet Buoy which is about a half mile out, and then make his turn from there. We do not want a grounding at this point with these conditions,  also the South side of that inlet tends to be shallow. We work on raising the main sail while steering into the wind, reefing it in the process, what a job. I am at the mast cranking the drum in which the mainsail halyard is stored on. I hear Walter yelling from his position at the wheel that the line is not wrapping neatly on the drum. I think to myself ‘Is he kidding’ also ‘who cares, what difference does it make?’ Anyway I let the mainsail down and again start cranking it up again while making sure that the line is wrapping neatly  around the drum , that is, each turn laying nicely next to the previous one. After the sail is up we turn south. At one point I hear Jerry yelling from below that a monitor that was hung up with a wall mount was slapping back and forth against the wall. I yell to Bob on deck to throw me a bungee cord. I go down below and secure it.

   Crew safety did not seem to be much of a priority with Walter. The crew bunks did not have Lee cloths built into them, these are cloth or straps that keep you from falling out of your bunk in rough weather. The top bunks are about 6 feet above the floor, so a fall from them will probably result in a broken neck, back, or shoulder. On deck he never installed the Jack lines. These are lines that you clip the lanyard from your harness to when you move around the deck in rough weather and also at night. The Jack line issue was mentioned while we were in the marina, but forgotten. So here we are, past the inlet, and I turn to Walter and say “Where are the Jack Lines”. He looks at me and then turns away to stare straight ahead. I am pretty convinced that Walter was pretty much in shock at this point. The experience of going through the inlet, with it being as rough as it was, was pretty traumatic for him. If I knew where he had some line or strap, I would of ran the jack lines then, but he never showed us where anything was.

   Then we turn south. At this point someone else takes the wheel. I find out later that Walter went down below to check out the engine room. On his way he finds food supplies thrown all over the place, stuff from the galley all over the floor. A big mess. When he goes into the engine room he finds 3 feet of water, and also all that hardware that I warned him about, all over the place. The reason that the Engine Room had the 3 feet of water in it is that back in Barnegat Bay, when we were all smelling the exhaust fumes, Walter decided to open the Engine Room port light window to air it out.

 ****I have to take a break at this point and mention this. Walter was basically frozen at the wheel after he got through the inlet. I hear him say, the following day, that he was thinking of steering the boat back though the inlet. I guess that he thought it was too rough out there. So imagine……He turns the boat around to go back through the inlet. So now he is bringing the boat, into this rough inlet, into an outgoing current of what?  6 ,7, eights or more knots! What do you think will happen. The boat basically stands still with respect to the ground while it continues to take on water through the engine port light window. Eventually the engine would stop and hopefully if we are not sunk the boat would be washed back out the inlet. ****

After a while Jerry yells for the Mizzen Sail to be raised.  Walter and Bob go to the back of the boat, Walter on the starboard and Bob on the port side of the sail. Jerry turns the boat into the wind so they can raise the sail. Now I am sitting on the starboard side of the cockpit, with Jerry in front of me steering and at the same time I could see Walter at the end of the Boom. When you turn the boat into the wind the boom has a tendency to swing back and forth across the boat. The amount of swing depends on how tight the sails main sheet is pulled in. Well, I guess that it was not pulled in too tight. I see Walter holding onto the end of the boom. As the boom swings to port, Walter goes flying across the boat with it. Then the boom swings to starboard and I see Walter smashed into the starboard stern rail. This happened a few times. I can not allow myself to express the feelings that I had inside of my self at this time. Anyway eventually the sail is raised. After, I am talking to Bob and he indicates to me that he almost fell off of the boat while trying to get the sail up.

   So now we are heading down the coast. It is night fall and I am doing my, 7 to 11 PM, deck watch. At one time I mention to Walter that he should turn on the VHF radio, saying that someone could be trying to call us. His response " Nobody wants to call us".  I am not sure of how much I steered on the watch, a lot was happening, and steering was a problem, very tiring. Anyway at 11 PM, I get relieved.  I go down below, and lucky me, get a solid 4 hours of sleep. At 3AM, Bob  wakes me and lets me know that it is my time to go on duty. Bob was also off duty and getting some rest.  I go above and relieve Jerry.

