Look at the picture: this is how I feel after 6 weeks on Peregrine. Water, land, sky, in the middle of nowhere—it could be anywhere—yet perfect in beauty. Dickie told me the other night that I seem happy. We pulled the word apart: happy has too many expectations attached to it, like having fun and so forth. Our expectations are simple: taking Peregrine back home, and hoping it goes without too much trouble.

Our life is plain. Early wake up in the cold, sliding into yesterday’s clothes, making coffee, starting the engine before 7:00, and voilà, another day on the way hoping new shoals won’t have formed into the channel. We are at the tail end of the migration south to the Bahamas, and it may be hours before we see another boat, and when we anchor, a few days before we speak to someone.  And here is a small miracle: for the first time in my life, I don’t feel the need to talk.

I told Dickie that “content” would be the word for what I feel. No small gift after this last year. He just nodded and smiled.

Wind and waves are not so much a problem in the south part of the Intracoastal, but shoals are, and some places are only navigable at high tide. Dickie had it timed so that leaving at first light, we’d made it through the shallowest parts. We were anchored right in Charleston where it’s plenty deep but inhospitable with a highway and port with huge boats. We were making our way toward the channel, careful to avoid the few abandoned derelict boats, ghostly with their overgrown green algae and torn flags.  Suddenly and as if coming from nowhere, a black boat pulled up to us. Dickie reached for his radio, but before we could react three men dressed in black with heavy boots boarded Peregrine. They disconnected our electronics, and two of them stayed with Dickie in the cockpit while the third searched the cabin below, making me pull apart our bed in the front berth to reach the cavity under. After forty-five minutes of looking through everything, they must have realized they would not find much of interest on Peregrine, and gestured for the fourth guy following us on the black boat to pick them up. It looked as if they would not do anything to us, and I felt much relief. Just before they left, Dickie asked them why they had picked us out. They said it’s just that we were the first to leave Charleston, but that they would inspect all the other boats at the anchorage. I did not realize coast guards were that thorough.

Men in black leaving Peregrine…

We are docked at Georgetown, and last night watched “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson. It was filmed here, and roughly tells the story of Francis Marion who faught the Revolutionary war with a small guerilla band. This piece of history is central to Georgetown, which with its 18^th century old quarter still looks from that time period. Marion and his militia used the swamps for their hide-out, and it was exciting recognizing in the movie the very cypress trees that had thrilled us yesterday with their roots above water.

The intracostal goes down the Waccamaw river (SC), crossing untouched swamps for miles and miles. Being able to reach unspoiled wilderness is something I’ve grown to appreciate about boats. But not all boats are alike. A big, speeding motorboat passed us yesterday, leaving a path of cut branches floating in its wake. Heartbreaking to imagine how much destruction in the slow-growing environment this one boat can create (cypress can live 600 years, so some were already 80 years old when Columbus dropped by). Oh, how much I love our Peregrine, so gentle that porpoises come and play around her hull (which by now may be encrusted with barnacles). We have been going days only seeing cars when crossing bridges, and I surprise myself at wishing fleetingly we did not have them. On the picture above, you can see the cypress trees with their “knobby knees” rising above water, to provide oxygen to their awesome roots. It was also around here, at North Island, that the French Generals Lafayette and Dekalb anchored in 1777. Now, that’s my history as well.

Dickie is sitting opposite me at his computer, planning our route for the next few days. It strikes me that with the blog I write about our past, while he plans our future. This distribution of roles seems typical of our marriage, and while striking forth is obviously necessary for survival, looking back may be just as necessary. Dickie must be aware of it in his own way: he is the one who registered “our” blog, which I resisted at first, knowing very well he meant for it to become my blog.

I resisted it because writing our history has been painful since Stuart died. Even the short facebook postings can turn the knife. I was also afraid the blog format would bring more introspection on my part, and it has. But I now also see the necessity of writing about Stuart. It safekeeps his memory so that we don’t have to worry about losing him that way, but even more it allows us to absorb his death within our family history, so that our family can survive. And maybe at some point our family will grow stronger from it, his death becoming a tie of love rather than a destructive force. And maybe that’s what Dickie had in mind when creating the blog.

