Jeff's Update

I have fallen far behind in writing about our adventures.  The Hinckley yard seduced me with its boats and threw me off track.  Having been thrown off track, I have decided not to return.  So, this post will be disorganized, rambling and will do an erratic job of bringing this blog up to date.  To really update on our last few weeks, I would have to reach all the way back to Nantucket and burden the reader with all sorts of prattle about having gone here and there.  I won’t do it.  Instead, it will be more of a stream of consciousness update.

First, I have intended to write something about our visit to Westport, MA.  We would not have gone there except that it allowed us to rendezvous with my old college friend Kevin Convey and his wife Kathy.  I met Kevin at Colby College in 1973 and we became good friends immediately.  After I finished college in 1975, we shared a flat in Dublin for a semester while Kevin was doing his junior year at Trinity and I was wandering around Europe and doing a little bit of aimless writing.  Kevin is a journalist who teaches at Quinnipiac Univ (not likely I spelled that right) after many years in the newspaper business, eventually becoming the editor in chief of the New York Daily News.  He and I picked up right where we had left off and I can’t believe we let all these years slide by without staying in better touch.  The four of us have had many of the same life experiences over the past 40 years or so and there was no lack of stuff to talk about.

Too quickly, our time ran out and the launch needed to return us to the boat.  We invited them to meet us again and stay aboard.  Fortunately, they were able to join us in East Greenwich, RI.  We had a very nice afternoon sail -- mainsail and staysail only -- happy hour and then Kevin cooked dinner for us.  He is an avid cook and has never lost his love of music and literature, so we asked him to cook and to bring some of his favorite music to play for us.  Sitting on a mooring in the lovely, placid East Greenwich harbor, we had a grand time and I hope we see them again very soon.

Our parting was a little unfortunate because the next morning we were headed to Hinckley for various repairs.  We were actually excited to go there, so you can imagine that when we started the engine that morning and heard a new noise, we were more than a little upset.  I have already written about that!  In our concern about that new issue, we hardly had a proper goodbye to Kevin and Kathy.

Skipping ahead, after Hinckley, we went to Newport for two days.  By this time, our daughter Lindsay and her friend Jessie were aboard.  They are writing their own blog for this site, so you will read what they have to say about being aboard.  Lindsay brought a very large suitcase full of clothes and shoes.  It was a challenge to stow, but we did it with love.  With all three of our kids living in California, we don’t see nearly enough of any of them and so it was wonderful for us to have her with us.

After a great sail out of Portsmouth, tacking all the way down the East Passage to Newport, we took a slip at Bannister’s again, right in the heart of Newport, because we knew Lindsay would be pleased to be where all the action is.  But, this time, unlike our prior visit to Bannister’s, I did not slide the boat into the sardine-sized slip like a pro.  Instead, my first pass ended with the anchor tapping the pilings of the wharf across from us, while the dinghy was nudging the piling of our slip.  I had to back up, try again, fail again, and attract a large crowd of spectators, before the third time proved the charm.  Lindsay congratulated me on getting it in, but I had a different feeling about it.

Almost immediately, the girls were off to explore the waterfront of Newport.  Jae and I tended to some boat chores.  That night, we went to hear a band at the Newport House of Blues.  The band was terrific and we had secured a great spot at the bar by arriving early, until a rather nasty looking old woman arrived, flipped up a placard showing she had a reserved spot at the bar, and rudely elbowed us away from her chosen spot.  It made me so mad that I went over to the bar where her placard was sitting upright, picked up the placard and slammed it down on the bar as hard as I could, right in front of her.  I never said a word to her, just walked away.  She came up to me a few minutes later, giving me the finger, and uttering the f*&^% bomb a few times.  I ignored her.  It was proof that she is as nasty as she looked.  There is something really unsightly about a person in their 70’s behaving like that.  We stayed a little longer, but the bloom was off the rose and we left shortly afterwards.

Jae and I had two must-do items for Newport.  First, we wanted to visit the International Tennis Hall of Fame and second we wanted to do the Cliff Walk.  We did not do either on our prior trip to Newport, thinking the girls would like to join.  They were interested in the Cliff Walk, but not the Hall of Fame. 

The Hall of Fame is in what was once called the Newport Casino.  It is a great example of the Old World in the New World.  I believe it is Tudor architecture surrounding a lovely grass tennis court with gardens.  Very English.  This was my first visit to a sports hall of fame, and likely my last.  I enjoyed it, but it is not like a museum, and I learned little of interest.  I was reminded that Major Wingfield had patented tennis in the 1800’s (and I will read that patent) I learned how court tennis is played.  Of note among the tennis exhibits is the fact that you once could buy 12 tennis balls in a pressurized can.

We then reserved a grass court for later in the afternoon.  I think these grass courts are pretty well kept and in fact we played on one of their tournament courts.  Nonetheless, the bounces are not all even and the ball really skids with volleys and slices.  It is easy to see why Roger Federer’s and Pete Sampras’ slices and volleys were so effective and why Steffi Graf only needed a slice backhand to win Wimbledon.  The club’s rules require all white tennis clothes, which we had, but they play with yellow balls, not white balls, as I did growing up.  We will have many photos of this event because the girls showed up in time to photograph it.

From there, we did the Cliff Walk.  This is a walk along the cliffs facing north from Newport, where all the very wealthy people built their summer cottages.  The scenery is terrific and the beach below it seems well worth visiting.  I am sorry we did not have time to do so.  Lindsay and Jess had met some girls in the bar the night before who invited them to go to the beach the next day, but we did not realize a beach was so close.  Jae and I are already planning a return to Newport, at least by car, if not boat.

That same afternoon, Quantum delivered a headsail for us to use for the rest of the trip.  Quantum retrieved this sail from our shed at home, found mice had munched on it, stitched it to close holes made by these hungry mice, and shipped it to Newport.  I have previously written about it.  It still has a few mouse bloodstains on it and is certainly homely.  Jae and I have joked that we are channeling the movie Captain Ron, which we require all crew to watch so they will know the important principles of seamanship for their time aboard Sirius. 

Despite the sail’s unsightly appearance, Jae and I hoisted it early in the morning in the slip and furled it before easily dropping our lines and sliding out of the slip, bound for Shelter Island, NY.  No crowd was there to watch our departure.

The east end of Long Island is an area that none of us had visited.  Unfortunately, there was no wind, so we motored the whole way, taking about 7 hours to get there.  Along the way, we discovered that the work done at Hinckley had brought the autopilot to full operational status and the boat steered the route, adjusting course at each waypoint in the route.  That was a very welcome discovery.  

As we approached Shelter Island, fog set in.  This is something that we treat with great respect.  We turned on our running lights, retrieved the ship’s whistle, fired up the radar and started keeping a close watch.  It is nerve wracking to come into a strange port in the fog, despite the instruments.  We were about the only sailboat around, but there were fishing boats zipping every which way, producing large wakes and no one was showing running lights or using the whistle.  We pulled out the old whistle we found on the boat, see earlier photo, and had the girls up on the foredeck, giggling and blowing the whistle every two minutes.  I am sure visibility was under 2 miles, and some boats were hard to see in the distance, but no one was ever close and there was never a risk of collision.

