Part 3 - Fells Point, Baltimore Harbor – Monday, May 20th

Climbing into my berth on Sunday night there are a few things on my mind. As far as the POB2 herself, she is flat out beautiful, and I have no worries about her. But there are other thoughts bouncing around my head - the excitement of the trip, of being with new people, and a bit of disappointing news, two bits of it. First, the POB2 isn’t leaving the next day as planned. The boat is expecting the delivery of a cannon any day now. Tomorrow might just be the day. (It wasn’t.) And secondly, we won’t be sailing south down the Chesapeake like I assumed. We will motor north into the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and out the Delaware Bay. Looking at a map, it makes more sense – the route is much shorter. But I wanted to see the Chesapeake.

Of all the things on my mind, my performance aboard the POB2 isn’t one of them. It should have been. My mind is going in too many directions; I take a sleeping pill, 5mg of Ambien. It might leave me a little drowsy in the morning but we don’t muster in the morning until after breakfast.

Monday morning is sunny. The breakfast is good, great really. Mark, the cook for the journey, has laid out a spread – eggs, bacon, hot oatmeal, pastries. Another good omen for the trip.

The muster goes well. Our captain, Jamie Trost, a native of Erie, PA, leads it and explains what is expected of the crew and guest crew. I feel a little intimidated by him. He is in his mid to late thirties, strong, fit, sure of himself. The opposite of me. But it’s OK. He seems competent enough, and that’s the only real thing a captain has to have.

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He turns the muster over to Jill Hughes, the Chief Mate. She’s originally from Buffalo, NY and also seems competent and confident. She explains the details of what will happen today. It’s a day of voyage preparation. For the regular crew this means mending this and checking that. She assigns different tasks for each regular crew. The Second Mate of the POB2 is Will McLean from Rocky Mount (or somewhere near there) North Carolina. He will direct the regular crew.

 For the guest crew (six of us) it will be a day of orientation: learning about the boat; about safety on the ocean; about what is expected of us. The orientation is led by the Bosun (an apprentice Mate), Meredith McKinnon, from Montreal (I think), Ontario, the only Canadian aboard. At orientation we learn about the boat, about safety at sea, about what is expected of us in different situations. Most of the orientation is routine, how the lifeboats work, how to put on our immersion suits, which side of the boat to walk on while it’s moving. And then at the end Meredith asks, “Does anyone want to go up the main mast, just to see what it’s like?” Most of the guest crew goes up, including, of course, me. I have to go up in a big, fat hurry to show everyone my capability and also my comfort in high places. I’m a former roofer/carpenter/painter after all.  

Guest Crew in Immersion Suits Which Can Keep You Warm and Afloat

When orientation is over and I’m in my cabin waiting for lunch to be ready. Afterwards Captain Trost wants to take on fuel so the POB2 can get an early start in the morning. The fuel dock is two minutes of motoring away but getting there requires maneuvering the 185+ton boat away from its berth. To push the bow away from the dock requires the crew heaving 2” dock lines at the stern to pull it towards the dock which pushes the bow out into the harbor. (Yeah, let me jump in with these 20-year old kids and pull as hard as they do.) And I do. The procedure at the fuel dock requires heaving on both bow and stern dock lines. Then we repeat the procedure and return to our slip. By the time the heaving is over, I’ve had it.

 --Bob Kerber

Going Aboard the Pride of Baltimore II

 Sunday night May 19^th,  2013,I am anxious to go aboard the POB2 for my trip from Baltimore into the Atlantic, through the St. Lawrence River system and Lake Ontario and finally into Lake Erie, ending at Cleveland.  There are a number of reasons why this trip has happened – here are the important ones.

First is the boat itself. Launched in 1988, she is a beauty. The POB2 is a modern reproduction of a two-mast Baltimore Topsail Schooner from @ 200 years ago. The length of the hull is 109' with total length @ 145’. The main mast 107‘ above the waterline; she is 26’ wide and weighs @ 185 tons. In May, 2013 she’s berthed at Fells Point in Baltimore Harbor. Obviously well-maintained, she’s all wood, with ropes and canvas, chains and cables, some glass, metal connectors and two large, iron anchors. The wood is varnished and shining. Everything seems organized and orderly.

Secondly, I love the ocean - always have since first swimming in it in 1970.  The power of the surf, the way a wave can carry you towards and onto the shore.  Then, after a long day at the beach, falling into an exhausted sleep still feeling the push and pull of the water.  During the following decades I always find ways to get back, even though unfortunately for this, I am a southeastern Ohio boy and it’s always a long journey back to the ocean. But more than a just a beach, I want the real deal.  I want to see what the Atlantic is (and was) like, way out where there is no land and a boat rises and falls with the swells.

