We took advantage of a lull in business, to add a day to our three day ‘Labor Day’ weekend to enjoy our last sail of the season. Granted, this would be a little different in that we’d be doing it the old fashioned way – without electronics to show us the way. On the other hand, it’s a familiar route from Mattapoisett to Newport – and the power of iPhones these days is such that we weren’t truly without electronics…

The forecast for the Friday was for breezy conditions from the North East, giving us a nice downwind sail, pretty much all the way. Nice, since we didn’t want to run the engine much – in case there had been damage from the lightning strike. We initially sailed on main alone, and then unfurled the Genoa – and saw that the lightning strike must have tracked down the forestay… The furling system on the headstay is made up of a series of about 4 – 6ft aluminum extrusions bolted together along its length and the luff of the sail sits in a groove in that extrusion… Well, at every joint, the genoa displayed a burn mark – where apparently the lightning had sparked over the joints in the extrusion! Later in the day when we unfurled the inner jib, we saw the same thing!

The good thing about not having electronics is that there’s no wind speed indicator – so we just kept sailing along, faster and faster as the wind grew! It appears it must have been blowing about 25 knots, because as soon as we reached the last buoy and turned left to head up the east passage to Newport, we had to pull in the genoa and set the small jib and a reefed mainsail! We rocked our way into Newport and set the anchor down just 5¼ hours after leaving Mattapoisett on our expected 8 hour trip!

Jane and Mike on Jamin followed us in about an hour later, having taken just as long to cruise around from the Sakonnet – no doubt slowed by their dingy which they towed with the engine still attached…

We had a lovely weekend, in company with Paul and Marg aboard Paradise (an impressive 47ft Vagabond) and Ron and Ineke from Lily – both boats had participated on the OCC cruise we’d organized during the summer. Good to see these friends again.

Fishing Lines on the Commercial Wharf

Newport Harbor

We got to watch some old wooden boats attempting to race around Connanicut Island – though it turned out to be more of boat parking lot under Newport Bridge!

Wooden Boat Race

We sampled offerings from Newport’s Elks lodge and had a splendid dinner at a Mama Luisa’s (excellent!) – and the following evening Peter and Diane (Elixir) joined us for another memorable dinner at Sardellas.

On Labor Day Monday, after ‘Super Billy’ rescued(!) 2 boats from their anchor traps (Jamin’s evil swivel and Paradise’s cable fouled anchor), we sailed up the Narragansett bay to New England Boatworks – site of repairs and over wintering. We sailed dead downwind ‘up’ the bay, with genoa poled to one side and jib flown on the other. The sea was flat calm and the sun was out, giving us a lovely peaceful last sail of the season.

We entered the NEB basin and headed for the fuel dock where we pumped out the holding tank and topped up with diesel for the winter. Then we had to turn around… not good. Very embarrassing as I failed miserably to get the boat turned around in a ridiculously narrow spot with wind coming from the wrong direction! Fortunately we missed all the massive boats surrounding us so it was only my ego that got bruised – but it took 3 attempts and 4 hefty people to get Toodle-oo! turned around and facing the right direction!

It’s now a couple of weeks later and Toodle-oo! is in the hands of NEB for repairs. The insurance surveyor estimates damages to be in the neighborhood of $100,000 – half of that in electronics, the rest in rigging and ancillary electrical stuff – chargers, wind generators, lights, etc…

She’s out of the water now – but we’ve not seen her yet – will be interesting to see if there’s an obvious exit location from the lighting pulse… more to come…

This weekend we were looking forward to having various guests aboard…

I arrived at the boat on Friday morning with Brian Gardener from work… as I loaded our weekend luggage I noticed something lying on the cockpit seat… When I moved inside I noticed the cover of an electronic control lying on the couch… When I tried to turn on the fridge to cool our beers, it wouldn’t go on. Alarm bells ringing!

The thing on the bench outside was examined – it was the fascia of the spreader lights – checking them out showed them to have been blown to smithereens. We’d suffered a lightning strike 🙁 .

Somewhat numbed, we decided to have a beer and sort through what works and what doesn’t – finding that nearly everything electronic was fried. Unfortunately, it also appears that quite a lot of electrical stuff also took a hit – switches for some lights, for the windlass, etc.

