Adventures in the Ditch: A Memoir of Family, Navigation, and Discovery on the Intracoastal Waterway

Contents

Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE

Chapter I

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter Io

Chapter Ii

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter I 6

Chapter 17

Chapter I8

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Single Screwed: Belhaven To Alligator River, North Carolina

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Twenty-Five Secrets To Cruising The Icw

References

About The Author

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everyone who helped to get Griffin to Miami and back. To my mother for supporting me in everything I do, and encouraging my father to pursue his dreams. To my brother and mentor, Chris, for all the lessons he has taught me. To Dick Barton, Gloria Barton, Karen Kilheffer, Ed Harriger, Pete Nyce, Dick Christopher, Courtney Coile and Frank Halse for their feedback and suggestions during the voyage. To Capt. Joe Pisula, Capt. Jeff Berube, Fred Riedel, Mike Kilcoin and all the people they work with, for keeping Griffin underway. To my brother Andrew Coile, Steve Holmgren, Eli Barton, Fred Riedel, Michael Carr, Capt. Ron Novak, Tom Harner, Thomas Black, Jeff & Wendy Berube, Carol & Mike Ross, Pete, Susan, Mathew & Stephen Nyce, SueAnn & Jake Packard, Geoff, Brenda, Spence & Wils Wood, Curtis, Deborah & Brockton Morehead, and all the others who cruised aboard Griffin and contributed to the story. To Peter Q. Nyce, Jr. who in my youth, let me play with oxy/acetylene torches inside his garage, and Margaret Nolan who enthusiastically promotes my books. And finally, to Mike & Gina Baldwin who introduced us to big-boat cruising in Florida on a freezing week-end in Ft. Myers on their family’s motoryacht, Tomfoolery.

To the other authors who encouraged my writing; I need to first acknowledge my critique group partners, without whom this would never have made it into print. In alphabetical order because they are all equally special and important to me: Mary Bargteil, Shirley Bauer, Wendy Sand Eckel, Cindy Polansky Gallagher, Denny Kleppick, Vicki Meade, Susan Moger, Joe Nold, and Bridget Bell Webber. Other writers who influenced me in the writing of this book include my late brother Russ Coile, Jr., my mother Ellen Miller Coile, sister Jennifer Coile, brother Andrew Coile, nephew Zac Coile, my niece and copy editor Noelle Barton, my Executive Assistant and pre-copy editor Suzanne Gingher, Art Director Lauri Ladd, fellow aviator and nautical adventurer Chevy Alden, aviator/authors Phil Scott and the late Scott Anderson, physicist and newspaper columnist Xavier Maruyama & his wife Edie, boater/author Howie Eckel and his environmental philanthropist son, Jeff Eckel, and finally to the leader of my loyal readers, the first person to buy one of my books at Amazon.com, Dana Strandmo.

Most of all to my wife, Wendy, who shares half of my passion for boating, but gives me the leeway to pursue the rest.

Adventures In The Ditch

PROLOGUE

As I came around the corner, she caught my eye: a nautical vision, a siren, calling out to me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her lines. From her sharp prow with a fine entry to part the ocean swells, to her broad transom with abundant reserves of buoyancy to provide lift from a following sea: it was clear her naval architect was a master at his craft. The lapstrake hull was a deep navy blue—so right for such a vessel. Her sheerline cut an attractive sweep from her bow aft, along the main deck to her stern. I was in love.

As I gazed upon her I day-dreamed of beating my way off a lee shore, rounding a headland and ducking into the shelter of a protected bay. Tropical islands, oceans, the lure of the sea beckoned. That this vessel could take me anywhere, I was certain. I wanted with all my being to possess this boat.

I turned and looked over my shoulder at my father, following in my wake. Switching on my salesman’s charm, I prepared to launch into my pitch .

It’s a pool toy, my father replied to my unvoiced begging.

What? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A pool toy? I glanced around to get my bearings and realized with a shock that I was in the outdoor department of our local Sears Roebuck store.

I know it’s your seventh birthday in two weeks, my father responded in anticipation of my arguments, but we don’t even have a pool. What would you do with it?

"We could use it for a tender for Patience Too," I said.

Patience Too was our family’s twelve-and-a-half-foot long fiberglass sailboat— an ungainly looking catboat called a Tech Dinghy, designed for the sailing program at my father’s alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I envisioned this little blue lapstrake plastic pool-toy rowboat being towed along astern as we sailed our Tech dinghy around the Potomac River near Washington National Airport. If we chose to anchor, my rowboat could ferry us ashore, or so I fantasized.

