July 8 -- Sakonnet River Anchorage to Sandwich Marina, 43 Miles

A very easy day. We pulled anchor at 7:15. The bottom was sandy so there was no mud problem. Very little traffic on a Sunday morning. Very little wind too, though we had sails up and they gave us a few tenths of a knot until the last few hours. The last seven of the miles were in the canal at speeds up to 10.4 knots but averaging less than eight. Conditions in the Canal were very rough, too rough for autopilot. It was like New York's East River with waves that threw ILENE's head from side to side and caused her to pitch. But not as much as last year, coming the other way, when the cats cried in terror.
The Sandwich Marina is an excavated space on the Cape side of the Canal near its Cape Cod Bay end. We had a bit of a problem coming in. We misunderstood the instructions and were headed past our assigned berth to B dock instead of C Dock. The problems were that I realized that this was the shallow end of the marina, as evidenced by many small shallow draft fishing boats, and that turning a sailboat via a five point turn is no mean feat in a small space. ILENE is the only boat with a tall mast and B Dock is the empty one a bit closer to the camera. The Canal runs just past the building with the red roof it the background and the row of green trees, left, are on the other side of the Canal.

Lene says I did a great job and being praised by my woman is always a thrill, though I'm just pleased that we neither hit the bottom nor any of the other boats docked around us. We were tied up by 2:30. Then Lene observed, accurately, that with our next stop, Provincetown, only 23 miles away, we could have gone there today. This was our first night of paying rent for docks or moorings on this cruise.

You know that Lene's leg is bad when she let me walk to the supermarket -- a task she so enjoys doing. We used the Marina's new modern clean showers and dined at Fishermans View restaurant, only about 200 yards from the boat, just off to the left of the picture. It has large picture windows overlooking the Canal, hence the name. It opened less than two years ago. They brag being named one of the ten best restaurants on the Cape by a Boston mgazine. The food was good, the service courteous and friendly, the prices reasonable and the place packed. We ordered five starters and no entrees but the portions were so large that we took two of them back to our home. The cats enjoyed prowling the dock. It was a quiet night.