Brian winched me up the mast (without an electric motor to assist!) where I found we’d had a direct hit. The masthead is blackened, the brand new VHF antenna was vaporized and the masthead light destroyed! What’s worrying is the possibility that the shrouds that keep the mast up might also have been compromised.

I’m back on the boat today to evaluate more – and to see if I can get a charging system to run to keep batteries topped up.

Plan then is to sail/motor the boat back to New England Boatworks in Portsmouth (about 45 miles away) next weekend and start the real assessment and repair process.

Sailing’s done for this year! 🙁

A week off!!! Always a good thing!

Our plans for this week were to sail alongside Mike and Jane aboard Jamin, up to Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod and then go the outside route around the Cape and south to Nantucket…  The red track on the map below…  Best laid plans and all that…

The weather was not forecast to assist. It was forecast to be nice and sunny and with good wind – but the wind for the day we were to head south to Nantucket was predicted to be strong from the South South West – right on our nose (big yellow arrow) – so our course would have taken us offshore towards the east – and then at about the time we’d tack back towards the west, the wind would shift again – keeping us offshore! So, we re-planned…

Route

We headed (green route) first to Hadley Harbor – a first for Jane and Mike. It was a hot day so we were fearful that the very protected harbor would be a furnace, but in fact it turned out to be really quite manageable and we had a very enjoyable afternoon swimming (Hadley has quote a current in it – so swimming was quite an effort at times!) and we followed up with a boozy evening as always!

The following day we had a relaxed start, awaiting suitable tide through Woods Hole – Jamin’s first transit, which proved to be a non-event. Once through, we sailed all the way to Edgartown and anchored out in the bight north of the main harbor, parked next to a large trawler type affair. Jamin arrived about 30 minutes after us and decided to anchor ahead of the trawler, closer to land – but as they dropped, the Trawler captain stood at the bow of his boat staring them down and then yelled that they were on his anchor and should move. Jamin was AT LEAST 500 feet forward of the trawler, so he either had an inordinate amount of rode out – or an over inflated ego! To prevent any scenes, Jamin moved and re-anchored. We then suffered listening to the Trawler’s generator – for hours on end – so in the morning we relocated ourselves out of earshot, leaving Captain Mud to his own devices.

We got the tandem out and bicycled our way up to Oak Bluffs for a very enjoyable – if short – lunch with Laurie’s sister Cynthia and Arthur and then pedaled back again and enjoyed a cocktail with Jane and Mike at one of the bars in Edgartown.

Nantucket beckoned, so on Tuesday morning after a lazy start, avoiding a couple of downpours (same storm system that wiped out half of Rhode Island!), we set sail in not very much wind at all, but gybed our way out of the harbor using our reaching sail. As we cleared the headland, the wind dropped further, so we furled the reacher and brought out the spinnaker, but after about an hour of that, the wind died almost completely so we reluctantly brought it down and started the iron genoa. 5 minutes later, the wind came up, we doused the iron maiden and set the Genoa and started making excellent progress towards Nantucket. Slowly the winds built so we reefed the main. Then we reefed again. As we turned into the final straight for Nantucket Harbor, we pulled in the Genoa and set the smaller jib – so by now we’d used every sail in the inventory! We arrived in Nantucket with the wind at about 22knots, gusting to 28 and happily took up our mooring just a few spots away from Jamin.

Nantucket House

Chatting on the Streets

Julian and Lynn aboard Domini (whom we’d met on the OCC cruise) had expressed an interest in joining us in Nantucket, but were unable to secure a mooring reservation. Nantucket’s policy (since they were theoretically sold out) is that without a previously arranged mooring, you must call on the day of arrival to see if there are any no shows and therefore availability – not easy for Domini since they were in Newport – a long day’s sail from Nantucket. However, I learned that they allow raft-ups, so if a mooring was not available, they’d be able to pull alongside Toodle-oo! – with this back up plan in hand, Domini was able to join us the following day – and in the end managed to secure their own mooring.

No Smiling Laurie!

