Hi there,
Bernie here with your latest issue of The Grit, with stormy greetings from aboard Grit.
It’s hard dark outside and blowing 30 knots. I’m reading Bill Wyman’s Stone Alone, about his time as a Rolling Stone. Every time Grit lunges against one of the three anchors I’ve set to hold her against the howling wind, it feels like I’m sitting on Charlie Watts’ bass drum while he’s pounding out “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” More on that in a sec, but first the latest Travel Grit news.
Trucker to Teamster: Meet Angela Wood
I just posted Angela Wood’s Travel Grit interview about traveling 4,500 miles coast to coast with her covered wagon. Angela is an over-the-road trucker by trade and had little experience driving horses before she took on her voyage.
To paraphrase her description of her imperfect team: Renegade doesn’t like work, people or anything else. Starbuck is lazy and just wants to hang out and enjoy people.
And yet, despite enormous adversity, like getting her wagon bogged so badly it took an excavator to extricate it, she completed an extraordinary wagon voyage.
Angela’s philosophy is, “If you wait for perfect, you’re never gonna do it.” I admire the hell out of her tenacity and the care she took of her animals. You will, too.
Tobacco, Tomatoes and a Late Start
Back home (I’m sailing solo while Julia holds down the homestead), we’re tipping fast from shirtsleeve weather into barn coat season. This year I grew tobacco for the first time. The seeds are tinier than a cootie and my first three plantings yielded 1) nothing, 2) clover and 3) tomatoes. The fourth finally sprouted on July 14.
That’s late. Tobacco farmers set out their seedlings right after the last frost, around the last week of April. Mine took their sweet time but grew into lush, four-foot-tall plants with leaves as big as green paper towels. I’ll be lucky to harvest before the hard frosts of late October kill them. If I do, I’ll hang them in the barn to cure with the same baling twine I used to hang Grit‘s tiller from the rafters while I varnished it for this trip.
Which brings us back to Grit.
Three Anchors off Roanoke Island
Grit and I are currently anchored in 3 feet of water in Shallowbag Creek off Manteo, North Carolina, on Roanoke Island. There were 5 feet of water in this creek until three days of the 30-knot nor’easter I’ve endured blew almost half the water out. I had to pull up Grit‘s centerboard so it wouldn’t bang into the bottom.
Roanoke Island is best known as the site of England’s first attempts at settlement in the New World, including the 1587 “Lost Colony” that vanished without a trace. I’m anchored within sight of the Elizabeth II, a replica of one of the seven ships in Sir Richard Grenville’s 1585 expedition that brought English colonists to Roanoke Island under Sir Walter Raleigh’s charter.
I started my ramble aboard Grit in Oriental, North Carolina, two weeks ago. I sailed to Ocracoke on the Outer Banks, then up Pamlico Sound to Manteo, where I’m waiting out the weather, studying up on the Rolling Stones and working on more Travel Grit posts. As soon as the nor’easter decides it’s huffed and puffed enough, I’ll sail across Albemarle Sound, down the Alligator River and south into Pamlico Sound, then back to Oriental.
Fair Winds, Mateys
Until next time, I wish you good anchoring (as opposed to my experience here, when my anchor dragged because it got fouled on a car tire) and fair winds (of which I’ve had many on this trip, and maybe a few that were too strong).
As always, it’s great hearing from you. Just drop me a line.
Stay Gritty,
Bernie
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