The Clusterfuck in Cleveland

The Clusterfuck in Cleveland

Wednesday 30th September 2020

Well Gloria was right, it was a bit of a rough night as a strong cold front moved through. I’m not sure what time the wind really picked up but by 5 am the boat was rocking and rolling, the wind was screaming and I was fully awake. I got up and put on our instruments and the wind was gusting 25-35 knots. There was quite a lot of noise coming from the cockpit and I realized that we hadn’t taken down our bimini (sun shade). It was being buffeted by the wind and one of the stainless steel poles had become disconnected. I managed to fold it up and thankfully no damage, but I was soaked from the rain by the time I finished. I dragged my duvet into the main cabin and settled in to start reading about the “Clusterfuck in Cleveland”. For once this didn’t relate the performance of the Cleveland Browns but rather the complete shit-show that was last night’s first Presidential debate. Did anyone watch it? I personally did not and I’m glad that I missed it. I’d rather have all my wisdom teeth extracted through my rear end than spend one second listening to the orange-headed turd. 

The rest of the morning was a lazy affair as the winds continued to blow, albeit not so strongly, and neither of us fancied a wet dinghy ride to shore. But this afternoon we did get some laundry done as well as completing another coat of varnish on the toe-rail. We only have a couple of days left before we start our journey south and we may be getting close to finishing our current list of jobs. The truth is that the "to-do list" never gets finished and when the day comes we will just leave! 

Hope you are all doing well.

Mike

East Greenwich, RI

There is a restaurant in East Greenwich called Raku Sakura that sells excellent sushi ... yummy. They are currently only open for takeaway but that suits us just fine.

Thoughts about Language

Thoughts about Language

Tuesday September 29th 2020

Today I read an interesting article about efforts to recover the language of the Wompanoag.  The language of this native group (Wôpanâak) lingered in the place names that we know in Massachusetts and Rhode Island - Seekonk, Pawtucket and Potowomut. However, the spoken language has been lost for many generations.  One of the early efforts to convert these Indigenous people to Christianity resulted in a translation of the Bible into Wôpanâak.  Ironically, this Bible (printed in 1663) has helped linguists find words and word roots.  Help with pronunciation has come from similarities to other Algonquian languages that are still spoken.  Initially a small group of adults worked hard to learn the language and are now teaching children of the Mashpee Wompanoag tribe.

After lunch we went for a walk and got flu shots (surprisingly painful). We decided to walk down to the yacht club and found my brother Paul scrubbing the decks of his boat.  His boat was due to be hauled out tomorrow but there is severe weather moving in overnight and no boats will be taken out of the water on Wednesday.  One thing led to another and we wound up having a wide-ranging discussion about vocabulary, euphemisms, the importance of education, the state of politics and many more topics. Happily Fran was able to join us and keep us from becoming too ridiculous.

We got back to the boat after 8 pm.  In the dark, we set about getting ready for the weather ahead by tying a second mooring line to the boat and hoisting the engine off the dinghy and onto the rail of the big boat.  The forecast includes such delights as severe thunderstorms at 2 am and high winds and rain through Wednesday morning.  Another good night of sleep on the way? 

Gloria

East Greenwich, RI

One Leaf

Two Leaves

Three Leaves

Where is home?

Where is home?

Sunday 27 – Monday 29 September

We’ve been busy! Yesterday we drove up to our house in Sudbury to do some work in the garden. We have lots of pots filled with Canna and Cala lilies and we had promised our tenants that we would come round and tidy them up before the winter sets in. Neither the plants nor the pots (if left full) would survive being left outside in the extreme New England winter so we were keen to empty them. It turned out to be a great afternoon because we got to meet the entire Masurel family – Vianney, Dorothee and their four children, Maxime, Lise, Eulalie and Eloi. We had only met Vianney and Dorothee very briefly in the past, but not their children and it was real pleasure to spend a little time with them. We feel very fortunate to have such a lovely family staying in our house. Whilst we were there word got out that we were back visiting and several of our neighbors dropped by to say hello, which was great. Our trip up to Sudbury also allowed us to meet up with our friends Stew and Susan for a couple of hours in the morning for a walk through a local woodland reservation. Again it was lovely to see them. Before we headed back to the boat we stopped in at Costco in Waltham and bought some additional supplies for the weeks ahead. All told it was a busy day and we were ready to sit down, relax and watch the Patriots beat the Raiders. Ahhh ... happy days!