Still Smiling Laurie

Smiling Laurie

Mike and Jane

Laurie and I took a tandem ride out to the western extremity of the island to spy out a possible anchorage there – it’s a bit bleak. Otherwise we all strolled the very neat cobbled streets of Nantucket or sat around the beach sunning ourselves – the weather was really fantastic for us all week.

Western ‘Bleak’ Anchorage (well beyond the power boats)

Feed Us!

We had planned three nights in Nantucket, but unfortunately, the founder of the company I work for had passed and so we had to make arrangements to stay a fourth night – so that I could fly back to attend. I took the first flight of the day out to New Bedford and managed to secure the co-pilot’s seat in the 10 seater plane. What a great view! Able to see all the difficult shoals around Nantucket and get a real feel for the geography so familiar from water level. I arrived back that afternoon, earlier than expected, so we headed to the fishmonger and secured all the necessary for a clam boil which we shared with Mike, Jane, Justin and Lynn – great night!

The following morning it was time to go – but the wind was howling in the harbor. We’d worked out that a 6am departure would get us favorable current most of the way and Domini had decided to come too. Jamin had already bagged it as too windy – besides which, there was to be a Boston Pops concert on the beach along with fireworks. In the end Domini bailed too in favor of the Pops, so Toodle-oo! was on her own.

We finally set off about 6:45 with 25knots blowing in the harbor, rather leary of what we might encounter ‘outside’ the safe haven. In the end, we were in good shape as the wind never strengthened, remaining at that level pretty constantly. The day was a glorious one – beautiful sunshine, low humidity and once we’d rounded the first leg marker and turned westward, the strong wind was abaft the beam, making for some really nice progress towards our target destination, Tarpaulin Cove on the south side of the Elizabeth Island chain. We made it there in just four and a half hours having planned for 8! It always helps when you’ve got the current with you – and as we approached Woods Hole, we were showing a speed over ground of between 10 and 11 knots – constantly!

We set anchor at about 11:00am and decided that since we got up so early, we could have an early beer to mark our arrival! There’s nothing here. It’s a private island though they let you use the beach and wander up to the diminutive lighthouse. Other than that, it’s relax time!

Tarpaulin Light

Tarpaulin Cove

In the afternoon, the cove became somewhat inundated with power boats – in for the beach – and some sailboats joined us. By sunset, all the small power boats (save one) had left us, but we’d been joined by a mega yacht, a coast guard cutter and 12 other sailboats, variously anchored around the cove.

Our final day of holiday dawned ugly – drizzle and fog and not much wind – though apparently back in Nantucket the wind was up because both Jamin and Domini had bailed again and were staying yet another night – the true benefit of cruising without a schedule! We had to get back and so, to take advantage of the currents, we left at 7:30am with the tail end of the fair current up to Woods Hole – though unfortunately the wind was on the nose. Never-the-less, we sailed right up to Woods Hole. When we got through, the wind piped up and we scooted across Buzzards Bay like we were a power boat. The wind kept building and in the end we had both reefs in the main and the small job was reefed down too!

10 minutes after hooking our mooring the wind dropped and the sun came out – so we celebrated with another late morning beer! We also got to take Toodle-oo! to the dock and give her a good washdown and loose all the salt build up.

It was a great vacation – great destinations, great company, the weather really cooperated and we hardly used the motor at all! Doesn’t get any better!

July 18

We had visitors aboard for a day! Nancy Tripp, who we’d bumped into at Cuttyhunk the previous weekend was joined by Laurie’s workmate, Nancy Henry, along with colleague Steve Carter and his wife Simi.

With a brisk south wind forecast for the day and possible rain showers, we decided to head for Red Brook Harbor on the west coast of Cape Cod. If the rain comes, we’d have a short bailout of the Beverly Yacht Club in Marion. Fortunately, the rain held off and with Steve mostly at the helm and with reefed main and small jib, we made great speed – 7 – 8 knots – and great time to Red Brook where we were able to hang on a mooring for lunch.

Nancy T had brought along a fruit basket, Simi some cheese and my favorite (Mc Vitties) buiscuits and Nancy H brought the brownies! How could we go wrong with that lot coupled to beer and wine!

