Peter took over his watch sometime around four am and unlike the previous night there were no emergencies—no boat flooding with water, no bilge and auto-pilot switches accidentally bumped off. No incidents to report whatsoever.
A few hours later when I woke up, it was light out and it was still raining. I looked out at Peter. He was having fun. He had on his yellow rain jacket, his old one from West-Marine with the rip in the shoulder showing the navy blue lining, yellow hood pulled up to his steel-rimmed square glasses, cinched under his beard. He was wet, but smiling. I stood on the companionway steps to look out and saw how windy it was. The wind was blowing the tops of the waves off! It looked like the waves were raining on themselves. I struggled to remember the Beaufort scale and where lopped-off waves fell on that scale. I kept pointing to everything like the flag flap-flapping and snapping in the breeze. At sea, a storm of any degree always instills awe and I was amazed and a little scared of the power of the wind and waves.
With the flag blowing to the port side of the boat, I knew the wind was coming from the east as we close-reached on a starboard tack to Block Island. We were feeling pressed for time—we wanted to be in Block well before sunset to be able to see to navigate the opening and also to anchor. Peter always says it’s no good going into a place at night—it’s part practical know-how, part superstition on his part, but I’ve learned to trust his instincts. With friends awaiting us, we knew if we didn’t get in there by nightfall, we might not get in until the next morning and we’d be missing out on fun. Although we didn’t have cell phone service out there, we guessed Mike and Andy were probably already in Block Island and Liz was due to arrive by train that evening. We were still five or six hours away if everything went to schedule.
With our time schedule dictating the course north east, and the wind coming from the east, and the swell pressing in to shore from the southeast, the angle of the waves was making the ride uncomfortable.
Peter recounts his watch saying that as we closed in on Long Island the breeze was building. The closer to land we got, the rougher it was because it shoals up and the seas stack up, making for steeper waves. The wind getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It was not a dramatic sky at that point—the clouds were even showing signs of breaking up over toward the East and we were hopeful that it would clear up before long.
Gradually, the sky got greyer and greyer. It didn’t feel like a big system (to Peter!), but the breeze was building. As we closed in, 60 miles down Long Island, 15 or 20 miles off shore, Peter, ever the quiet, stoic captain, did not share what he later said he was thinking: “Fuck, this is big.”
The wind was blowing hard from the east. Peter shouted over the wind, “Which way you think that’s blowing?” pointing to the mass of black clouds. I shouted back with a laugh, “I don’t know! I was just thinking the same thing. The wind is blowing…that way,” I motioned to the flapping flag, “…it should be blowing it away from us right?” But within minutes, we had the answer—it was coming fast towards us and we knew we were in for a bit of an uncomfortable ride. We later admitted that we were both thinking, “Oh shit that’s coming right at us.”
I ducked down below and flipped the knob on the VHF radio. We heard lengthy weather warnings including: “Small craft advisory in effect” and “Mariners should seek safe harbor immediately.” Following were the warnings telling when the storm would arrive to Ocean, Monmouth, Suffolk counties, and so on. But not knowing the geography of Long Island's counties, it was hard to know which storm we were looking at, how many storms there were, how fast this one was moving and where it would be next.
We talked about running into Shinnecock Inlet—it was between that and standing off shore. Maybe it was better to go into Long Island than to spend all night running off shore in the opposite direction, putting more miles between us and our friends in Block Island.
As I reached for the cruising guide down below, Peter considered the big questions from the helm: How long is this gonna last? Is it a series of small storms or a series of big ones, or one big one and after it passes, we can run up to Block Island? I located the South Shore of Long Island section of the cruising guide and paging through it found, “Shinnecock Inlet shoals every time a strong storm blows through and is subject to extreme tidal currents. Don’t attempt passage without up-to-the-minute local knowledge.” I continued reading until I saw “look for the deepest water between the inlet’s east and west breakwaters.” I shouted up to Peter, “I’d rather be out here and uncomfortable than bust up the boat on some jetty.” He nodded at me wordlessly. The thunder storms were still about 40 miles west of us, moving East down Long Island at about 15 mph. We still had a couple of hours til it got to us. We still had a couple hours to get out of the path and run out.
It was becoming clear that it was more important to be comfortable, to be safe than to get to Block Island on time. We turned and ran south on a broad reach away from land, away from the storm. Each passing minute feeling good that we made the right choice. Our boat, The Moon, loves to sail into the waves and she felt sturdy, doing what she was built to do, riding each wave up and down, the wind chasing behind us.
Now the only thing to consider was how long this storm would last and how long we would have to hold this course. If it’s a huge system we stand off shore all night, or a cell and we run to Block Island.
I left Peter to ponder that in the cockpit. The reading down below made me feel sea sick and this newly familiar pattern of queasiness followed by pounding raw headache threatened. I ate saltines, sipped a rum and ginger ale and tucked into the sea berth for a snug little nap.
It’s hard to capture that feeling of a summer storm, a cloudy day, on the boat, the apprehension of what might come. Time becomes totally irrelevant. All that really matters is Peter and me and the boat and nothing really exists outside of that world. You feel so all alone floating on the sea—getting knocked about by the waves—and yet strangely secure.
Peter reports that it wasn’t that bad in the end. There was one big cell that blew through. After a bit the clouds blew through. We turned around and pointed toward Block Island.