I asked Gloria whether it made her homesick visiting our house. She said that it wasn’t so much that she missed the house but seeing our neighbors made her realize how much she misses them. Which just shows you that it’s really all about the people. One of the nice things about being in East Greenwich is that we have been able to meet up with some of our family and friends. Tonight we are looking forward to having Rod and Sue over for dinner and on Saturday our friend Will arrives to join us for the journey down to New York. It will also be great having Will travelling with us next week. All of this helps us feel a little less isolated in the Covid era. In 2012 when we headed down the East Coast via the Intra Coastal Waterway we were surprised how many other boats were doing the same journey and it really enhanced the experience to meet up and interact with fellow boaters. We wonder how different it will be this year. We can rationalize that there could be more boats or fewer boats because of the pandemic, but it’s hard to imagine that the interactions will be as easy as they were on that previous trip. 

Mike

East Greenwich, RI

A baby snapping turtle we encountered on our walk with Stew and Susan

A truly fierce reptile ... all of two inches long!

Sue, Rod and Gloria at the table in our main cabin ... after all the eating and drinking were done

Kung Pao Toast

Kung Pao Toast

Saturday 26 Sept 2020

We eat well on the boat. We have a fridge, freezer, 3-burner stove with an oven and a good supply of cooking equipment. More importantly, as you know doubt realize, we like to eat! So I was a bit surprised this morning when Gloria said that toast was the most interesting meal we have on board. I asked her why and she explained as follows. “Well we have no toaster and so we use our large non-stick pot to brown the bread. The toast comes out flavored differently depending what we cooked in the pot the night before.” It’s true that this is our favorite go-to pot, we pretty much use it for everything and if you have cooked curry in it the night before then you do get an aroma of Indian spices the following morning. Obviously we do wash it out before re-using it, but I hadn’t realized that the toast was so infused with the flavors of last nights dinner! I guess I’m just insensitive!!!

Today we started applying varnish to the teak toe-rail, which needed attention. We also went out for a brief motor around to adjust our Wind-Pilot self-steering. I think it’s set up as best as we can do – now it’s just a question of seeing how well we can get it to work and building confidence that we can let it take care of the steering without us fretting about it. For this we need more sea-room and more time. It was super crowded out in the bay today, perhaps not surprising on a lovely Saturday at the end of the season.

Mike

East Greenwich, RI

Looking down the companionway steps into the galley and main cabin (behind the sink)

East Greenwich Bay at night 1

East Greenwich Bay at night - the view from the stern

East Greenwich Bay at night - the view from the stern

Brightwork Blues and Fantastic Sailing

Brightwork Blues and Fantastic Sailing

Friday 25 September 2020

We started the day with some sanding and scraping on our “brightwork”.  I’m not at all sure why the varnished teak areas of the boat are called that—maybe it just sounds better than teak. In some areas the varnish was lifting away from the wood, a sign that water has been getting in somehow.  So we needed to do something and we started on it today.  Varnishing is not my idea of a good time and, by all indications, Mike is not too thrilled about it either.  My theory is that boat enjoyment is inversely proportional to the square feet of teak that you have on your vessel. (I feel that I should insert an equation here but I will spare you)  Thus, almost no teak—you have a wonderful time with your boat.  Lots of teak and your boat enjoyment takes a big hit.  After a couple of hours we quit for the day.  It will still be there tomorrow...  

