0 to 20 knots in 10 seconds

 "Quiet sail"

Saturday morning Martha, Paulo, Peter and I had a lovely breakfast and decided that it looked calm enough to go out for a sail and enjoy some time on the water. We had a soft deadline of getting back to Newport harbor by 5, when Mark N, Amanda and Leo were expecting to get to Newport.

We went around a little regatta and headed north up the Narragansett Bay to avoid any potential ocean swells. The initial thought was to drop an anchor, have lunch and then sail back, but then it was so quiet that Martha tossed a salad together, we brought up some cheese, hummus, some pasta for Peter and ate without stopping.

All this time the wind was playing curious games: it would turn 90 degrees, it would stop, it would pick up. At some point we got all the way up to 6 knots and it seemed super fast. Peter was bored sitting on SG and "jumped ship" to sit on the dinghy which we were pulling behind. Then he came back, and we were sort of sailing. 10 minutes later the wind pretty much quits. Peter said we should turn on the motor, and 5 minutes later we did just that, rolling the genoa but keeping the mainsail up. Just in case...

As we were motoring, up ahead I started seeing whitecaps. Curious... Let's turn the engine off and try to sail. All of a sudden Peter was not bored and wanted to steer. No problem. 5 knots against the wind with mainsail alone. Not bad... I figured that giving us a bit of a jib would balance the boat, so I unrolled just enough foresail to make it feel balanced. As it turned out, that was the most amount of foresail that we should have carried.

The suddeness of the wind change caught everyone by surprise. Peter handed steering off to Paolo who despite essentially no experience sailing caught on very quickly. Martha was sitting on the high side with a clear expression on her face: "this is not comfortable, things are not supposed to be that way". Later on she said that mentally she felt better by looking at other boats that were also heeling, but instinctively she was quite uncomfortable.

Peter kept asking "what's the wind speed?". I couldn't give him a precise answer from the instruments (a shortcoming that I have not been able to address), but I knew that we had at least 12 knots of wind given the white caps, and we were moving at 6.5+ knots. Peter did the math (first incorrectly, then spot on) and was super proud that he felt 20 knots of wind on his face.

Pulling into Newport harbor was a bit more challenging than usual: there were Newport Jazz concerts playing by Fort Adams, so lots of boats had the anchors dropped in the middle of the channel (did they get a fine?). Anchor dropped, we took a breather and we were ready to pick up Mark, Amanda, and Leo.

With everyone aboard, the dinner was lively and to top it off we played music. Paolo brought keyboards, Peter brought his trumpet, and I already had a guitar aboard. "Newport Sunset" blues improv turned out quite feisty.

Big boats, big everything

Sunday morning was slow. Coffee in the cockpit with no wind and the sun. We tried to hail the pump out boat (empty the toilet), but they wouldn't respond, so I decided to pull up the anchor and get diesel, water, and do the pump out at the same time. The timing wasn't great: there was a huge motor boat taking up more than half of the fuel dock that not only took forever to fuel up, but also to empty its refuse holding tanks.

While we were doing the necessary things Martha went to a bakery to pick up cinnamon rolls and muffins. Unfortunately, she didn't return by the time we were being kicked off the dock, so while Mark was doing circles on SG, I jumped into the dinghy to pick up Martha, and we went back to the anchorage to enjoy a slow breakfast. Kids took advantage of the still weather to hang out on the water.

After breakfast Amanda headed back to NYC. Work is work. Mark took the kids to a playground and I found Martha and Paul chilling on the bow of SG.

We took their things to the car, and then they drove me to pick up laundry and food for the week. We got a couple of pizzas on the way back giving kids some calories so that they could continue running around the playground.

Chore power

Having said goodbye to Martha and Paul the four of us came back to Salty Ginger. With all the food stowed away we set out to do chores: tighten the rest of the stanchions, lubricate blocks, etc.

Most importantly, I finally traced  the wires from the wind generator and labeled the switches so finally we have wind power to supplement solar and hydro! I was afraid that something was broken with the wind generator, and I'm delighted to be proven wrong!

Of course we are presented with new projects: the bracket on the dinghy transom separated from the hinge. Sigh.

While it may seem that we only fix things, we find more than enough time to swim, have fun, eat well and of course sail!

Off to Cuttyhunk again

My parents arrived last night, so now the crew for the week is all here! We intend to make it to Plymouth on Friday night after transiting Cape Cod canal.