We took a mooring at Shelter Island Yacht Club and walked around Dering Harbor.  Jae and I will return in a couple of days and explore it further and take advantage of the public clay tennis courts.  The girls chose to return to the boat pretty quickly after our walk, I think Jess was not feeling entirely well, but Jae and I decided to ride the ferry across to Greenport and walk around.  We liked Greenport – I think it is the bluer collar alternative to Sag Harbor, the Hamptons and so forth.  After walking through most of the town, we ended up at a waterfront bar for a drink.  We were discussing our schedule, when a woman seated near us overheard and interrupted, saying she had just come from Sag Harbor (our next destination). 

We assumed she had come by car, but it turned out that she and her husband are sailboat liveaboards.  We had a very nice chat about their adventures over the past 2 years and we made numerous suggestions to them for their upcoming visit to the Chesapeake Bay, where they have never visited.  They have done a season in the Caribbean, including five months living in Grenada. 

We could have talked far longer, but we needed to ride the ferry back to Shelter Island, where the girls were cooking dinner.  How nice for us to have them take charge of dinner.  After dinner, we all laid on the foredeck and tried to watch the Perseid meteor shower, but there were too many clouds.  We never saw a shooting star.

The next day, we motored out of Shelter Island, fighting huge power boat wakes all around us.  We were rather shocked at the transmissions we were hearing on the VHF.   For the landlbubbers, VHF channel 16 is the international hailing and distress channel that the Coast Guard and all boaters should monitor.  It is Ok to make contact with another boat on 16, but you must then switch to another channel, so that 16 is left free for emergency broadcasts.  Even in this modern era of technology, we must all share this one channel.  It necessarily follows that boaters transmitting on 16 should be polite and observe proper decorum.  That is not what we heard.  Instead, we heard boaters complaining about large boat wakes in no wake zones, very profane language and some really nasty exchanges.  Repeatedly, the Coast Guard would admonish people to remember the purpose of 16, to no avail.

It was tempting to characterize all of this as a “welcome to NY” type experience.  We had not heard really any of this elsewhere.  But, as I listened to the descriptions of some of the complaints, it appeared to me that most of it was coming from across the Sound – from genteel Connecticut.  At one point, after one guy had let loose a series of F bombs, another guy came on and reminded him that children can hear these broadcasts.  And to emphasize his point, he then put a mike next to a crying baby, almost as if to say the baby was crying because of the foul language.  We were sorely tempted to turn the radio off.  It was that ugly.

But, once we had motored well into Gardiner’s Bay, a large protected bay and a lovely sailing ground, the radio traffic seemed to die away.  The wind piped up and we unfurled all the sail we had on deck, including the staysail and Captain Ron’s mouse fatigued genoa.  I think the genoa is about 90% so the word genoa does not really apply.  It certainly does not provide as much power as we would have liked for 12 knots of wind, but it did a pretty good job and soon we were clipping along at 7-8 knots, in a hurry to go nowhere but eager to ensure the girls had one last fun sail.  If anyone was laughing at our Beverly Hillbillies headsail, we could not tell.  The girls first sunned on the foredeck and then Jess took the wheel and did a fine job of steering and tacking.  After a few hours of sailing all around Gardiner’s, we took our slip at Sag Harbor.

Sag Harbor is the most expensive place we have been.  The slip was oversized for us, which might explain some of the cost because we were in a canyon of huge power megayachts, each of which had professional crew who were constantly waxing, washing, polishing, and whatever.  There was wind in the harbor, but these multi-level boats blocked our wind and view.  We only took the slip to facilitate the girls’ departure the next day.

The girls again launched off to explore Sag Harbor, which had intrigued them after reading the cruising guides.  It is a very nice town, easy to walk, and has all the provisioning we needed.  I did begin to despair about buying beer, however.  We had run perilously low on beer and it seems that New York regulates who can sell beer.  Just in the nick of time, as the last had been consumed, I found more.

Sadly, the girls left in the morning to return to Los Angeles.  We miss them, just as we miss everyone who has been aboard.  They took notes throughout their stay and have promised to write a post that I am sure will be fun to read.

After one night in the canyon of megayachts, we moved out to a mooring in the harbor, the most expense mooring we have seen, and plan to stay here a few days.  Today, we will bike to East Hampton. 

Our plans are a little unsettled for the rest of the week, except that we will be in Norwalk again by the 21st, and will catch the tide down the East River on the 23rd, weather permitting. 

Hinckley Boatyard

We are in a land of magical boats. 

Next to us on the dock is Courageous, which won the Americas Cup in 1974 and 1977, the latter with Ted Turner at the helm.  She is only one of three boats to successfully defend the Cup twice.  Below, I have catalogued our pictures of this land in a postscript, except for one that is immediately below.

Across the dock from us is a boat called Apache, which I would guess is about 140 feet long – it is so big that I think one could buy a condominium in it – we have posted a picture but you cannot really imagine its scale. 

Lined up and down the docks are Hinckley yachts, both power and sail.  Scattered among the Hinckleys are megayachts, whose provenance I can only guess.  Yesterday, we saw one Hinckley leaving the harbor that is cleverly named “Just Add Water” – this boat was owned by a late heiress of Campbell’s Soup, and its color scheme matches the company’s soup cans.  Our friend here, Jay, told us that one private yacht came in recently and took on 40,000 gallons of diesel.  The bill was about $140,000 for the diesel alone and it took four tanker trucks to fuel the boat.  Then food trucks lined up for provisioning; followed by a garbage truck and a sewage pumpout truck. 

Yesterday, while I was writing this blog, they dropped another Americas Cup winner, New Zealand into the water.  I took pictures like a voyeur.  If the crew of Courageous had been even slightly friendly (they were not), I would have asked for a tour, but they weren’t.  If Lindsay (our daughter) had been here, I am sure it would have been a different story.

There are 6 Americas Cup winners here.  I have not found all of them, but I have no doubt they are present.  Before I leave, I will find them and include pictures.

By now, you are likely wondering where Sirius is.  A fair question.  We find ourselves in the Hinckley Yacht yard in Portsmouth, RI.  The yard itself is nothing special, unless you appreciate a collection of skilled craftsman, state of the art equipment, and a service culture that is truly impressive.  If you prefer a swimming pool, a gourmet restaurant or T-shirt store, then it is surely not your place.  But if you pull in needing some repairs and wanting quality work, then you could not find a better place.  Much as I like the Jabin’s yard in Annapolis, this place trumps it – sorry Rod.  They even have a larger Travelift to hoist these massive boats out of the water.

We sorely needed such a place.  We had been limping along for about 10 days with a compromised refrigeration system that threatened the frozen tuna steaks that remained from my heroic fishing exploits off Block Island (I will secure every part of that fish until we can finish eating it), we had developed a jam in the windlass that prevented us from using our anchor, we saw an alarming drop in oil pressure in our engine according to the oil pressure gauge, and so on.  We also needed to service our generator.  In short, we needed something like the Hinckley yard to give us peace of mind and shore up Sirius.

My memory is a little fuzzy about how long ago these various maladies began, other than the oil pressure gauge, which I remember vividly as occurring several hours into our trip from Nantucket to Westport, MA.  Just as we were fighting the tide past Woods Hole, we saw the oil pressure needle dive down on our gauge.  We stopped the engine, sailed for a little while, so I could check the oil level, which I found to be a little low, so I added a bit of oil to encourage higher oil pressure. 

The one rock in our boating life with Sirius has been that big Yanmar engine; it has been so reliable and constant, like a third crew member.  So, it was a shock to think it might act up on us.  Having added oil, we motored through Quicks Hole against the tide, which I had not planned to do, but the reward was that once through it, we could give the engine a rest, enjoy a favorable tide and sail most of the way to Westport.  From there (Westport will be a separate post), we traveled on to Newport, taking a slip that was located right in the heart of Newport’s thriving harbor scene.  We stayed two nights, and spent our first full day . . .  changing the oil!