     So now it is just Walter and I on watch. Walter tells me to take the wheel from him. About an hour later a cold front comes through. The wind changed from the NE to the NW. The wind was pretty strong and was accompanied with rain. I yell to Walter to pull the jib in so that we could change it from the starboard side to the port side of the boat. So Walter goes to roll up the jib and for some reason has difficulty doing it. So then I tell him to pull the jib port sheet so that he can get the jib over to the port side He reaches for the port sheet and it isn’t there. It has slid up the deck toward the bow.  I guess that he should have had a stopper knot in it. Next, as he is half out of the cockpit trying to reach for the line, he yells to me to push the red button. He is very excited.  I yell to him “where is it”. He says that it is on the side of the console. I had no idea what the red button was going to do. I press it and I hear HOONKKKK, HOONKKKK, and again HOONKKKK, with that I start yelling “All hands on deck”, again, “All hands on deck”. Now you have to realize that Jerry and Bob were awake from probably 6AM the previous morning, and Jerry has just gone below about an hour ago to get some sleep, and maybe he was just slipping into a deep doze when he hears me yell one more time “All hands on deck”. I hope that I am not the only one to see the humor in this. Anyway Jerry comes up to the companionway and ask "what is the problem". I tell him that we are having an emergency on deck and that the captain wants them up there. Realize now that Jerry and Bob have to get re-dressed. Basically put on their foul weather suits, then their harness, then their PFD’s (life preservers). As they are coming up I hear the captain yelling that he does not have his harness on. With that I start yelling at the captain that he should go down below and put your harness on, and that if he falls overboard we probably will not be able to get him back. Realize that the weather was bad, it was night time, and the boat was very difficult to handle, also the fact that the deck lights were not working.  In a short while everything gets under control. We are sailing down the coast, I am behind the wheel, and Jerry and Bob are staying up above. I think that they lost their desire to sleep.

     Now I think that this would be a good time to talk about the navigation equipment on the boat. At the dock, during the many visits that I had with Walter I would always be impressed with the software that he would tell me that he planned to use. He had this huge monitor in the pilot house which he planned to use to display a GPS map which would show where he is at anytime and also of where he planned to go. Well….like just about everything else on th boat, ‘IT WAS NOT WORKING”. For navigating down the coast we were using this rinky dink tablet with a navigaton App, that was plugged into its power cord, which in turn was plugged into an extension cord, which was plugged into an outlet in the cockpit. Many times when someone would come into the cockpit from below they would accidently kick out the extension cord and we would lose power. Another problem with it is that it was so bright that, while steering, it ruined your night vision. So we would look at it to see our position, and then put it face down to block out the light. I remember the captain comes into the cockpit and wants to know “why is my tablet wet”. Now… let me think . Could it be that there was no bimini on the boat, and it was going through the same experience as we were?  OH,  by the way, did I mention that there was no compass in the cockpit. I mean a real magnetic compass. He did have this little electronic compass, of which  I had no idea of it’s existence, nor do I think any of the rest of the crew knew about it until we reached shore. Actually  there were no mounted instruments by the helm, nor were there any gauges in sight of the helm.

     Now back to the cruise. We are heading south, and I am listening to Jerry yelling at me to steer the boat straight. It turns out that a few miles off the coast of Wildwood there are these blinking red light buoys. Their purpose is to alert tugs with barges that the depth is changing from 40 feet to 26 feet. With this boat there is nothing to be concerned about, we draw only 6 feet. . But Jerry is nervous about them. When you are far away from them you see in one instance you are steering to the right of it and in the next second you are headed to the left of it. Compliments of a boat that won’t steer straight. The only thing that I had to be concerned about was not to crash into one of them. As we are sailing  Jerry says to me and  Bob that we have to pull into Cape May, that this boat has too many problems. I liked that idea and add “When we get there I am getting off the boat”.

      The plan originally was to sail down the coast to Norfork. I tell these guys that we have been lucky because we had the lights all along the NJ coast to guide us, but if they continue down the coast, they will not see any lights for the next hundred and twenty miles. Also while doing that if the tablet takes a crap then they will be in  a lot of trouble.