The day took a sharp turn for the better when we joined my brother Rod for a sail on his boat “Summerfly”.  (By the way, Rod’s vessel has almost no teak on the outside at all.) We set off from the dock and motored out into Greenwich Bay. Despite the light winds, we decided to try to sail to Wickford.  As we went along, the wind speed increased and we were sailing up-wind beautifully with flat water.  After entering Wickford Harbor, we headed back to Greenwich Cove, somewhat concerned about the time.  We made swift progress back and even poled out the genoa and sailed ‘wing on wing’ for a large portion of the journey. We were pleased with ourselves as we managed to ‘smoke’ a larger boat sailing near us.  They even cut the two green buoys on the way back into the bay, but they didn’t manage to catch up with us.  Are we competitive? 

Gloria

East Greenwich, RI

Aboard Rod's boat"Summerfly", sailing back into East Greenwich cove

Gloria and Rod on "Summerfly"

Gloria at the helm shortly after her first America's Cup podium finish

Eating Pancakes in my PJs

Eating Pancakes in my PJs

Thursday 24 September 2020

I think we talked quite a lot about the cold north wind that was blowing for several days, but I have to say the last two days have been gorgeous. This morning we cooked blueberry pancakes for breakfast and ate them out in the cockpit. As you will gather from the title I was still in my PJs and it was plenty warm enough. It is like we went through a time warp and are back on a different planet.

We did use part of the day to drive up the closest REI camping store and bought some additional warm clothes ready for the cold months ahead as we make our way down the eastern seaboard / Intra Coastal Waterway.

This evening’s dinner became a little more entertaining when Gloria pointed out the pretty pink sky of sunset. When I looked out I noticed there was a fire on the shore. It appeared that the grass and vegetation close to the water was burning quite well. What was less obvious was whether the kids that were gathered around had started it or were trying to put it out (or both!). in any event some other boaters called 911 and the police and fire brigade arrived pretty quickly and put it out without much trouble. After dinner I took the dinghy ashore to get some night-time shots of the public docks that we have been using. I love low-light photography because the shots come out looking very different from the scene in front of your eyes, often in ways you don’t expect.

Mike

East Greenwich, RI

Grass fire on the banks of East Greenwich cove

East Greenwich public dock and launch ramp

East Greenwich public dock and launch ramp

Jumble-nyms?

Jumble-nyms?

Wednesday September 23, 2020

I have some weird ideas in the middle of the night.  Last night, I woke up with a headache.  While waiting for the i-buprofen to start helping, I was thinking about pairs of words that are made from the same letters.  We all know synonyms, homonyms etc.  I thought the pairs with the same letters but in different orders could be called jumble-nyms. A couple of examples might be: grab and garb; drab and brad, dog and god. It seemed perfectly reasonable in the middle of the night.  This morning, I wondered if it was just the headache that caused these troubling thoughts. I’m hoping for a more restful night.

Today, Mike worked on cleaning the lazarette (the very large locker off the cockpit). First he took everything out.  What a shocker that was.  It was impossible to move around the cockpit. I knew it was a big deep locker but I totally underestimated its holding capacity. It’s somewhat sobering to think about having “all that stuff” on the boat.  After Mike washed out the lazarette, he put everything back.  He is a hard worker...

In the afternoon, we went to the dock at Goddard Memorial State Park (some 490 acres!).  We had a nice walk through the woods along some bridle paths.  Mike speculated that we were probably walking the route of the cross-country race that Tasha participated in several times during high school.  The route was certainly a lot quieter today than it would have been on those other occasions, when it seemed there were thousands of students running.  In fact we actually saw a large deer on the path.

The thing that struck me about the park was how dry all the vegetation looks.  Admittedly it’s no longer the height of summer but the plants (weeds?) were all drooping and looked half dead.  The risk of fire must be quite high.

Gloria

East Greenwich

East Greenwich, RI at night - Toscana

East Greenwich, RI at night - Toscana (good for dessert!)

East Greenwich, RI at night - Quite a crowded outdoor dining scene for a Wednesday night

East Greenwich, RI at night - La Masseria

East Greenwich, RI at night - Rasa (great Indian food!)

