A Bit More Time / Gratitude

If you've been following my Instagram feed, you'll know that I was recently in the BVI for a week-long trip on a charter sailboat along with my wife Sara and her mom Cathy (a.k.a. Momma). Sara & I had been to the BVI before with friends back in 2012; we fell in love with the place and vowed that we would eventually go back. After a few years of work taking courses and sailing as crew, I earned my RYA Day Skipper certification last summer which would allow me to charter a boat on our own instead of having to rely on others.

Once the three of us started planning this trip last December, we knew it would be one for the books. It was going to be my first time as the skipper on a multi-day sail, it was the first trip abroad for Sara & I since getting married, and it was going to be Cathy's first trip ever to the Caribbean. From the time we booked the boat until the day we left, Cathy was curious about what we were going to be seeing and where we were going to be going, and Sara & I spent joyful hours telling her all about it. Cathy's excitement was almost palpable. But in addition to all of the excitement and happy anticipation, there was something looming over all of our heads making this trip somewhat urgent.

Cathy had been diagnosed with terminal cancer about sixteen months before our trip.

After she was diagnosed, she started on various rounds of chemotherapy, to which she responded quite well, and spent time traveling domestically to visit friends and family. By the time December rolled around she was still in relatively good health despite the grim prognosis for her kind of cancer, and that's when the three of us decided to take the BVI trip. I had just earned the credentials, we had the money, we just needed a bit more time.

I had never taken the phrase "a bit more time" so seriously in my life.

The trip was everything we dreamed it would be and we all had a fantastic time in spite of a few bumps along the way. Even though she had only been on a sailboat once before with us for a daysail in Pensacola, Cathy took to life aboard very well and enjoyed our time under sail. We hit some of our favorite places from the 2012 trip (The Baths, North Sound, Trellis Bay) along with a few new ones (East End, Cooper Island, Spanish Town). I took a lot of pictures, the ladies did some shopping, we spent much well-needed time just relaxing and enjoying each others' company, and Cathy sent post cards to folks back home, which I thought was a really nice touch.

I had never seen two grown women try so hard to contain their excitement and happiness about visiting new places, doing new things, and simply...being. Having the opportunity to see them have so much fun for the week, especially in light of Cathy's condition, instilled me with a profound sense of gratitude.

A few weeks after we returned, Cathy's health deteriorated rapidly and she finally succumbed to cancer on Saturday, May 14th, 2016. We had been back from the BVI for just over a month.

I am grateful for the wonderful daughters she raised, grateful for the wisdom she shared with me in the brief time that I knew her, grateful for her and her family accepting my daughter and I as one of their own, grateful that she trusted me enough to take her far beyond where she had ever gone before for one last adventure, and profoundly grateful that we had just a bit more time to pull that adventure off.

Love you Momma.  Thanks for making me a better man. <3

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on May 8, 2016 at 6:10am PDT

Things I (Re)Learned Sailing In The BVI

And just like that, my much-anticipated return to the Caribbean has come and gone. I'm somewhat settled back into my regular routine and ready to share some lessons.

1. Pack light. I've heard this before and I think I did a reasonably good job packing light on clothes, but my camera bag was another story. I brought just the right amount of gear for my Nikon (probably because I don't really have any gear for my Nikon apart from a charger and a pair of lenses), but I totally over-packed on GoPro stuff. My CamelBak had never felt heavy before, but this time it was stuffed to the gills and I definitely felt it. This over-packing was accentuated by the fact that being sick for a few days kept me from doing much of the snorkeling that I had planned on using it for. Urk. One of the first things I did when I got home (aside from sleeping) was cutting down my standard GoPro kit to something more minimalist for future adventures.

2. "Travel Days" are an absolute Godsend. The last time Sara & I sailed in the BVI, we arrived the day before we set sail and we spent that night on the boat. "First night on the boat" is a common service offered by many charter companies, but after a long day traveling, one more night in a real bed, with a real shower in the morning, would have been nice. And on our last day, we had to drop off the boat, clean up, pack up, and make a flight home all in one day. Needless to say, that last day on our last trip was a blur. With these lessons in mind, I scheduled a "travel day" on either end of our charter this time around; we stayed at a hotel at the marina the night before and the night after our charter. Not only did this mean we were far less rushed and much more rested, since our charter company had a busy day scheduled on our return day and we didn't have to catch a flight, they actually gave us a few more hours out on the boat for free. Score!