      We pull into Cape May around 7 o’clock in the morning and anchor next to the Coast Guard Station. Jerry is wondering whether we should have a talk with the captain before we take a nap or after. I tell him that I think after a nap might be better, because after the talk you might not feel that comfortable sleeping. See YouTube video   [ youtu.be/0G0cF72HFy0 ]. In the video you see Bob talking to the captain, who looks pretty well distressed, telling him there is a problem with the steering on the boat. This time the Captain says that that is the nature of long keeled boats (Did he think that we would believe this). Jerry says that that’s not true, and I say that I have a longed keel boat, and I don’t have that problem. In fact, I tell him, my steering is solid. The Captain also starts to talk about the grounding just before we got to Barnegat Light and that we are probably  holding that  against him. We all say that we never thought about it and that it could of happened to anyone. With that he tells us that it was not his fault, that one of us got their heads in the way, and that is why it happened. I smiled and said to myself ‘Boy…..he won’t even take credit for that’.  Anyway I say that “This is the end of the trip for me, I’m getting off the boat here”. Jerry is telling the Captain that the boat has a lot of problems, and is not safe to sail. The Captain tells Jerry that he can not leave him here, that Jerry has to help him sail the boat down to Morehead City. I tell the Captain that he is in a safe harbor with plenty of marinas around, so therefore he should not have a problem. Jerry sort of wants to get off the boat for at least a few days, he says he wants to go home and get some rest (when you see Jerry in the video, he looks very tired).  The Captain asks Bob what he wants to do, Bob says that he could stay, but at the same time he would do what ever Jerry wants to do. Bob is very loyal to Jerry. The meeting ending,  the Captain asks me to stay out of the way while they lower the dingy and attach the outboard.  In a while the Captain takes me into shore and for me the trip is over.

  

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      On Monday morning around 8 AM, the day before we were going to take off , my sister drops me off at the boat. For now on I will be sleeping on the boat. I spend the day, as mentioned in the last post, installing fire extinguishers in the engine room, lashing items to the life lines, securing appliances down below, so that they will not move around in rough weather. He also has me screwing trays of nuts and bolts to the top of tool boxes so that they will not move around. Mind you there is no cover on these trays. Boy...does he have a surprise coming.  Well... by the time 6 PM rolled around,, I had just worked 10 hours on his boat, I was pretty tired and hungry. So I go down below and ask the captain "What's for dinner?", His response was "There are the noodles that my friend left on the boat the other night". I turn to him and say "I don't want that . There was no sauce on it and they  sucked." . His response was " that's your problem. the crew is responsible for feeding themselves.".
   In that one instant he changed my whole attitude toward the cruise. My first instinct was to take my gear off the boat and call my sister to pick me up. I get a hold of myself and walk to the pizza parlor that was in the nearby strip mall. I order a chicken parm then go to the nearby liquor store and pick up a Fosters Oil Can. Nothing smaller could of satisfied me at that time. BTW while I was at the pizza parlor I called Jerry to tell him what had happened, and that I was pretty pissed off. Also I tell him that if I see something going wrong with that guy's boat I would not tell him (the captain) about it. Jerry gets excited at this point and tells me that I can not be like that, somebody will get hurt.
   Anyway I return to the boat and eat my dinner. The captain at one point yells up to me "Is everything OK". I yell down that I am having my dinner and after that I am going to bed. He knows that all is not OK.
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 The following morning Jerry and Bob show up at the boat. Jerry is in a very excited mood and tells  Walter that "WE HAVE TO HAVE A MEETING". In this you _tube video---------------------------->
 [ http://youtu.be/Takl1eg-gMM ] , (paste this into your browsers address bar and hit return). Anyway you will see the captain complaining that I expected him to stop whatever he was doing and cook dinner for me. That was not the case, all he had to do was tell me where the food was so I could  cook it. Actually this cheap bastard should of bought me lunch every day that I worked on his boat, and last night , should of bought me dinner. Also you will hear him say that even though I worked on his boat for the last two weeks, that I still was not considered crew?????? Then he complains that I stopped working after I ate dinner at 7 PM. lol
  In this next video   [ http://youtu.be/aSna0PLorbk ] you hear Jerry complaining that one crew member should not correct another when they are in the middle of performing a task   ( A repeating theme of his). Funny, If you recall from a previous post about the captain laying down the rules, Jerry was all for criticizing anyone if they were screwing up :).  I like Jerry, but I feel that Jerry's feeling about this depended on which direction the wind was blowing. For instance, If the wind is blowing from Jerry to me then it was OK for him to criticize me, but if the wind is blowing from me to him, then it is not OK.
   Anyway more important, you hear Jerry complaining to the captain that he is not going over the workings of boat with us. To this the captain says "He had no time". Imagine.... we are going to sail this boat  down to the Caribbean Sea, anything can go wrong along the way, and the captain has no time to show how the boat works! I remember about two weeks ago, Walter and I are sitting in the cockpit having a beer , and I bring up the subject about the boat operation. I tell him that I would like him to go over the operation of the engine, basically how to prime it, if we lose power. "Also I tell him that I want him to go over the operation of the bilge pumps. His response is "What do you want to do, steal my boat". I smile, and reply that "It is a nice boat". With that he smiles. I sort of felt that I could not press this subject anymore at this time.
 Anyway, in a few hours we leave port.