East Greenwich, RI at night - classic fire station

The Cliff Walk, Newport

Tuesday 22nd September 2020

There are only so many days in row that you can work on boat jobs before you start going crazy. So today we took the day off and headed over to Newport to check out the “Cliff Walk”. It was blowing strongly from the north and we were impressed by the whitecaps and waves in Narragansett Bay as we crossed over the Jamestown and Newport bridges, but this was nothing compared to the swells rolling into second beach. There were lots of surfers out in the water making the most of the conditions. Personally I don’t see the appeal of the surfing … maybe in Hawaii where the water is warm … but in the cold New England water, no thanks. 

The cliff walk was really fun. We took a picnic and spent several hours wandering along the coast. The light wasn’t great for photography but the seas were spectacular. The Newport mansions are interesting to see and Salve Regina college, which is right there by the ocean is a beautiful campus. Adjacent to “The Breakers” mansion, appropriately named on a day like today, there was a section of the path that was only passable at the risk of getting drenched by spray. We were undecided whether to try it and whilst Gloria consulted a map, I took some photos, only to get drenched by the spray from a particularly large wave. We opted to head inland! 

After many days of cold north wind the weather is supposed to warm up over the next several days … hoorah!

Mike

Eats Greenwich, RI

2nd Beach Newport

The mansions, Newport

The cliff walk - railings

The cliff walk - pedestrian underpass

The cliff walk - pedestrian underpass (B&W)

The autumnal equinox

The autumnal equinox

Monday Sept 21, 2020

It’s technically the start of the autumn season but right here it feels like the start of winter.  The north winds have been strong for five days now.  It seems each morning is colder than the last.  When we were in Maine, I was saying that I didn’t have enough warm clothes.  Now, Mike is saying the same.  Maybe this will be the year with no autumn.  Usually we go right from winter to summer with no spring.  Now after one of the hottest, driest summers that anyone can recall, we go straight to winter....

Mike did a number of projects yesterday: Fixed the shower curtain, fixed the broken dorade surround and installed an alternative priming system to the holding tank pump.  Today we got an email about "port closure latches".  So now we have some of those on order.   These gizmos allow you to close the “windows” in the boat securely.  By turning the threaded plastic knob you can tighten the opening window against a gasket.  It’s all well and good until the plastic piece develops cracks.  If it actually fails, you can’t get the window closed tight.  No one wants to have salt water coming into the boat....

My personal accomplishment of the day was to sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan. What a nightmare this has been. It’s a long and complicated story, but basically because of Covid-19 it wasn’t possible to get an in-person appointment at the Department of Social Security and when my on-line attempts to register for Medicare couldn’t be completed I received help from a telephone consultation, which ended up with my account being registered with a temporary Rhode Island address rather than our full-time Massachusetts address. When it came to sign up for the Advantage plan, which is a state specific program, it wouldn’t find my account because of a mismatch of addresses. Today we were able to resolve that and complete the process … except in the confusion I ended up signing up for a different plan than we intended. So now we are stuck with that until the open enrollment period starts next month and we can change it for the following year. Could they make it any more complicated?

Today in addition to some land-based jobs, we took the boat into the dock.  We had three objectives: fill with diesel, pump out the holding tank and fill the water tanks.  The tough aspect in this case was that these activities are on different docks.  So that means coming in to one dock for the pump out and then untying and moving the boat to a second dock for fuel and water.  The stronger the wind (and/or current), the tougher the docking challenge.  The approach to the pump out dock went fine.  Once we had completed that task, we backed off the dock.  That’s an un-docking method that is less familiar to me, but it went just fine.  Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of traffic going past.  I imagine that most boaters might not be expecting the departure in reverse.  The second docking and undocking, similarly, went well.  The bonus was that we were able to give the topsides a wash down with fresh water.  This well go a long way to removing the salt that accumulates after those “spicy” sails. 

Then we went back up the cove to pick up the mooring once again.  Now we are resting and bracing for the big winds that are forecast for tomorrow that are a result of hurricane Teddy to the East.