Yet another picture of Peregrine, water, a line of land, a few clouds and the sun going up or down.  This brings a few questions: can one tell from a picture which way the sun is going? Does it matter which way the sun is going? Are sunsets and sunrises the only things worth showing about our trip aside from bridges?

My guess is more or less all humans love dusk and dawn and so do I. I grasp the moment whenever I can, usually from our kitchen window in Atlanta. Such a short time for day to fall into night, or night into day. Just a few thrilling minutes of acute awareness of the universe and our place in it. I used to resist twilight. Felt a twinge of anxiety that it would become dark no matter what I did, that another day would be irremedialy gone, with life clicking away one day at a time, clic clic clic. Now, I delight in the playful changes in light, marvel there is always another day after a night, feel comfy in the universe’s tempo.

A few months after Stuart’s death, I could not see the reason why humans had to go through a life so painful for so many. Wouldn’t most of us be better off without it at all? Then one morning I saw a pink cloud through our kitchen window. Oh, such a sweet sight. Well, of course, that was why life was worth living. More sweetness to come, always another day after a night, Benjamin and Albin growing their own sweet families, going on new adventures with Dickie. 

So, what a great sunset at Mile Hammock Bay anchoring last night. However, after all that talk about universe, I’ll have to confess our anchoring was not God-given but man-made for WW2 GIs to practice climbing up and down a full-scale mock-up transport ship. Docking or going ashore was strictly forbidden, but the harbor was well protected from wind and had a consistently deep depth that made getting stuck in mud an unlikely event. Now, and this will be my last question: how much better can it get? 

We were disconnected two+ days in North Carolina. No internet, no blog, no e-mail. The Intracoastral Waterway crosses the Alligator National Wildlife refuge with the last of the Eastern black bears (did not see any) and some red wolves (did not hear any). We found beautiful anchorings, one with four boats, three of which we recognized from previous dockings—fun to follow each other from place to place. Sometimes you know the boat by name, but not their crew. We have been called “Peregrine” before, as in “Knock knock, Peregrine, can we come on board?” We were alone in the second anchoring at Campbell Creek. The sky had just cleared up after a few overcast days, and we sat in the cockpit catching a few rays, sipping wine–we started on our black box vintage, or bladder as Dickie calls it in an all too close analogy that I will leave to you to develop.

I used the internetless time to check out the i-movie tutorial (disappointed to find out that I can’t stop finding new fun projects. I was hoping to “empty” myself during this trip, as in looking at the sky and water and letting the breeze take me wherever it wished. But in the end I’m way too much of a doer to stop very long—and much enjoy the mechanical aspect of the trip, like understanding how things work. Although I find the idea attractive, I’m not gonna sit in a cave and let stalagmites grow on my head). So, I made a couple of (crude) movies, but can’t blog them, grr. I got to the point where one is on my desktop, reduced to a medium size, but it won’t blog through (Ben—any suggestion?). Not that it is a great loss.

We docked at Beaufort last night (fuel, water, pump out, shower, chit-chat with human beings other than each other, restaurant), and left first thing this morning. With its treacherous waters, Beaufort has a history of boat wrecking, and (therefore I’m guessing) of boat building industry. Pirate Blackbeard is still the shipwreck star with his 1718 Queen Ann’s Revenge—people are still diving for it.  We did not visit Beaufort’s museum. We want to move on when we can, fearing the cold might close on us. We’re making good time, motoring our way through. Canals and rivers are too narrow to sail anyway. But here is a picture of Blackbeard from Hampton’s museum.

When Blackbeard was caught, his head was severed and exhibited on a pick to scare other pirates away, at what became Blackbeard Point in Hampton. It was then hung to the bowsprit of the ship that captured him, and sailed back through Beaufort inlet (an effective way to spread live news without media I’m guessing). You’ll notice the close-up framing of my photo. I wanted to focus on his awesome features. Yet, the truth is that the wax head in the museum was displayed on a pick. I know I’m morbid here, but you would too if the last vision of your beloved son was of him dead, yet offering the most beautiful profile possible for the few seconds we saw him before he was cremated. I had to write it sometimes. And Dickie and I howled and rushed to him and touched his face and hair. His hair was clean. They had washed it.

