Day 208, Year 9: Strike That, Reverse It
Date: Saturday, May 17, 2014
Weather: Heavy Rain Early, Then Clouds, Fog, Sunshine, Wind
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
Yesterday’s log was named “Gearing Up for a Weekend of Work.” Based on weather reports, I reported that we had decided to not move the boat this weekend. Instead we were going to spend the weekend doing many work jobs on the boat that need to be done. Well, you can strike that and reverse it. We are now on a mooring in Quissett Harbor, our new home for the summer. The weather report was right on with heavy rain at 7 am, but three hours later at 10 o’clock, the rain was long gone, the wind seemed to have died down a bit, and the sun was coming out. Mark and I looked at each other and then I asked the question, “Should we take advantage of the weather and the 10:30 am high tide and get out of ‘Dodge’? We both knew the answer, so I called Heather and Jed to see if they wanted to come along. Heather was at a Master Planter’s garden plant sale with Sam and Jonah, but they made a quick turn-around, dropped off a car at Quissett, and were onboard Windbird before Mark and I had everything ready. We really weren’t prepared to leave, but it’s always a good test of your readiness ability to see if in one hour you can go from winter live aboard status to sailing status. Jonah was a bit tentative about going as he remembered the couple of bouts of mild seasickness he experienced last year. But he finally agreed to come along if we would motor and not put up the sails. We agreed and off we went. There will be plenty of time for sailing throughout the summer. By 11:30 am were untied and backing out of the slip. We were headed SW and had SW winds against current making for choppy seas. We did a little hobby horsing and then it either settled down or we got used to it. Everything inside the boat was fine, so I guess we live “ready to sail.” We had one unexpected experience on the way to when we motored into a wall of fog, but Sam and Jonah just had me get out the fog horn and we watched carefully. Just before we reached the entrance to Quissett Harbor, the fog lifted and the sun came out. It took us exactly two hours to motor the almost 9 miles from Fiddler’s Cove, so by 1:30 pm we were picking up a mooring. It was then time to put the motor on the dinghy so we could travel to shore and go get the two cars we left at Fiddler’s Cove. We had the motor professional winterized and thought it would just start right up, but when Mark tried to pull the cord to start the engine, it wouldn’t budge. A few tools and a half an hour later, he got the motor running. When he was working, I got a phone call. It was Jim Hammitt, a sailing friend from the Boston area who keeps his boat across Buzzard’s Bay at Padenarum. Jim is a Professor of Economics and Decision Making at Harvard and is Co-Director of Harvard’s Center for Risk Analysis. I could only hear every other word as my phone has almost no signal here, but I heard enough to understand that he was on shore watching Mark trying to start to the dinghy motor. I never did see him but he could certainly see us. The National Academy of Sciences Jonsson Conference Center is located on land just east of where we are moored and he was just getting ready to leave after attending a couple of days of meetings. Unfortunately we needed to get to Fiddler’s Cove to get the cars so Heather could go home and check on the two new hives of bees, so we didn’t have time to visit with Jim. But hopefully he and Suzie will sail over soon so we can visit. Since they won’t have to time their arrival to come through the Woods Hole Cut with the tide, we might see more of them this season. In fact, this harbor has almost immediate access to Buzzard’s Bay which doesn’t have the strong currents we had in the Vineyard Sound. So I think we will do more sailing this year. But because we are open to the bay, the dinghy ride to and from shore this summer will be rougher. Eel Pond in Woods Hole was so very protected and we were spoiled by that. So we have easier access to sailing, but potentially rougher and longer transportation to shore. You win some, you lose some.
While Mark, Jed, and I drove to Fiddler’s Cove to get the other two cars, Heather took all three boys for a walk out to the Knob and back to the beach. It is a lovely walk and I’m sure we’ll do it many, many times this summer. When we returned, Heather, Jed, and boys headed home and Mark and I headed into town to buy a new pair of sneakers for Mark. When he got home from work yesterday, his feet were killing him. So we are hoping a new pair of New Balance running shoes with super cushiony insoles will do the trick. Mark also bought a new water pump, so tonight we have running water once again. But we discovered one thing this afternoon that we hadn’t counted on, or maybe I should say that we had counted on. It doesn’t appear that we have access to fresh water at the dock. We just took that for granted. But we see no evidence that water is available. For a short time, I was convinced that we would have to find another home for the summer. How could we possibly live aboard without access to water to fill our tanks? I started thinking about sailing around the world and wondering how in the world we did that without easy access to water. Then I remembered that, oh yes, we have a watermaker. We haven’t used it since we returned here in 2011, but this harbor is open enough to have good clean water with no oil residue (or at least we hope that is the case), so we should be able to get the watermaker going and have a ready supply of H2O. And we have internet access. So life is good.
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| 140517 Day 208 Cape Cod, USA–Move from Fiddler's Cove to Quissett Harbor |