And then there's Mary Ann, my wife and muse. She dinghy-sailed Barnegat Bay, the inter-coastal waters of New Jersey, in her youth.  As a 1970’s wanderer she bummed around Florida and the Bahamas on various sailboats.  Intrigued by her stories, in 1990 I bought a Sunfish type boat.  The first time I was alone on the boat when the wind caught the sail and the water gurgled along the hull as she accelerated, I felt magic and was hooked.  Not kidding here – I don’t know how magic works, but I felt it.

There is love and magic driving me offshore and then there is my health. I grew up with the Midwestern/1950s/male attitude about pain and health – “Pah!, just ignore it.  It’ll go away.”  It always did, until a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia came my way in the late 1980s. For the first half of the 1990s it is relatively easy to ignore it, not missing much work, my annual winter ski trip or the grunt work on our 22 acres with house and barn. 
 

 But by 1996 I’m struggling. I take a leave of absence from my engineering work.  In 1997 I quit work and start my own consulting business. This allows me to work my own hours, being the only employee.  By 1998 there are no break from the pain which brings on fatigue and mental fogginess which brings on depression.  Muddling through the first decade of the new millennia, my work suffers and Mary Ann has to do more and more of the farm work, either alone or with a hired teenager. The kitchen feels like the last realm of self-respect.  I take over almost all of the cooking and cleaning there. For some reason I can do kitchen work even when tired, cranky and in pain.

By 2013 I am 65 years old and I realize that being bed-bound and house-bound is in my future if something doesn’t change. My life could end this way, as an invalid - for that is how I am starting to see myself. So if I have to do something that will challenge myself, why not do something really exciting like going on a six-week sailing trip? How could this not work out well?

--Bob Kerber

Meeting the Pride of Baltimore II

May 19^th, 2013

 

A look at a map showing Athens County of Southeast Ohio can leave a sailor a little blue. Lake Erie is four hours to the north. The Chesapeake Bay is many hours to the east. The largest body of water close to home is the Ohio River, which has the possibility of a tug with a long string of coal barges around any bend in the river.  Its many bordering hills and direction changes makes for fluky winds. I owned a Catalina 25 and sailed on the Ohio River for two seasons and on Lake Erie for one. here are worse places for a sailor to live, but not many.

     After many day dreams and night dreams of sailing somewhere, anywhere, I decide to do something, do anything to get onto a boat sailing in some interesting body of water. In the winter of 2013, newly retired, I was snooping around the internet for sailing possibilities.

      Google searching for ways to go out onto the ocean, Landing on the Pride of Baltimore II website after a couple of dead ends, I find an ad for a 46-day trip aboard a 145’ long Baltimore Topsail Schooner from Baltimore to Cleveland via the St. Lawrence River all for a decent price! “Holy crap!  I can do this!” This would be the jolt to my life that was long needed.  Calling right away I find out that there is still space available and the only things required are the money, a doctor’s release since I was over 65, and passing muster in an interview with the captain.

     I also had to pass muster with Mary Ann.  Almost right away she says “Go for it”!  This is shortly after she said “You’ll never make it.” But this just makes me more determined.  

     Sunday May 19^th, Will (my oldest son) drives me to Baltimore Harbor from his home in central PA. I had stopped in Lewisburg to see him and his family before beginning this journey.  I had asked him to drive me to Baltimore because he loves sailing and I knew he’d like to tour a 145’ sailing vessel.

     My first view of the POB2 is of her mast and spars and rigging.  I’m impressed and intimidated, also nervous – a new situation, new people to meet, and (my biggest worry) can I do what I signed up for.  My voyage with the POB2 is not going to be a joy-ride. I’m sailing as a guest/deckhand.  Guests will be expected (but aren’t required) to work.

     Being a deckhand (guest or not) will be a challenge; I’m carrying some unfriendly baggage on board.  For the past 20 or so years I have been dealing with a condition the doctors call fibromyalgia but which is essentially chronic pain and fatigue, accompanied by depression, insomnia and mental fogginess.  It’s relentless.  Long before May 2013 I had learned that to have any type of a life, I am going to have to push past many things to achieve it.

     And here I am, on a dock in Baltimore harbor, looking at the POB2, ready to go aboard. We do go aboard, stash my gear and meet some of the other crew. There are new things to see, even a cannon, which I hope is real.  Will is jealous.  I would love for him to go with me.  But he drives home.

--Bob Kerber