Gloria

East Greenwich, RI

Football Standard Time

Football Standard Time

Sunday 20th September

Okay, so it’s really Monday morning but for the purposes of watching football we have adjusted our time zone to FST “Football Standard Time”. We purchased an NFL Game Pass subscription so that we can watch football games on our laptop / tablet. It seems to be working out well and you can watch any game, but only after it’s happened. Week 2 of the NFL season has the Patriots playing the Seahawks on Sunday night football and we wouldn’t be able to start watching the game until close to real midnight. So we went to bed and are going to watch the game as if it were live this morning.

Yesterday we got a couple more jobs completed. We installed a new rail for the shower curtain in the aft head and replaced the shower curtains in both bathrooms. The rail was broken and the curtains were moldy so a worthwhile job. The other thing we did was address the issue of our over-board septic pump-out system. Half the time the pump doesn’t prime properly which then requires that you disconnect the outlet hose from the pump and add water manually to prime the pump. This is the last thing you want to be doing (ever), but particularly when you are offshore and it's bumpy ... fighting with stiff 2" septic hoses whilst half upside down reaching into the cockpit locker ... yuk. So we installed a Y-valve above the pump and now to manually prime it all you would need to do is turn the valve, pour water into a conveniently placed hose, close the valve and switch on the pump. From what we have read this is a common problem with this pump and we did consider replacing it, but the alternatives are all the same design and so we think this is a more reliable solution. Of course we can't check it out until we are 3 miles off-shore.

It’s become really cold! We are now running our “Espar” diesel heating system in the mornings to warm up the boat. We have a second heating system based off the hot water tank. We’ve never used it but it may be time to try and learn how.

Mike

East Greenwich, RI

Our little Weems & Path lantern - creates a cozy glow and a little heat

I added this photo two days later when I cleaned the lazarette and had space to get a view of the septic system and the new manual priming system for the overboard pump.

A Sad Day

A Sad Day

Saturday 19 September 2020

This morning we awoke to the sad news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. She was an absolutely amazing woman and will be greatly missed. I already had grave misgivings about the future of this country, but the prospect that the current president, with his profound lack of ability and integrity, may get to appoint a third supreme court justice is just horrifying. As an American citizen I am obliged to say this is a “great country” (self-awareness and humility is frowned upon), but I can tell you that over the past three years I have grown to feel ashamed to be an American citizen. Just because a country is great at one moment in time is no guarantee that it will remain great … anyone with any awareness of world history knows that to be true. I believe that America can recover from Donald Trump’s lack of ability but may be irrevocably harmed by its acceptance of his lack of integrity. When it no longer matters whether the president speaks truth or lies, when facts and science become irrelevant and when anyone who disagrees with the administration is bullied and humiliated, then we are very far from being a great country. When the individuals that occupy other positions of leadership fail to stand up to abuses of power, we no longer have a “balance of power”.  When it’s more important to salute the flag than to address serious cultural and social issues then there is only one way to go and that’s down. 

On a more positive note, we had a lovely afternoon getting together with our friends Steve and Laura. They bought an Indian meal from a restaurant in Providence and we ate it in Goddard State Park, here in East Greenwich, sitting at a picnic table in the sunshine. We haven’t seen Laura and Steve since before the pandemic started and this was a really good way to meet up in a socially distanced way. The food was also amazing!

Mike 

Meeting up with Steve and Laura in Goddard State park - awesome Indian food - socially distanced!

Steve showing what happens when you avoid the barber for 7 months during a pandemic!

Glad to be back in Narragansett Bay

Glad to be back in Narragansett Bay

September 18, 2020

We awoke to the sound of the wind in the rigging of our boat.  This prompted us to look at the weather forecast.  Right now there is some kind of a front off the east coast that is creating strong northwest winds. This system is going to merge with Hurricane Teddy over the next several days.  The weather map used colors for wind speed, with a bright pink color for winds over 50 knots.  There is a LOT of bright pink on the map for the next week or so. We are counting our blessings to be back in Narragansett Bay, not facing open water passages....