PAGE 4

GETTING THE BOAT READY -

(picture: A view from the top of the mast.)

    Ever since being inducted into the crew I worked on the boat. Day 1, I went up the mast and mounted a navigation light, and a wind speed instrument. When I got down I mentioned to Walter that he should test the navigation light out that night. His response was sort of like, don't worry about it.  We, the crew, were all involved with doing different task on the boat. Jerry was making up some Stern Mounts which would be connect to either a boat  ladder, or a ramp. Richard was installing  U-bolts in back of the dingy, and Bob was making the stern ramp, which would also have a non-slip surface, to Jerry's stern mounts. Also Bob and myself were working together on making deck mounts so that the coolers could be tied to. For two weeks I showed up at the boat almost every day, sometimes for 4, 6 or more hours. Every couple of days I would ask Walter if he tested out the navigation light. Answer: No.
    Walter had a  white van that was full of tools, bolts, paint cans, and other sailboat rigging gear. He was able to sell the truck to a guy that would pick it up the morning of the day that we were suppose to leave. So everyday for the next two week, that I was working on the boat, he would take some stuff off  the van and either throw it in the garbage, or offer it to someone to take, or bring it to the boat. Now the stuff that would wind up on his boat would sit on the deck for a few days while he decided what to do with it. I noticed that a lot of his time was consumed with doing this.
    The day that we were suppose to leave Walter decides to test out the navigation light. It doesn't work! He suggest that maybe I did not crimp the butt splices correctly.  I told that I was pretty careful in the way I did it and that I felt that they should be OK. I volunteer to go up the mast again. I told him to put a volt meter in the bag with the other tools that will go aloft with me. When I got to the top of the mast I was able to get the probes of the meter into the ends of the butt splices and measure the voltage. I yell down to him that I only measure 1.6 volts ( I should of measured 12 volts). He doesn't believe that I am taking a correct measurement. So I tell him that I will cut the splices open and measure the voltage again. I again tell him again 1.6 volts. I re-splice the  wires and come down the mast.
 (Picture on right: A selfie, The marina an I)

