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