I find myself wondering if this really is a more severe hurricane season than in the past. Perhaps, it’s just moving onto the boat that has us more tuned into the severe weather.  If I’m honest, I think there is a large component of the latter.  However, I recall that 2012 was considered a very active hurricane season and that year we were pinned down for several days by Hurricane Sandy (at a lovely marina in North Carolina).  Because one of those days was my birthday, I clearly remember that it was near the end of October.  Here we are in September and already we have Teddy and Wilfred as named storms.  It sounds to me like this season is a real Hum-Dinger.  

As it was windy this morning, we pottered around on the boat.  Michael, the chef extraordinaire, worked on making rouladen.  This is a dish the Mike’s mom used to make (Edyth called it Beef Olives).  It’s thin slices of beef wrapped around bacon, onion and pickle with a dab of mustard.  The rolls are seared on the outside and then simmered in a rich sauce.  It’s late afternoon and I must be getting hungry, I guess.  Right now the chef is working on improvements to the lazy jacks system, so I won’t be enjoying rouladen for a while yet.

Gloria

The "PassageWeather" forecast for Tuesday afternoon. You wouldn't want to be offshore of Cape Cod !

Mike making Rouladen in the galley. We had a joint of beef in the freezer that we brought from home and wanted to use up. We now have enough Rouladen for a week!

The rolling-process. Note the 12 inch black steel pipe that we used to pound the beef filet ... the best things on a boat have multiple uses !

Ready to start dinner ...

 

The Real Boating Life

The Real Boating Life

Thursday 17 September 2020

If only every day was lounging in the cockpit, swimming in crystal clear water, drinking cocktails whilst watching the sun dipping below the horizon. Well today was a real boating life day - catching up on three weeks of laundry, re-filling the propane tanks, a little grocery shopping and “polishing” the diesel in the forward fuel-tank. It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun but it was actually a really good day. The dinghy was packed as we headed to shore in the morning, three sacks of laundry, two propane tanks and a bag of trash. Fortunately, we have our car parked at the dock on shore. (Rod and Sue are looking after it whilst we are away but kindly brought it down to East Greenwich for us to use the next two weeks.)

By noon we have completed some of our tasks so we made sandwiches and headed round to Paul and Fran’s to catch up with them over lunch. As ever, there was a lot of lively conversation and we ended up staying most of the afternoon. Once back on the boat we were keen to complete the cleaning of the forward diesel tank before settling down for the evening. With many jobs on the boat, half the battle is clearing stuff out of the way so that you can get to what you are trying to work on. If you are smart you remembered to get the tools you needed out of their storage area before you piled everything else on top of it! The forward diesel tank is under the V-berth where we sleep and having stripped the beds for the laundry it made sense to tackle this job before putting the sheets back on.

As some of you will know we had problems on our last trip with contaminated fuel leading to sludge in the fuel lines and all sorts of issues. Since then we have emptied and cleaned the fuel tanks by hand and I also built a rig to “polish” the fuel. This consists of a PVC tube to suck dirty fuel out of the bottom of the tank, a high capacity filter, a pump and a hose to return filtered (“polished”) fuel to the tank. It’s all contained a plastic box and it’s relatively easy to set up and seems to work well. We “polished” our main fuel tank when we launched this summer and we have seen no water or dirt coming through from that tank even when stirred up in rough conditions. However, on a bumpy day a few weeks ago we noticed that the forward tank had some water in it that was coming through to the separator. Rather than wait for that to grow bacteria and sludge we wanted to address the problem directly. So having cleaned that up we are now in a position to refill both tanks and add fresh biocide to keep them pristine. 

We celebrated completing these jobs with a delicious dinner: Swordfish sauteed in butter with leeks, lemon zest and ginger, served with white rice and homegrown tomatoes from Paul and Fran’s garden. Yummy!

So the real boating life isn’t so bad!

