Our first sail was a smooth ride to Cape Ann, arriving in Gloucester at nautical twilight (look it up!). Nautical twilight is the time at dawn and dusk when the sun is below the horizon, its rays are visible, and the horizon can be seen enough to navigate.
Nov 5- Early the next morning we prepared to depart, warming the engine for a few minutes only to have it sputter and die. My first engine naive reaction was to announce that it sounded like we had run out of diesel. Indeed that is exactly what happened due to a mislabeled valve which resulted in fuel returned from the diesel engine being routed back to the wrong tank, thereby emptying the tank supplying the engine. Unfortunately, this required we purge air from the fuel lines before we could restart the engine. As with all projects on a boat everything takes at least twice the projected amount of time to complete. This happens to be particularly difficult for me as I like to have a day filled with checking things off my list.
Historically, once you get on board it takes about two weeks to get into the rhythm of the boat, get somewhat organized, and to get comfortable with boat systems and task sequences. Tim is anxiously looking forward for us to get to this point. Over the past month friends often said “you must be so excited to begin your journey”; quite honestly, there was so much to get done, it was quite stressful with no time to be excited.
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Organization in the main cabin has improved since this photo was taken,
but don't peek into the forward v-berth. |
It was quite a ride to the boat basin at the north end of the Cape Cod Canal in Sandwich during which time we made a pre departure list of everything we needed to check and forgot to do this last castoff!
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| Tim on deck testing out the safety gear. |
Arrived in Cape Cod Canal around 7 pm, well after dark and docked in Sandwich for the night. Left at 9 am with flood through the Canal into Buzzards Bay, bound for Oak Bluffs on Marthas Vineyard. Fortunately Buzzards Bay was smooth as glass and we motored on through Woods Hole against the tide managing 1.8 knots for a brief time. Crazy strong currents! Arrived Oak Bluffs Harbor and backed in Mediterranean style, stern first, to the bulkhead, which this time of year is free! Once again we learned the water had been turned off days before our arrival, but the power was still on allowing us to use our electric heater. When we aren’t “plugged in” we use a Cozy Cabin propane heater which we installed immediately after we purchased Skylark. A heater takes the chill off of Spring and Fall cruising in New England and the Cozy Cabin Heater only takes two to three hours to install, the chimney is only inch diameter, its clean, and propane is readily available. The heater will serve us very well on our trip south as we escape winter.
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| The boat warming Cozy Cabin Heater, priceless. |
We took a walk/run to Harthaven to see my recently sold family property. Though bittersweet, it was a relief to find a longtime family friend contractor literally disassembling the home and reusing as much of the material as possible. This includes attempting the relocate the stone fireplace, which my grandfather had built, to the backyard for use as an outdoor fireplace for the new owners. The plans for the new home look quite reasonable which is a relief considering all the overblown McMansions going up everywhere.
We walked the Harthaven community beach and came upon the remnants of the original walkway pier that crossed the tidal river flowing from Farm Pond out to the sound which I walked over 50 years to get to the beach. It has been buried under the sand for decades until recently as beach erosion continues to march on.
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| Leaving Oak Bluffs |
We then had a roaring sail to Newport today with 25-30 knot winds from the SE. Skylark is behaving very sea kindly and our boat speed was averaging over 7 knots. While approaching Narragansett Bay we had an accidental jibe which shattered our top main sheet fiddle block and jammed the sheet in the broken block. I took over the helm as Tim jury rigged several lines to secure the boom and we arrived in Newport by 9pm and picked up a mooring in a sheltered area in the southern portion of the harbor known as Brenton Cove. We are getting a bit more comfortable handling Skylark which feels good.
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| Busted fiddle block with shattered lower sheave! |
After some provisioning and purchase of a replacement fiddle block with the assistance of a long time friend and fellow sailor Shawn, we headed for Great Salt Pond on Block Island.
