We did our first overnight on Friday July 15. The trip was 49 miles to the entrance of the Cape Cod Canal.
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
The destination for the overnight is Red Brook harbor on the south side of the canal in Pocasset, MA. We needed to wait til about noon to for the current to be right in the canal before making a passage. We left at 9pm to leave some margin for error.
We had really great wind all night long. A little more than we would have liked for a "relaxing" night sail. Neither of us slept more than an hour. It was so cool sailing through the night and watching the sun rise. We ended up arriving at Sandwich at about 6:30Am so we had about 5 hours to kill. We anchored off Sagamore beach and snoozed a bit. This is a great place to anchor. Nice clean sandy bottom and beautiful scenery.
After a nice rest, we headed through the canal when the current switched our way about 11:30.
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
Saturday July 16 to Red Brook Harbor
After getting through the canal, we headed through Buzzard's Bay toward Red Brook Harbor. Buzzards bay lived up to its reputation that day. It was very choppy and we were exhausted but fortunately Red Brook is just around the corner.
Red brook has very narrow windy shallow channel. The soundings on the chart are a little scary but bigger boats than ours are in there so... The spot our mooring ball was on was over 4 feet of water according to the chartplotter. The actual depth gauge disagreed with this (good thing)
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
Red Brook is tucked in behind Bassetts island. It is worth the dinghy ride over to the island for swimming and hanging out on the beach. The sand bar extends right out to the green cans that mark the channel. It's a little weird to be coming in the channel and see people standing knee deep just a few feet behind a channel marker.
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
At Red Brook, You can eat anywhere you want as long as it's the Chart Room. There is literally no other choice within any decent walking distance. It has a line around the corner to get in to eat or drink. One gets the idea that there's a little bit of local politics at work here. Just maybe. In case you don't spend enough money at the Chart room, you can go to the gift shop in the next building which has (surprise!) Chart Room tee shirts! That said, the food is great (even though it doesn't have to be), but definitely make reservations. We made ours for 8:30 and got seated about 9:30.
Sunday July 17 to Martha's Vineyard via Woods Hole
We got to Woods Hole about an hour too early. It should only be passed at slack current when you're in a sailboat with a little diesel like us. We watched one sailboat go through. Another one sail through. So we thought we would try it even though the current charts showed it was too early. We chickened out. twice. You get in there and the engine is barely running and you're doing 8 kts. We turned around and had to floor it just to move against this current.
So we anchored near Hadly Harbor and waited until the current chart showed only 2 kts of current. You get through it very fast. What they say about the chart being deceiving is true.
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
We had the fastest sail ever in from Woods Hole south toward the Vineyard. We were in big wind over the beam and surfing some big swells. We were seeing 10.7kts on the gps a few times.. This was with a reefed main and half furled jib (and later no jib at all).
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
Edgartown harbor
They put us waaaaay out on the yellow town moorings. We ended up using the launch quite a bit and were unpleasantly surprised to learn there is a charge of $3/person/trip to use it. We usually tip the launch driver but this is the first place there was a charge. Poor form in my opinion and several other passengers on the launch would grumble about it too.
Edgartown is a nice town for walking, shopping and sightseeing. We had a nice dinner and a really quiet night out on the mooring. Other than the $12 round trips in the Launch, we really liked it here.
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
The next day, we rented some bikes and rode to south beach to see the surf and then up to Vineyard Haven. The island is very bike-friendly. Lots of bike paths and the geography is pretty flat.
We also tried fishing off the sailboat for the first time using some fake squid. This stuff is like fruit rollups only squid flavored. I didn't taste it. We got lots of bites but Linda landed a couple porgies.
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
Tuesday July 19 to Hyannis
Every sail up til now was fast and intense. This one was the opposite. It was very hot, and absolutely dead wind. We had my friend Dan as a passenger and unfortunately he got to experience how well our motor worked (Sorry Dan). We also got terrorized the whole way with these nasty little flies. We were getting better at killing them as time went on but they just kept coming.
Hyannis Marina really puts out the welcome mat. They even give you a tote bag when you check in! They have courtesy cars you can take for free. Depending on who you ask, you can use them up til 8pm or 6pm. We got both answers. Trader Ed's has a major noisy party going on the first night. We slept right through it, but I would strongly suggest that if you're the type of person who likes to sleep before 2AM, you try to get a slip as far away from Eds as possible.