As we left Beauty-full Beau-fort this morning (picture above), and I was busy getting lines and fenders out of the water, I heard a ploof and saw circular ripples in the otherwise calm water just below where I was standing. Oh no my phone! No more photo, film, how am I going to blog?  Or since I’ve been careful to keep my phone in my zipped pocket, was it the key to the three tanks that I lost and we don’t have a duplicate? I heard the ploofy sound again, and realized it was too loud for such small objects and surely I had not loss something else. And then I screamed, “Dickiiiiiiie” and you guessed  it, it was a porpoise right there, right by Peregrine and me. Oh, what a delightful, thrilling sight. We have reached warmer waters, we are back to the South, close to home.

Back on the move. Hard to stay in the 50’ wide channel of wide North River. See on the picture the tiny marker showing the channel location? You veer a bit and you get stuck in the mud. Then options are to wait for a wave to take you off (no wave today so it would have to be the wake of another boat), or put an anchor away from your boat with the help of your dinghy and use it to pull your boat out of the mud, or call Seatow. I’ll let you know how we deal with it when it happens to us. I can’t help hoping we’ll avoid the fate.

Later on today, we’ll cross the Albemarle sound by following the Magenta line. It will be tricky at the “mouth” of Little Alligator River (how appropriate a name), where the Magenta line shuffles and the channel moves location so often that no two charts are the same. Hopefully the markers in the water will be updated when we go through. We also hope the bridge will be open—it is closed when winds are above 39 knots, which was the case yesterday.

Dickie and I were discussing one evening what makes the experience of living on a boat so unique, and came to the conclusion that Peregrine achieves a degree of aesthetic perfection with few equivalents. Especially when on the ground but also inside, you take a look at Peregrine, and you can see right away the beauty of her curved forms and how they contribute to the wholeness of her structure. Those forms are foremost determined by their structural utility, following the Modernist statement of “form follows function.” Yet Peregrine does so in a more perfected way: all her components are connected and integrated with each other, so that nothing is superfluous and nothing can be added or removed. In that sense, she is more like a Gothic church. I’ll take once more a Parisian example, my beloved Notre-Dame.

    Stuart in the nave of Notre-Dame

Notre-Dame’s entire structure (with its skeleton of piers, buttresses, ribbed vaulting) is designed to hold in equilibrium the different forces at play so that they neutralize each other. Peregrine like Notre-Dame uses the broken arch to bring a unity to its structure, and Notre-Dame borrows Peregrine’s grandma’s features of unity in her nave. Yet, Peregrine is more beautiful than Notre-Dame: her integrity cannot be challenged. The original design of Notre-Dame suffered many change-orders, one being the flying buttresses added later on to support a dysfunctional structure. Peregrine did not suffer those kinds of compromises. Her entity cannot be touched without some part going out of balance and breaking—think of the mast and standing rigging. Changes can only be applied to the next boat, and Peregrine will preserve her very own organic integrity.

Then you’ll ask, how does Peregrine differ from a car? I agree that most cars are merely boxes on wheels, but aren’t some perfectly adjusted to their function and “truthful” in their own way? Don’t they get to keep their integrity from one model to the other? Ah! But you see, a car is subservient to us. No matter the weather, we crank the heater and make that thing go anywhere we want, at speeds where we can’t distinguish apple trees from weeds. On the other hand, Peregrine brings us close to forces of wind and waves we cannot control, close to God-given water and sky. She transports us beyond the earthly world. She gives the experience of beauty.

Here is Dickie emptying the holding tank, also known as the pooping tank for those of you who did not get my euphemism in a previous post. Picture dedicated to Stephanie. We are staying at Coinjock for the day, and here is a picture of the marina:

What is so good about Coinjock you wonder, that the Spanglers are staying a full day and possibly more. For one thing, it has the amenuities we need: fuel, water and holding tank siphon. Even if I already mentioned this last amenunity twice and gave it a picture of its own, it does not hurt to underline the cruciality of it, as we actually “filled” the P tank to the max twice. I’ll skip on the part of how we realized we did, but reassure you nonetheless that the toilet did not overflow. It was close, and what a night it was checking on it waiting for a disaster, but it did not. I know. This is such trivial subject matter (did I write matter?) for modern times, yet it has a way to come back to the foreground with its unique urgency as soon as you go for a greenish lifestyle.