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on Apr 10, 2016 at 4:58am PDT

 
3. Don't panic! The wind on our third day (leaving Spanish Town for North Sound) was erratic and gusty, so the sail up and around Virgin Gorda was a bit...sporty. Once we cleared Mosquito Island to make our turn south into the Sound, we tacked the boat across the wind (which was out of the ENE). After tacking, the boat refused to point anywhere close to the wind and we were getting heeled over pretty badly. My guess was that we had hit a current that was pushing us off course. After fighting this for a moment there was a loud pop and the helm jerked over away from the wind. We regained some of our pointing ability, but the helm had gotten really sloppy; I would spin one wheel half a turn before the other wheel turned in kind or I felt the rudder engage. Immediately I knew that something in the steering gear had broken fighting that current. I decided to drop sail and motor our way into the Sound. I contemplated breaking out the emergency tiller, but I felt had sufficient helm authority, albeit barely, to navigate the entrance to the Sound. By the time we picked up a mooring ball at the Bitter End Yacht Club, my arms were exhausted and looking back I was surprised by how quickly and calmly I handled the situation. Experience pays! The next day, I found the access panels for the steering gear and, sure enough, one of the pulleys had broken. I called the charter company and they had someone out the next morning to fix it. To Dufour's credit, they engineered their steering system with a particular failure mode in mind (the pulley wheels were plastic, and therefore the weakest link) and ensured that that failure mode was easy to access and repair. Well done!

4. I am not a fan of self-tacking foresails. Our Dufour was equipped with a rather well-thought-out self-tacking foresail system that meant the boat could practically sail itself once you got it underway. Tacking was, as expected, as simple as turning the boat through the wind and both sails simply moved over to the new leeward side. Sailing upwind or on a reach, I rather enjoyed the system, even though it did lose some power because of the smaller foresail required. However, sailing downwind was kind of a pain. It was damned-near-impossible to get the foresail to stay on one side of the boat and it was difficult to trim it properly*. While I appreciated the ease of sailing upwind, during our one downwind leg I wanted nothing more than the conspicuously missing pair of cockpit winches and a few extra lines to get that damned sail set properly. Again, kudos to Dufour for making the best of the design principle (and for making the boat available for sale with a traditional foresail rig), but it's a design principle I'm not personally fond of.

5. Be flexible. Our original plan had been, roughly, to sail from East End to Cooper Island, then to Spanish Town, then to North Sound for at least two days, then to Trellis Bay, then wherever the wind took us (within reason) until we had to get the boat back to East End. Our steering casualty tacked on one day in the North Sound, and me getting sick tacked on another. Even though we spent twice as much time in North Sound as we had originally planned, we still got to Trellis Bay, and actually ended up in a great position to make a beeline back to East End on our last day through choppy seas and gusty wind. Had we been further away, that last day would have been far less pleasant. Having that extra time built into our schedule meant there was virtually no stress added by waiting for repairs or me sleeping a day because the blessed cold meds knocked me out while they worked. While you can do a whole circuit of the BVI in a week, I would recommend doing it in two or only doing a partial circuit in a week. The extra time is worth it, and not hitting two or three stops in one day means the trip won't be a blur for you.

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on Apr 21, 2016 at 5:13pm PDT

* As much as I present myself as a cruiser, racing sailboats has broken me. I may be okay with meandering wherever the wind may take us, but I want to get there efficiently dammit!

The Gods of Docking

On our recent BVI trip, we were docked comfortably at a slip at Leverick Bay on the North Sound of Virgin Gorda. Sara and Momma were making breakfast and I was up on deck enjoying the morning when I saw a sailboat pulling into a slip on the opposite of the pier. They seemed to be coming in rather fast so my gaze stayed fixed on them to see just how abruptly the skipper was going to slow down. The bow of the boat cleared the finger pier and then the boat slowed somewhat but it was still coming in faster than I would consider typical. I began wondering if this was some hotshot skipper trying to show off or some poor sap who didn't know what they were doing.

It was then that I noticed that there was no skipper. The boat was drifting in from the sound and, purely by the most blind of luck, managed to come in, bow first, almost directly into an empty slip. My mind raced for a moment at the near-astronomical odds of this happening. Had the wind or current been moving in any of an infinite number of other directions, this boat would have been washed up on rocks, drifted into one of the buildings on the dock, or crashed into one of the other boats at the dock.

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on Apr 19, 2016 at 5:51pm PDT

I quickly put aside all thought of the odds and by the time my feet hit the pier in order to help secure the drifting vessel*, I felt a low thump as the bow hit the pier. Myself and several others managed to wrangle the boat into something of a secure position using lines that were handy, but with no fenders and a bit of a swell on that side of the pier, the longer this boat was there the more likely it was going to sustain some damage. I say "some damage" because the impact with the pier managed to leave only the slightest of dings on the bow; the soft wood on the edge of the pier had absorbed most of the impact, and even the damage to that was minimal. Rather incredible when you consider the circumstances.