We’ll see, my father replied. Let’s go find your mother. He led me away from the object of my desires, little brother Andrew in tow, marching us off through the valley of Kenmore washers and dryers.

I began my briefing with a slap of my pointer on the street map of Washington, D.C. I needed to get the attention of my crew, Meg Withers and David Spillman, and begin asserting my authority as captain.

So we start with a portage from Rosedale Avenue over to Henry Clampitt’s back yard. We cross the railroad tracks here and launch in the headwaters of Rock Creek across the street from Henry’s house.

My pointer traced our route, showing how Rock Creek, while only a stream two blocks away from my house, would feed us into the Potomac River near Georgetown. From there it was a mere three miles downstream to pick up Patience Too. We would transfer to her, and continue south towing my little blue lapstrake boat astern, a fortuitous birthday gift just two months earlier. One hundred and thirty miles later, after traveling downstream in the Potomac, and making a right turn at the Chesapeake Bay, we would hit the Ocean. My plan was to spend the summer exploring the Atlantic, and then probably return in the fall to continue our studies at Lynbrook Elementary School.

The nods of acknowledgement seemed to indicate that my crew understood the basic voyage plan. They were both familiar with Patience Too, as she spent every winter on a trailer in our driveway. They knew she had the room we needed for the three of us to cruise in comfort. David Spillman, still a youngster at age six, raised a tentative hand.

What’s up? I asked.

"Patience is big enough for all of us but we won’t fit in the little dingy."

I’ve calculated the weight and balance for the crew, plus a cargo of clothes and food. We’ll fit.

You sure? asked Meg.

Yes, I said, not liking this first challenge to my authority. I’ll prove it.

I marched my little crew out into the back yard and all three of us climbed into the tiny blue dinghy, sitting on the patio next to the new wading pool my father had been forced to purchase. I sat amidships, facing aft, two tiny plastic oars in my sturdy grip. Meg and John sat side-by-side in the stern. Our cargo would take up the space in the bow. As long as we didn’t move about much, we would be fine.

With crew accommodations sorted out, we went back to my bedroom to finish the rest of the top secret briefing. I had flip charts of provision lists to go through and other details to iron out. Secrecy was necessary, of course, as my parents weren’t in the loop on the project. I planned on calling them from the Islands.

I’ve made a list of clothes we each need to bring, along with quantities, I said, pointing to the appropriate wall chart when a complete breakdown of authority started with a little snigger from Meg. Being a girl, she read faster than David and had caught a little typo in the cargo list.

You left the ‘R’ out of Shirts, she said, as she rolled off the bed in hysterics. And you want us to bring three of them.

David mouthed the words as he read, and turned beet red when he got to the part Meg was referring too.

I should have been able to recover my composure and regain command of my little band of mariners, but what modicum of control I had evaporated in fits of giggles. Meg, apparently a reluctant participant in the scheme in the first place, decided that she didn‘t want to go. Then David started mumbling about when would we get to watch TV. The more authoritarian I got, the less control I was able to exert. The briefing session ended badly as they both abandoned ship before we left port.

As I pulled down my flip charts and map and hid them away from my parents, my concept of time was too limited for me to grasp what it might feel like to wait thirty-four years to make the voyage.

Southbound

Final preparations before Griffin heads south

Chapter I

Wind ‘Em Up: Annapolis, Maryland, To Hampton, Virginia

I cracked open the hatch and the faintest whiff of the sweet dank odor of diesel fuel, a persistent legacy of poor maintenance in the past, wafted out into the cockpit of the freshly restored thirty-one-foot flybridge powerboat. Inside the cabin it was cold and dark in the pre-dawn gloom on the last Friday in November. Moored securely to a pier in the Severn River, ten miles upstream from Annapolis, Griffin was lying dormant with only a quiet hum from the battery charger in the engine room indicating that she was ready to get underway. Our breath hung in the air, a ghostly gray mist, as my brother and I moved around in the tight confines, turning on lights and heaters and slowly bringing the vessel to life. I looked out the back window of the boat, and felt the same surge of anxious excitement that seeing the tree for the first time on Christmas morning had given me as a kid. The time had finally come. Coming through the yard towards us I glimpsed my father, Russell, vibrant, active and still handsome at eighty-one years of age.

Wind ‘em up, I said.

Andrew stared at me, not comprehending. In response I pointed his attention up the pier to dad. Russell was jauntily marching towards Griffin, his arm held up high, one finger outstretched to the heavens. He was twirling his hand around in a tight circle, a smile compressing his lips, eyes glinting.

What’s that all about? Andrew asked me.