Coinjock also has a dock with high piles WITH CLEATS, if you can believe that. Now, what a smart investement it was somebody did (so far, I’ve only seen piles OR cleats). With such an arrangement of pile and cleat, you don’t need to lasso your line over a pile, which is chancy if the pile is higher than your 5’4”. Neither do you have to wrap your line around the pile and hold on to it all you can so lovely Peregrine won’t get scratched, which can hurt your shoulder and keep you away from tennis for a few more weeks. Nooo. You just wrap the line around the cleat and let it do the work. You can even act casually, perhaps showing a little knowing nod of appreciation to the pile and cleat combo, as if you’d been a boater your whole life. Actually this scheme does not work, because it requires somebody witnessing what a boater you are, which would only happen if Dickie asked for help by radio or cell phone, which he would not have done if his first mate had not asked for it please please, totally undermining the whole scheme because she had to be anxious about docking to ask such a thing, and therefore showing what a pro she is not. Now I hear you Dickie: “Why is is it so important to people to look authentic?” I know. You’re right and it’s that simple for your honest clear mind. I “hear” Dickie  but he is uncharestically not sitting opposite me at his computer. He’s taking a shower, another matter that has come to the foreground, although not with the same level of urgency as the other one mentioned above. Since we are going with the honesty theme here, I’ll say the shower issue did not present urgency at all and was the first thing we got used to. So great to slide into yesterday’s clothes (carefully piled the night before at hand’s reach so you can dress under warm cover), and you have the great excuse of not being possibly expected to take a shower when the cabin is in the low 40s.

Coinjock also has a store with jars of jam and such goodies labeled “Coinjock” and I had to have one even if I’m aware it’s not made here, and chose the Smokin Gun hot sauce over Licking Finger Good barbecue sauce. Now, you might start understanding what’s so attractive about Coinjock. Yes, it’s so like home (not Paris, Atlanta). But wait, here is more.

Dickie and I are having dinner at the Coinjock restaurant. It was nice, and nice is enough. Oh, nice is so enough and don’t let my light writing fool you, and I’m completely thankful for it, from the bottom of my heart and soul.

We are now in North Carolina and will stop at Coinjock for the night (shower! Restaurant!). Virginia was a challenge with its narrow canals, or channels in the middle of what appeared like lakes but were mostly shallow. Dickie did not get us stuck in a shoal–that is YET, because mud gets moved around in the waterway and charts can’t always keep up. Our guide says everybody gets stuck, and those who have not yet will soon, or are just liars.

So, bridges in Virginia of all kinds. I may not have them in perfect order, but here are a few of them, mostly those we got stuck at from 10-59 minutes waiting for them to open. Yes, the 59 minutes closed on us just as we approached it. They follow different rules (closed during traffic hours, for trains, at specific times), and are of different types: fixed, lift, bascule, pivot swing. A practical lesson in 19th century engineering. I say 19th century because my reference is the 1889 Eiffel tower, the ultimate (vertical) bridge. I realize the bridges were built in the last century. Above, the Gilmerton bridge, quite impressive with its double bascule, and then behind another bridge for the railroad. We were still in an industrial part of the Waterway. There were piles of junk metal, which Dickie guessed were going to China. And then, I suppose back here in the US transformed into Apple computers.

The Norfolk Southern bascule bridge, which is manned–see the little house? You are supposed to thank the bridge operator (through the radio) when they open it for you. I’m sorry if it gets boring to look at, but the blog is such a wonderful way for Dickie and I to remember them.

We had read about the Great Bridge lock, and were anxious about going through it even though it has only a 1 to 4 feet of rise. The lady at the lock helped us with the cleats and called the dock a little further to ensure they had room for us. So grateful. By then, we were loaded and worn out with new experiences. We docked for the night in what seemed an abandoned dock with an empty parking lot near by. Alas, Dickie’s computer was out of power, and we did not get to watch “All Creatures Great and Small.” We finally figured out how to download movies or TV series. Stuart was our pro with that type of technology, besides we normally only watch the tennis channel or the news (or football when Dickie has a match he really cares about).

North Landing bridge, closed, darn. This is how it felt all day long. Closed. Again. Darn. Oh well. It’s a double pivot swing, and the one below gives an idea of how it works.

Centerville Turnpike bridge. See how it swings on its pivot? Swamps and forests surround us, a drastic change from industrial Norfolk.