Stepping off

Friday morning was practically windless and sunny, so we swam and took it slow. I decided to use the spinnaker pole to set up a jump rope. To make it easier to retrieve the swinging fender I attached a retrieval line. Big mistake! When I swung out to test the setup, my right arm got caught in the line and I ended up with a rope burn and a huge bruise under my right armpit. Ouch! Using the boat hook to get the line back was much safer, so luckily I was the only one who got hurt and everyone had lots of fun.

When we left Sandy Bay the water was almost mirror like. A motor boat came to retrieve a few sailing dinghies with kids - those kids were not moving at all.

As we reached Thatcher island we spotted another sunfish. Vlad was on the floaty enjoying the sun and the water and requested goggles. We did a few circles around the fish and Vlad got so close he could have touched it! 

A light breeze filled in from the southeast, so the sails were unrolled and we were sailing at a gentle 4-5 knots. Easy and smooth.

The day was warm, so we were not in a hurry to pull into Boston harbor with all the associated heat and traffic. While we were sailing around the islands in the harbor the crew started questioning the need to go into the harbor. Why can't we anchor out here?! Forecast was calling for light southeasterly to south winds, so why not. I checked the blog entry from 4 years ago to double-check where we were anchoring and we went back to the same mostly protected place between Brewster islands. So there we were, 5 miles away from Boston and yet the only neighbors were birds.

For dinner we had pasta, eggplant that had been sailing with us for a couple of weeks and other remaining vegetables. Simple and yet very tasty!

Boat hand off

My friends Sasha and Alex agreed to take Salty Ginger from Boston and sail her back to Rhode Island for winter storage. That meant a complete boat hand over with packing, cleaning, doing laundry, picking up cars from Plymouth; in short a busy day. Also, it was hot.

Alla took the kids for a walk while David and Irina went to Plymouth to get cars. That gave me time to start draining the water tank that still had lots of carbon particles. I set up a hose to siphon water out of the tank, but the rolling waves from passing boats kept disrupting the water flow. In the end Sasha and I got the tank almost dry and mostly particle free. However, once we started to fill it up a few more got washed out. Definitely an end in sight to this nightmare, but probably not safe yet to remove the rag "prefilter".

By the time we finished the hand over and all the tasks it was 3:30, so after a quick shower we left Boston to spend the evening with Irina's brother's family. Quite a stressful day, but the memories of a wonderful vacation will stay with us much longer!