Mike

 

A full load in the dinghy - 3 sacks of laundry, 2 propane tanks and 1 bag of trash

The propane locker at the stern of the boat - 3 x 10 pound aluminum tanks, one in use - one hooked up ready to use and one in reserve. We tend to use about one tank every month

The fuel polishing rig that runs off 12 volts DC

Portrait of one of the pair of friendly swans that came by the boat in the late afternoon

Swordfish sauteed in butter with lemon zest, ginger and leeks. The tomatoes were from Paul and Fran's garden ... thanks!

The Big Finish

The Big Finish

Wednesday, Sept 16, 2020

Do you remember how fireworks displays always finished with lots of bursts and noise all at once?  Well today seemed like the sailing equivalent of the big finish.  

Checking the forecast this morning, we noted that there was now a Small Craft Advisory in place for Narragansett Bay for this afternoon. We think of the Bay as being relatively calm and familiar.  It’s not often that there is a SCA for inside the bay.  Certainly, it’s not what we were expecting on our final day of the “shake-down” cruise.

Even as we ate breakfast, we could hear that the wind was picking up.  Our problem was the currents through the narrows/bridges at the top of the Sakonnet River.  Favorable flow would not commence until 11:40 am, meaning that our journey back to Greenwich Bay would take place in the afternoon.  We decided to leave early and hope to motor through the adverse current. The winds continued to strengthen, touching 23kts at one point. Rather than try to sail, we wimped out and motor-sailed with the mainsail and the engine!  We were on the mooring by about 1 pm. 

The “shake-down” cruise certainly put us through our paces.  We experienced no-wind, strong wind, fog, big seas and benign conditions.  We did plenty of anchoring drill, picked up a few moorings, generally experienced life on the water.  We have a few (or more likely many) things on our “to-do” list.  Thankfully most of these are tweaks or improvements rather than repairs of broken equipment.

Tonight we are going into East Greenwich to get pizza!

Gloria

41 39.438 N, 71 26.736 W

no photos today

Back in Narragansett Bay

Back in Narragansett Bay

Tuesday 15th September 2020

It blew hard last night, with gust over 25 knots. The boat creaked and groaned a lot and we had to take the outboard motor off the dinghy in the dark prior to going to bed, but we were safe and warm on our mooring in Cuttyhunk harbor. Having just extended our Verizon cell phone plan we watched a Netflix film in the evening. We were both nervous about todays passage from Cuttyhunk to the Sakonnet River. With a “small craft advisory” in place due to strong northerly winds and swells form hurricane Paulette near Bermuda, we both feared that conditions might be gnarly, similar to what we experienced rounding Cape Ann last week. It turned out to be an absolutely delightful motor sail in light easterly winds and the swell, such as it was, was of such long period as to be almost undetectable. 

It feels super-chill to be back in Narragansett Bay, familiar territory, no ocean swells, just a short trip from our home-port of East Greenwich. We need to get back; we have a few jobs that we need to get done, including the laundry mountain. More critical is that we have just about enough milk for morning coffee and I think I’m down to my last beer! I see a lot of cleaning and shopping in our future.

p.s. As I write this the water ran out in our starboard tank. That means we used 60 gallons of fresh water in 13 days after we filled up in Rockland, ME. That’s less than 5 gallons a day – not bad! We have another 60 gallons in our port tank so we could go another couple of weeks, but we will have the opportunity to refill in East Greenwich and can afford to be a little less sparing.

Mike

41 33.859 N, 71 12.957 W

Yesterday we came across some flowering shrubs that had an incredible variety of bees and other insects feeding on them ... this shot of a wasp

... this shot of a ladybug

Sakonnet Lighthouse - as we head north up the Sakonnet River, Narragansett Bay, RI

High Point Light - Sakonnet River, Narragansett Bay, RI

A changed place

A changed place

Monday, September14, 2020

 

Yesterday we thought that there were a lot of moorings free in the inner harbor at Cuttyhunk and tonight there is even more space available. I think of the 65 town moorings there are less than 15 that are occupied. When we came here in August there were no moorings available by sunset.  Today there was plenty of space at the dinghy dock.  Typically you have to push boats around to be able to get to the dock. There were hardly any people to been seen walking around on shore.  What a difference from our visit only a little over a month ago.