By then, our fridge was acting up.  That is a technology that is a total mystery to us; we had no idea where to start on self-help, so we started looking for someone to help us -- good luck on that in the height of Newport boating season.  Insult followed when, days later, our anchor chain jammed into the windlass.  It is interesting how these things affect your mental state and eventually, like the boat, you begin to feel compromised yourself, just like the boat.  Some systems are a bigger hurt on my psyche, and the windlass and the engine are among them.  This must be a male thing because I think Jae was more concerned about the refrigerator and the black goop on the transom deck that was making black stains on the deck and ruining my shorts every time I sat down on the transom to fool with the dinghy.

In short, these failures of these “male” boat systems impinged on my male need to “run the boat.”  With the fresh water system compromised, the oil pressure low and angst about frozen tuna steaks thawing, I was working to keep my cool.  The final pain came on a sail down to Dutch Harbor, on the same day as the chain jam, when our headsail developed a gaping tear in its middle.  We limped into Dutch Harbor, feeling thoroughly compromised, ready for [un]happy hour.  But the buoyant spirits of the crews on the other cruising boats brought us back around, and Quantum Sails promised to take the sail early in the morning and immediately evaluate it for possible repair.  We were absorbing and working around even these problems.

The next day we departed for Bristol with plenty of wind but no headsail and no ability to anchor; we had reserved a mooring in Bristol, but what if that somehow fell apart?  Jae unsuccessfully tried to arrange for assistance from anyone skilled in marine refrigeration systems.  They had every explanation about why they could not help. 

I was depressed about the chain jam, feeling I should have done something differently.  I was mentally prepared to disassemble the windlass because I saw no alternative and thought of it was a good “learning” experience for some future time when we are in a remote place and I have no one to rely upon for the fix.  It seemed this was something I should be able to fix.  But, rather than step up to that challenge, however, I had one more avoidance strategy – to text my friend Jay who had been the CEO of the windlass manufacturer, Maxwell, and ask him if he had any idea who could help us.  I had not been in touch with Jay for a few years, but we had played tennis regularly and sailed together in Annapolis.  He knows a lot about Maxwell windlasses.

And that text led us to the land of magical boats.  Jay, it turns out, had just taken a job at Hinckley in Portsmouth.  He was only a few miles away and offered the yard’s services with open arms.  When I asked what systems they work on, e.g. a specific type of marine refrigeration system, he replied “we work on everything.”  And indeed, they do.

Before we could get to Hinckley, of course we had to have a last scare in the East Greenwich harbor.  That morning, we woke full of expectation that Hinckley would put us back together again.  But, when we put the engine in gear and dropped off our mooring lines, our engine shrieked.  This was a brand new, very disturbing noise that we had not heard in the 9 years we have owned the boat.  Since it was very calm that morning and we were already off the mooring, we limped over to the fuel dock, without much shrieking, to take on fuel while I thought about what to do.  Cooling water was coming out the exhaust, the engine temperature was fine and the oil pressure was perfect.  What could it be?  These three inquiries exhausted my very limited mechanical diagnostic repertoire.  Then, it dawned on me that this noise sounded like a belt slipping on a car.  So, I opened the engine compartment and checked the tension of the alternator belts.  They were loose.  Could it be so simple?

While Jae supervised adding fuel to our tanks, I worked on tightening the belts.  Of course, my first effort resulted in loosening them, but that is because the bolts that tighten the belts work in a counter-intuitive fashion.  I already knew that, but of course in my half-assed mechanical fashion, I had to do it wrong first before I could do it right.  I never swore, cursed or got upset; I have accepted my mechanical failings and I know my path in these matters will always be a jagged one.  The great reward here was that tightening the belts worked.  No more shrieking. We tooled out of East Greenwich with normal engine noise, lots of diesel and some overcooked confidence in our problem solving capabilities.  I am sure we will be knocked down again, in the words of Jerry Garcia, “like a bowling pin.”  But Monday, we weren’t thinking about that at all.

This causes me to reflect on boat economics.  We are now two days at the yard.  The service is terrific and nearly all that ails us has been fixed.  Thus, our refrigeration system is working like a charm; our generator is serviced and ready to work for many more hours of work; the stuffing box has been tightened to ensure no leaks into the boat; the miscreant water pump is now in a box somewhere in the bottom of the boat and its replacement is doing just fine; the decking on the transom is no longer bleeding black goop all over the boat; the canvas covering the cockpit is in rehab and coming back on the boat later today; the technician is now connecting our chartplotter to the autopilot, which will help on the trip home and I hope we are going to get a new mechanical oil pressure gauge today so that we can know the true oil pressure and not panic when our electronic gauge sends erratic readings, as Yanmar gauges apparently are wont to do.  That might not even be the whole list.  The high quality of service causes one not to think about the cost; this is a rule that has governed my thinking in years of personal service as a lawyer.  In my view, it is a universal truth; top notch service is the most important thing to a customer.

But all of this does cost money.  Fortunately we are not paying for this beautiful, wide slip because Jay has arranged us to stay here free.  And it does not appear that the hourly charges for the work are any greater than Annapolis, so we have indulged ourselves in taking advantage of the fact that everything is located here and easily accessed.  I have a strong belief that, having made the investment in this boat over many years and getting the systems working, we cannot limp along any more than necessary.  For example, we would never have gotten a boat without refrigeration.  We once had such a boat and we were always looking for block ice and worrying about food spoiling.  I don’t want to relive those days and I am willing to pay to avoid them. 

Incidentally, boat owners know that the word “boat” is really an acronym for “Bring Out Another Thousand,” which is also referred to as a boat unit.  While I don’t want to expend boat units, I believe that we are tuning her up for the next trip, that these expenses are necessary and that their pace will decrease (the last one is really foolish, I know).

Here in the land of magical boats, there is assiduous attention to detail and constant varnishing of the lovely teak finishes on the Hinckleys so that even if the hourly rates do not differ from elsewhere, the acronym here might have another “T” – “BOATT”.  Fortunately, we are only here for a few days and do not have a BOATT.

Postscript

In looking at my Iphone pictures, I am a little disappointed in myself.  I could have taken better pictures.  Well, here it is.

This is Courageous.  It left the day after we arrived.  Before leaving, 4 young men loaded about 10 sails aboard, cases of beer, water and gatorade, boxes of wine, but no food that we saw.

Here is New Zealand, which was dropped in the water the day we arrived.  It left that day.

This is a picture of Defender.  Wherever Courageous and New Zealand were going, Defender was not a part of it. 

Jay said there are 6 Americas Cup boats in the yard, but I could only find three and I walked everywhere.  We did see another one sailing out of Newport Harbor as we entered on Aug. 10. Lindsay took a picture:

Next boat is Inukchuk, supposedly registered in the Marshall Islands.  They took its mast off with a construction crane.  It was enormous.  It is a charter boat, about 108 feet long, but I paced it off at around 150 feet.

Here is another random, beautiful sailboat, also with Marshall Islands registry.

And this boat has a retractable shaft and prop.  I have never heard of such a thing.  The prop looked rather small, so I am not sure how powerful the engine could be.  This is the keel, perhaps the longest I have seen.

This boat, Islander, must be a one-off design.  I could not find any information about it online.  It is a ketch, beautifully kept and enormous.  I could not pace it off to guess at size.  Check out the aft boarding platform.  Pretty luxurious.