Those of us on the dock securing this wayward boat wondered what had happened to it and where its crew were when we noticed that there was a line hanging off of the bow. Someone fished the other end out of the water and discovered that it had been the pendant of a mooring ball and that it had likely been cut by a propeller. Our guess was that someone had taken a dinghy too close, damaged the line, and left the boat to adrift and at the mercy of the wind and tide.

With the marina dockhands on the scene, I left them to their work, still amazed at what  had just seen. Sara & Momma didn't almost didn't believe me when I told them over breakfast. The owners must have been nearby because the boat was gone within an hour or so.

My takeaways from this episode: be careful with your dinghies while in a mooring field...and whatever Boating Gods the owners of that boat pray to seem to be highly effective!


*This was one of those times that I opted to forego snagging my camera to catch the action and just go help. I did take pictures of the minimal damage afterwards, but the boat was gone before I had a chance to offer to share them with the owners. Oh well.

New Toy: Nikon D3100

Apologies (again) for the lack of posting. It seems that I generally only have time to do two Nautography-related things at a time, and as of late that has largely been shopping for cameras and getting ready for our upcoming BVI trip. (Less than a week away!) Curse you day job!

As someone who's budding social media career depends greatly on taking pictures, I have found myself lacking in the camera department for some time. Most of my experience snapping pics has, sadly, been done with just a smartphone. They're compact and easy-to-use, they're obviously great for uploading images, and doing something as simple as turning on the gridlines on your display make lining up quick shots a breeze, but they are fundamentally limited in what they can do in terms of, you know actually taking pictures.

I addressed part of this limitation last summer when I bought my GoPro Hero4 Silver. (In hindsight, I should have written a post about it at the time, but I got it just before several trips so I was busy posting about them instead. Oh well.) In my GoPro, I gained the ability to shoot while wet (which is kind of important on a boat), take higer-resolution images (my trusty Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini is definitely showing its age in this department), and its wide-angle lens affords me the opportunity to do things take closeups of sailboats without clipping off the mast and also capture good panoramic shots. And yes, it does shoot amazing action videos too and the ability to mount it places and control it remotely is incredibly handy. But as I soon learned, even with my GoPro supplementing my GS4m, I was still largely limited to taking non-landscape pictures of subjects relatively close to me. I referred to that limitation as "the boatlength rule" because I could really only take good pictures of things within about one boatlength* of wherever I was.

This winter, I started on my quest to fill yet another gap. I spent a lot of time asking around and doing some research. While the choice of my GoPro was practically a no-brainer, my next choice for a camera was far less clear. Should I go with a waterproof, ruggedized, point-and-shoot like an Olympus TG-4? Or should I go with a more conventional-yet-less-boat-friendly digital camera like a DSLR or mirrorless? Should I go high end or something with fewer bells and whistles? WiFi enabled? GPS enabled? There were just so many things to consider.

Well, as the title indicates, DSLR won. Specifically, a factory-refurbished version of an older DSLR won. The Nikon D3100 had almost all of the things I was really looking for: manual controls so I can broaden my photographic horizons, exchangeable lenses so the camera can grow with me as I learn, and a low pricetag ($270 with 18-55mm lens and all factory accessories) that went a long way towards sealing the deal. It uses the same media (MicroSD cards with an adapter) as my GoPro and my GS4m, which greatly simplifies logistics. And to top it off, even though it's not WiFi enabled, I can just drop the MicroSD card directly into my GS4m to post pictures in the field if I want to.

Not too shabby for a camera that was released over five years ago.

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on Mar 22, 2016 at 3:20pm PDT

Given the cost of a typical 18-55mm lens, I pretty much only paid $170 for a fairly modern and capable Nikon DSLR. No, it's not brand new and no, it's not top of the line, but as someone who's just learning neither of those things matter to me right now. I can do far more than I could before, and I can do it without having broken the bank, so that's pretty much perfect for me.

The one thing** I sacrificed, and the one advantage that the Olympus I mentioned earlier had over my Nikon, was water resistance. The Olympus would have been wonderful for taking underway (and even underwater) pictures, but it would have been far more limited while working afloat (i.e. docked, moored, anchored, etc.) or ashore. Since I already have some underway/underwater capability in my GoPro, I opted for the camera with more growth potential (both in the camera and in my abilities) with the understanding that I wouldn't necessarily be able to use it while underway. Had I gone with the Olympus, I feel like I would have just gotten another GoPro-like camera, which is really not what I was looking for.

