Day 294, Year 8: Woods Hole to Tarpaulin Cove
Date: Saturday, August 24, 2013
Weather: Gorgeous, Gorgeous Day, Winds NE 10-20
Location: Anchored in Tarpaulin Cove, Elizabeth Islands, Massachusetts
What a gorgeous day! We didn’t make our destination of Menemsha on the west side of Martha’s Vineyard, but we’ll get there tomorrow. Today we had heavy current against us and were trying to sail dead downwind—not the easiest point of sail. It was too rocky and rolly to do any fishing with Sam and Jonah so we decided to stop early at Tarpaulin and go fishing–and what a good decision. The fishing expedition was a huge success. We followed the directions of Sue McIntosh at West Marine and within seconds of lowering the first line, Jonah had a bite. We were fishing for scup as not much else is biting right now, and we caught scup, scup, and more scup. After Jonah caught the first one, Sam landed two at once, and then Jonah caught another. And so it went. It was so much fun and made the early stop a definite winner. After the fishing frenzy, we went to shore to walk and play. We took the cleaned fish in and scraped the scales off on shore to keep from making a fishy mess on Windbird’s deck. It was low tide and Jonah scoured the beach looking for sea glass while Sam went in circles with his boogey board. By going in circles he says he makes his own wake, but he looks like a puppy chasing his tail. Ollie followed along, doing everything just like his big brothers. Then it was back to Windbird to fix dinner. Jonah doesn’t eat fish and we couldn’t convince Sam to try the scup, so this might be the end of our fishing career. But we had no trouble getting the boys to eat S’mores after dinner. We toasted the marshmallows on the grill which worked great.
This morning before we left Woods Hole we had a good time on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s (WHOI’s) dock. Sam and Jonah really enjoyed seeing and hearing about Challenger, as did I. I couldn’t believe the small size of the capsule that holds the human occupant. Talk about claustrophobia. But it was definitely worth the time to see the vehicle. Me? I’ll stick to snorkeling.
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| 130824 Day 294 Cape Cod, USA–Woods Hole to Tarpaulin Cove |
