Halcyon Days: From a Dream to Reality

By Austin E. Moorhouse

This book is a sailing travel-adventure demonstrating how dreams can come true for those who have the desire to accomplish, persistence, a sense of adventure and are willing to take risks in order to make their dreams come true. It is about the pleasures, responsibilities, trials and tribulations that go along with any major change in lifestyles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 28, 2004
• ISBN: 9781412218993

Austin E. Moorhouse

Austin Moorehouse was born in Pennsylvania and raised from infancy in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1959, 60 and 61 he sailed in the Stewards Department under the now famous Captain Morgan Howel on the Steamship Aquarama during the summers in order to earn tuition, room and board at Bowling Green State University. He became interested in Mental Health as a Clinical Psychology Technician in the Army during the early 60's. He attended several other colleges before graduating from Cleveland State University in 1970. Post-graduate work was completed at Ohio State University to become a licensed Nursing Home Administrator. He spent a total of 32 years as a Mental Health Professional working at various positions from Social Worker to Mental Health Administrator for the Ohio Department of Mental Health. Encouraged by his wife, Teresa, he began sailing in the early 80's on Lake Erie as a hobby on weekends, holidays and vacations where it became more than just a passing interest. Studies in meteorology, sailing and seamanship resulted in a major change in lifestyle and lead to the current adventure.

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© Copyright 2004 Austin E. Moorhouse. All rights reserved.

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Contents

Introduction

In the Beginning

Chapter 1: Masonboro to New Bern, NC

Chapter 2: New Bern, NC to Solomons Island, MD

Chapter 3: Solomons Island, MD to North Myrtle Beach, SC

Chapter 4: Catastrophe in North Myrtle Beach

Chapter 5: Going Back to the Chesapeake

Chapter 6: Eight Hundred Miles to Daytona Beach, FL

Chapter 7: Daytona Beach to Key Biscayne

Chapter 8: The Bahamas

Chapter 9: The Exuma Islands

Chapter 10: The Far Bahamas

Chapter 11: The Out Islands

Chapter 12: Weathered in at Spanish Wells

Chapter 13: The Abaco Islands

Chapter 14: The Long Voyage Home

Chapter 15: Back in the States

For Teresa

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The people most responsible for this book are family and friends who read our letters and e-mails during our trip and who encouraged me to write.

My highest thanks to Daniel Dietz and Valerie Romain who suggested several times that I write about our adventures. Being fellow boaters and long term friends, they were able to appreciate our freedom and our adventures.

My mother, Evelyn Moorhouse encouraged me to continue and not to give up several times when I became discouraged.

I am very grateful to Phoebe White, a Navy Officer’s wife (and expert sailor as well) who spent many hours proof reading and correcting my errors in navigational terms, tense shifts, etc.

Most important is Terri, not only my wife and best friend, but also my sailing partner who gave up a great deal of her time to my writing. She also read the book for consistency and accuracy as well as spelling and in order to point out other grammatical questions.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge all of those friends that we met along the way and with which we have had the privilege and pleasure of sailing during these past several years. Each and. every one of them has enriched our lives immensely with their friendship. God bless them all!

Introduction

This book is about a major change in lifestyle in order to pursue a dream. It took many years of preparation, research and study to prepare for such a change. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate that dreams like ours can come true for those who put their mind to it; are willing to take risks; are willing to study for it and have a sense of adventure. In addition, we would like to share some of our experiences and adventures with those who are interested, particularly with those who are contemplating a similar change in lifestyle-whether it is in a motorhome (land yacht), a sailboat or some other change in lifestyle. However, I must admonish those contemplating such a change that this is not an extended vacation, but rather, a change in vocation. We still have all of life’s responsibilities, duties, pleasures, problems and heartaches that go with all other lifestyles.

The book is also about the bonds that develop between people who share the same interests and have the same need for support in areas where safety, mechanical and health services are not readily available. It has been our experience that many of these long-term friendships continue well after the passage is over. Cruisers meet again and again in their travels sometimes thousands of miles away from where they first met. They stay in touch by telephone and by e-mail.

Finally, I would like to share some of the historical research that we’ve done in preparation for our voyages. Having some historical perspective only makes the places and sites more interesting and meaningful. It helps us understand how we arrived at the place where we are today.

I view Terri, my wife, and me as ordinary people with no particular special talents for this adventure except for weekend and vacation sailing experience. Learning has taken place along the way as well as from books and articles. I spent 32 years working at various jobs from Social Work to Mental Health Administrator in the Ohio Department of Mental Health where I retired at the age of 55. Terri spent 26 years working as a Laboratory Technologist for Kaiser Permanente.

