BeLeave

My first sailboat: a 1976 Pearson 30

At the very beginning of 2020, I began dreaming up plans to buy my first sailboat. Why? I don’t know exactly. I had never even stepped foot on a sailboat before but I was drawn to the freedom of movement and sense of adventure that cruising on a sailboat affords.

In March 2020, I picked up a 14 foot Sunfish Sailboat to start getting my feet wet (literally). It was the only sailboat I could find that I could cartop. Since it was so small and didn’t have any ballast, it was really difficult to sail. I sailed out into the Long Island Sound and Great South Bay a bunch of times. The Coast Guard yelled at me twice for “sailing off season”.

In April 2020, to start to get some ocean experience, I picked up a job as a commercial sea scallop fisherman out of the Shinnecock Inlet. The weather was rough, the work was hard, and the trips were long (often ~30 hours), but I absolutely adored this job. Being way offshore, being exposed to the extremes of mother nature, seeing the sunrises and sunsets, pulling up interesting bycatch, watching the sea birds and shore birds flying, and seeing the dolphins, whales, and tuna jumping made it all worth it. There was a big problem though. I was plagued with severe sea sickness. It wasn't crippling but it was real bad. Since I was working 2 other jobs at the time, I ended up just quitting after a month. About a week after I quit, on a foggy day, the boat collided head on with a much larger fishing boat. The bow got smashed in, equipment smashed through the roof of the cabin, and the captain and crew almost died.

Surprisingly, my experience as a fisherman didn’t deter me, it actually motivated me even more. I scoured Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for a year, searching for a sailboat. I ended up going out to look at probably 6 or 7 in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

On April 6th, 2021, In Portsmouth Rhode Island, I found my boat. A 1976 Pearson 30 Sloop named BeLeave. She was in decent condition and had a recently rebuilt Atomic 4 gas engine. I paid $1500 which for a 30 foot boat is next to nothing. 

She wasn’t quite ready to go at first so I spent 3 weeks in the marina that I bought her in replacing engine parts, replacing seacocks, cleaning, repairing a torn sail, adjusting the standing rigging, setting up and familiarizing myself with the sails and running rigging, buying needed equipment, fixing the water pump for the sinks, etc. I met some really cool sailors in the marina that gave me a bunch of helpful advice and also gave me a bunch of equipment. One guy gave me an old inflatable dinghy and let me restore it in his warehouse nearby.

Eventually, everything was set, and I was ready to set sail. I dropped my car off at home (Huntington Station, NY), and made my way back to the boat.

Excerpts From the Ship Log

April 26th, 2021 12:22 AM

PORTSMOUTH, RI

Just arrived here after taking a train, a few buses, and walking here. A loon is calling outside. It’s an extremely still and quiet night. I'm overwhelmed with excitement. I've been working hard on this boat for about 3 weeks. She's a bit of a hot mess right now but that's alright. I'll get everything cleaned, organized, and stowed tomorrow morning.

8:30 PM

Left the marina at 5 PM. After about 45 minutes, the motor started giving me trouble. It seems like there's a fuel issue. I anchored on the south side of Hog Island. It was hard to sail to my anchorage since I had to sail into the wind (NW) without a motor for while to get there. This boat doesn't tack close to the wind.

April 27th, 2021

Woke up this morning to sleet on my deck. I was going directly into the wind literally the whole day so I never put my sails up today. Motored over to Gould Island and anchored for an hour. It rained all morning. Once I left Narragansett Bay, the sea got really rough and choppy. My bow kept plunging into the water. It was especially rough going around Point Judith Lighthouse. My engine turned off a few times in some rough seas which was stressful. I made it to Point Judith Harbor of Refuge with barely any gas in the tank. Anchored at around 6:30pm and made some penne pasta while I watched the sun set from my cabin window. Even though I never raised my sails, it was still a pretty intense day.

April 28th, 2021

It was a calm, beautiful morning in the harbor. I went into Point Judith Pond to find a gasoline dock. I accidentally skimmed the ground in the middle of the pond. When I found the fuel dock and tied up to it, it was closed. Besides a few fishing boats coming in and out, the harbor was pretty much dead. Luckily, there was a guy that was walking his dog nearby that was nice enough to give me give a ride to a gas station. From Point Judith, I sailed to Block Island. It was sunny and the wind was super light which made for a slow, relaxing sail. When I reached the entrance to Great Salt Pond, I realized both my batteries were dead. I made 2 attempts at getting in under sail but the wind was blowing directly out of the narrow inlet. I sailed down and back up the west side of the island. In the evening, the wind died and the bright sun was overtaken by super dense fog. I used my phone GPS to anchor on a shelf west of Middle Pond. I stayed alert for most of the night as I was pretty exposed. I used the lighthouse as a reference point in the foggy darkness. Even though it wasn't windy, huge rolling swells came from the south and caused my boat to rock hard side to side.