Here is a row of Hinckleys.  They were all over the place.  You almost started to take them for granted.

There were also plenty of huge motoryachts.  Here are a few.

We were not the smallest boat in the harbor, though.  Along one wall was a collection of smaller, more modest boats.  I think these were staff boats because the electrician who helped us with one project pointed out his small sailboat out to me along that wall.  I am guessing Hinckley must give the staff a concession on the marina cost so they can keep their boats there.  Another point in Hinckley’s favor, if I am correct.

And finally, here is a partially sunken tugboat that is just outside the bulkhead of the harbor.  It is obviously quite a counterpoint to what lies inside.

Fog

At 8 am we left Westport, located on the Westport River in Massachusetts.  We had made for the harbor to have dinner with an old college friend of Jeff’s.  A ribbon of green trees and marsh grass separated the blue of the sky from the blue of the water.  The current was running fast by our boat.  There wasn’t much wind when we dropped the mooring and headed out.  The morning was quiet, hearing only a small fishing boat coming in and the gentle rumble of our engine as we made way.

The river was tricky to navigate with hairpin turns, not much clearance on either side, a racing current and the promise of running aground if we strayed off course.  While I had Jeff steer us in, I felt confident enough to take her back out.  Herons sailed on the air near us, into the cattails that lined the sides of the river.  Water encroached on the land in various places, creating ponds and marshes that were stunning to look at.  With the sun shining brightly in the sky, the greens looked more vibrant, the blues of the water more nuanced and mirrored reflections from the land stared back at me from below.

The entrance was fairly short and soon Sirius emerged into the widest point of the river.  Suddenly, I lost my bearings as the fog rolled in.  With very limited visibility, I slowed down.  By using my chart plotter I could negotiate marks, avoid rocks and stay out of shallow water but I was worried about hitting small fishing boats.  Jeff promptly turned on the radar, though it was difficult to read the radar images.  Radar doesn’t tell you that this is a boat or this is just some visual static. 

Once we were out of the river, the water depth quickly climbed to 65 feet. I could settle down some because now there was nothing to negotiate except other boats.  Bigger boats appeared on my AIS, clearly showing the boat, its speed and direction on my chart plotter.  No worries there.  But there were many boats not on my AIS.  Jeff said we needed to sound a horn every 2 minutes.  The first blast came from our signal horn.  It was so loud, I was positive that I would go deaf if it were sounded every 2 minutes.  I told Jeff we had to find something else.  And he did.  We ended up using the admiral horn Jeff had found on the boat, after he cleaned out the wasp nest, of course.

It was much kinder to my hearing.  Jeff went forward on the bow and blew our horn at the appointed times.  He wasn’t making enough noise, so I told him to blow harder.  He was also my scout who would look for lobster traps and various other things that float on the water.  Going only 2 knots, I watched as waves seem to come out of the fog towards me.  It was almost like the fog was creating them and sending them my way.  They crept out under the fog curtain and sped toward Sirius.  They were small waves, not too concerning, but I was mesmerized by their sudden appearance.  I looked around and all the colors of the morning had gone, melted into a gray tinged whiteness that surrounded Sirius. Even the water around our boat lost its color.  The sky was gone.  We were cocooned.  I imagined all the other boats in the water that day traveling around in their own cocoons, small bubbles of clarity in the immense fog bank.

Up ahead I saw something in the water.  Jeff was below at this point, refining our route.  I swerved to avoid it.  On my starboard side as we slid past it, I saw it was a cormorant swimming, unconcerned about our presence.  Its head promptly disappeared in the water as he continued to fish.

As I kept watch, off the port side, I started to notice out toward the sea, that I could see farther than before.  In the distance, a ghostly ship made itself known.  We were on separate headings and wouldn’t collide, but it made me shudder wondering what lurked in front of our bow. 

Then the fog was gone.  It lifted as easily as it had come, silently, with no fanfare.  Now I could see colors again.  The horizon was tinged a salmon color with streaks of soft pinks interspersed.  Looking ashore, I saw white puffy clouds above green trees and grand houses.  There was a point of land coming up and there sat a large lighthouse, its brilliant white color made it easily distinguishable from the rest of the landscape.  In a light fog, at least, I could easily spot the structure and now knew why lighthouses are often painted white.

We were heading to Newport that day, riding along the coast but keeping it comfortably distant when again the fog descended.  Ocean swells gently rocked Sirius.  The water was a different texture this time, the glassy surface rising with the swells beneath it and then settling back down.  With limited visibility I started to notice that even though the colors were gone, there were an infinite number of gray variations in front of me.  The light gray of the fog was fairly consistent.  It only got darker when something, like a boat or a marker started to become visible.  But the water, it reacted to currents and wind, which was now blowing at 13 knots.  I would look left and the water was glassy.  I’d look right just forward of our bow, and the water was speckled in places as if a million fish were kissing the surface. 

Throughout our trip, the fog came and went.  By the time we got to Newport, it was a bright, sunny day again.  In the end, the fog wasn’t so bad.  I liked the eerie feeling when Sirius was slowly motoring through the whiteness.    

Jeff Goes Deep Sea Fishing!

I am so far behind in terms of posting, but I have to interrupt the normal flow to report on a very exciting day.  As you will learn at some point, we spent a few days at Block Island.  This was the first destination of the Corinthian Cruise.  Coincidentally, our friend Jim Desnoyers was staying at a house on Block for a week.  Jim’s firm is hosting a fishing tournament.  We arranged to meet him on Monday afternoon.

Jim was not only hosting a fishing tournament, but invited us to go deep sea fishing the next day.  I could not say no.  Jae reluctantly did, out of fear of seasickness, and that turned out to be a mistake because the sea was pretty gentle and the boat had a good motion.  I am sorry she did not go.

But, I am delighted that I did.  Sirius was at anchor in the Block Island harbor, so at 6:30 am, Mike Dowie, Jim and Ercole (a young delightful Italian fellow) came alongside, plucked me off Sirius and out into the deep blue we went.  Mike had risen at 3 am to travel from Essex, CT to Block.  His boat is a 37’ Duffy and is fully rigged for deep sea fishing.  It is a nice boat.  It took him 3 hours to reach Block and we motored for another 90 minutes or so, past the giant windmills that now power Block, to a place called Tuna Ridge.  Along the way, we stopped once to try fishing, with no luck. 

Just as we were arriving at Tuna Ridge, Mike saw a big school of fish on his fishfinder, so we stopped and Mike and Jim quickly rigged 7 poles with various different lures.  There was a lot of discussion about their favorite lures and Jim explained to me how they work.  I cannot say that I retained much, but it was very interesting.  I now have a much better idea how to fish off Sirius.  We started trolling again, wandering around at 7 knots or so, looking for that school.   Much like a MOB (man overboard) mark, Mike had marked the spot on his fishfinder, but of course the fish were no longer there – they swim all the time, it seems.

We then spotted a large pod of dolphins and headed for them.  Mike and Jim explained that any signs of sea life likely mean fish are around, so dolphins, whales, sea grass, all are favorable signs.  We saw a lot of dolphins, so we were pretty excited.  They were swimming and diving around the boat.  Jim thought we also saw tuna flying through the air, as did I.  Fish certainly were flying and I don’t think they were dolphins.  We trolled around them for a while, feeling that we should pick up a fish any time.