In the Beginning

In October of 1983, I had a mild heart attack at the age of 43, from which I recovered fairly quickly. As a vacation and convalescence trip, Terri and I went to Key West, Florida where we took a one-day snorkeling trip on a sailboat named Laura. The snorkeling provided good exercise and the rest and relaxation speeded my recovery. Shortly after our return from Florida, Terri talked me into taking a course in sport diving. On subsequent vacation trips to Florida, California and North Carolina over the years, we gained a love for sport diving and began making still pictures and underwater videos.

In the early summer of 1989, we had gone diving in Beaufort, North Carolina to make some underwater videos of the U-352, the first German submarine sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard about 40 miles off the coast during the Second World War. We made several dives during that trip from Six Pack vessels. We spent time on the Senator Du Hammel, the Aoelus, and a number of other sunken Liberty Ships of the Second World War, taking still pictures and underwater videos as we went.

On the way home from that trip to North Carolina, I burned up the engine of our pick-up truck, and we barely made it back home to Hinckey, Ohio. During that time, I made a smart remark to the effect that we could have had a piece of our own boat for the money that we spent on that trip. At that time, Terri asked me if I liked powerboats or sailboats. Without thinking much about it, I responded, I think I would like a sailboat.

A month or so later, Terri asked me to go and look at something with her. I said, Go look at what?

She said, Just go and look at it and if you don’t like it, then you don’t have to buy it. So, I went along with her just to make her happy. We looked at a 22-foot Catalina sailboat. I didn’t like it because it was dirty, and poorly maintained. But the idea had me fascinated. Shortly afterward, we looked at another one and this one was clean, well kept, and ready to sail. It even had a trailer to haul it up to Lake Erie where we first started to sail.

Neither Terri nor I had had any real sailing experience, so we went to our local library and secured books and videotapes on sailing and seamanship in order to learn. Later, we took a course on boating from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Then, we took our little boat to a small marina called Cranberry Creek near Huron, Ohio where we launched her and rented a slip. We spent the summer making short trips out onto Lake Erie and by the end of the summer, we had gained the confidence to sail to Kelly’s Island and then to Put-in-Bay.

By the end of the summer, we had decided that we would need a larger boat. Terri and I sat down and listed all the things that we wanted in a sailboat for the Great Lakes. Terri wanted an inside head (toilet), life lines on the deck and a furling jib. I wanted an inboard engine, a center cockpit and a wheel as opposed to a tiller. After the boating season was over, we pulled the 22-foot boat out of the water, put it on a trailer and took it home for the winter. Then, we went to the Wooly Bear Festival in Vermilion, Ohio and while walking around the area; we passed through a boat sales yard where Terri happened upon a sailboat. She said, Look, Austin, this boat has your name on it! It had all of the features that we were looking for and more. The price was right and we went the following day to the broker where we made arrangements to buy the boat. We sold the 22-foot Catalina and bought the 26-foot Parker-Dawson sloop. Its original name was Spritzer and we changed it to Kestrel.

Over subsequent years, we sailed this vessel thousands of miles on weekends, holidays and vacations all over the Great Lakes. We sailed to Buffalo, New York and to Port Colburn, Canada. We sailed to Lemington, Canada and to Kelly’s Island and Put-in-Bay. We trailered the boat to Hessel, Michigan and sailed through the Straights of Mackinac, the full length of Lake Huron to the St. Clair River, across Lake St. Clair and down the Detroit River to Lake Erie and home. During this trip is where the sailing bug bit hard and we had decided that we wanted to live aboard and sail.

For the next few years, Terri and I read books on sailing, watched videotapes on the subject and read books on boat maintenance, cruising and provisioning. Of particular importance are navigation, weather, techniques of anchoring and the purchase of proper equipment. Today, I feel safe in saying that most cruisers who get into big trouble fail to gain adequate knowledge and experience in these areas.

Lots of people thought we were crazy when we expressed our intentions of selling the house and sailing off into the sunset. Many thought we were just talking and would never really do it. Several people have asked us how we could give up the security of our home to live aboard a sailboat. Well, in our way of thinking, our home became a liability rather than an asset. It would be very expensive and foolhardy to try to maintain a home during an extended absence of 10 years or more.

In December of 1998, Terri and I had sold our home in Hinckley, Ohio after having lived there for 15 years. It is a beautiful home, 2000 square feet on the base and an acre and a tenth of property, with a large 900 square foot pole barn. It is located in a rural area with fine lawns and pretty landscaping.

Over the last five years of home ownership, we had gone from one broker to another looking for the right boat without any luck. Vacations in Florida, special trips to Annapolis, Maryland and other places all along the Eastern Seaboard, were spent looking for the right boat. We looked at literally hundreds of boats over a five year period before the house was sold, but, they were either too dirty, needed major repairs or were way out of our budget.

