Journey Of The Snow Goose chronicles the spiritual and physical sojourn of

Barbary and Bill Chaapel, who leave land and everything land represents behind
them to sail away in a tiny sailboat 7 1/2 years; To leave the known luxury of
home, career, friends and family for the vast and deep unknown, sailing long and
hard on the wind, sea-salted eyes searching for glimpse of land.

From Journey of the Snow Goose

Excerpt One ...

Jackson Creek off the Piankatank River is our next destination with a course
of 192 degrees. It is September 18 at eight in the morning with calm winds and
fog. The great ships are ghosts gliding by. We are navigating buoy to buoy in this
dense fog. On the Chesapeake every day we must go in for one or two hours from the
shipping lanes to find a decent anchorage, which is tiresome. At Jackson Creek
aground again … no wonder … the buoy took us within three feet of the Virginia
shoreline. That wasn't right! 9 AM on September 19 and we are on our way to the
Severn River. We are both disgusted … aground again trying to reach the fuel dock.
It took us much longer to get free this time and we left without fuel. At 1000
hours Bill writes in his logbook: Wind and waves are getting high. If Bill admits
they are high then they are really high! At 1200 hours, slamming down, our fog
bell rings of its own volition as we fall off these square wind-against-incoming-
current ocean waves. The boat is reduced to three knots forward. There is not
enough fuel to get to Norfolk so at Wolf Trap Light we reach west into Mobjack
Bay. There is immediate relief inside the entrance. Without all that wind we
realize that it is 92 degrees hot. At 1600 hours we thought a school of sharks
were headed for us but we were delighted to discover the fins are porpoises,
sighting them our reward for this hard day. But we immediately get out of sorts
again when we saw the entrance to the Severn … lots of day markers means going
aground to us now. Picked our way in only one mile and we are out of markers. How
can that be?! Our chart ended here, too. So we started following what looked like
a path of fish stakes. When we finally got ourselves anchored the owners of the
Glass Marina told us those stakes mark oyster beds. Bill says in his log:
Prettiest anchorage yet and he means the people here, too. The marina owners,
Whitey and Lee, invited us to their house this eve to use their phone to call
Mike. Met the sailors on Ques, Drew and Chris, who have access to a local's car,
so we shopped with them. Next day three bashful men came alongside, said they'd
heard we like oyster and handed us two dozen of their catch. It took us two hours
of not knowing what we were doing to open them. On September 22 Bill finished the
antibiotic for his ear and it is still bad. Mary, who works at the marina, asked
her mister, name of Buddy, to take us to the hospital where the doctor looked at
both our ears. Seems I'd ruptured both ear drums from that foolish swim and
ensuing infection in the Sassafras River. I'm okay now but Bill's infection in one
ear won't heal. He has no ear drum in that ear because it was removed years ago to
have a tumor excised alongside his brain. The doctor said to avoid meningitis take
another round of medicine. We've stayed aboard for Bill to mend. We are beginning
to be afraid. . . .

~~~

Excerpt Two ...

We set the alarm for 5:30 AM and elect to take the rim route rather than
cross Lake Ockeechobee. There are lots of new birds to wonder about, including a
very tiny black duck with a touch of white. Our bird book says it is a pied billed
grebe. We want to go into Pahokee but can't determine on which side to pass an
unmarked stake at the harbor entrance, so head west rather than risk going aground
again. This is our first time to see an anhinga (water turkey). Bill says they
look as if they'd been tarred and feathered. The cattle, of course, have cattle
egrets riding their backs. It is unsettling to see cattle on one side of the canal
and orange groves on the opposite side. Now I know what the creators of the new
artificial Christmas trees took as a design pattern. The pines along shore have
such long, lush, green needles. Having seen the artificial version first it is
hard for me to believe these are the real ones. The rocks edging the shore have a
dark red, tannic stain. The water is clear brown with alligators. For miles we've
had to wend Snow Goose through large yellow spatters of pond lilies. Bill makes
the day for me and several passing fishermen. As evening nears he prepares for the
mosquitoes he is sure are due any minute by dressing like a beekeeper from the
North Pole, all his foul weather gear, gloves hat, sea boots, even the netting
from the hatchway tied around his head. I am quite comfortable all evening in my
bathing suit. Not one bug appears. Again, we foolishly keep going, looking for a
place to anchor (the object being not to go over our budget with dockage fees),
beginning to feel like ancient mariners after 13 hours, creeping along in the
winding reflection of the moon, shadings of pitch dark narrowing the canal. Where
are the alligators? There is an eerie scent of sugar cane burning in the air like
scorched cotton candy. After three more hours of fumbling forward we find Moore
Haven Lock, but it isn't lit well enough for us to be sure how to get through. So
far we have avoided the overpowering dolphins that are meant as tie-ups for
barges, sure we couldn't manage to lasso and hang onto those mammoth cleats.
Amazing what you can do when you are desperate. In the morning we are thankful we
hadn't tried to negotiate the lock. What we thought was the lock was really the
dam run off. Today will be a short run. Bill and I are both zombiesque after
yesterday's seventy mile run. We are quitting at 1 PM in favor of Labelle's quaint
old town dock.

Past downtown Ft. Meyers we sail to Cape Coral via the Caloosahatchie River.
Here we will store the boat to fly to Cleveland for Christmas. . . .

~~~
Excerpt Three ...