And sure enough, two bluefin hit two poles at the same time.  The boat went sort of crazy at that moment.  First, we had to bring in all the other lines, so they would not foul the active lines.  Then, Mike helped Ercole with his fish, while Jim helped me.  They were both shouting at us to keep reeling to maintain pressure on the line and the fish.  That was much easier said than done.  A 25 lb. fish is a formidable adversary and my pole was severely arced out over the water with the fish swimming in every direction while I slowly, painfully brought it toward the boat.  I was wearing a belt into which the pole could slot, but the pole kept slipping out of the slot.  I could not keep up with reeling the fish, my arms and back were aching by this time, and so Jim took over the rod and finished bringing the fish close.  Mike expertly gaffed the fish and into the boat it came.  It was a beauty – see picture below.  No sooner had this fish come in the boat, than Mike gaffed and boated Ercole’s fish.  Now two were flopping around in the cockpit, with blood spattering all over.  The need to wear old clothes was immediately apparent (Jim had warned me, but I did not totally comply).

As soon as the second fish was in the boat, Mike wanted to get the poles back in the water so we could catch more fish.  That was a bit challenging given the two big fish moving around in the boat, but Mike is a pro and he and Jim had the poles quickly rigged and back in the water.  Somewhere in this time, we saw a pilot whale roll partly out of the water, as only whales do.  He was a big one, according to Mike, and we saw either that whale or another one several more times.

It seemed only minutes before another fish hit one of the poles and again we secured the other poles.  By now, Ercole and I were beginning to understand what to do and we were more helpful this time.  Ercole put the belt on (there is a superstition not to don the belt until the fish is actually on the line) and he began reeling again.  He was working it hard and Mike and Jim were helping and telling him to have the rod follow the fish in the water and to keep the rod from touching the boat (it will break the rod).  After many minutes, he got the fish close to the boat and Mike brought the fish with a net.  This time, Jim carefully removed the hook, we admired the fish and back into the water it went.  Ercole was exhausted and insisted that the next fish was mine.  While I knew I would be worn out from it, I was eager to reel the fish all the way in this time.

Only a matter of minutes later, another fish was on the line and this time, Jim reeled it closer, before removing the rod from its holder and handing the rod to me.  I was determined to reel the fish all the way in.  We had discussed technique after the first fish and I was trying to remember the technique, keep your left arm straight and lean back, but in the heat of the moment that was quite difficult.  Again, my arms and back were aching from the power of the fish.  You might not think that 25 pounds of fish would be that much of a challenge, but that fish was all muscle and power, as far as I could tell.  I have a new appreciation for the strength and stamina of deep sea fishermen.  Like Jim, his son is an avid fisherman who once spent ten hours fighting a fish before landing it.  Twice, my fish was close to the boat, it ran and dove both times.  When that happened, there was nothing to do but watch the reel run out.  The fish is just too powerful then.  Once the reel stops spinning, however, you must start reeling again.  I guess this is when the fish rests for a second, thinking perhaps it has escaped.  And the reel reminds the fish that it is still on the hook.

I did get the fish to the boat this time and Mike netted it.  I held it, we took a picture, and back into the ocean it went.  By now, there were boats all around us.  This happens because everyone is watching each over and when one captain stops his boat, the others all assume he is on a “ball of bait” as they call it, and they come over to catch our fish!  We had caught all the fish that we were going to catch that day. 

With a knife, Jim cut into each of our fish, they bled to death and we put them into the large fish cooler that is in Mike’s cockpit.  Having them bleed makes for better eating because it avoids acid in the muscle that forms if they are killed in another fashion, e.g. alcohol in the gills.  Someone has told me this does not affect the eating too much, but Jim wants to get it just right.

On our way back to Block, Mike pulled out his cleaning table and cleaned the fish.  

Once back in Block, Jim swiftly took the fish to his house where he cut them into smaller pieces and iced them.  Mike went back to Essex, where I hope we see him in a few weeks.  I hopped back on Sirius, had lunch with Jae and then we dinghied to a venerable bar called The Oar for an early happy hour.  Jim joined us with our share of the fish, which we brought back to Sirius.

And last night, at Potters Cove in Narragansett Bay, we had 7 people aboard for grilled tuna steaks, followed by a guitar jam.  It was a blast and the fish was terrific.  Thanks to Jim and Mike for my first deep sea fishing experience, which was wonderful.  I am just sorry not to have a picture of the four of us with the fish.

Our Time in Nantucket

This post is dedicated to our time in Nantucket, nicknamed the Grey Lady because the island is often wreathed in fog.  The almost universal building code might contribute as well since the homes and buildings are largely of a weathered gray.  I guess if a building is truly old enough, it might be exempt from this code, but any new construction seems bound by it.

And this reflects a homogeneity of Nantucket that is not altogether satisfying.  In this regard, it is quite different from Provincetown. Nantucket is full of good-looking, fit affluent people who almost look as if they could be from the same family.  They dress very stylishly and seem quite manicured.  Because of Nantucket’s great cost, it must select out those who care about costs.  I looked at the real estate section in the local paper, charmingly referred to as the “Inky Mirror” as a local shorthand for Inquirer and Mirror.  My conclusion was that it you did not have at least two million dollars to throw away on a house that would rarely be visited, then you are in the wrong place.  I know many are rented and likely cover their carrying costs, but it is a very short season, a little over two months, so you better charge sky high rents to handle the other 10 months and all the things that go wrong during winter on an island 30 miles offshore.

In our previous trip to the island, we learned that summer visitors started a second yacht club because the original one would not accept any new members.  The second club charged an exorbitant initiation fee, several hundred thousand, as well as monthly dues in the tens of thousands.  That club is only open in July and August.  So that is more throw away money, I suppose.

Yet, we stayed a week.  You might fairly ask why.  The answer is simple – it is a truly beautiful place that reflects its remote seaward location.  I remembered it had a big commodious, but very secure, harbor and so I proposed that we spend a week there, going nowhere really, just relaxing and enjoying and perhaps avoiding some of the high costs.  In this, we succeeded in all respects except for the two days when the wind blew from the northeast.

The day after we arrived with Raul and Valerie, Jae was not feeling very well, so I stayed with her, while they launched off on an ambitious bike ride.  We provisioned and did other mundane stuff not worth recounting here.

The next day, the four of us set off in the dinghy to explore the northeastern part of the harbor.  It is part of what makes Nantucket special because so close to all the hustle and bustle is a wild preserve where you can walk along the beach and hardly see another person.  In the distance are some magnificent homes, but they don’t really alter the impression.  We landed the dinghy on one of these remote spots and wandered around for a little while.  Not too long, though, because we discovered it is a natural and thriving habitat for black and green biting flies.  Those flies are a part of nature that I have trouble appreciating.  I am sure they play a role in the ecosystem, but I am not enough of a tree hugger to be grateful for it, whatever it might be.

From fly haven, we returned to town and caught a free shuttle to Cisco Brewers, which we had been told is one of the “must-do” things on Nantucket.  That was certainly true.  It is a brewery, winery and distillery in one place where different restaurants set up food booths on different days.  And of course, you can buy T-shirts, etc.  We drank the beer, frozen sangria and enjoyed the food.  We were told the single malt was fantastic and award winning, but a pour is $50.00 and a bottle is $350.00.  I took a pass.  Unfortunately, we could not stay for the music because Raul and Valerie had a flight home later that day and Jae was still not feeling too well.