 

We set off to walk to the shellfish farm on the south-west end of the island.  Our path took us past a pickup truck parked outside the house with the big “Trump 2020” sign.  I noticed that the truck had no license plate on the back.  When we got to the front, I turned and spotted the plate on the front.  Facing forward again, I spotted the same numbers on the rear plate of the next pickup along.  I pointed this out to Mike who said “that’s interesting”.  I replied “interesting and illegal”. 

 

This evening sitting in the cockpit we heard sounds akin to thunder.  We figured out that it was waves crashing on the beach opposite the channel into the harbor.  From time to time we could see spray over the tops of the dunes in that direction.  This is presumably the start of the swells from Hurricane Paulette.  The NOAA forecast looks quite dire for wave heights for the next couple of days.  We are planning to make the hop back to Narragansett Bay tomorrow, hopefully without seeing the higher end of the predicted “4 to 7 foot seas”.

 

On the National Weather Service site, they explain about wave heights.  The prediction is for the average of the highest third of the waves.  The disclaimer goes on to say that individual waves could be more than twice the height of the predicted range.  That’s a bit sobering, but in fairness the period of the waves is also important, so we would expect “4-7 foot waves” with a period of 13 seconds to be much easier than the ~5 foot waves with a period of 4 seconds that we encountered on Friday. We typically get our marine forecasts from three sources - NOAA, Buoy-Weather and Passage-Weather. They each give you a different perspective, such as wave period in Buoy-weather, but it’s not always easy to form a single consistent picture.

 

Gloria

 

41 25.532 N, 70 55.476 W

Wild-flower - that we collected on our walk today then photographed back on the boat

The reverse side of the same wild-flower - photographed back on the boat

The leaves are starting to turn color and fall

The leaves are starting to turn color and fall

Re-shooting old photos

Re-shooting old photos

 

Sunday 13 September 2020

 

As you no doubt realized, I like taking photos! However, if you take into account all of our travels on Cotinga, we’ve been living aboard for a long time now and it can be quite challenging to think of shots that might be new and different from what I’ve taken before. This is particularly true when we spend extended periods of time without going ashore – the boat hasn’t changed that much over the past 8 years! So sometimes I end up re-taking shots that I have done in the past and seeing if I can do them better. Today was a case in point. We needed to leave Duxbury fairly early so that we could make the Cape Cod Canal with favorable currents. But I also knew, based on a photo that I took back in 2012, that the Duxbury lighthouse is quite photogenic against the sunrise. (I hadn’t appreciated that it was actually the very same day 8 years ago!) Photography is a lot about being in the right place at the right time and on that previous occasion it was purely by chance that we came around Duxbury lighthouse backlit by the rising sun. Today we planned our timing deliberately to try and be behind the lighthouse just as the sun was coming up. We were up at 5am in the dark and on the move at 6am. Our timing worked out pretty much as intended but in truth we might have gotten better light if we’d been there ten minutes earlier. With Gloria at the helm I was able concentrate on the photography and shoot several shots of the lighthouse looking into the sunrise and also some looking back. If you go back to the blog entry “To Windward” for Sept 13 2012 you can take a look at the photos I took them and decide yourself whether I did better this time. Personally, I think not … !

 

The rest of the day went really well. We motor-sailed into the light south-east wind for a couple of hours to reach the Cape Cod Canal, passed through it in less than an hour, then had another great sail on a beam reach most of the way to Cuttyhunk before the wind petered out. Tonight we are again on a mooring in the inner haobor. It’s super comfortable and Gloria made meatloaf for dinner that was delicious. I also made a loaf of Irish Soda bread that we have not yet tried. When it gets dark we are hoping to watch the Patriots-Dolphins season opener on “NFL GamePass” if the cell phone reception is up to it.

 

Mike

 

41 25.532 N, 70 55.476 W 

Duxbury Light at Sunrise

Duxbury light at Sunrise (looking west)

A multitude of fishing boats depart Duxbury at sunrise

Cotinga heading into the sunrise