Following in Pilgrims' wake: Plymouth

The last 2 days were so filled with getting things done and getting crew on and off Salty Ginger. Mark, Leo and my parents had to return back home. Irina arrived half hour before they left. Alla, David, Vlad and Yury came to Plymouth a few hours later, so right now the new crew (and provisions) are back in Cape Cod bay having left Plymouth harbor, and I have time to write what happened in the last 2 days.

Friday morning we planned to have an early departure, but between breakfast and getting fuel and pumping out the holding tank we didn't depart Provincetown till 10:30. The wind was SW so we had to go on the "wrong" tack until we had enough room to tack to port tack and go north following the whale watching boat. Unfortunately, without VHF antenna AIS was not working, so we had no clue how far north they headed, but then we saw another whale watching boat just to the north of the Provincetown sandbar. When we got there the birds were diving after fish and then a whale back appeared about 50 meters away from us! After about half hour of sailing around the birds we saw the back of a whale a few more times, but clearly the animals were shy and we were short on time.

Wind picked up, so we could sail quite nicely. We decided to check out the spot where we saw whales 4 years ago, but on Friday their feeding ground was in a different location, so we rolled the code-0 in and unrolled the genoa to get on a close hauled course towards Plymouth.

Plymouth harbour is huge and well protected, but rather shallow. At one point I thought I could go straight over chartered 12-15 foot shoal, but the depth meter showed 2 feet under the keel, so I quickly got back into the channel. After a rather sill unsuccessful attempt to find our mooring we got escorted to our mooring ball past the replica of Mayflower.

In the morning I made crepes and after breakfast we went into town to drop off laundry, rent a one-way car to NYC, but most importantly visit the ship replica!

While we were cooking dinner we noticed an unusual visitor who landed at the top of our mast. My bird knowledge is not that extensive, but looked like an osprey. Many people bring good quality cameras, but instead I used binoculars and Vlad pressed the camera button.

In the morning I saw more feathered friends who for some reason were swimming back and forth under the transom of Salty Ginger.

One of the natural phenomena that one must take into account in these waters are tides. Not all dinghy owners take them into account.