That night, after they had left for the airport, Jae and I saw a production called Sea Wife at the Blue Heron Theatre in town.  It was very good and told a story about a young New Bedford man whose father was lost on a whaling ship.  He went to sea as well, not with great enthusiasm, met a girl in port, married, took her out on a boat one evening when they were mugged by pirates.  She drowned, while he survived with a bad limp and of course was haunted by her for the remainder of his life.

A band called The Lobbyists wrote and performed the play.  They are very talented and play almost interchangeably a variety of instruments, including guitar, cello, percussion, banjo, mandolin.  They make clever use of the set and few props, making themselves into props such as sharks and a whale, and the main character actually shifts from one performer to another after the pirate scene.  I would highly recommend it to anyone going to Nantucket.  I believe it might be performed in other locations as well.

The next day marked the beginning of some very unpleasant weather.  A northeaster set in and the wind blew from the northeast, which is not very well protected in the harbor.  The boat felt like it was sailing, bouncing all over the place and making plenty of noise as it smacked the water.  We concentrated on trying to solve our water pressure problem and our laundry. 

The weather did not improve the next day, but we went ashore with our bikes and rode to Madaket.  During the ride, I began to worry about the mooring.  I remembered that as we left the boat, I noticed that one of the mooring pennants (the lines from the mooring to our boat) was fast against our anchor.  And I noticed that pennant had no chafe protection.  While on the ride to Madaket, I started thinking about the possibility of the anchor chafing that line.  Normally, this is never a concern because most mooring pennants are much longer and I lead them farther back on the boat to other cleats.  But these pennants were short and I was forced to use the anchor cleat.  The other pennant did have chafe protection and one is enough, but I worried during the whole trip to Madaket, imagining the boat becoming free and caroming off other boats as it was blown through the harbor until eventually it would find shallow water and become stuck.  I imagined fruitless efforts to capture it before more damage could be done.  My lawyer’s mind then considered all the follow-on issues. 

Back in Nantucket, we rode the launch out to Sirius and there she rode on the water, just where we had left here.  I did notice a little bit of chafe on the one pennant, but the moorings guy assured me that it would not chafe at all.  He came out to look at it in his little boat and was wonderfully skilled at holding his boat right at our bow.  We agreed to put a safety (or backup) line off the mooring, just in case, and he threaded the line I handed him through a bar tight loop.  I don’t know how he threaded it in 25+kts of wind, but he did.

That night, we slept poorly.  The boat was rocking and rolling all over the place.  Jae moved to the main salon to sleep, thinking it would quieter and perhaps less rolly.  I don’t think there was much difference. 

The weather finally relented Tuesday night.  On Wednesday, we secured repair services from Lewis Marine to inspect our water system.  Two young guys came aboard, very excited to help us out.  They were very polite and wanted so much to help.  We had a history with Lewis.  Five years ago, there was one guy, Tim Lewis, running the business.  We had a problem then with a generator and I called him on a Sunday.  He was working on a nearby boat and came over minutes later – how often does that happen?  He worked on it for a while and then announced he had to leave for a root canal!  He not only diagnosed and fixed the problem, but he gave us a copy of a technical paper on air that is entrained in diesel fuel, which ultimately was causing our problem.  So we had high hopes for these two young guys and when they kept talking to Tim on the phone, it seemed like the future was bright.  And indeed it was.  They replaced the valves to the water tanks, which leaked different amounts of air, depending on their respective positions.  This meant the pump could sometimes build pressure and other times it could not.  Along the way, we discussed dentistry with Tim again and he told use about the latest dental work he is having done and its cost, which seemed quite high.  I guess everyone pays high Nantucket prices.

Jae and I left them to finish the job and rode our bikes to Sconset at the other end of the island.  By now, the weather had improved and we had a nice ride.  We saw houses at the Sconset beach that we would rent if we ever came by land.  It is a quaint little village with almost no commercial activity and the houses remind me of going to the beach when I was a kid.  The flowers there, and everywhere on the island, are spectacular and robust.  It makes for a really lovely scene.

Early the next morning, we slipped our mooring and made way for Westport, MA.  We left the Grey Lady with mixed feelings.  I am sure we will return. 

Many More Pictures

Just added about two weeks worth of pictures!  Come and see.

Boat Life

First, those landlubbers among you perhaps don’t realize a few of the realities of living on a boat.  Other than a few short stops to take on fuel and water, the boat has not been connected to a dock in nearly four weeks.  This means we have had no electricity other than what we generate, we have created most of our water and we have had to dispose of garbage and waste from the toilet holding tanks.  Almost every day, we think about these issues whereas ashore, they are much less a part of our lives.

Fuel is the least of our concern because Sirius has a ridiculous amount of fuel tankage.  We have five tanks that hold over 400 gallons of diesel.  Not only does this allow the engine a tremendous range, but it also enables us to run our diesel generator and make electricity every day.  Most of the systems on the boat consume 12 volts, so we largely rely on a bank of batteries to power things (cell phones are an important part of that equation, as are computers).  A few things require 110V, including Jae’s hair dryer and the microwave she uses to heat her chai lattes.  But these run only briefly and so consume few amps.  We also have a TV in the main salon that we occasionally use to watch a movie.  It is LED and uses few amps.  It can also display the navigation charts from the computer.  All the lights are LED’s and so are low amperage as well.  The stove is propane, as is the grill that sits on the stern rail.  Our biggest power hog is the three box refrigerator, one of which is a freezer that has kept ice the whole trip.  I am hoping we can improve on the insulation of these boxes when we return home because I fear that in warmer waters, they will consume quite a bit more amps.

We do our best to make water with our new watermaker.  That has been difficult as I have previously written, however, because the water quality in many places has been poor and the filter becomes clogged and must be discarded.  We now carry so many filters that we could open a small retail operation specializing in filter sales in the harbor.  We expected to be drowning in fresh water, but instead we have been stingily wetting ourselves in the shower, turning the water off, soaping up, and then one rinse.  This is compounded by the problem of one tank having an apparent air leak that causes the water pump to continually try to build pressure.  That is bad for the pump, causes it to overheat and eventually would destroy it.  So, instead of having three tanks full with 50 gallons of water each, we are limping along with two that are only partially full and always in danger of being empty.  In the grand scheme of things, it is not that big a deal and we are adjusted to it by now.  Here in Nantucket, as in many other places, we can also go ashore and take a shower -- where the water flows freely and is always warm or hot.

Garbage is pretty easy.  When we have a full bag, we put it in the dinghy where it waits to be taken ashore.  If we were offshore for many days, the dinghy might get pretty full, in which case we would have other deck storage for it.  Also, farther offshore, you can put certain items overboard.  There are rules for what can be dumped overboard and where, all of which are posted in our navigation cubicle.  Some things, like plastic, can never go overboard.  We follow those rules closely.

Human waste is kept in holding tanks.  We have two heads, fore and aft, and each has its own holding tank.  Inside of three miles, this waste cannot be put overboard, but outside of three miles, we can do so.  We may also use pumpout facilities to vacuum the tanks’ contents, so to speak.  This is pretty straightforward, but you must keep the hose centered over and pressed down on the deck opening, or things will get quite unpleasant.   One boating nightmare is a problem with the heads or the holding tanks.  We thought we had such a problem in Dutch Harbor with the forward head, but it turned out to be an easy solution that only involved pumping out that tank.  Thank goodness.