Check back in here (and on Instagram) for pics from my trip, but for now, here's a few teasers:

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on Mar 26, 2016 at 6:58pm PDT

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on Mar 27, 2016 at 4:27am PDT

I also have it on good authority that someone took it upon themselves to order me a 300mm telephoto lens as an early birthday gift and had it shipped here. It should arrive just in time to take some fabulous pics in the BVI. THANKS MOM & DAD! B^)

UPDATE: I've got a few weeks of shooting in with my D3100 and I'm now convinced that it is an ideal camera for me at the moment. Coupled with the fantastic Nikon 55-300mm telephoto lens, a lightweight bag, and a few extras, I've got a kit that is light, small, and capable. I'd eventually like to get a few prime lenses (one each for general use & low light, portraits, and wide-angle), but I think what I have right now will work just fine for a while. And even when I do eventually snag a few prime lenses, I'm such a fan of keeping my bag light that I'll likely only ever bring two lenses with me at a time: one on the camera and one spare.

A photo posted by Ben Cushwa (@nautography) on May 28, 2016 at 5:38am PDT

Here are some specific things about the D3100 that I like and dislike.

PROS:

Size/Weight: I didn't realize it when I bought it, but the D3100 is one of the smallest and lightest DSLRs available. It's not much bigger (sans lens) than many mirrorless cameras. This makes it ideal for travel use and lugging around all day.

Ergonomics: I can snap pictures, switch modes, and make some basic adjustments with just my right hand. This is very useful on a boat when I'm often using my other hand to hold on to said boat. Nikon's higher-end cameras all have their mode dials on the opposite side of the camera so they require two hands. I added a hand strap for extra security when shooting one-handed.

Capacity: The D3100 has an older, lower-resolution 14MP sensor. It's immediate successor, the D3200, and several other Nikons released around the same time, have 24MP sensors. Unless you are using top-grade professional lenses, digitally zooming your pictures, or blowing prints of your pictures to several feet or larger, 14MP is plenty. I save all of my pictures as full-resolution JPEGS and RAW files, and between the smaller file size of the older sensor and the recently available 64Gb SD cards I have never even come close to running out of space. My whole week in the BVI only took up a little over 5Gb.

Cost: You can find refurbished models with a standard 18-55mm kit lens for under $300. New ones can still be had for under $400. That's hard to beat.

CONS:

Speed: Powering up and taking single shots seems quick enough, but in continuous shooting mode the D3100 really struggles at about 3 frames per second. This isn't really quick enough to get an action sequence. You can increase this by not saving the RAW file and opting for smaller JPEGs, but not much or for long.

Viewfinder: I like that the viewfinder isn't cluttered (all you see are your image and 11 small auto-focus points), but shooting on my GS4m and GoPro definitely spoiled me to using grid lines to compose my shots. I've tried to use the AF points to help with shot composition and horizon leveling, but it doesn't seem to be as effective. Fortunately, it's easy enough to digitally rotate images in post-processing. (Note: gridlines are available if you shoot using the LCD screen, but the disadvantages of doing that far outweigh the benefits of the gridlines.)

Availability: The D3100 has been discontinued by Nikon, so they're not always available new or used. Fortunately, the D3200 is still in the lineup and it has many of the same advantages, especially if you save your images at less-than-maximum resolution, but it does cost more.

* For reference, I typically sail on boats 40ft in length or less.

**I wouldn't really call this a sacrifice, but I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't shiny and red like in the Amazon listing. At this price though, I'm not going to complain.

Review: SailChecker

I didn't start Nautography with the intention of reviewing businesses related to my sailing experiences, but after my recent experience with SailChecker, I feel compelled to change that.

SailChecker is a yacht chartering service based in the UK that I have heard good things about, so it seemed natural to give them a go when booking our upcoming sailing trip to the BVI. After putting in inquiries with several charter services, SailChecker got back to me with an offer that was seemingly too good to be true: a week in early April on a 2006 Dufour 385 Grand Large for $2,000 US.

That price is not a typo.

The other offers we had gotten were closer to the $3,800 US range for older, less well-built boats. Needless to say, Sara & I jumped on the opportunity as that price was far less than we were expecting to pay.

The old saying goes that if something seems too good to be true then it probably is. Alas, this was the case with our offer from SailChecker. I received an e-mail from Chris Lait, the CEO of SailChecker, apologizing profusely and explaining to me that the offer had been generated as a result of a technical glitch in one of their databases and extending me another offer. Admittedly, Sara & I were both torn about proceeding with SailChecker at this point: despite their good reputation in sailing circles, their first impression with us had not been all that impressive.

