We just spent a week on the Intracoastal Waterway, and I am still trying to figure out what just happened.  Sections were blackwater, dark red or brown water that is stained by tannins from decaying vegetation in the watershed.

I forgot about this.  The last time I saw this I was 22, and on a cargo boat in the Amazon. The sky was perfectly mirrored on the flat surface of the dark river, reflecting a twin jungle in 360 degrees. On the ICW, the effect looks like this:

There’s a bunch of other stuff that is ecologically unique with blackwater, and I’m hoping to learn more about that as well as the two larger inland waterbodies we cruised, the Pamlico and Albermarle Sounds.

About a year ago, I experienced first-hand what climate change looks like when my community and region experienced massive flooding during “Superstorm Sandy”.  I watched closely and participated enthusiastically in the post-Sandy planning that was fast-tracked, and cheered for the storm surge barrier that the resulting plan prescribed for Newtown Creek, my backyard.

However, when that plan was set into motion, a recommendation called Seaport City appeared at the top of the stack. This element of the plan envisions a luxe development off the edge of lower Manhattan with a levee system under its skirt to (rumor alert) protect Wall Street. Classic Bloomberg. This is a land where skyscrapers are subsidized on former wetlands as common practice, while basic infrastructure is so primed to flood that “even on a dry day subway pumps remove millions of gallons of water” from the subway tunnels.

Therefore, I am often shocked at what other cities get done without pinning a condo on top.

In New Bedford, MA, we enjoyed the protection of a massive hurricane barrier that was built in the 60s by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect the commercial fishing fleets based there. The barrier extends well into the city of New Bedford, as well as the neighboring town of Fairhaven across the bay, with a fabled elevator and underwater tunnel across the actual gate.

More recently, in Norfolk, VA, we noticed tide gates around the Waterside neighborhood downtown, that led to some Googling and the discovery that Norfolk was the nation’s first “Tsunami-Ready City” in the US. I had no idea that such a designation existed, but was excited to find several more such sites coming up on our route.

No doubt that these infrastructure works were not implemented without extracting a pound of flesh (and not without major if not total Federal subsidy), but in both cases, the works extend well beyond a single development site, and included elements of placemaking and open space.

Are the condos underground? How do these other cities git ‘er done?

We launched.  We gathered all of our efforts from the last year and held our breath and launched out of New Bedford for the open sea. We landed first in Block Island, where locals were hunkering down for the winter in earnest. We spent two nights there and launched again to spend three days/nights offshore, my longest sail ever, and the first time I spent any significant time out of sight of land.

I originally wanted this blog to be a place where I could let my biology training produce…something… as I journey on this boat. OK, so how will this work?

There we were out in the sea and the wind died.  I was kind of losing it to begin with.  My friend Loren had just given birth to her son a week before, after 40 hours of labor.  I had no idea how long 40 hours was until I spent that long tossed around in a little plastic boat, seasick and exhausted. At the end of the second day the crew outvoted me and we kept on pushing for Norfolk in one shot. At the end of the third day, however, the wind died, and I rejoiced.

We were heading in. Hot shower, here I come. Feet on the ground. Food in a restaraunt.

On land I felt like a failure, a wimp. My crew were lobos del mar, seasoned captains who were reliable on watch, making repairs in their spare time, cheering me and telling me jokes instead of sleeping. I, on the other hand, felt broken, scared, overwhelmed. I barely spoke at dinner and shuffled off to sleep.

The next day I woke up in Wachapreague, Virginia, a town tucked in behind a winding salt marsh, where folks busy themselves hunting ducks, fishing for flounder and shucking oysters out of the mud.  I sat up in the dark at 5:30am, and crept out into the town. As luck would have it, there were a line of junky beach cruisers in the parking lot for guests.

This town has a plankton farm for crying out loud! I drank coffee with the early morning hunting crowd, and tried my best to convert my recently-perfected south coast New England accent into a slight southern drawl. I ate pecans from a bag that definitely smelled like tobacco.  I was in Wachapreague, dammit, and this thing was finally rolling.