We have a plethora of electronic equipment aboard.  It is almost all related to navigation and weather and it includes redundant systems.  We also turn to paper charts, which we carry and consult daily.  I have become totally enamored of one reference book, Eldridge’s Tide and Pilot Book 2017, which has covered East Coast waters since 1875.  In this book, you can learn about tidal currents for the East River in Manhattan, the Cape Cod Canal, Woods Hole and so on, which are all very tricky places to navigate if you arrive at the wrong time.  It has diagrams for key places that show how the currents change during each hour of the tidal cycle.  I have studied the diagrams for the Pollock Rip Channel quite a bit for our trip later this week to Westport, MA.  So far, all of our timing has been right!

The electronics, like my old VCR, offer far more functionality than my digital immigrant brain will ever absorb.  When I plot a course on the computer, if I include departure date and time, the computer will calculate the tidal currents, adverse and favorable, and will adjust our nominal speed of 7 knots to account for those variations.  The tidal currents and their velocity appear on the chartplotter, which is the Ipad like display that the helmsman consults while steering our boat.  Thanks to a technology called AIS, we can identify many other boats out on the water, their course and speed and determine if there is any risk of collision.  Coming up the Jersey coast, we constantly used this feature and the data point called CPA (closest possible approach) to judge the risk of collision with another boat.  The chartplotter constantly recalculates these values and considers both boats’ speed and headings.  It is amazing, especially at night.

I could go on about all of this, but perhaps the landlubber reader has had enough, while the boating reader lost interest long ago.

I also wanted to comment on a few photos that reflect on boating life.  First, you see below a picture of the Nantucket public dinghy dock.

f it looks like boating gridlock, that’s because it is.  When you approach this dock, you have to figure out how to nose in, push other boats out of the way, or climb over them to tie your boat to the dock.  Sometimes, we cruise around looking at the dock for a while, trying to find an opening.  Somehow, one always presents itself, even if it means climbing over a few other boats to reach the dock.

The next picture is of pilings in Provincetown, MA.  

The tidal range there is 10 feet.  No big deal for New Englanders, especially north of the Cape, but for us southerners, this is a whole new world.  When we went ashore in Wellfleet in the dinghy, which only needs about 2 feet of water, we were aground in the afternoon and had to wait in a bar, during happy hour, before we could return to the boat.  That was tough duty.  I think the tide is the real reason Massachusetts outlawed alcoholic happy hours and requires us to pay full freight on the booze, but not on the food.

You would never guess the next picture, but it shows the inventiveness that boating life sometimes requires.  It is our niece Sonya’s IPhone, playing music amplified by a go-cup.  We were in the Norwalk Yacht Club and she was trying to provide music for our merry little group.

The next picture shows our friend Valerie with Jae in a launch, going ashore in Ptown.

Valerie is graciously holding our laundry bag, while also doing a product endorsement for the detergent Jae used to wash the clothes.  Launches like this one are big, diesely boats that come right alongside, take you ashore and bring you back.   Some of the young people we have met on these launches hardly seem old enough to have drivers’ licenses, but they have all handled the boats quite expertly and in some challenging water and wind conditions.

Finally, I feel compelled to include a Nantucket sunset picture.

We have seen any number of beautiful sunsets. This picture, while not of a watery horizon, reminds me to mention that there is an argument among boaters over the existence of something called the green flash.  Supposedly, in the final instant that the sun is dipping below a horizon on the water, if the air is clear at the horizon, there is a green flash.  Some swear it exists and other deny it.  Many believe it is the product of a rum-infused imagination.  Jae and I have looked for it all over the place, with and without rum, and have never seen it.  It remains a mystery to us.

Cape Code Canal Through Nantucket Harbor

I realize that I have not written in a week.  Time has flown by.  When last I wrote, the King of Tennis had just reigned supreme as we were leaving the Cape Cod Canal.  This Canal seems pretty tame when you are riding the current, but if you should be fighting it, I am not sure that would be true.  We surfed through it at 11 knots on a beautiful sunny day.  We were with our rally mates at that time, but as we exited, they turned towards Maine while we, with some regret on my part, turned toward Provincetown.  I wanted to go to Maine, but I remain sure it was the right choice not to do so.

So rather than look at a long motoring night, we raised our sails and ghosted along in about 5 knots of breeze for several hours towards Provincetown.  We wanted so much to sail, but the wind did not really support us in this regard.  But, since we have just chucked our schedule out the window, we did not care when we arrived.  Raul steered most of the time, content to steer even in such a slight breeze; Valerie read her book, in peace I think; Jae read and fussed around the boat a little and I don’t know what I did other than plot the course and watch for lobster pots.

Eventually, as we approached Ptown, we doused the sails and motored on in to our mooring.  Once on the mooring, the nightly happy hour started with rotation on showers.  Incidentally, the water in Cape Cod Bay is clear and beautiful, so clear that our watermaker was happy making water all the way.  That made us happy as well.  Now, over three weeks into this adventure, I think our biggest worry has been the water system.  Where we tried to make water, such as Cape May, it was dirty and the filters fouled.  And if we had enough water, the pump system acted up on one tank.

Sirius has three water tanks, each holding 50 gallons.  Two of the tanks have been fine, but the midships tank seems to have some sort of air leak that we cannot find.

As a result, when that tank is the source, the water pump won’t build pressure and shut off.  We have to turn it off.  If you are not a boater, you will not appreciate that on a boat such as ours, you become keenly attuned to every noise.  We can identify, by sound, every pump on our boat, as well as a bunch of other things.  An unexpected, or unknown, sound is therefore a big deal.  The other day, while we were sailing to Nantucket and I was on the phone, I heard a strange noise.  Jae had heard it as well and was already investigating.  She assured me to finish the call, that everything was OK.  When I did, I learned that one of our rope clutches, for the furling line on the genoa, had ripped out of its bedding.  No damage done and no one harmed, but the load on the line was so great (we had a lot of wind) that it tore out.  Raul correctly judged that the load on the brake was too great.  We will not load the brake up that way anymore, though it has worked for us these past 8 years.  The point is, noises are really critical to monitor and identify.

Once secure in Ptown, into happy hour and all clean, we rode the launch ashore and started looking for dinner.  It is a crazy fun place.  Ptown became an “artist’s colony” about 100 years ago.  It has an absolutely overwhelming number of art galleries, all with interesting work.  For about that same period of time, it has been a vacation and residence for gays and lesbians.  Here, more than almost anywhere I have been, they show great confidence in being “out.”  But it is also a place of many families and all sorts of folks.  It is truly a heterogeneous place.

The next morning, Jae and I attended to laundry at the marina laundry facility while Raul and Valerie took off on rented bikes.  They biked all over the National Seashore.  We followed a few hours later on our Bromptons (which we love) riding to Race Point for sandwiches on the beach.  The trail was up and down the whole time and required some real work, but riding through the dunes was terrific.  Back in Ptown, we climbed to the top of Pilgrim Tower, which was built over 100 years ago to commemorate the Mayflower first landing there, not Plymouth!  Teddy Roosevelt laid the cornerstone and President Taft dedicated it three years later.  It was an exhausting day by the time we made it back to the boat.

But, we soldiered on, cleaned up, had happy hour and another great dinner ashore with plenty to appreciate along the streets of Ptown.  In the morning, we moved over to Long Point, anchored, dinghied ashore and and had lunch on the beach.  We watched seals for a while before returning to the boat and leaving for Wellfleet.  Of course, leaving Ptown harbor the wind was on our nose for our course, but we were determined to sail, so we put in about four tacks, had a glorious sail with almost no other boat in sight on flat water and 18-20 kts of wind.  It was the best sail to that point. 