The ride back was a little bumpier heading into the wind, but with only a couple of tacks we made it back in good time to enjoy another beverage (or a cup of tea)!

Nancy T., Simi, Bill, Nancy H., Laurie and Steve

On Sunday, there was no wind! It was hot and very humid, so after a couple of boat chores, we bailed and headed for the apartment – at least it would be a little less damp there!

After 2 weeks of ‘being on’ as organizers of the OCC’s Southern New England Cruise, it was nice to have a quiet weekend among friends.

We took advantage of an early start, and sailed down to Cuttyhunk on Friday afternoon, against a light wind and anchored on the outside alongside Mike and Jane in Jamin. Just as we arrived, a group of seals welcomed us into the harbor.

On Saturday, Peter and Diane aboard Elixir showed up too – opting for one of the outside moorings.

We had a really relaxing weekend sitting on the beach and watching crazy cows also enjoying the beach! We enjoyed a bit of a pot luck dinner (and too many drinks) aboard Elixir on Saturday night.

Diane

James Bond perhaps?

Big Hawk!

Beach Day!

Salty Cow

Jane

Mike and Jane

Sunday was beautiful, so we walked to the top of the hill and back – then Mike bought us ice cream! As we were leaving in the dingy, Laurie suddenly recognized Nancy Tripp in another dingy that was just arriving. We had house sat for Nancy and her late husband a couple of years ago so it was nice to catch up with her again.

We had a nice down-wind sail back to Mattapoisett in the heat of the day – and then opted to stay aboard for the night as our non-air-conditioned apartment was likely untenable! So we did a few chores and made our return early on Monday morning.

A Fleet of 10 boats assembled in Shelter Island, NY for the start of the OCC’s 2015 Southern New England Cruise on Sunday June 21^st to be entertained at the Shelter Island Yacht Club by OCC Port Officer Charlie Weiner and his delightful wife Lynn. Charlie, in his 90’s has been a stalwart supporter of the cruise since its inception, so this was a perfect venue to start the rally – and the event proved to set the tone for the remainder of the cruise.

The Flying Fish

Entertainers – Bentley, Ju and Jim

We were musically entertained by Jim and Bentley from Salty Paws and Julian off Domini while Charlie kept the drinks coming!

Lynn, Rachelle, Bill and Charlie

The following day, while several boats took off to other destinations, others took the opportunity to bicycle our way to a Long Island vineyard – Mattabella – for a tasting of their offerings. The wines were surprisingly good, as was the exercise – just enough to warrant an excellent meal on the way back at the local and excellent ‘Fish Market’ restaurant.

Wine Tasting

Wine Tasters

On the Tuesday morning, the remaining boats departed Shelter Island after a terrific visit. Toodle-oo! took off in company with Alcedo and Lily for the 75 mile trip to Menemsha on the western end of Martha’s Vineyard. Initially, the light winds favored Toodle-oo!, but as the winds strengthened, the big boats flew past.

Alcedo and Lily – Behind(!) Toodle-oo!

Toodle-oo! arrived in Menemsha to join Lily, Time Bandit, Domini and Over Budget in the anchorage while Dawnpiper was snug as a bug in the inner harbor.

The following morning, Toodle-oo! moved in to share the inner mooring and Jamin later joined us too. Meanwhile, the anchorage filled with the additions of Alcedo, Egret and Wishbone and we all gathered at Menemsha beach for late afternoon pot luck drinks and appetizers on a gloriously sunny day.

Menemsha Beach Gathering – Click to enlarge

Later that evening a large contingent gathered for dinner at the local restaurant, Home Port.

Menemsha is a delightful (albeit dry) fishing village, with excellent opportunities for knick-knack shopping in the little shops – or for fresh seafood right on the wharf.

Larsen’s The place for seafood

Sunset watchers – and fishermen!

The next event of the cruise was to be in Edgartown on the Saturday, 3 days on, so boats chose their own itinerary between events – enjoying some of the many fabulous anchorages of the area.

When the Fleet assembled in Edgartown it had grown to 13 with the additions of Star Light and Alia Vita, so we dominated an area of the mooring field quite handily. Unfortunately the weather was somewhat dreary, with a storm due to blow in right after our planned event in Edgartown, which was to be held at Fred and Anne Osborn’s house. And what an event it turned out to be!

