Cuttyhunk again

Monday, for the first time this trip we had wind from the stern quarter, so finally we were able to set the spinnaker and fly it for most of the passage to Cuttyhunk. One forecast predicted SW winds and a different one NW. Going east either one was fine, and it was indeed NW.

Leo and my mom got seasick. Mom was mostly sleeping, sometimes Peter stomping on top of her. Mark was attending to Leo, trying to improve his mood while the boat was still rocking on the waves coming from abeam.

Peter was jolly, and after lunch asked if he could be dragged on the floaty behind the boat. The wind was very mild, so even though we were still under spinnaker I allowed him to do so. First gave him a warning that should he fall off, he would be bouncing in the water for quite a few minutes until we douse the sail and come back to retrieve him. He agreed to the "rules of the engagement" and heeded my advice not to put too much weight on the front of the floaty.

After a while I also joined him for a while. It was a bit  challenging to embark and disembark without rolling Peter off the floaty, but all went well.

Elusive electrical autonomy

One of the reasons I wanted to install hydrogenerator is that it's the only source of power one could have going with the wind without sun. Wind generator is great on a beam or close reach, but going with the wind the apparent wind is too slow to spin the generator. However, at 5 knots Watt&Sea is supposed to generate plenty of power.

Problem 1: charge controller gets confused selecting between solar and hydro when both are producing about the same amount of power. It's rather silly to have 50W of power from either source and the controller outputting 0.

Problem 2: rotation speed of the generator seems to jump around a lot from 500 to 900 RPM even when the speed through water seems to be relatively constant.

Problem 3: even at 900 RPM the amount of output power is maybe 120W which is way lower than the advertised 300W.

I have a separate charge controller for the solar, so at least we can separate hydro and solar and presumably combine the total output power. For the other two problems, I don't have a good guess. Maybe offsetting the generator from the centerline could help. Something to try...

Cuttyhunk

We got to Cuttyhunk to find out that all town rental moorings were taken. We could have picked up a mooring outside the inner harbor, but then we'd either have a long walk, a long dinghy ride or both. One of the boats assured us that anchoring in the corner would be fine as long as we ensure that the anchor sets. With 50 feet of chain we did drag the anchor, but once Mark let out 10-15 feet more the anchor set solid. We spent most of the $55 that we saved on the mooring almost immediately: a raw bar boat came by and we got a dozen oysters and clam chowder. Leo tried the chowder, but didn't eat it despite the fact that he didn't have lunch and gave his breakfast to the fish.

- "Leo, what do you think of the chowder?"
- "It's not my favorite..."

We ordered lobsters at the lobster shack, but they told us that they wouldn't be ready for an hour, so we took a walk to a beach, kids happily sipping their blue slushies.

At 7:30, as promised, the lobsters were ready. All the tables were taken, so we decided to go back to Salty Ginger to have dinner. Everyone was so focused on the food that we didn't pay attention to the sunset until the sun hid behind a hill.

Planning for weather

Under the starry skies we started discussing plans for the rest of the week. The main complication is the forecast that is calling for 2 days of rain. Another important consideration is the current in the Cape Cod canal. Tuesday favorable current starts at 12:48 and tomorrow and 13:36. We decided to opt for earlier transit and anchor somewhere on the south side of Cape Cod Bay being ready to cross the bay tomorrow to Provincetown.