Wellfleet is a cool little town.  It has a shallow harbor, so Sirius had to anchor far away from everything else and we had a long dinghy ride.  Once in town, the next day, we walked all over, Raul inspecting every art gallery, while I looked for old Asey Mayo murder mysteries.  I had remembered that, as a teenager, my mother found them for me and I think I might have read all of them.  In a funky little used bookstore, I asked the Eastern European girl there, who spoke passable English, for the books.  She had no idea and they had no filing system.  But then I stumbled on three of them, bought them all, gave one to Valerie, will give one to my sister and will keep the third one for myself.  We walked back to the harbor, ate raw clams (fantastic) and of course, the divine Wellfleet oysters.  Happy Hour at the harbor begins at 3 pm we discovered, and the tide (10 ft tidal range) was out, so we had to wait to leave in the dinghy.  In Massachusetts, we were told, happy hour with low cost alcohol is illegal, so they entice you with low cost claims, oysters and lobsters.  According to our server, her parents explained that it was outlawed in the 70’s because our generation drank too much and had too many accidents and deaths.

We left Wellfleet the next morning, transited back through the Cape Cod Canal, and dashed into Marion, MA for a quick lunch at the Beverly Yacht Club.  That was only possible because Annapolis Yacht Club has reciprocal privileges with BYC.  By then, the tidal current was right to transit Woods Hole and we were off to Nantucket.

Four hours later, after another glorious sail, we reached Nantucket Harbor.  I will close here, but I must say that while I was at the helm, we reached 10.2 knots with the wind on the beam, obliterating John Heintz’ prior record of 9.5 kts on the beam aboard Sirius.  I hope he will come aboard and try to beat my new record.

Jeff's 3rd Blog

Today, I feel like I am in the lap of luxury.  It is a beautiful day and the boat is humming along just fine.  We are entering the Cape Cod Canal with the tide and I am down below watching the Wimbledon final where my favorite tennis player, Roger Federer, is winning at the moment.

Last night, we stayed in the Mattapoisett Harbor with the Salty Dawg rally and went ashore to a town festival and lobster dinner.  Jae and I decided on Friday that we would not go to Maine.  It was just too much travel up and back with not enough down time in Maine.  Plus, the forecast was for very light winds and that meant a bunch more motoring.  I had been worrying about this for several days because as I studied our schedule, I was concerned that Jae and I would be hopping down the Maine coast over 5 days with a need to make substantial ground every day without regard to weather and that is a prescription for a problem.  That did not seem congruent with the whole reason to be doing this.  Also, Cape Cod is a lovely area in its own right, so why not explore and enjoy it.  So, that is what we are doing.   The photos of Long Point, at the very end of the Cape, look fantastic.  Tomorrow, we will anchor and picnic there.  Along the way, I hope we can catch some fish.  Raul says he knows how to fish – I am clueless about fishing, like my friend Walter Laird (who affects to know about fishing).

I did feel a little badly about dropping out of the rally because so many other boats had dropped out for various reasons, but in the end, we need to do what is right for us.  I knew it was the right decision because once made, I felt a considerable sense of relief, and that just confirmed it was the right thing to do.  This is a sense of discipline that we need to learn on the boat – don’t push it.  I also have this strange sense of feeling that I need to spare the engine from unnecessary work and hours.  That is really stupid; diesels love work, but I was vindicated when Raul offered the same thought.

My last post left us in Stonington.  We took our English folding bikes ashore the next day and rode several miles to Mystic Seaport, which neither of us had ever visited.  It is the nautical equivalent of Williamsburg and we both enjoyed it.  The bikes worked great.  Our pump crapped out en route, but then we encountered – a bike shop.  We had a great talk with the guy there who was all interested in our trip.  Throughout this trip, I have been very pleased and a little bit surprised to encounter so many friendly and helpful people.  No one has been unfriendly, even the launch captain in Mattapoisett after I accidentally dumped strawberry shortcake into the bottom of his boat.

Back in Stonington, we had dinner ashore in the Dog Watch Café, which the cruising book highly recommended.  I wanted to go to Watch Hill, RI, but we did not think we could get back in time for the last launch to the boat.  The Dog Watch was terrific as it turned out and we met a couple at the bar who are cruisers and want to help us when we visit eastern Long Island.  We had a great chat and we also watched Federer win a match in the process.  So, all good.

From Stonington we motored up to Dutch Harbor, RI, which is actually in Jamestown, R.I., across the harbor from Newport.  It was a very rolly ride in the ocean with swells coming at us amidships.  Jae steered a good bit of the time as that is a good way to deal with her tendency toward motion sickness.

It is truly remarkable, by the way, that she does this boating thing with me given her tendencies toward mal de mer.  What a great wife.

We arrived in Dutch Harbor just moments ahead of a sizable thunderstorm and hardly had the mooring ball secure when things got a little crazy.  We were cozy down below, except that we had to wait quite a while for the launch to pick us up because of lightning in the area.  We did get ashore just in time to meet Madeline’s parents, Andy and Marilyn, for dinner.  We had a great time with them and talked quite a lot about our mutual granddaughter, Quinn.  Andy then asked if we wanted to go to the grocery store.  Of course we said yes, but that turned into quite a bit of a madcap car ride to find one open and then get back for the last launch.  It all worked out fine.  Next day, we went to Newport in search of filters for the watermaker and welcomed Raul and Valerie aboard in the afternoon.  In our brief exploration of Newport, we found much of interest and will have a chance to visit again.

In this part of New England, we have discovered that the mooring fields are quite large and the boats are generously spaced apart.  On the chart, we thought Newport mooring space would be quite tight with limited maneuvering, but riding the ferry over, we saw that is not the case, so I am sure we will bite the bullet and pay for one night in the harbor.  There is plenty to see there, that is for sure.

We deferred a visit to the Tennis Hall of Fame until later in the trip, probably when our daughter Lindsay is aboard.  We are very excited to have her join us and just wish all our kids could be with us for some part of the event.  For her visit, we will stay in Narragansett Bay and focus on having fun as opposed to trying to get anywhere.  That is the sailing spirit, not the motoring spirit.

As for life aboard, I cannot say there is any particular rhythm to it yet.  We are running the systems just fine as far as I can tell.  There have been two minor issues since Raul came aboard that were easily resolved.  He is incredibly knowledgeable about nearly everything as far as I can tell, so that is a great resource.  The bigger issue was the forward toilet and we determined an air vent was blocked, which we remedied easily by pumping out the nearly empty tank.  That worked just fine.   The other one was to tighten the belt on the secondary alternator, which we had to consult the manual to find the 2d bolt that needed to be loosened.  Importantly, the watermaker seems to be working well so we have not been tied to a dock even for that purpose, except for taking on fuel and water in Oyster Bay, which we could have skipped.  So, we have been pretty self-sufficient except for the the need to buy water filters.

As I conclude this post, we are now through the Cape Cod Canal and sailing, slowly, toward Provincetown.  It is a beautiful, sunny day with light wind but we are moving at around 4 knots and having lunch.  Some motoring is clearly in our future this afternoon, but right now it is nice to be underway with sail only. 

I am very pleased that Roger Federer won Wimbledon. 

Change in plan...

We've decided not to go past the Cape Cod Canal with the Salty Dawg rally.  Instead we will head to Provincetown and putter around in Massachusetts for several days.  To get to Rockland, Maine would have meant endless hours of motoring and we just didn't have it in us.  Today we are headed to Mattapoisett.  We hope to arrive early afternoon.