Fred Osborn

Fred and Anne’s

Fred, Anne and their family had toiled to set up a barbeque feast in the garden sufficient to entertain the entire contingent of 32 guests and what’s more, they managed to hold off the worst of the bad weather – the odd sprinkle or two just adding a nice touch of atmosphere.

They then produced for us thrilling entertainment of the Vineyard Sound (http://vineyardsound.org/) – an A Cappella group made up of students and recent graduates of local universities that come to Martha’s Vineyard each year to give concerts. Fred had scored a 30 minute slot of their time, just for the occasion and they did not disappoint – the music was inspiring.

Vineyard Sound

At the end of the evening we all dingied back to the boats and battened down the hatches for the predicted storm. During the night we saw gusts up into the 40’s, but no damage was sustained – we all survived!

The iconic film ‘Jaws’ was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard so the following day, a large contingent attended a showing of Jaws – in its 40^th anniversary year – at the small cinema in Edgartown. Our group could be heard muttering locations throughout the film – which by the way, remains as scary as it ever was!

Our next port of call was the Beverly Yacht club in Marion, where commodore and OCC member, Larry Hall had managed to persuade them to keep the bar and kitchen open a little longer than normal to feed some weary OCC’ers. A good time was had by all.

The next stop was in Newport, but most boats stopped along the way at Quisset, Hadley Harbor or Cuttyhunk, before arriving at the anchorage in Newport, which had plenty of space to accommodate our group. In Newport we were joined by several late joiners – El Vagabond (hot off their recent circumnavigation), Paradise, Kittiwake, William Barron, Grace and Dragon Run. We were also joined in the evening by Moonstone – members of the CA.

Dinner had been arranged for 20 at the Brick Alley Pub, but the manager proved to be completely flexible, accommodating over 40 guests and providing an excellent service to boot!

Our Fleet – Click to enlarge!

The final venue of the cruise was Bristol RI – home of the oldest running Fourth of July Parade, true Americana in action!

OCC members Jil Westcott and John Bell invited us to their beautiful home on Poppasquash for a pot luck dinner – with entertainment once again from our cruising pianist Julian, who had prepared a wonderful ditty to remember the events and participants of the cruise. He got a little interference from a Mandolin player too! Afterwards, we all retired to our boats to watch Bristol’s firework display on a beautiful clear night, and then saw countless other displays around the area.

The Ladies

Paradise

The group at John and Jil’s

Jane and Rachelle

Hands Across the Sea

Pianoman

Greta and Gary

Jill Westcot

Ron and Ineke

John, Charles and Rob

Mike and JW

David, Rob and Charles

The final day of the cruise, July Fourth, dawned beautiful and sunny and had us all watching the parade alongside Bill Knowles of Salty Dawg fame and OCC member. He had arranged a prime viewing spot right in front of the TV cameras. Several of us scooted off to the local hostelry, Aidans where we watched the parade on TV (and kept tabs on our cruise members) and sampled the Irish nectar!

Bristol July 4th Parade

The two week cruise was over – it had been a great success and we all got to meet new friends and experience new cruising locations.

We had an interesting day on the water this past Saturday – Toodle-oo!’s first race! We entered Mattapoisett Yacht Club’s ‘Spring Around the Bay’ race – a 20 mile jaunt around the top end of Buzzards Bay.

Enlisted as crew were friends Mike & Jane and Peter & Diane, along with Mike Dahill – a fortuitous addition to the crew – the only one who really knew what he was doing!

Fair to say tensions were running high leading up to the start – this was the first time we’d had so many folk on  board and trying to work out who goes where and what does what got a little crazed…

Tensions run high!

The Crew ( Laurie behind the camera)

How did I land up on THIS boat???

We managed a great start under Mike’s direction, hitting the line just a few seconds after the horn went – fortunately, the start was staggered according to boat handicap, so having only us approaching the line sure did help matters!

It looked like we were catching the commodore’s boat ‘In Deep’ on the first two legs, but he must have sussed us out cos I couldn’t make any inroads on the third leg and he disappeared on the fourth!