Once down he questions me as to weather I had the meter on the right scale. I told him that I have been using volt meters all my life and that I know what scale to put it on. Then he jumps to "maybe the probes were not making good contact with the meter".  I shake my head and go onto something else. This was Sunday. Tomorrow we were suppose to leave. that is not going to happen now. Not without  navigation lights.
   I have to say that there were a lot of little red flags that I was seeing about the captains performance and his decisions, but at the same time,  I wanted to go on this trip so I ignored them. I remember one day Jerry shows up at the boat with Bob, his emotions  elevated as he tells the captain that he wanted to make this a safe trip, and as a result he wanted to rig the mainsail differently. He must of anticipated that the captain was not going to like this. Anyway the foot of the mainsail was attached to a roller reefing boom. That means that as you lower the sail you turn a crank on the boom which winds the sail around it. like a window shade. A very neat way of storing the mainsail, but also as you lower the sail the slides come out of the track on the mast and wrap with the sail around the boom. So far so good. The problem is that when you go to raise the sail, you have to raise it to the point of where a slide is at least a foot above the entrance to the track on the mast, then you have to gorilla the slide over to the track and slide it in. The front edge of the main sail is about 4 inches behind the mast so the slides were not really lined up with the track. After you get that slide in you have to go through the same process of raising the sail another two feet before you insert the next slide. As you can see raising the mainsail was a very laborious project, and you need at least two people to do it.. Jerry's idea was to rig the sail as it on most typical sailboats that is: it is flaked on the boom, and tied in place with slip knots, and when you want to raise the sail, all you have to do is release the ties, that is done with just a pull on the tail of the knot, and pull the sail up the mast with the main halyard. The slides never come out of the track in this setup , so therefore a lot easier system to control, and also one person can do it. . Well,,, the captain did not like the idea that his brand new sail was going to be treated in this fashion. Also, he had a point , that a sail of this length, foot wise , was going to be pretty difficult to flake neatly on the boom. Actually with four of us it was a task. The only thing is when you are on the ocean who cares if it is neat. You just want it to be fast, He was trying to tell us that his system was not difficult at all. Well...think about this, with two people on watch, the other two getting their big 4 hour sleep below, who was going to steer the boat while the sail was being raised? You could say "Use the auto pilot", well we will talk more about that later.
    Getting back to the navigation light, the following day, the day that we were suppose to leave, Walter goes up the mast as far as the spreaders. I had no idea of what he was doing, but he was up there for at least an hour. It turns out that there was a junction box at the height of the spreaders that had a circuit board in it that controlled the navigation light above. It turns out that the PC board inside the junction box had corrosion on it.  So he removes the circuit board from the junction box and directly connects the input wires to the box to the output wires. He comes down the mast and goes inside the cabin to start playing with the cable, of 4 or 5 wires, that is coming down from  the mast. What he has to do now is to connect a hot wire, from below, to the correct wire in the cable in order for the navigation light to work. Now if he wanted the anchor light to work then  he would connect the hot wire, to the anchor light wire. .

 (Picture to right: Walter working on junction box) .

    So I have to ask,  who would mount a junction box with a circuit board full of electronics halfway up the mast?  Also I  thought that when I first went up the mast to mount the navigation light that it was the first time that it was being put up there. Later I was to find out that it was up there and he took it down because it was not working. So, I'm guessing, he takes it down.  Tests it and it works. So in his mind, when he had me put it back up, He knew that the light was in good shape so why be in a hurry to retest it. :)
   We delay departure for another day, actually I told him that I thought that the boat was another two weeks to being ready. To that he laughed. Anyway that day he had me install fire extinguishers in the engine room. While doing that I noticed trays and shelves of bolts , nuts, cans of paint, lets just say all sorts of junk. I tell him that somehow he has to get  that stuff out of there, that once we start getting into rough water that stuff will be all over the engine room. I do not think, and as I find out later, he did not do a very good job of it.

                                                                            PAGE 3

 Pre-Trip Talk-

 On Monday Sept 15, Walter asks me If  I can be at the boat at 3PM to meet the other crew members. They wanted to meet me before they they would accept me as part of the crew. I already knew Jerry, but never met Richard. I show up and it turns out to be a pretty nice meeting. The first topic was the food. They wanted to know if I agreed with their food  plans. It turns out that Richard was a vegan and he would do all the shopping, make up the menu, and do all the cooking. When I heard that he would do all the cooking I gladly agreed to the whole food plan.
    After this the captain gives a talk about what is expected of the crew. First: absolutely no drinking while the boat is in motion. Second: If someone in the crew is performing some type of task, another crew member should not yell at tell him that he is doing it wrong. Jerry differs with this and says that if the crew member is not doing the task correctly that he should be corrected. I myself suggest that instead of telling him that he is not doing it correctly better to suggest that you help him do it, and in this way you can get the task on the right track.
   Next the captain lets us know that he is the captain and that he has the last word.

