An entirely different day
Saturday Sept 12th 2020
I set off with some trepidation today. Having been seasick and frightened yesterday, I feared that today would bring more of the same. The forecast this morning had moderated to 10-15 knots of wind from the east, seas 3ft. When we got up, the wind seemed to be from the north or northeast, throwing further doubt on the forecast. We set out with Duxbury as our objective with a possible cut out at Scituate.
Once we were a bit further off shore, the wind was ENE at 12-15kts for most of the day. The seas were probably 3 feet but so much more regular! We sailed on a “nearly” beam reach. The boat seemed to handle the waves well. No water came into the cockpit. We just zoomed along with glorious sunshine. (We were mostly making about 7 knots)
We spent some of the day trying to get our wind steering system working. At times it would steer the boat well. At other times we would be a long way off course and a considerable time would pass before the heading was acceptable. The easy conditions did allow us to fool around with it for quite a while. I imagine that our track across Massachusetts Bay would have looked like the “drunkard’s path.” Eventually we went back to hand steering *. I took a short turn at the wheel and found it quite heavy work to keep the boat on course. No surprise that the wind steering was struggling. We think we have some tweaks that will make it work better.
Now we are anchored in Duxbury after seven hours of sailing. We are feeling pretty tired but pleased with the day’s progress. Hopefully, we will be able to get an early start tomorrow and transit the Cape Cod Canal.
Gloria
* We started hand steering when we got a radio call from the coast guard (we think) noting that we were approaching a Boston deep-water anchorage buoy and we should keep a minimum of a quarter mile away. A few thoughts ... firstly, were they tracking us on AIS and / or by drone (which I thought I saw later); secondly, were they so concerned by our wild S-shaped course as the WindPilot steered us across the Bay that they felt they needed to call us, and if it wasn't that why did they call us?
42 00.397 N, 70 38.537 W
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