"Serene Zelda to military ship on our starboard side. Can you help us confirm our position?"
It was a pitch black morning after two days of hard sailing. My crewmates and I should have been within spitting distance of Beaufort, NC. Only we weren't. We were lost.
"This is a British warship," came a welcomed radio reply. "What indication of position do you have?"
"We believe we are at 34°–49'–36"N and 75°–57'–22"W," I explained over the VHF, "but we have a disagreement between our instruments and we're confused."
"Your GPS is correct," announced our new friends. "You are at 35°–12'–11"N and 74°–46'–08"W..."
It was indeed bad news. Instead of being 12 miles off the coast, just south of Cape Hatteras, we were 45 miles out to Sea. Something had gone very wrong. The question was, what?
A REPEAT PERFORMANCE
Brian MatthewsAaron Clark clips in as he assumes the helm for a late night watch on Serene Zelda.
Every year in May some of my colleagues from North Carolina State University join me for a destination cruise complete with overnight passages and at least one 300-mile leg.
Serene Zelda, my 1988 Hunter Legend 37, is based in Irvington, Va., 12 miles up the Rappahannock River from the Chesapeake Bay, a four-hour drive from Raleigh.
These annual outings are our only opportunity to do more than short day sails and each has had some unique adventures. The week between the end of the spring term and beginning of summer is our only real free time each year. So we prepare well and generally sail regardless of the conditions – we've been through storms and calms, heat and cold, squalls and even hail. (For a story on the hailstorm, see link.)
We practice meticulous safety practices and provision the boat for all kinds of conditions and extended time away from port. In doing so we try to at least pretend that we are actually fulfilling our collective, lifelong dreams of high seas voyaging, even though we are rarely more than 100 miles from port.
The longest trip was a non–stop, 1999 circumnavigation of the DelMarVa Peninsula. Other years we have visited towns in the extreme lower or upper ends of the Bay: Hampton, Norfolk, Baltimore and Annapolis.
Two of the trips were aborted attempts to go south to Beaufort, NC, via the ocean route.
One of those trips was in 2000 when we set out on a stormy afternoon and sailed through the night. We made good progress. Using the prevailing winds, we easily made the 70 miles from homeport to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and crossed the Bay Bridge tunnel without incident. That's when the storms stuck.