Trim looks good to me!

Rail Meat!

The race started with a reasonable amount of wind and we were able to make good speed, but the forecast lull certainly came into its own on the last couple of legs, wind dropping to less than 5 knots, which saw us ghosting along at 1.5knots! (And that with a knot of helpful current!) We ended up finishing more than an hour behind In Deep and apparently dead last in our class – of those that bothered to finish!

There has to be some wind out there somewhere…

I see a wind line!

Needless to say, it was a great day out on the water and we really enjoyed ourselves and finished off the day with a super meal aboard with Laurie’s Lasagna, Diane’s salad, Jane’s brownies and copious amounts of alcohol!

Managed to install Pig Stick on Sunday – we’re dressed!

Dressed with a mast-top Burgee!

Every once in a while you meet someone that has an immediate and sudden impact on you. Who introduces you to things and concepts you’ve not thought of before. Though time spent with them can be brief, the observations made and lessons learned can be long lived. John Galpin was just such a person, who I met for but one day in October 2013. http://toodleoo.com/?p=484

In September 2013, I left Laurie aboard Toodle-oo! in Belfast while I went on a three week business trip to India. Happily, John and Val Galpin arrived shortly afterwards and moored their beautiful blue power boat ‘Grampus’ close by Toodle-oo! and they befriended Laurie – to the extent that somehow she managed to wangle an invite to visit them where they live on the Isle of Man!

We had an enthralling visit with them during which John showed us the fault line between the American tectonic plate and the European plate – by jumping across the divide identified by a line of quartz and a big crack.

John and Val showed us around the town of Peel, including a visit to a tiny little Nautical museum, in which was housed an old rum running sail boat – the Peggy, perfectly preserved in its basement where the boat had been walled up. (The boat recently featured in one of the popular sailing magazines.)

Val and John invited us to dinner at their beautiful house where Val has discovered that she is a significantly good artist, and where John would study what appeared to be a passion, of understanding the sea life in the Irish Sea, Dolphins in particular.

He explained to me an interesting docking method that allowed one to tie securely in a dock without need for fenders – which with constant motion inevitably wear out the gelcoat of a boat’s topsides (and if you look a few posts earlier on this blog, you’ll see details of that method).

Most spectacularly of all, John  talked of the ‘Green Flash’ – a phenomenon that occurs just as the sun dips below the horizon and when the atmospherics are just so, a green flash of light shows for just a short duration. While I’d heard of the phenomenon, I admitted to being skeptical – so john brought out the documentation he had to hand to prove the physics – quite convincing… As we were sat down for dinner, just as the sun was setting, I queried if there’d be a green flash tonight – he was confident that there would be and he gave Laurie and I both a pair of binoculars with which to watch, so we interrupted our dinner to watch the sun sink below the horizon. Sure enough, as it dipped below, a clear green flash appeared. I would not have believed my own eyes if Laurie hadn’t seen it at the exact same time.

To this day, every time I watch a sunset I think of John and Val and our wonderful – though short time together. We talked of John just this weekend as we watched the sun setting from our favorite harbor, Menemsha.

Sadly, I learned just this week that John is no longer with us. He was diagnosed with Cancer at the end of July 2014, and succumbed just 10 weeks later in early October. He was just 66.

People like this don’t come around often. He will surely be missed. His sudden passing is reason enough to make sure that we make the most of every day and live life to the fullest.

Rest in Peace Mr. Galpin, we will remember you always and often.

We had a three day weekend and the wind looked favorable for Menemsha with Saturday blowing us there with a north east breeze and Monday morning a south westerly to blow us back! While we’d prefer not to sail dead down wind, we managed really nicely, sailing wing on wing, Main out to starboard, genoa to port and made good progress at 6 – 7 knots all the way, on a direct line to Quicks Hole where we picked up sufficient current to clock 10.5 knots over ground as we squeezed through the Elizabeth Islands.

