Rolling

(Wednesday, December 16)  Rolling

One of the less pleasurable elements of nighttimes on the water is the rolling.  On the seas, rolling is God’s way of putting you to sleep OR keeping you alert, because you can’t possibly close your eyes and have a little dreamtime.   If you’ve been on a boat at a lake you can suffer through rolling, because eventually the wake of another boat will settle and the waters will return to calm (until the next boat goes by). But on the oceans?  Not necessarily so.

Rolling is mostly caused by the underwater wave action.  You may be in a protected anchorage and the waves will be coming from the other side, but if the anchorage has a wide opening, they can round a point and enter the bay.  Big boats, ferries, cargo ships, can set you a-rolling five minutes after they have passed.  The motion can then bounce around and create conflicting directions which means that sometimes the boat sways side to side and other times front to back, or worse, back to front.. 

If there’s a bit of wind pushing on the boat, then you lessen the rolling.  If there’s no wind, then the boat is even more susceptible to the wave movement and you can twist and turn all night and…(ugh)…bump into the mooring ball, if you’re using one of them.  The bumping noise is eventually ignorable, but at first it can sound like you’ve hit another boat!

Rolling seems to come in three forms that I would call gentle, stronger, and storm.

Gentle rolling is that peaceful movement, just enough to remind you of being rocked in the cradle.  You fall asleep and dream sweet dreams.  Stronger rolling is irritating enough that you find yourself getting up a couple of times to check on things, making sure the lines are secure. Storm rolling is a bit of hell on the waters.  Heavy winds accompanied by heavy wave action makes for a miserable night.  You don’t sleep, or won’t sleep much.   In our experiences thus far, we’ve known the gentle and stronger types of rolling.

Monohulls take the rolling much worse than a catamaran.  But catamarans are not immune to this wonderful little piece of life on the waters.

So, yesterday, we spent our first night in the US Virgin Islands at Hawksnest Bay on St. John Island (part of our national parks system).   The parks services provide mooring balls in all of the bays and do not allow you to drop an anchor for fear of damaging the coral.  We checked in and paid our $10 for a Sr. Citizens pass (which means the mooring balls cost $7.50 a night rather than $15.00.  And we motored over to Hawksnest, noted in the guide book for its beaches and snorkeling.  There are 14 mooring balls at Hawksnest, but only three were being used.  We grabbed one and actually relaxed with a little leg exercise – swimming over to snorkel along the rocks, and then arm exercise as we co-paddled to shore on a paddleboard we inherited (we were sitting down, thank you).  The first thing we saw was a sandy snowman and enjoyed a chuckle.

We spoke briefly with a couple of folks, including a resident who has lived at a beach house on this bay for over 26 years, married to a man who was born and raised at Hawksnest.  She warned us that the bay can be rolly and that in another three days, a front will move through and we’d best not overnight here.  We thanked her for the advice, paddled back to our boat, and noticed that all the other three boats had left!

Last night’s rolling was in the category “Sronger”, and with no wind.   We heard the bumping ofinto the mooring ball, and experienced both front/back and side to side movements.  Not fun, I can assure you.  You can feel patterns developing in all this.  The boat will sometimes simply lift you up and down, and then suddenly your body is flopping left and right.  You subconsciously count the number of times you experience each kind of roll, and hope that helps you drift back to sleep.  And this morning, the rolling continues.  Just went through another rough one, which was caused by a ferry boat on the open waters that had passed several minutes earlier.

So, I think of the baby Jesus when I think of gentle rolling, being held in the arms of a loving mother rocking in the waves of God’s waters.   And I think of Jeremiah when it gets to be stronger.  I want to stand out on the back of the boat, and have a little conversation with God, as in “Why me/us?”  I’m being tested to lift a curse or two.  And I imagine storm rolling brings to mind Jonathan Edwards’ fire and brimstone, sinners in the hands of an angry God.  A night of pure hell.

So, I’m grateful that last night’s rolling wasn’t storm-based.  I wish it had been gentler.  And we’ll be moving the boat in about an hour!

Dave