   I want to add at this point a feeling I have as to how the food accommodations were made. In the beginning ( I wasn't there)  when Walter was planning the trip, he mentioned the whole itinerary to Jerry. Jerry and his friend Richard, being very excited about the trip, must of volunteered to buy and pay for all the food.   Now I am coming aboard and also being happy to make the trip, I do not complain and also come up with a few hundred dollars toward the food. Personally , my inner feelings are, the captain being happy to have a crew to help him sail his boat to some destination should of forked over all the money for the food, but again, like these guys I smiled and paid.

 Sept 26 -

The day after the blog incident I show up at the boat and find out that Richard, the priest, will not be making the trip. Personal reasons. Anyway now there is a lot of talk about the food that he has bought. Remember the vegetarian thing? Well now we have two problems, one is a lot of food that we are not very happy with, and also without much protein, and second 'Who is going to do the cooking?  Jerry shows up at the boat and in a meeting it's agreed that he will go shopping the morning of the cruise and supplement the meals with meats. The cooking part has still not been determined.

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  On Wednesday, Sept 25, I send a text message to The Captain telling him about the Blog that I started. I was pretty happy about doing it and I felt that he would also feel the same. The response that I received shocked me. The messages between up go like this.

G.-    "Walter, how do you spell your last name?"
G-     "What is the displacement of your boat?"
W-    "My last name is Cieniewicz and the displacement is 35 metric tons."
G-     "Thanks. working on blog."
G-     " Walter, check out blog."
W-    "George , The page is access-able. Could you please remove it for a few days?
W-    "The page is still there. Please do it ASAP otherwise it will be a disaster."
G-     "I am erasing it now"
G-     " Look it up now."
G-     "Tell me if you can see it. Also relax :) "
W-    "OK it's gone"
W-    " The title is still there"
G-     "I not sure if I can do anything about that . I will try"
G-     " Doesn't look to good. No option to remove it."
G-     " Title removed".

   What I am starting to realize and, Walter confirms in very few words,   is that to him the trip initially is all about getting the boat out of the marina before his wife, who he is presently going through a divorce with, can stop him. After this incident he mentions to me, again in very few words , Walter did not talk very much about his personal life, that the lawyers were giving him a hard time, and he did not want his wife and the sheriff showing up at the dock.
  I really had no idea before this time that they were going through a divorce. There were times that, in the past, that I would stop by his boat to chat with Walter, and Anna his wife would be there. She was usually busy cleaning, shopping, cooking, and doing errands, while Walter worked on his boat. If anyone has ever met Anna you would notice that she was a tall very sweet woman with incredible poise. Well educated, She reminded me of Jacky Kennedy. It's funny, as you will hear more about this later, she would tell me that he would not tell or show her anything about the boat. Now I knew that they were planning on sailing the boat around the world once the boat was finished so I would say to her that did not make any sense. I would say to her ' What would happen if he got sick or otherwise indisposed, how would she be able to handle the boat?
   Months ago, I stop by the boat to say hello and I notice that Anna is not there. I ask Walter,"where's Anna". He tells me that her mother is very sick and Anna is taking care of her. On additional visits I still notice that Anna isn't present and my mind starts to question the excuse that he made. It is none of my business so I do not inquire any more.
  One day I  stop by the marina, before learning about the cruise, I ask Walter what's new? He tells me that we are  planning on leaving the marina at the end of the month. I inquire " You and Anna?". He responds " No, Jerry and a friend of his are going". He tells me about initially sailing to Tortola, then after a few months there he will sail  up to the Bahamas, and after that, across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, In my mind I wondered if Anna would be meeting up with him over there.

