Day 283, Year 7: Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket
Date: Friday, August 17, 2012
Weather: Beautiful Day, Beautiful Sailing, Wind SW 10-15
Latitude: 41 17.372 N
Longitude: 070 04.927 W
Location: Nantucket, Massachusetts
We motored out of Vineyard Haven this morning and found very little wind
waiting for us out in the Sound. But once we got to the end of
Chappaquiddick, the wind filled in and we had a beautiful sail the rest of
the way. As we neared Nantucket we watched the various fleets of boats
racing. Each grouping raced in their defined areas and just about the time
we were ready to head into the narrow channel leading into the Nantucket
Harbor, the first fleet finished racing for the day and headed in as well.
Add to that the ferries heading out and you have a bit of craziness in that
channel. Alan was at the wheel and he did a great job of getting us in
safely. Then we had the challenging task of trying to figure out where to
anchor. The mooring field here is huge and it was totally full. We were
pulling the dinghy behind us and forgot to pull it up tight. So at one
point we got it caught on a mooring ball and had to untie it and let it go.
By the time we headed around to try and pick it up, it had loosened itself
and was floating closer to us. So pick-up wasn’t a big deal. But at that
point, I decided to call the Harbor Master and get some instructions on
where we might find a place to anchor. We got our directions, found a spot,
and put down two anchors as suggested by the Harbor Master’s office.
There’s a lot of eel grass here and we were told that plow and spade anchors
don’t hold very well. The suggestion was to put out a Danforth anchor. We
don’t have a Danforth, but we do have a Fortress which is designed just like
a Danforth but is made of aluminum so that it is light weight. We have
carried that Fortress around the world and never used it, so this spring we
disassembled it and stored it away. Well, this afternoon we dug it out and
put it out as well. We think our spade dug it right away and we probably
didn’t need the additional anchor, but better to be safe than sorry. After
the hour of anchoring activity, it was after 5 pm. We decided that rather
than fighting the winds and heading into town for showers and then dinner
that we would stay on the boat and shower and eat here. We are supposed to
get rain tonight and possibly tomorrow as well, but we will go into town in
the morning to do daytime explorations of the island. There are LOTS of
extra people here for Raceweek, but they will be out racing all day, leaving
the town to the normal number of tourists. On Sunday we will head back to
Woods Hole. The wind report is mediocre, but we’ll hope for a little
miracle and some nice winds to blow us back home.
We have had a number of equipment failures on this trip. It is almost like
all of our electronics have decided to retire at one time. I’ll write a
more detailed description of the problems once we are home, but I’ll just
list the issues here. And by the way, short does not equal cheap. Each of
these issues is quite costly.
GPS is not receiving communication from Mark’s computer, so we don’t have
electronic navigation except for the display on the GPS. This meant digging
out the paper charts and parallel rules so we could plot our course today.
Radar display screen has malfunctioned. The unit works but we can’t see
anything on the screen. This makes the radar useless.
Display screen on the single-sideband radio no longer works. This could
mean replacing the radio. Ugh! That is really expensive.
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| 120817 Day 283 Cape Cod, USA–Arrival in Nantucket with Alan and Helaine |
