Sept 2 — Day 55 — Scituate to Onset — 40

 We took ILENE to the Satuit Boat Club’s dock and put a lot of water in her empty starboard tank. We probably had enough fresh water left in the port tank to get home, but why take chances.

.A beautiful sailing day — most of the way to the Cape Cod Canal. A close starboard reach with ten knots of wind had us making over seven knots under main and small jib. But then the wind got stronger — to 27 knots apparent (subtract our six into the wind) and we actually slowed down. We also were forced to sail close hauled, off course, with a pair of tacks at the end to bring us to the entrance to the Canal. In the Canal the tidal flow and a bit of engine bore us along at up to 9.5 knots though the wind and wakes of big power boats (yes, a holiday weekend) slowed us to about six knots. 

The canal runs from Cape Cod Bay in the NE in this arial view to Buzzards Bay in the SW. Everyone who visits the Cape by car crosses one of the two bridges across the canal highlighted in red. This passage  can be a horrible trial, going with the necessary ebb tide in the afternoon, except on windless days or atypical ones where the wind is not strongly from the Southwest. The tide pushes us SW while the strong SW wind builds up huge seas opposing the tidal flow.With the strong winds today Lene had a lot of anxiety. In the event it was not as bad as last time  and we ducked into Onset (the blue dot)  to escape the wind. The original plan had been Pocasset, to the mooring in the lee of Basset’s Island, (shown in the lower right). Actually the moorings there are under the “as” in the word “Bassetts”but I feared that the protected part would be full this holiday weekend. Plus the starboard turn into Onset, just above the peninsula, got us out of the SW wind a lot sooner.

Our Rocna is connecting us to the bottom (15 feet at high) with 50 feet of snubbed chain. The only other time we have been in Onset was to party on a dock with the other Tartan owners on our Tartan Cruise, our honeymoon cruise in 2002.

At the end of the day we noticed that one of the shackles holding the self tacking mechanism for the small jib had come off. It is replaced from our spare parts. The passage ended up wilder and with more heeling than Lene enjoys. Here is a view of the somewhat crowded mooring field behind us from ILENE, with lots of water around her.

And last, Hog Island Channel in the background, behind us with the escape route into Onset from the peninsula at the right.