"Don’t you remember Cliff Robertson in the movie PT109? He played a young President Kennedy in World War II. Whenever he left a skipper’s briefing and went back to the pier, he’d make that same gesture to his crew on the PT boat. Wind ‘em up—start the engines. It’s time to get underway. Russell thinks he’s Jack Kennedy about to patrol the Tulagi Straits in the South Pacific."

What was he doing up at the house anyway?

Calling Mom to say goodbye.

Goodbye? It’s 4:30 in the morning in California. Didn’t he just talk to her last night?

Well, he wanted to call her again. I don’t know why. You ask him.

Forget it. Let’s get going. So, how do we start the engines?

I’ll show you.

At thirty-seven, Andrew was four years younger than me and the baby of the family. I’d conned him into joining our father and me for a nine-day voyage down the Intracoastal Waterway to Miami on Griffin, the used powerboat I’d bought for the trip.

Looking at us, you would never guess we were brothers. Andrew inherited height from our dad, with both of them topping six feet. I, on the other hand, got the short gene from both sides of the family and barely cleared five-feet-seven.

It wasn’t just height that differentiated us—Andrew and I are about as different as two brothers can be. Andrew is basically a sedentary computer geek. In stark contrast, even though I work at a desk, I like to think of myself as the outgoing adventurer type, with a bit of P.T. Barnum thrown in. Not terribly athletic— didn’t get that gene either—I still go out for active pursuits: boating, flying, and in my youth, mountain climbing. I’d used my professional sales skills gained as a real estate broker on Andrew and sold him on the excitement of a cruise down the Intracoastal Waterway, despite his ambivalence to boating. In truth, I was making it all up, never having done the trip myself.

It wasn’t that I was a novice to boating, having spent nearly five years at sea as a Naval Officer—first as Auxiliary Machinery Officer, and then Navigator of a 563-foot Destroyer in the Pacific, and ultimately as the Chief Engineer of a 132-foot Hydrofoil Patrol Boat chasing drug smugglers out of Key West. While I may have been a fully qualified Surface Warfare Officer (SWO), Officer of the Deck (OOD), Gas Turbine Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW), and Battlegroup Navigator, my pleasure boating had mostly been within twenty-five miles of Annapolis on the Chesapeake Bay. I had done a lot of reading about the Intracoastal Waterway so pulling images out of my imagination of what The Ditch would be like, I painted a picture of the voyage being fun, relaxing, and not-too-challenging—a family adventure.

Originally, the trip had been, in my mind anyway, a continuation of a series of father/son bonding adventures that I’d started putting together when our Dad, Russell, turned seventy-five. The first excursion had been a three-day fishing trip with Andrew, my older brother Chris and our dad. After that great experience we expanded the crew, and the trip, and chartered a forty-two-foot catamaran for a weeks cruise around the Chesapeake. For the charter, all five surviving adult siblings went along, adding Russell, Jr. and Jennifer to the crew roster. Perhaps it was memories of that rainy week of lousy sailing by autopilot from inside the cabin, but when I had started looking for family crew, Jennifer was out of the country with the Foreign Service and both Chris and Russell, Jr. had business commitments that started cropping up as the sailing date of the day after Thanksgiving neared. Initially, Andrew had signed on for the first half of the trip only, intending to get off in Charleston, but as other siblings dropped out I started working on him to make the entire trip. He hadn’t said flat out no, so I was hopeful as we embarked on this new adventure. I could close him on this deal.

Russell climbed onboard Griffin as we started the diesels. Their loud roar reverberated off the banks of the river, the only sound breaking the silence of the pre-dawn calm. As the twin Volvos warmed up, Andrew and I went through the process of disconnecting shore power and getting ready to go while Russell busied himself with the chart for our first leg down the Chesapeake.

My wife, Wendy, came down to the pier to send us off, her bright yellow boating jacket the only splash of color on the otherwise dreary morning. Do you have everything you need? she asked.

I sure hope so, I said. I’d been working on getting Griffin ready for this trip for a year. I didn’t think I’d forgotten anything.

Well, you need to call me every night and let me know how things are going. Keep an eye on Russell. He’s not a kid anymore but he wants to keep up with you and Andrew. Don’t let him overdo it.

Russell, older brother Chris, and Andrew on the Father/Son fishing trip

I promised to take care of everybody, and after a goodbye kiss, jumped back on board. Focused more on style than good sense, I ignored the ladder to the flybridge, and scampered up the outside of the superstructure, using window sills and handrails as foot holds, and took my place at the flybridge helm. Andrew took in the last dock-line, and with a gentle nudge on the shifters, I put the diesels into gear and Griffin eased out of her slip into the deserted river. A turn of the helm wheel and we were headed towards Annapolis and beyond. The Intracoastal Waterway and ultimately Miami beckoned over the horizon. We were off on the start of our 2,500-mile round-trip adventure.