We arrived in just over 3 hours to find that the New Bedford Yacht Club had a stellar turnout for their “Shakedown Cruise” so everything on the inside was booked – save one slip that would have cost us more than the embarrassment of mooring betwixt 4 pilings was worth, so we chose to anchor out instead. Since it was blowing 20+knots, we figured we’d be in for a rolly night – and noisy with a bell just upwind of the anchorage! Turns out the holding there is excellent – immediately grabbing our Manson Supreme – and that held very securely – and fortunately, the wind died in the early evening, so all was good. Actually very good!

We dinghied in for essential supplies – mussels for our appetizer! And also met with Ginny Jones who is an assistant harbormaster and is helping me with the upcoming OCC cruise.

Mussels!

NBYC had 18 boats on the inside – great turnout – and they all enjoyed pot luck appetizers on the beach at sunset – no doubt admiring Toodle-oo! in all her splendor! Looks like the way to enjoy Menemsha with a large party…

Certainly looks the part!

Larsen’s The place for seafood

Sunday we were pretty lazy, but we did relocate the boat to the inner harbor once the others had all left – but to be honest, while the harbor is empty, we somewhat regretted moving in – the anchorage was just idyllic and the inside mooring balls where they’ll raft upto 4 boats on each are always a real giggle. Lunch was a picnic in the lagoon on the beach on a beautifully sunny and warm day – truly the best weather! Another run to Larsens enabled us to pick up all the necessary (clams, littlenecks and mussels) for our first clam boil in ages – wonderful!

First Clam Boil in ages – Yummy!

Sunset watchers – and fishermen!

Monday’s winds were again behind us as we set off across Vineyard Sound and this time we flew both headsails, one on each side and made a B line for Quicks Hole. Once into Buzzards Bay we were able to head off on a run with reefed Main and small jib in the building winds, making 7 – 8 knots and gaining another 1.5 knots from the favorable current. Our only downside was having to douse the sails in 25kts! – always interesting!

The season is off to a flying start!

Toodle-oo! spashed as planned on May 13th (well done Brandon and everyone at Pirate Cove Marina) having been washed waxed buffed and had her hull tidied up with bottom paint where necessary.

With everything fitted and installed, we took a short trip down to Newport while Abigail was visiting, where we anchored and then dinghied across to Fort Adams to watch the In-Port Race of the Volvo Open Round the World Race. It was an interesting event – though the race it’self was a bit of a procession…

           
On the Sunday, (having listened to the foghorn all night!) we up-anchored early enough on a misty morning  to not get blocked by the exclusion zone that was due to be set up in the East Passage, and headed through that passage and out to sea for a trip up to Mattapoisett, summer home for Toodle-oo!, some 45 miles.

Leaving Newport

Winds were OK to start with, but turned very light so we ended up motor sailing into Mattapoisett some 8 hours later, and because our mooring was not prepared, took a guest mooring – where she still lies a couple of weeks later…

The following weekend was Labor Day weekend, and unfortunately, Laurie had to work on the Saturday, so I arranged to have our squash team join us for a trip over to Hadley Harbor. Wind was light to moderate on the way over, but came up boisterous on the way back, with Toodle-oo! having a blast crashing through waves at 9 knots! Fortunately, the team managed to keep it together – no spewing required!

Rick, Kim, Doreen and Dave…

Laurie got a reprieve for the rest of the weekend, so we had a great sail across to Martha’s Vineyard on Saturday with winds up to 28kts on the beam! We got to Vineyard Haven in record time!
Unfortunately Vineyard Haven has allowed the mooring field to encroach well out into the anchorage now, so in the windy conditions, we opted to take a mooring within the breakwater rather than have a really rolly night. That perhaps was not the best decision as our mooring put us just a few feet from the rock breakwater – blocking our view to everything.

Our return from VH was uneventful – we got through Woods Hole before the tide changed against us and then hung out in Hadley Harbor for a while while I rigged the Monitor Wind Vane (Self Steering gear). We used the Monitor to come back across Buzzards Bay, and it turns out that the complete re-build I gave it during the winter months was worthwhile, with the Monitor being able to hold a course within about +/- 10 degrees in moderate winds. Good enough, and I’m sure with practice we’ll improve.

We were back on our borrowed mooring by lunchtime and had a lazy afternoon!

Sure feels good to get back on the water!