The Move
We moved Whisper from Lake Anna on Saturday of Memorial Day long weekend (May 26 – 30, 2001). We had arranged to stay away from work until Thursday, so we had lots of time to make this move. Rhonda’s mom 
came along Saturday, out of curiosity I guess. I know she hates water and boats and all that good stuff. Almost drowned when she was young, been at sea in a Typhoon, and she’s too skinny to float. It’s good to face down one’s greatest fears, and inspiring to realize that it’s never too late to do so. Anyway, unless we are stopping to eat, she stayed in the car most of the time and as long as we kept the window cracked for her cigarette smoke to get out she was fine. She just likes to ride and talk. We took my pickup followed by Rhonda’s car, with little walkie/talkie radios to talk on. I got to drive solo in my pickup.
It rained all morning so there was no real hurry to arrive. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and some times to read, ate lunch on the way there, and finally get to the marina early in the afternoon just in time to see the sun come out. Whisper was floating happily at her pier, just as if it had never rained a drop. I was very pleased to discover how little stray water was inside the boat, all considered. A little boat glue and some grunting and sweating would patch up most of the last little leaks just fine. Life was good.
The afternoon turned out so pleasant that the problems we did have were not too much trouble to shrug off. Mostly we had to fight to keep the trailer hitched while pulling our boat out. Inexperience and poor trailer design pretty much ate up the rest of the afternoon. Some good people lent their hands to make our bigger problems smaller, and make our little problems funny. I come away from the water so often wishing I could thank people more for the little things they do sometimes that make these kinds of things more manageable. So, we left with higher standards to live up to and no maritime disasters to further unbalance our views of the world.
We were on the road to Whisper’s new home for the next year; Mobjack Bay. We avoided the highway due to the holiday traffic. The Virginia countryside is really something to see on a rainy spring afternoon, and there’s quite a lot of it to see. The drive was, like everything else we did that day, more time consuming than expected and our arrival was just at nightfall.
I parked the pickup and the boat in front of some sailboats stored up on blocks, mostly off the entry road and out of the way. Rhonda and her mom parked in the parking lot and we stood in the blustery dusk wondering what to do now. The office was closed, but it would be good to leave a message saying that tomorrow we would be back to get our boat set up and into it’s slip.
Looking out toward whisper’s new home, we saw some people at the end of the pier apparently having a barbecue 
on their boats. Maybe they would know the phone number of the Marina manager so we could leave a message. This was one more thing we hadn’t thought of. We went to ask.
Well, nobody knew the phone number but everybody assured us that our boat was just fine, and if we got back for it tomorrow the manager wouldn’t mind at all. And where is the boat and why don’t we bring it around to the slip? Oh, it’s on a trailer. Well, why don’t you put it in the water? Oh, it’s dark. Well, he won’t mind at all. Are you spending the night on your boat? Oh, it’s on a trailer. You can sleep on our boat. Don’t worry about your boat, he won’t mind at all.
Too bad we still had some driving to do, I kind of wanted to hang around but there really wasn’t anywhere for the three of us to sleep. Even with Whisper in her slip, I don’t think it would have worked. So we were on our way again. Holiday weekends really get people out of their homes and into the motels. This was very inconvenient. Motels that did have vacancies also had outrageous prices. It would have been great if we could have come back early to set up the mast and launch, maybe go sailing right away. It would be great to be Popeye hopped up on spinach, too. Reluctantly, we drove back home for the night.
Bright and early the next afternoon, having called our apologies in to the manager before hand (who really didn’t seem to mind), we were set to raise the mast. Rhonda’s mom stayed home. I think she had seen enough the previous day. It was just as well, mast raising is a grim business with us. We have a mast raising gizmo to help the thing up, but it still needs some steadying and extra care while operating it. It only takes an hour of preparation and then five minutes of crank, crank, crank. Acrophobia, heat exhaustion, dehydration, one slip that knocked the wind vane off, a finger smashed under the crank and a few bruises, and then before you knew it the mast was up. Not as bad as last time. Well, the wind vane was kind of worse, I guess. Too bad we didn’t notice it before we got the mast up, but now it’s too late. We retreated to the nearest shade.
All I wanted for that weekend was to get the boat into the slip before sundown Sunday. If we got nothing else done by then I would be happy and sleep like a baby. I got my wish. The marina manager was a great help with the ramp, knowing it so well. We were lucky to be getting there about high tide and I was getting better at trailer backing up all the time. Whisper slipped off the trailer like a kid into a wading pool. Everything was perfect. All our little detail things were clicking along now at the lazy pace of sailboat events. The motor worked. We putted our way around one pier, then way around the other pier, and slowly, slowly, backed into our slip.
Another one of our nice neighbors, one we hadn’t met yet, was waiting to throw or catch a line or just say welcome to help us in, but all she could do for the longest time was laugh while we learned to motor backward against the wind. It was the finest, warmest welcome we could have had.
Sailing on Tuesday
Monday had us tied up with family matters, which was fine with me because I was dog tired and ready to hang out, take it easy and eat good food just for singing "Happy Birthday 
Amber". It was a good party. The balloons that got away from us drifted north.
Tuesday, we showed up again bright and early in the afternoon. Something must be wrong with us, I guess, that we can’t get someplace an hour and a half away from our house in less than six hours after we wake up. The rainy, blustery weather was past. It was cooler and drier, just a little cloudy and the winds were light and variable. We knew we could handle this. We were ready. We went.
I was hoping that we could make it to the New Point Comfort lighthouse just about ten miles away from the marina, south and southwest. I figured we could do a round trip in five or six hours with a suitable west wind, and if it took eight hours or more, no big deal. It turned out that I was a little optimistic; we only made it about a mile, all the way to a day marker I would rather have stayed clear of, and then ran out of wind. The current pulled us in slow circles just north of the marker and the shoals it marked, and the wind, when it blew, didn’t blow long enough for us to make a coordinated tack in any direction. Our inexperience was at the tiller. We didn’t get far for a while, but we did eat lunch while we waited.
This was not a setback, this was an unexpected fun activity. The wind was so very slight that we were seeing no wake around our boat at all, but the sails were catching just enough wind to fill themselves out. We had time to think. After a while I tried something. Turning our bow to the east side of the river I was able to move us away from that troubling marker and into more open water. I had to deduce the wind direction and then kind of pretend to sail in really slow motion. The whole process went so very slowly it was hard to see progress, but it worked. There seemed to be more wind where I managed to get, but it went away again soon. And came back again. This went on for a while. We had given up on the lighthouse and were just chasing gusts of wind in slow motion while making our way back. It was quite fascinating.
The water gradually became mirror still and instead of our planned trip we had played like children in the wind and the water, and finally wound up suspended in a quiet, bright blue universe. Our little craft had taken us somewhere after all.
We wasted Wednesday on a little antique shopping and a drive through the countryside. We took the ferry across the James River. It was kind of a vacation from our vacation. So that vacation was over; it was a good vacation, it had everything. Then we wasted Thursday and Friday at work.
On to Sailing With Lee and Rita Back to Mobjack Bay