April 29th, 2021

The rocking is really rough. It's raining. I wanted to attempt to get in the inlet this morning but my engine wasn't working and the wind wasn't good. My wind vane was spinning all over the place. I'd really like to see Block Island but I need to find a sheltered spot tonight because a storm is coming through.

Okay, so I just stopped writing to try starting my engine one more time and it worked. It worked after having my JUMP starter battery on there for about 18 hours. The wind just picked up. I'm getting rocked to death by the swells so I'm gonna get outta here and go to Montauk Lake. I'll leave Block Island for another day.

I sailed to Montauk in the rain. There was barely any wind but luckily it's not that far from Block. Tomorrow there will be 30+ knot winds going toward the east so I went out of my way and motored against the current around Montauk Point and into Lake Montauk. I picked up a mooring on the south end of the lake. My gas tank and cans are empty.

April 30th, 2021

I had one job today: get gas. I didn't bother to look for marina gas when I pulled into the lake because I saw a sign up that had a ridiculous price for diesel. Where I am now, I don't even have enough gas to make it back across lake. The plan was to use my big inflatable dinghy but I was unable to paddle it in the strong wind. The strong winds are supposed to die down briefly tomorrow.

May 1st, 2021

I walked into town in the morning with a 5 gallon gas can. The gas was super expensive but I was only getting 5 gallons. I had to wait for the wind to die down in the evening to row the dinghy back to the boat

May 2nd, 2021

The wind was going directly east along the coast today so I had spend another day in Montauk Lake.

May 3rd, 2021

Left Montauk Lake at dawn. There, was supposed to be 15 Knots of wind going west the whole day. I used my engine to round the rough waters of Montauk Point then put my main and jib out in opposite directions, perpendicular to the boat. The wind never came and it was completely dead the whole day. I was seasick, my sails were flapping, and my wind vane was spinning all day. Luckily, I was able to get to the Shinecock Inlet at around 7 PM. I docked up at the fuel dock just inside the inlet to the west. I was only half asleep all night because the current kept slamming me into the dock.

May 4th 2021

I had to wait a while for the marina to open but I was eventually able to fuel up at the fuel dock. There was a bit of wind in the morning so I made it to Old Inlet pretty fast. Past there, the wind died. I motored into Fire Island Inlet once I passed the lighthouse. The sunset was beautiful. Clouds of least terns and lines of surf fishermen tore into the schools of fish as they entered the inlet. I tried a few of the really protected anchorages but they were too shallow so I ended up anchoring just behind where Fire Island fans out. The tide shifted at 11pm so I kept waking myself up to check that I wasn't drifting in the strong current. I was in 15 feet of water and had all of my anchor rode out.

May 5th, 2021

At 1 AM, I hadn't dragged anchor and the tide had fully shifted so I went to sleep. At 6 AM, I woke up to a really loud clang. I ran out to the cockpit in my sleep clothes. It was cold, windy, raining, the current was super strong, and there was a fog that reduced visibility to about a tenth of a mile. The top of my mast was jammed up underneath the Fire Island Inlet Bridge, two miles away from where I had anchored. The wind vane and masthead lights tore off the top of the mast. I maneuvered myself out from underneath the bridge but soon came to a hard stop. My anchor had gotten caught up. I cut the rode. I went to pull up a chart of the inlet on my phone but I had ran out of phone data so it wouldn't load. I had a detailed chart on my chart plotter but it was too old. The shoals and the channels in the Fire Island Inlet are constantly shifting. I definitely should not have gone through that inlet without a chart but I did anyways. Luckily, I made it out to the ocean safely. It wasn't windy on the ocean but for some reason, it was supper choppy.

Whenever the engine is running, my stuffing box leaks excessively. The bilge generally needs to be bailed out 4 times per day. Both my manual and automatic bilge pumps are broken. When I realized my bilge was starting to overflow in the tall swells, I immediately hopped into the cabin to start bailing water. After a minute, the engine cut out. I turned the throttle down and tried to start it up again but after another minute, my electricity to the whole boat cut out. I drifted for a while to kill some time because I needed to enter Jones Inlet at high tide, when the tide was incoming. As I got close to the inlet, the wind and the swells completely stopped. The fog cleared. The dark storm disappeared into the distance. My boat sat in front of the inlet still and lifeless for a few hours. The sea was glassy. Eventually, a slight wind and current carried me in Jones Inlet. I carefully docked under sail at the West End Boat Basin on Jones Beach Island.