On April 10 we all leave Honeymoon for Cat Cay at 10:30 AM. The wind is stiff
at 18 knots out of the southeast. It is a crisp, bright day. The high rocky ledge
to our north is quite defined and on the south side of this cut that takes us from
the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic to the Bahamas Bank and the south side is very
shallow water. The water in the cut sloshes, pocks with four feet waves and strong
current. Now we motor south down the east edge of Cat Cay to a private harbor.
Bill goes ashore to clear us through customs. The customs man said to Harold,
"Didn't I see you at Honeymoon Harbor this weekend walking your dog?" Back north
along Cat Cay's eastern edge, we six boats line up like ducks in a row for the
night, before starting across the Bahamas Bank in the morning light. And we were
caught doing what all sailors know not to do, anchor on a windward shore. A rather
huge wind appeared unexpectedly, thirty knots, and we all sat in our cockpits all
night, watching. Sometime in the wee hours I saw an empty space to the stern where
the dinghy should be. We'd pitched so hard it has untied itself. Now it is on the
way north in the Atlantic.

April 11, the morning after, a change in plans. We all motor back through the
cut, then north to Honeymoon Harbor again. Bill and I fell asleep immediately
after we anchored.

Today, April 12, we are sailing to Russell Light on the Bahamas Bank. The
wind is 25 knots. The little bit of the Gulf Stream we had to go in to get to the
cut was scary rough this time. We cleared the cut at 0830 hours and reefed the
main sail and set the storm jib to start across the bank. At noon we sail on
reefed main and Genoa. At 1300 hours we shook out the main sail. At 1500 hours we
turned on the motor. At 1700 hours we anchored at Russell Light in six feet waves.
Snow Goose is rocking and rolling with plow anchor, 50 feet of chain and 150 feet
of line. We are utterly exhausted. And the scene and feel of this anchorage with
no land for miles and miles, nothing in sight is hair raising when we think about
it. The three large boats kept going to Chubb Cay. We three little ones didn't
have the engine power, couldn't make the landfall in daylight. We are fifty miles
from Cat Cay and 35 miles from Chubb Cay. Looking down into the water it appears
we are suspended midair. Now another miserable bouncy night with the wind at
thirty knots. But the anchor held. Today we all head for Chubb Cay with clear sky,
three foot waves and wind, 15 knots. Last night was anyone's idea of a nightmare.
Bill and I each held onto the pole in the main cabin that supports the mast so we
wouldn't fall out of our bunks. Finally I slept on the sole of the cabin' between
the bunks. At 1200 hours we spotted N.W. Channel light. Six foot waves and getting
steeper. There is a heavy set to the current, waves coming over the bow almost to
the cockpit. Here in the tongue of the ocean, . . .

~~~

Excerpt Four ...

At 9:15 AM the wind is fifteen knots, cumulous clouds, fair weather, seas
three feet. Our course is 67 degrees and it took us two hours to go two miles this
morning, picking our way around coral heads with the sun in our eyes. Then it was
a joy to be in the ocean for five hours. Galapagos Bound and Talaha didn't come
with us. Sea Spell, already in Calabash Harbor, talked us through the barrier reef
with her radar. Immediately we are over the side to cool off. We have roly-poly
seas on our way to Clarencetown, Long Island this June 11. With those seas we
changed course to 60 degrees to stay clear of the stag horn coral rising from the
sea at the north end of Long Island. An eerie and wonderful sight. We saw a lot of
flying fish today, some landing on our deck. At 0935 hours we changed course to
150 degrees to sail south along the island's eastern shore and spotted the Atterly
Mast Light bearing 210 degrees and swept into the narrow harbor entrance with huge
rollers close by on our left. We anchored off the mail dock at 1745 hours after
sailing 65 miles. It was a white knuckle day for Honoree, so she had some of our
supper as a reward and is happy again. June 12, our first stop is to see the bread
lady. We admired her goat and signed her guest registry. What a surprise to see
our friends aboard the Obligee, Carl and Joyce, had signed two days earlier on
their way back to the states. We'd traveled the Erie Barge Canal with them last
year. The late Father Jerome built an Angelican church here, went to Europe,
converted to Catholicism, came back and built a Catholic church. We looked into
each of these cool, dark, twin-spired churches. At the only store we bought $10.00
worth of Cool Aid, which says something about thirst and this hot weather. The
bread lady gave us a tour of her house and asked us for a rope to tie her goat.
When Bill gave her a piece of nylon line she said it was too thin and probably
wouldn't hold the goat. In the evening we sat aboard Sea Spell for a drink with
Joyce and Gil from Toronto.

The wind is almost on our nose, twenty knots and six foot seas as we leave
for Atwood Harbor in the Acklins this morning. Under main sail and genoa, I'm in a
cold sweat. I just spent ten minutes in the head trying to get my pants back up.
Bill and Honoree have vomited all over the place, Bill from going forward to
reduce sail when he got tangled in the lines. I could see him on the bow taking
green water up to his waistline. He was sick for about four hours, lying in the
cockpit, wanting to die on the spot. Finally, forty miles later, we had some
easing of motion because we were in the lee of the Crooked Islands. At dusk we
finally anchored at Atwood. The boats already in there turned on their masthead
lights and talked us in with their radar. We met a Cal 39 named Tuto Tuo, which
means "all yours." It is owned by an Italian named Vince with two American boys as
crew, gorillas, boaters call them. Vince is an importer-exporter of jewels who
lives in Venezuela and wants us to go home with him. Hmmmm. We had conch for
supper on their boat.

It is June 14 and we are resting a day, as are Sea Spell and Enterprise, both
motor sailers. Tuto Tuo sailed for Venezuela. A brief squall came through and we
had fresh water showers and hair wash before Bill uttered his famous line to the
boat anchored aft of us: "You are dragging your anchor!" He will never live down
the fact that we were dragging our anchor into them.

Our course is 150 degrees to get past Plana Cay on the way to Mayaguana
Island. . . .