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| Block Island sunset |
This harbor, which in the summer is filled with a 1000 boats, was now empty. We met up and had a nice dinner at Kimberly's (recommended) with Lars, a former Portsmouth friend who now works at the Block Island Times.
We were up early the next morning leaving a dawn to catch the flood at "The Race" into Long Island Sound. Tim grew up sailing in Long Island Sound so we were so tempting to pull into past anchorages and homeports such as Mattituck, Setauket, or Lloyd Harbor where Tim's Dad taught him to sail at the age of five, but we were on a mission to get as far west and south a possible before the wind and weather turned on us.
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| Approaching the Throgs Neck Bridge after a long calm run down Long Island Sound |
We finally anchored a west end of Long Island Sound in a little cove next to the Throgs Neck Bridge.
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| Throgs Neck Bridge from our anchorage. |
We spent the next morning continuing to organize the boat while we waited for the currents to ebb down the East River around 1PM. With the current we did over 11 knots past NYC, under the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge to Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay.
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| The Brooklyn Bridge with the new "Freedom Tower" in the background. |
Entering the Sheepshead Bay Harbor we ran aground on a sandbar literally in the middle of the buoyed channel. We bounced off the sandbar and reversed our course to figure out what had happened. Upon consulting the online cruising guide Active Captain, we learned a sandbar has extended 50 feet into the marked channel and the Coast Guard has yet to move the channel buoys even years since this hazard has existed. We made our second entry well east of the sandbar and found picked up a mooring for the night. The day concluded with my daughter Kelsey and her husband Bryan who joined us onboard for dinner.
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| Dinner aboard in Sheepshead Bay with Kelsey and Bryan. |
As usual, it’s always something, the 4-stroke 9.9hp Mercury outboard, which came with Skylark and had run smoothly for months, failed to start when preparing to return our guests to shore. Fortunately, we also brought along our reliable 2-stroke 5hp Nissan outboard; one of the many duplicate items we brought on the trip as backup. If you can believe it, the Nissan also died as Tim was returning to Skylark and had to row back, its always an adventure!
We were up early the next morning and had a great sail down the Jersey shore arriving at Cape May around midnight. We have been enjoying using the AIS transceiver (Automatic Identification System) that came with Skylark and feel it will be tremendously helpful during our travels. As we entered the harbor intending to head to a marina to wait out the next two days of stormy weather, an alarm sounded. What was it: the AIS warning us of a nearby vessel? the VHF? the low battery voltage alarm? the high bilge water alarm? an engine alarm? It turned out to be the engine temperature alarm and a quick look at the exhaust confirmed there was no water discharging with the exhaust. We shut the engine off and fortunately we were near the anchorage, so we drifted to the edge of the channel and dropped the anchor. Tim inspected the engine systems and confirmed water was getting to the engine, but since it was now 1:30 AM, the overheating problem would have to wait until morning to solve. In the morning the engine ran fine, so it appears a plastic bag, some other trash in the water or seaweed might have been sucked up against the engine water intake strainer on the hull, preventing water from entering the system. Then when we turned the engine off and there was no more suction, whatever blocked the water entry drifted away.
We ended up a Utsch’s Marina to sit out a vicious blow with 40+knot winds while listening on the VHF radio to the less prepared cruisers still at anchor calling the Coast Guard for assistance as their anchors dragged. I am constantly reminded of how grateful I am sailing this adventure with Tim who is super prepared and cautious. We just heard over the radio that a small tug boat on a dredge barge sank! We use two wind forecast apps Pocket Grib and Windy, which typically do a great job with wind forecasts so we’re surprise more cruising sailboats didn’t choose to play it safe in a marina when stormy weather approaches. Friday brings more high winds so we will hang tight another day, do laundry, fill up the water tanks (water was turned off at all docks at our northern stopovers), and take on some diesel. Then on Saturday we are off on an overnight sail to Norfolk VA with what looks to be a very favorable weather window.