May 6th, 2021

I charged my phone and power bank in the bathroom at Jones Beach. I got yelled at for being there off season when they weren't collecting money. I fiddled with the electrical and somehow got it back on and got the engine running. Once the tide came back up, I went out Jones Inlet and back out to sea. The fact that it was a beautiful day made up for the fact that I was sailing directly against the wind. I saw a huge whale today right off the coast of Long Beach. Not sure what kind it was but it was BIG. I sailed into East Rockaway Inlet and went through the Atlantic Beach Draw Bridge. I searched for hours for a good spot to anchor but eventually settled on my original spot that saw on the map which is in Bannister Bay, west of the island that's in the middle of the bay.

I worked at Target Lawrence for a few days, then I took the train to see my mom for mother's day for a day, then I was stuck in the mud for a day cause the tide wouldn’t get high enough. Bannister Bay was an oasis for all kinds of wildlife, including a group of yellow crowned night herons.

May 11th, 2021

I left Bannister Bay at high tide, went through the Atlantic Beach Draw Bridge, and out of the East Rockaway Inlet. I tacked into the wind up along the coast until I rounded Coney Island and motor-sailed for the rest of the day. Massive cargo ships passed close by as I went through the Verrazzano Narrows. The Upper Bay was busy with commercial traffic. Once I got into the East River, there were only NYC Ferries and police boats. The sun set beautifully behind Manhattan. I don't think I saw any other boats past Roosevelt Island. The current through the East River wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. Of course, I had timed the exact times that I would enter and leave the East River to avoid being caught in an opposing current. I anchored in Little Neck Bay at (40.78517,-73.76879).

May 12th, 2021

I slept in in the morning. It was a warm sunny day. At this point a lot of my jib sail stitching had come apart. The sail was fraying and wasn't usable so I started off with my slow, stretched out mainsail. While out in the Sound, I replaced my main jib with my storm jib. My storm jib doesn't furl properly and for some reason, raising a jib on my boat is super difficult. I've also continued to be plagued by an excessively leaky stuffing box. I made it in the evening into Huntington Harbor and docked at the public dock.

May 13th, 2021

When the Harbormaster's Office opened in the morning, I walked in to talk about getting a mooring. The Harbor Master yelled at me for a good while. He didn't like that I was trying to put such an old boat in "his" harbor. Without even seeing my boat, he said, "I don't need more crap in my harbor" and "One man's crap is another man’s treasure". Huntington Harbor is crowded and expensive anyways so obviously I needed to find a better option. I sailed out, anchored in Huntington Bay, and bought a 150 pound mushroom mooring with chain, buoy, and pendants nearby off Craigslist. I went into town to buy galvanized chain, a swivel, shackles, buckets, and cement.

May 14th, 2021

I moved the ship over across the bay to Price Bend and dropped the mushroom anchor.

May 15th, 2021

Collected sand, gravel, and cobbles from the beach. Mixed a ton (not literally?) of concrete in the cockpit and made 5 weights out of materials that were bought on the 13th. Reinforced a rusty section of the main mooring chain with new chain. Sawed through an old shackle to add a swivel to the mooring. Tried to unclog the head with muriatic acid but had no luck.

May 16th, 2021

I got an expensive parking ticket for parking near the town beach last night. I chained the concrete weights to the main chain with loops and sent them down to the bay bottom.

Summer 2021 Ship Log Summary

October 15th, 2021

Sailed back out under the Verrazano into the Lower New York Bay for the first time since May. Sailed up into Jamaica Bay.

October 16th-28th, 2021

It took a while but I eventually found a good anchorage next to Bayswater Park in Far Rockaway. I worked at Target Lawrence for most of these days to earn a tiny bit of money. On one of the days I picked up 12 gallons of water and 10 gallons of gas to top up. It was a calm, pretty anchorage. Besides another small sailboat that was anchored nearby, I didn't see any other boats the whole time.