After the house sold, Terri said that she wanted to take a trip to North Carolina to look at some boats that she had seen for sale in the Soundings Magazine. It was too far to drive, so we flew to Raleigh, North Carolina and rented a car. I really had no intention of buying a boat at this time, however the two boats advertised were the first appropriate possibilities. The first was a Moody-42 in New Bern, North Carolina, which needed a good deal of work. After looking over the boat for a half a day, Terri and I decided to make an offer of $75,000. However, the offer was refused. Then, we went to Masonboro, North Carolina where we first laid eyes on Phase II.

Phase II is a 41-foot Islander Freeport ketch motor-sailer, built in California and is beautifully clean. She was very well maintained and very well equipped for cruising. She has two bedrooms (staterooms), two bathrooms (heads) and is finished in dark mahogany, which is literally scratch free. She has a small 12-volt refrigeration unit, an AC generator for AC electric power and air conditioning as well as heating. She is equipped with VHF radio, Single Sideband radio and Ham radio. She has a built-in global positioning system (GPS), an Autohelm, depth sounder, speed-distance log and electric hot water heater. She has a 105 horsepower Chrysler-Nissan engine and it was just rebuilt by the former owner. She holds 200 gallons of fresh water and 200 gallons of diesel fuel, which gives the boat a 1500-mile motoring radius on one tank of fuel without using the sails. And best of all, the price was right. There was no doubt in our minds that this was the boat. Nevertheless, we had twinges of anxiety about purchasing a boat this large.

That night in December of 1998, in a motel in New Bern, North Carolina, the gravity of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. I asked Terri, What have we done? What did we just buy? We just bought an aircraft carrier or so it seemed. This was a bigger boat we ever thought we would own. And the idea was overwhelming! We continued to be somewhat anxious about whether or not we could handle such a large boat, but lots of other people were doing it. (Now that we have lived aboard for several years, it ain’t as big as it looked.)

We watched the tides rise and fall 60 inches twice a day in Masonboro NC. This was something new for us to consider since there are no tides on the Great Lakes where we have sailed up to now.

Chapter 1: Masonboro to New Bern, NC

Knowing the Ropes:

In addition to learning how to tie various knots, early mariners had to learn which lines controlled which sails. They also had to know what effect paying out or taking in on any given line would have on a given sail, thus the saying knowing the ropes.

Getting Started

Phase II was purchased from Charlie and Louise Septer, who are two people that we will treasure for the rest of our lives and will meet again and again before our sailing days have ended. After moving aboard, Charlie spent three full days teaching me how to operate the main engine, the generator and the air conditioning. He showed me all of the electrical and mechanical systems as well as ways of maintaining the boat and gave invaluable hints on sailing it. He didn’t mind being videotaped as he explained the inner workings of the boat and I have referred to those tapes many times later when questions arose. Few new boat owners get this kind of orientation to a new boat. On our sea trial, Charlie and Louise took us to Wrightsville Beach and taught a wonderful lesson on the operation of the boat as well as anchoring and using the dinghy. Louise had prepared a great lunch for us on the boat for the sea trial.

Over the next three months, we remained at Masonboro Boatyard where Charlie and Louise were building their new trawler. (Or I should say, totally refitting an older trawler that they have made to look like new).

Anxious Moments

March 22nd was a nice clear sunshiny day and the water was calm. Terri and I had decided to take the boat out onto the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) this morning for the very first time. High tide was at 12:30 PM. But first, the dinghy needed to be put up on the davits. Unfortunately, I decided to change the cloth lines in the dinghy to steel cables covered with plastic. It seemed to me, at the time, that these would be stronger and hold more weight. Holy mackerel, was I wrong!!! The cables broke, the plastic insulation stripped right off releasing the small boat, which fortunately hung on two smaller lines that held it until we could lower it back into the water. Then Charlie came to the rescue. He very pleasantly explained how he had experimental for days before he found the right rig for hauling this dinghy.

I felt like a fool, however Charlie said, That’s how we learn. And he was very understanding as he re-rigged the dinghy the way it originally was.

Terri and I were anxious enough about taking Phase II out for the first time and this minor catastrophe really wasn’t needed. By 12:30 PM, after some difficulty putting the dinghy up on the davits, the boat was finally ready to get underway. It was important to leave at full flood tide in order to avoid the strong currents in the creek.

I started the engine according to the procedure manual that I had carefully written from Charlie’s instructions and waited for it to heat up to 140 degrees.

There were two young brothers who lived on their sailboat, Babe, and who attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I invited one of the brothers, Matt and his best friend to go with us on this, our first trip on the Phase II. They were very helpful on the dock with the dinghy and they also have some knowledge of the area. They were thrilled to have the opportunity to ride on Phase II as it was the biggest boat in the marina at this time. I was glad to have them with us as crew because I wanted as many hands as I could get in the event that I ran into trouble out there.

We went north on the Intracoastal Waterway up to the anchorage at Wrightsville Beach. After sailing twice