We decided to spend a couple of weeks cruising in Maine! In order to simplify logistics and save Irina and Peter a long haul from NYC to Maine we wanted to get Salty Ginger to Boston first. Having sailed along the coast of Long Island, this sounded like a good warm-up for the season with typical favorable south or southwesterly winds.
There are 3 potential ways to get to Boston from New York:
- Longest path: south of Nantucket, around Cape Cod. The main problem here is that Nantucket shoals stretch for tens of miles south of the island, so that adds quite a bit of mileage. The potential benefit would be higher likelihood of seeing dolphins and whales, just like we did last summer.
- Medium path: through Vineyard Sound, between Cape Cod and Nantucket, around Cape Cod. Saves a few miles, and affords the possibility of seeing whales around Provincetown if not around Cape Cod.
- Shortest path: through Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Canal. Definitely attractive in its length, but given last year's experience least likely to see wildlife.
There is also the consideration of going through Long Island Sound or the ocean side of Long Island: dealing with currents and fickle winds in the former case, and dealing with the Atlantic in the latter.
King Neptune decided that the dominant winds would make the trip boring, and all forecasts predicted SE winds Friday night into Saturday morning, shifting to easterly for the remainder of the trip. Fine, that rules out paths 1 and 2, but the predicted winds of 15 knots didn't seem that formidable to exclude the ocean passage which is what we chose to do with the following strategy: keep as close to the wind on starboard tack to get as far offshore as possible before the winds shift to easterly, and then point at Montauk or Block Island once they do.
That strategy did not quite work out. Just look at
our track. Leaving Breezy Point we were having difficulty getting any southerly component: we barely cleared Jones Beach! And by the time we were south of Fire Island the winds commanded we go northeast. While that almost directly points to Boston, there is land to avoid!
The pleasant surprise on Saturday late morning was catching a fish! We think it's a small dorado. Last year our big catch was thanks to a diamond jig that we were trolling at ~7 knots, so that's what I stocked on for this year, and it worked!
After that the excitement was delivered by the low pressure system which was blowing pretty hard over New York and continued to build waves for us with 15-20 knot winds from the east. The last attempted tack we did to get offshore from Long Island was so uncomfortable that we decided to furl sails and motor directly to Montauk. When we left Brooklyn we only had the forward hatches closed. As we made progress east, first all hatches got shut, and then I asked Joao to zip up the dodger window, just in case. As he was closing the last zipper, the window was hit with a healthy doze of spray! This time, Joao stayed dry!
As the waves continued to build, the slamming increased. And more and more waves would not just send spray into the dodger, but shower it with so much water that the cockpit seats got wet from the draining seawater. The upwind side of the deck had streams of water draining it almost constantly. Within a couple of hours everything was salty.
We scheduled shifts at 50/50 duty factor by having Joao (who has little experience) and Frank (who has a USCG captains license) take one 3 hour shift and me taking the alternative 3 hour shift. It would have been totally fine if sleeping was easier. When I went to take my nap on Saturday night, the guys had to turn on the engine somewhere south of Block Island to motor directly into the wind. The slamming into the waves was so violent that I was woken up in my V-berth cabin by falling so hard on the bed that my ribs hurt! We lowered the RPMs and the motion became more agreeable, but we were making progress at only 3 knots towards Buzzards Bay.
My stomach was not ready for so much excitement, so even though I didn't eat much on Saturday besides breakfast, I had to provide some food for the fish. After taking a nap I thought I felt better and tried to eat a waffle. It went back to the fish within an hour or two. By Sunday 1am I didn't have much to offer to the fish anymore and kept drinking a bit of water every now and then. Interestingly enough, while I obviously was seasick and felt very negative about life, I was fully capable of standing watch.
At 5am Sunday we could finally resume sailing. The crew went sleeping after helping me to set up reefed sails. Slow upwind pace was accelerated by a favorable windshift, and for the first time since leaving NYC we were not close-hauled. Our velocity over ground was up to 8.5 knots even as we were sailing against a 1-knot current.
Right as we were getting ready to motor under the Cape Cod railroad bridge, the operator hailed (luckily on channel 16) that the bridge was closing! In some way, that not that bad: the current was not sweeping us onto the bridge, so we throttled down and assumed our position, ready to go into the canal once the bridge opens.
On the eastern side of the canal we were able to fly our new spinnaker for a couple of hours until we jibed towards Boston, and started making 4-4.5 knots in the not-so-strong wind. While we could have made it on sail power, it seemed more responsible to turn on the engine and do some chores. We ran a new line that supports the boom, attached PVC tubes as fishing rod holders, cleaned up a bit, and grilled our catch for an early dinner before we pulled into Charlestown Marina.
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| The fish was delicious! Thank you, Ocean! |
There is a mariner superstition against starting a cruise on Friday. Was that our problem and we should have left Thursday night? If so, we'll have to figure out how to make it up to King Neptune so that he can allow for less tumultuous passages in the future!
Some pictures from the passage: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4j2eWuSFKK8gEfAw8