October 30th, 2021

At 8:30 AM, I winched my dinghy up onto the foredeck, pulled the anchor out of the firm, muddy bay bottom, and sailed out of Jamaica Bay. I was extremely optimistic about my sailing ability at this point. I really wanted to make my first long passage so I had planned on sailing south down the coast a little, then over the Gulf Steam and over to Bermuda. I've put so much time, energy, and money into this boat, I really needed to get some real experience with it. It’s a terrible time of year to sail in the North Atlantic but I’d been monitoring the wind forecast and decided to leave on the 30th because a supposedly had a 1 week window of good weather. The wind was blowing north so I slowly tacked towards the south, along New Jersey. The swells weren't massive but they were decently sized. Even after taking motion sickness medication, I got crazy seasick to the point where it was crippling. At one point, I was in the middle of the ocean, the wind wane was steering the boat, and I was in the cabin, curled up and gagging into a bucket. I had already thrown up all of my stomach contents a while ago. I needed to get up the keep watch but for a minute I just couldn't. I couldn't stop gagging. It was at this moment that I realized I was going to have to put my sailing dreams on pause. I turned around, quickly made it back to New York Harbor late at night and anchored just NW of Coney Island.

October 31st, 2021

Although I really wanted to push myself and go back out to sea, I tried to think about the situation as logically as possible. I decided it wasn't worth the risk.

Originally, I had planned on finding an inexpensive boat slip rental further down the coast after I came back from my big trip. Due to the new circumstances, I decided to just save the time and money by keeping the boat in Huntington Bay, NY for the winter. 

On February 23rd 2022 at 12AM, 

I drove out to my boat with my sea kayak. A routine trip. It was an unusually warm night and there was a massive swell (compared to usual). It was cloudy so the bay was pitch black. I couldn't see my anchor light from the beach. I paddled over to where it should be and couldn't see it. I pulled up my anchor radius on navionics to make sure I was in the right spot. I was. I thoroughly searched every harbor and accessible part of Huntington Bay but It was dark so I couldn't see much. I searched again after the sun came out. No luck. I walked along the beach to the (hard to access) Eatons Neck Coast Guard Station. No boat. 

Eventually, I found it. It was almost hiding in plain sight. It was on a nearby beach, hiding just behind a small private pier. Luckily, it didn't do any damage to the pier. To my disbelief, I discovered that my excessively thick anchor rode (that was in excellent condition) must have snapped. There’s a chance that someone cut it but that would be highly unlikely. It must have happened in a storm that passed through a few days before. The only explanation I can think of would be that it snapped from too much sun exposure.

It was a bad situation. Since the tide swings so much there, the boat was almost completely submerged at high tide. I called up Sea Tow and they said It'd be well beyond $5000 for them to unbeach the boat. I had to wait a few tide cycles for the right conditions to unbeach the boat myself. I needed the wind to be blowing away from the land, I needed the water to be relatively calm and flat, and I needed the tide to be especially high. The next night would be my window of opportunity. The biggest problem was the fact that the waves and the high tide would fill the boat up with water, then the water would just sit in the boat. The boat was sitting in such way that opening up a few seacocks wouldn't be a viable option. 

When it came time to unbeach the boat, had rented a gas water pump from Home Depot to get all of the water out at low tide. It didn't work. Instead, I used all of the hoses that I had accessible on board to siphon out the water at low tide. I also pumped the manual bilge pump for a few hours. At the peak of high tide, I tied the bow of the boat up to the stern of my kayak and maneuvered it around the boulders along the shore that I made note of during low tide. I couldn't sail because my rigging was a tangled up so I just drifted out into the bay. Eventually, I got a backup anchor and rode from a hold and set it. There was a serious leak coming from the rudder post. I kept bailing, and bailing, and pumping, and pumping. It was cold and I wasn't dressed warm enough. My deck was covered in a thick coat of frozen sea water. 

The sun started to rise. A Huntington Harbormaster came out to me because the Seatow guy had called them. The Harbormaster said he was going to have to tow me in to Huntington Harbor. I spent a few long days at the boat ramp dock in the Harbor. The boat was covered in snow and ice for most of the time. I called up all of the marinas and boat yards around but couldn't find anyone that was able to haul me out so I could do repairs. It wasn't clear at first but I eventually discovered that while the boat was beached, the force that the rudder put on the hull caused a long hairline crack to form in a circle around the rudder post. I put a lot of work into trying to patch it but could not.

Given the circumstances, the value of the boat, and the amount of a liability the boat was becoming, I decided the best option would be to just scrap it. Me and a few other sailors stripped out everything valuable from the boat, including the engine. In the middle of the night, we cut the stays, dropped the mast into the harbor, and cut it into pieces. On the morning of February 27th, I paid a guy to come with a hydraulic trailer and trailer BeLeave to a dump Upstate.

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