  

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   In five days I will be taking a cruise on a 50 foot sailboat named ASPERIDA to the island of Tortola. I am pretty excited about this cruise, for one, although I have sailed for approximately 25 years on my own boats, a lot of that single handed, to places like Block Island, The Great Lakes, Virginia and North Carolina, I have never gone across the Gulf Stream, or sailed to a foreign country. The plan is that we will leave the Toms River on Monday Sept 29 around 2 PM, where the tide is close to high tide. The boat has a 6 foot draft, so we need a lot of water in order to get out of the marina. We will motor down the Barnegat Bay to Barnegat light, stay over night, and about noon on Tuesday Shove off. The plan is to sail to Norfolk,  Va. on the outside and from there go inside through the various rivers and canals to Morehead City, NC. From there, with the weathers permission, we will sail SE between Bermuda and the Bahamas and head for Tortola, which is BTW the capital of the British Virgin Islands. Think of the trip in these terms. We will be sailing through the middle of the Bermuda Triangle in the middle of the  Hurricane season. Now it can't get more exciting then that!
    The captain and owner Walter Cieniewicz bought a Steel hull boat, actually Nickle Copper, about 13 years ago. I think he got it in NC. Then he motored it up to NJ into the marina in which he is now planning to leave. Initially the boat was dry docked probably for the first ten years then it was put into the water. As far as I know the boat was basically equivalent to a bare hull ie: an unfinished boat. In all this time he has been finishing the hull into a completed  boat. An Electrical Engineer by profession, as far as I know, he is an incredible craftsman. Everything to the N'th degree perfect. The woodwork below is beautiful. He also put a tremendous amount of work into the mechanical systems of the boat. Double water treatment systems. Fuel polishing systems ie: systems that keep your diesel fuel clean. He also put a lot of time into the electronics and computer systems of the boat. Whenever I would run into him he would talk about some new software that he was using or about some far out fuel tank measuring system that he was installing. It was always interesting to hear him talk about what he was doing with the boat.
   The boat is a 50 foot steel ketch ie: double masted sailboat. it weighs 35 metric tons, over 70 thousand pounds. It has a large State Room, nice size Galley, Captains Quarters in the rear, and four bunks near the bow for the crew. It has a large stand up Engine Room. The boat is equipped with a washing machine, refrigerator, and wind generator to charge the batteries. I will tell you something. I have not gone on this trip yet, but I am very impressed with this boat!
  I will be part of a crew of initially 5 to Norfolk, and then 4 the rest of the way. The crew will consist of Jerry ( a retired cop),  Richard ( a priest), and Bob ( a Mechanical Engineer)., and myself (an Electrical Engineer and Electrician).  Jerry and myself have a lot of sailing experience. If you think about it, I think that I am in pretty good hands. For 1: If the boat tries to get boarded by pirates we have Jerry to hold them off; 2: If the boat is sinking we have Richard to give us our last rites; and 3: Between the Captain, Bob, and myself we stand a pretty good chance of fixing problems as they arrive.
  Jerry is in charge of the watch schedule, that is the schedule which says when you should be on deck. The schedule puts you on a 4 hour watch, and allows you to sleep 4 hours when you are off. Personally I think that a 6 hour watch would of been better, thus allowing you to sleep for 6 hours, almost a full nights sleep. Jerry also set it up so that there would always be 2 people on deck at any one time. Realize that if you are on deck for 6 hours you only have to steer for 3. Not bad. I did not complain though. I was just happy to go.
  Richard was  both, in charge of shopping for the food and also for cooking it. He was a vegetarian, so  I had to agree to this diet in order to go on the trip. So I did. I also liked the idea that he was going to do all the cooking. For that I would almost accept any diet. He was also a pretty nice guy, but I guess, for a priest, you should be.
    Bob, who I just met for a short time in the beginning, came across as being very helpful. Also like the rest of us was diving in to do what ever was needed to get the boat ready. Bob will be the crew member that will depart in Norfolk.
   A cruise can be a great and exciting experience, especially if the weather is descent, and the crew gets along well, and the boat has no problems. Those are the three things that you think about before you leave. Today I was elected to run for sandwiches. The specs for each sandwich were varied and pretty specific. So I go buy them and bring them back to the boat. I put them on the cockpit table. The crew stops their work and head for the cockpit. They each grab a sandwich. For some reason they all grab the wrong one even though they were all labeled. While they were eating them one says "This doesn't taste like turkey", another  says "This don't taste like ham". On realizing what had happened they exchanged sandwiches and laughed about it.To me that sounds like a good start.