The third running of the OCC’s ‘Southern New England Rally’ was a success – especially as we managed to pass management of the event to our good friends Peter and Patty on Serendipitous, and they did a super job. We ended up with 14 boats, about half of them foreign flagged. The cruise took us from Newport to Bristol then up Buzzards Bay to Woods Hole, across to Martha’s Vineyard and ending at Beverly Yacht Club in Marion over the course of 2 weeks. We had a great time with the varied group, enjoying dinghy drifts, beach barbecues, sunny and rainy-day games – and of course, plenty of sun-downers!

Dressed for July 4th

Boozy Raft-Up

Now it’s time to take a little break from cruising and get Toodle-oo! back into tip-top condition so we ‘sailed’ her back to Bristol as a staging area before we head into New England Boatworks to spend altogether far too much money! Our “Sail” from Marion was mostly motoring (10 hours! – eugh!) and for a good portion we were in thick fog so watching AIS and Radar carefully. It was fortunate that we were vigilant as we came very close to having a head on collision with another boat on a reciprocal course – I threw the helm over and we missed ‘Adagio’ by about 10 feet!!! (Interesting tidbit: Toodle-oo!’s previous name was Adagio!)

We made it back and are now sitting on a friend’s mooring in Bristol, getting ready for the next few weeks of TLC…