Do you want me to take it? Russell asked as I shifted control from the flybridge down to the lower helm inside the cabin.

It wasn’t really a question. Growing up, we had a succession of sailboats that we used nearly every weekend, and Russell had always been the captain. Not a heavy handed one, but he had clearly been the master and I, the mate. Despite his lack of experience with powerboats, he wanted to take his place behind the wheel.

Attention in the Pilothouse, I announced in a loud voice, using the standard terminology I’d used as a young officer to relieve the watch on Navy warships. Colonel Coile has the Deck.

I grinned at my dad as I slid out from behind the helm and he climbed up onto the seat. I knew he liked the Navy lingo, and I wanted this to be a memorable trip for him. In fact, it was the main purpose of the trip. While I’d day-dreamed of cruising the Intracoastal for years; the real reason for going now was to have a father/adult-son bonding adventure before Russell got too old and the inevitable health issues interfered. At least, that was my plan as we shoved off and headed for Miami, with more than a week of cruising in front of us.

Very well. I relieve you, sir, he replied, peering ahead through the large windshield at the empty river ahead.

Just keep her in the middle, I added.

I checked the marine weather on the VHF radio. Even this early in the morning, out in the bay the expected post-dawn calm had already turned into a substantial 20-knot breeze out of the south. The wind was kicking up three- and four-foot waves in the Chesapeake, according to the forecast, and we would be driving right into them. Not what I would have preferred, but not too bad for late fall.

Andrew, give me a hand getting these groceries down into the stateroom. We’re going to pound like a son of a bitch when we hit the bay.

You get down there and I’ll pass, he replied.

I headed down the steps to the galley. Griffin’s cabin is divided into three separate areas. A stateroom with a queen-sized berth is up in the bow, at the very front of the boat. Just aft of that is the galley to starboard, head to port. The salon, our living room, is up three steps from the galley, and has a sofa, a table, one chair, and—best of all for a late fall cruise down the Intracoastal—a protected lower helm station. The helm has a wheel, controls for the engines, a VHF radio for communication and a GPS receiver for navigation. Radar would have been nice but it wasn’t in my budget. It was a duplicate of the upper helm on the flybridge which was a wonderful perch on a sunny day, but miserable in late November in Maryland.

I propped open the door to the forward stateroom and Andrew passed boxes down. Anticipating the heavy rolls we knew would be waiting for us in the bay, I wedged everything into the corners around the bunk, then headed back up to help drive.

As we cruised down the river, I pointed out the navigation marks and buoys to Russell. In my home waters, the navigation problem was a no-brainer for me. I could probably draw the chart of the Severn from memory, but when we got more than 50 miles from home, I knew it would be a different matter.

We were stowed for sea and ready to head out into the Chesapeake by the time we were abeam the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Andrew and I had decided to act manly and not take anything for seasickness prior to getting underway. We had been fine in the river but within fifteen minutes of hitting the bay, we were in deep trouble.

Jon, did you say you brought something for seasickness? Andrew asked with a hint of anxiety in his voice.

Yeah, I‘ve got Bonine. I could use some too. The problem is, it‘s up there, I said pointing forward, toward the stateroom in the bow.

Pounding into the head seas, the bow pitched up and down in the steep, sharp waves of the Chesapeake. Griffin stormed up a wave, her bow tossed into the air, climbing four feet or more. As we cleared the crest, the bow hung suspended in space over the trough for a millisecond and then plummeted over the top, crashing down with a bang.

The sound of gear adrift, clattering around in the stateroom, beckoned us forward but neither wanted to go up there to search through the groceries for the pills.

I glanced at Russell in the helmsman’s seat, intent with concentration as he scanned the bay ahead for crab-trap buoys. He was having fun being back at sea, not bothered one bit by the waves, while breakfast was on its way up for Andrew and me. Russell did not need any help with driving at this point, so we were free to go forward and dig for the sea-sick pills.

You want to go look, Andrew?

No.

My trip—my task. Got to get to the pills before we hurl.

The first sign of seasickness is a headache. Second sign: queasy stomach. Third sign … I didn’t even want to think about it. I climbed down the steps to the galley, bracing myself, and went forward into the stateroom. The bow dropped out from under me as we soared off a wave top and I fell on the bunk.

Damn it, Andrew. Why didn’t we sort this shit out yesterday before we left? Do you know which box it’s in?

He’s not here, Jonathan. Russell yelled down from the helm, barely audible over the roar of the diesels and crash of the waves.

"Not here? Where the