Then, something rather unexpected happened. I got a phone call from Chris. He explained to me the situation in more depth and said that he was willing to work with me to get us on a boat. We talked for a while and I told him specifically what we were looking for and he said he was certain he could help us. That phone call, not from the employee who had made a mistake, but from the CEO of the company, changed my mind. It spoke volumes about his professionalism and the lengths to which SailChecker would be willing to go to meet our needs.

We exchanged e-mails over the next few days (including negotiating a refund policy that we had been offered from another company) and finally settled on an offer. In the end, we got a much newer Dufour, a 2015 Dufour 382 Grand Large, for a price that, while understandably higher than the initial offer, was still less that the offers we had gotten from other companies for older boats. Although we're still a few months out from the trip, everything since that initial database error has been smooth sailing and I suspect it will remain that way.

Dufour 382 Grand Large, stock image

UPDATE: 

On March 21st, less than two weeks before our charter was scheduled to start, I came across a booking mistake that could very well have jeopardized our trip. Since I caught the error in advance, we were able to make the necessary adjustments and instead of a potentially ruined trip we were only inconvenienced.

I realize that this situation was caused by an error that is probably very rare. However, it is the second such rare error that I have experienced while booking the same trip with SailChecker. Both times they compensated me for the errors, and that compensation was fair and much appreciated. Although I still think very highly of SailChecker's staff because of the lengths they went to in order to do right by me, I will likely not be using SailChecker's services again in the future because, quite frankly, third chances are not something I grant lightly.

Dinghy Salvage Artist

Something I'm rather fond of doing with my daughter Abby is wandering around to a few "beaches" in Annapolis in search of, well, stuff. Driftwood, shells, and various bits of flotsam are our usual haul. But one recent Saturday we came across something a bit bigger.

We pulled up to the Ellen O. Moyer Nature Park at Back Creek, which has a little cove off of Back Creek where things tend to wash up, near dusk. There's less driftwood and more trash this far up the creek, but it's still fun to check. But this time what we found wasn't trash, it was a derelict dinghy. It was half-deflated, only barely floating, and judging from the amount of accumulated dirt and grime had been adrift for some time. It still had a painter* that was within reach of the shore, so I pulled it in out of the water.

My immediate concern was to prevent it from becoming a hazard to navigation, but there wasn't anything sufficiently heavy to anchor it. Given enough time I likely could have improvised something, but since it was going to be getting dark soon I had to settle for pulling it ashore and hoping that the tide didn't carry it out of the cove. My other concern was seeing if I could identify who the owner was and possibly returning their lost dink to them, so I took several pictures of the craft, including its Maryland registration number, while I still had light.

The next morning, I returned to the cove with some equipment in order to properly secure the wayward dinghy until I could identify its owner. As I had suspected it would, the tide had shifted its position but fortunately it hadn't gone far. Now it was on the opposite side of the cove very near to the A-dock of Port Annapolis Marina. With a little effort (and only a slight bit of cold water down the top of one waterproof boot), I managed to get the dinghy ashore and properly secured so that it wouldn't drift out into the creek and become a nuisance.

A photo posted by Nautography (@nautography) on Dec 6, 2015 at 7:38am PST

On Monday, I contacted the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to inform them of the situation and ask for assistance with contacting the owner. Shortly thereafter, the owner called me directly to confirm the condition and location of the dinghy.

I guess now I can add Amateur Dinghy Salvage Artist to my resume right beside Amateur Salvage Diver.

*In nautical terms, a painter is a long bow line attached to a dinghy or other small craft. There were no paint-brush-wielding people attached to the dinghy.

Landlocked

As is wont to happen to a sailor who doesn't own their own boat, I have spent most of the latter half of 2015 on dry land. I've still been posting photos on Instagram, learning how to turn driftwood into something resembling art, and I even had a random dinghy salvage adventure that almost got its own post (and probably should have now that I think about it), but I haven't actually been sailing or doing much sailing-related stuff*. Such a pity.

Well, fortunately that will be changing in the near future. I'm in the process of booking a charter sailing trip in the BVI for Sara & myself and her mom Cathy for this coming April. I've been taking notes as I go along and plan on 'blogging the entire process from booking, through travel preparations, and the trip itself. The Annapolis racing circuit should also be getting back into gear around that point, so I'm looking forward to a very eventful 2016.


*Note to self: I posted back in July about having time to process a bunch of pictures and videos. July. Half a year ago. I must remedy this....