Friday, August 27, 2010

End of summer Mass Bay Tour

Day 1 - Boston -> Plymouth

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36 miles to go. Very low wind out of the north-norhtwest today. We're sure hoping it's not in this direction when it's time to go from Provincetown to Gloucester. The wind was right on our back the whole way. Since it was such a light wind, we sailed most of the way to plymouth with the sails wing and wing.

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Latest version of OpenCPN installed and tracking our course from data received over serial port from the GPS in the cockpit.

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Boston fading away


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Linda's toes with Plymouth Light in the background

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Our Neighbor for the night in Plymouth

Plymouth Yacht Club set us up with a great mooring very close to the dinghey dock. It was a quiet harbor for sleeping and the town itself is pretty fun. We'll definitely go back there.

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Linda's People were on the Mayflower. Just ask her

Day 2: Plymouth to Provincetown

It's pretty much... east to provincetown. We had a north wind (still) coming over the beam which is our most preferred wind direction. However it was still a pretty soft wind. We started out with best intentions to sail all the way, although as would be the case every day of this trip, the wind really softened up in the middle (hot) part of the day.

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Linda was fascinated by these guys'... uh.. boat. yeah that's it... the boat. Actually it was a pearson 33 proving once again that size does not matter.

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Leaving Plymouth Harbor

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Linda studies Provincetown in our cruising guide

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Almost there. By this point, we had been motoring for a couple hours and just wanted the noise to stop

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That's our mooring field for the next two nights dead ahead. We had about a 1/2 mile dinghey ride to the dock this time. Flyer's boat rental maintains a bunch of transient moorings. They number each row in series of hundreds. We were in the 500's row which is about the nearest one that is in deep enough water for us.

Plymouth harbor was quiet and scenic. There was easy dinghy access to the beach which faces the town on the point.

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Welcome to Provincetown!

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A short dinghey ride over to the beach opposite of the town

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Self portrait

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Linda on the Rocks


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Fujin in Provincetown Harbor (photo taken from the dinghy)


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Bob cools off in Provincetown Harbor


Day 4: Provincetown to Gloucester... er make that Scituate

(What about Day 3? we played Tourist in Provincetown and stayed a second night there)

The weak north-northwest wind continued today. We got underway from Provincetown at 5:30AM to give enough time for the trip to Gloucester but it quickly became obvious that we couldn't make it. The highest we could point was taking us way off course. Plan B was to point as high as possible and get to the edge of of the Stellwagen bank so we might see some whales and then turn west to Scituate.

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As we headed north from Provincetown, the wind started moving a bit westerly but it was too weak and too late to make it to Gloucester. We did our westerly tack and within about an hour the wind totally died. Once again, there were hours on the engine to come.

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Sunrise over Provincetown

And then look who showed up!

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Our friend appeared far from stellwagen bank - actually closer to Scituate. It surfaced and dove probably 10 times near us.


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Approaching Scituate Harbor on a very hot afternoon with no wind.

Scituate - roughly translated into modern English means "Don't spend any money here". The first inkling of this comes at the harbormaster. He'll only accept cash for the transient slip. Yay - let's walk to an ATM and back and spend an extra $2 penalty fee. I'm sure most transient guests carry wads of cash around while boating. Sheesh. He charged us $3/foot for the slip which is typical. It would have been nice if the slip itself was at least half as long as the boat! I wished I could have paid by the foot for the slip length instead.

We did find a great restaurant for dinner. On the way we spotted a place called Phins which had breakfast hours starting at 7AM. The next morning, we got up and about and were lusting for a good breakfast at Phins. Well... we got to Phins and found door locked, lights out, and a sign on the door saying "Closed, be back at 7:00". It was 7:45. So began our odyssey to find breakfast. It was already in the 90s, we had no water with us and we both had to pee. After-all, we were only walking a block to Phins. We asked a few people where we could go and amazingly no one had any idea where one could buy breakfast in Scituate except for... Phins. We ended up walking the mile along the harbor looking for someplace to eat. Nothing... We did notice a bakery/cafe place which we figured would at least have coffee and muffins but when we got there, it was "open" alright, but nobody was inside (including employees) and even the coffee makers were not switched on. What a bizarre town!

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On our quest for breakfast

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This place is "open"

The only game in town appeared to be... Dunkin Donuts. Unbelievable. So that's where we went and guess what... the line was about 20 people long. 20 people waiting for crap dunkin donuts breakfast and every other restaurant in town closed. Makes perfect sense.

I'm not in a hurry to return to Scituate.


Day 5: Scituate to Boston

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As we got ready to leave Scituate, we noticed the flags blowing from exactly the direction of Boston. Being only 17 miles or so, we were determined to try to actually sail the whole leg this time even if it meant heading far off-course from Boston and doing one large tack.

It started out as pretty nice sailing. Not thrilling but not too slow either. As the hours went by, we found the wind lifting us toward Boston. If it held up, we wouldn't need to tack at all. But, like the previous 4 days, it got very hot in the mid afternoon and the wind died. We had to do about the last 5 miles under motor.

By the time we got in around the Boston Harbor Islands, we were so hot, we needed to go for a swim. So we grabbed a mooring off of George's island and cooled off for a bit.

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Bob plays a little guitar


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The poop plant - we're almost home

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Cooling off at George's Island

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Overnight to Manchester, MA

Work schedules and weather finally came together and allowed our first overnight since bring Fujin home back in May!

Here we are just after arriving in Manchester Harbor. We had very heavy wind on the way up. Fujin was a bit overpowered even with a reefed main and half furled Genoa.

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We brought reading material but ended up hitting the town instead

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Here are some shots of the beautiful scenery around Manchester

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Relaxed...
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