We had the slip in Hyannis for two nights. The second afternoon, we started hearing scary weather forecasts for the next day. So our plan was to get up and get moving at 4AM and try to get to either Falmouth or all the way out to Cuttyhunk Island before things got too out of control.
Yeah well, after not sleeping very much (see warning above about Trader Ed's), we woke to a foggy nasty windy morning. Small craft advisory already in effect. We tried anyway and got about 2 miles out before we realized that a full day of getting tossed around like that wasn't going to go so well. So we turned back.
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| From fjuin-2011-july |
We went back to our slip on A dock (near Ed's), but as soon as the office opened, we reserved the additional day and asked if we could pretty please move to a different row (away from Ed's). They said we were the first people who ever complained. I should point out that this marina is about 95% motor boats. I'll leave it at that. Anyway they let us move over to F dock. Closest to the Heads. And far from Ed's! I definitely recommend you ask for F (or higher) dock if possible if you go here.
Friday July 22 Back to Red Brook via Woods Hole
The weather for Friday is still a bit heavy but much less scary than Thursday. The plan is to get back to Red Brook for the night and then sail all the way to Boston on Saturday. Slack current in Woods Hole is at 4:38. We left Hyannis about 8am and motored pretty much straight into the wind and waves for the whole 26 miles.
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
We were about two hours early for Woods so we anchored off of Falmouth beach and ate (once our stomachs started cooperating again)
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
Going through Woods hole at slack current is simple. This time we were relaxed enough to actually take some pictures. It's still a very confusing channel but if you can take your time, and watch the chart, it's no problem.
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
Once we got through Woods Hole, we had a beautiful fast sail up Buzzard's to Red Brook. Flat and fast! Linda said this was our reward for the awful motoring all morning. We got to Red Brook about an hour before sunset and it was hot and still in there. First job was to jump in and swim to cool off. This is a great harbor for swimming.
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
This time we decided not to play the Chart Room game and we found a great pizza place that delivers to the marina (I can imagine the Chart Room trying to arrange for an unfortunate fire at this pizzeria). If you go, here is the site: http://www.graziellaspizza.com/
So we had a lovely dinner on the boat by the light of a bug candle. Pizza: half Anchovy, half pepperoni, mushrooms and hot banana peppers. We both fell asleep in the cockpit that night. Red Brook is definitely a favorite place for us now.
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
Saturday July 23 Back home via Cape Cod Canal
Today seemed like a pretty straight forward plan: Hit the Canal anytime after 10am and sail north to Boston. The weather had a little surprise for us later.
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| Leaving Red Brook From Fujin-2011-july |
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
We had a nice smooth sail up Buzzards bay toward the Canal. As we approached we noticed a bit of a dark sky to the north. Along the way through the canal we also noticed a few lightening bolts to the north. We brought up weather.com on the iPad and saw a nasty storm about half way up the coast. No problem - we'll just anchor off the beach after we get though the canal and wait for it to pass. Once we got through the canal, we refreshed the page and saw that this storm had spawned a tail that went way to the south west and was heading right toward us. The warning said there could be 50mph winds and big hail too. By now there was no way to outrun it to the south (Bob's idea) so we went to a better anchoring spot to wait it out (Linda's Idea). By the time we dropped anchor again, the lightening bolts were getting close and it started raining and blowing pretty good
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| From Fujin-2011-july |
We didn't feel that taking pictures at this time was a priority so this is really the only one I got. And this one is facing south while the worst of it was coming from the north and west. The wind never got any where near 50 and it blew over us in just a few minutes, but it was a little nerve wracking.
Homeward Bound
Once we changed our underwear, we re-started the trip home. After the storm passed, the wind was just dead. We tried sailing but it was just too slow and we had 49 miles ahead of us. The forecast was for it to pick up a little later on so we got some miles under our belt with the motor.
About 3 or 4 pm, we noticed a couple other guys out there starting to put sails up. We tried it and caught a perfect beam reach that had us going toward Boston at between 5 and 8 kts.
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| Minot Light against the sun. From Fujin-2011-july |
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| Looking back on Minot in the sun From Fujin-2011-july |
We got to Boston outer harbor just as the sun was setting. Other than some &^*$%^# party boat running us out of the channel out by Georges, we had no problem navigating in the dark through the islands to the inner harbor. We sailed almost all the way to the North end.
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| Boston outer harbor at sunset From Fujin-2011-july |
