July 13 — Day 6 — Stonington CT to Mattapoisett MA —61.2 NM

Today was a great passage; the kind that keep us sailing through the less enjoyable days. Wind with a lot of south in it came from ILENE’s starboard side — one LONG glorious fast starboard tack. We hoisted anchor at 9:10 this morning, and dropped at 5:45, more than 8.5 hours later. Only one engine hour. Wave height low. We measure our speed as “speed over the ground”, i .e., GPS speed. By some accident of dumb luck  I believe we stumbled into Mr. Eldridge’s “sweet spot” for this passage. He studied tides and noted that when the tide is ebbing in these parts  it flows, all at approximately the same time: east out of Long Island Sound, west out of Buzzards Bay and south out of Narragansett Bay into a huge whoosh south in Block Island Sound. So if you can plan your voyage just right — to arrive at the magical  ‘X” spot at the right time, you can have helping ebb tide from LI Sound and then helpful flood tide in Buzzards Bay as well. The math is too complex for me but we had favorable tide the whole way, plus about 10 to 14 knots of apparent wind and several hours of exceeding eight knots, with less speed when motoring and motor sailing before the wind came up at the beginning and of course while selecting a good spot to anchor at the end. Average speed better than 7.1 knots over the entire passage!

The 24 year old, always trustworthy autopilot (except recently) did the steering and did it well. 

We passed several beautiful boats (this one, I’m told by friends, is “Arabella” and takes out passengers on cruises

fishing trawlers, with their coronas of hungry sea gulls

and further off shore, several  tankers. Traffic, going every which way, was particularly intense rounding Point Judith. 

Uniquely, this summer’s cruise will not include a stop in Rhode Island, unless we make such a stop on the way home. Yesterday we crossed the entire RI Atlantic coast and much of Buzzards Bay.Our first target destination was Westport MA, desirable for protection from the 10 to 15 knot southerlies predicted for the evening. But we were sailing so well that we continued a lot further to Mattapoisett. Goòd memories of Turks Seafood Restaurant, a walk of only 1.4 miles from the dock, beckoned, but based on our arrival time and the need to lower the dinghy, we just canned that idea, this time. Chef Lene (she is also, among other roles, my  communications officer, electronics officer and social secretary) provided our third meal today. I think that with portion control that gets lost in restaurants and the exercise of sailing, I may be able to fit into my pre Covid clothes better come fall.