July 15 — Day Eight — Scituate MA to Manchester By The Sea MA — 23 NM

 We traversed Massachusetts Bay, from its South Shore to its North Shore in a straight shot from the buoys outside Scituate to the islands guarding Manchester. Rain was predicted today, but it came at 5 a.m., with lights and sound effects, while we were still asleep. The rest of the day was dry. Lene had a yen for a breakfast she did not cook, and for shopping, so we took the Club’s launch to the Harbormaster’s dock.  Breakfast at the same bakery we had patronized last time, and groceries, in hand, the Harbormaster summoned the Club’s launch to fetch us. Then a dock stop to refill ILENE’s fresh water tanks, which were 3/4 empty. Oops, we missed the Satuit Boat Club water dock and accidentally grabbed the nearer one next door — of the Scituate Harbor YC. No problem. Friendly people all around.

Underway at around 11:30 with winds building so we shut off the engine. These pictures tell the tale of the good part of the day. Sails drawing nicely.

The top instrument shows the wind: it’s direction, from the starboard quarter but well forward of the stern, avoiding the possibility of an accidental gybe, and in the inset, it’s apparent speed, relative to the boat’s speed: 12.1 knots. And the lower instrument shows us moving at 7.5 knots over the surface of the earth. 

Some time for minor repairs infer the forward end of the boom. The preventer lines (thin, horizontal above my hat) had been tied to tightly and marlinspike and pliers made them usable, though they were not needed today. A tiny line holding thumb cleats out of the way had become too loose over the years and was tightened.

Nearing port we passed between House Island to starboard and Whaleback Rock to port, about 500 feet across. Not dangerously close but requiring attention.

We have been to the Manchester YC before, courtesy of our friendship with Jamie and Lori, who we met in Maine several years ago. The club by policy, makes no charge for guest moorings. This time they put us on a mooring in the intensely protected but crowded inner harbor. Our dinghy, hanging off the stern marks the “red” side of the channel and many beautiful boats frequently pass behind us,  a lot less after dark. See picture below.

And then the crew came out

Dinner at a restaurant was with Jamie and Lori and their friends, Jim and Ann, after drinks and nibbles at J snd A’s magnificent house which abuts and overlooks the YC Clubhouse and inner harbor. ILENE is front and center.

Last launch ride of the evening and a good night’s sleep.

July 14 — Day 7 — Mattapoisett MA to Scituate MA —48 NM

 This was the day for the passage through the Cape Cod Canal. As best we could figure it, the tide turned fair in the Canal at about 1:30 pm so we pulled anchor at 11:30 planning two hours at six knots for the twelve NM to the Buzzards Bay “end” of the Canal to arrive at 1:30 pm. It was raining when it was time to leave, with more storms predicted, but we figured that if we got out into Cape Cod Bay at the Canal’s NE end by 2:30 (after one hour transiting in the Canal) we could do the 28 NM to Scituate by 7:30. 

I find the Canal, difficult to time. It changes the direction of its flow at different times within its ten mile length, and of course at different times each day.  There is no clear universally accepted definition of where the Canal’s Buzzards Bay end  begins. The solution is to create a table that, depending on the speed of one’s vessel, shows the earliest and latest time one should plan to get to a specified point  in order to complete your passage with fair tide the whole way. This is a great little project for some IT guy. I’m surprised it hasn’t been done yet, or maybe I just have not been able to find it. 

It was windy so I put in a reef before raising the anchor and used only the little jib. But after five minutes, Autopilot stopped working, AGAIN! This was his fourth failure. And I could not even go down to look at it then because the winds were strong and close to our stern so that Lene could not hand steer without risk of accidental gybe.

I steered broad reaches until we were in Hog Island Channel, the extension of the Canal into Buzzards Bay (or maybe it’s beginning. Then after dousing sails. Lene took the helm and I went down under the cockpit to check out the problem. This time, unlike last time, what had detached was the brass ball-pin at the end of the threaded connecting rod that is supposed to stay attached to the rudder stock, rather than the brass ball-pin at the rudder angle indicator end of that  threaded connecting rod. That was the ball-pin I had used from the repair kit I had purchased, and had repaired with 5200. It had slipped past my wooden pressure lever retainer, but that lever was created as a secondary measure. The pin is not supposed to slip out in the first place! The part Raymarine sent to us in Stonington had the ball-pin cold pressed into the vinyl; the tech rep surmised that the part in the repair kit was defective. So while Lene steered through the canal (a low wind area and for motoring without sails) I took off the old, bolted on the new and strengthened the wooden lever. To get the screw driver into the second of the two bolts that hold the vinyl piece to the rudder stock, the wheel has to be turned. Lene slowed down the engine and made a sharp 360 degree circle. This prompted a VHF call from the canal authority asking if ILENE was in need of assistance. Fortunately not. And once reconnected Auto behaved himself again. 

Once out into Cape Cod Bay, there was no wind. The difference of an hour or of an ecosystem.

Cruiser does not look like a happy camper, in his box, but at least he came up into the sunlight.

The 28 NM to Scituate were made, like yestersday’s sail, at seven knots, but this time the power was provided by Mr. Diesel.

Before entering the Canal, not realizing that I would be able to effect the repair underway, we made a reservation for a slip at the Marina in Sandwich Mass, at the Cape Cod Bay end of the Canal, and told Scituate we would be delayed a day. Lene called to reverse these arrangements, only an hour later but Sandwich said “but we have to charge you the $129. Lene persuaded them that the next reservation to come in for that night, it was very early in the afternoon, would be given “our” slip so we would not be charged.

The Satuit Boat Club (Native American pronunciation of Scituate) is where we were delayed for five days a few years ago before the mechanic discovered that the hose delivering diesel fuel to the engine was clogged off with metal filings. We liked the town and the Club. It’s mooring fee this year is $60 per night, reasonable based on what we have been seeing, though almost double the Harlem’s $35. It is a very friendly club and we would have liked to go to our favorite restaurant in town (the launch will drive you there and pick you up), but time for that plus showering was tight between our 7:15 arrival and the last run of the launch at 9 pm. And lowering and then raising the dink takes half an hour. But the Club, which has a kitchen for catering but no restaurant, was having its annual hamberger roast and we were invited. No cost. The members were very welcoming and talkative. One lady offered me a glass of her wine. A very pleasant evening.

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.

June 12 — Day 5 — Lay Day in Stonington

 No rush on a lay day so French Toast for breakfast. 

Next, we filled in the calendar from now until mid September, with places to visit. This will definitiely change and lacks details, such as periods of three to fifteen days to transit between X and Y, or to visit various ports, to be determined, on the St. John River. All can be adjusted to speed up the outbound with more days for the return, or vice versa. Days are built in for weather delays. I have not checked the tides at the mouth of the St. John River where we have to enter and leave — across the famous reversing falls — at the daytime slack at high tide. But Bennett of “Ohana” will be able to determine when to fly up and join us.

Dinked to town to pick up the repair part, which had arrived; thank you Raymarine. Visited a few of the local antique shops and art galleries and Lene got her hair washed, a process that uses lots of water, so better done ashore. We visited the Jinishian Gallery of quite expensive nautical art. The last time we did this was with the Club’s “Winter Land Cruise” maybe six winters  ago. Then his gallery was in rural Fairfield CT. The new place is smaller but, I think, in a much better location. I was struck by this painting

which I recognized as one of “Brilliant”, anchored next to us. A photo of her is in yesterday’s post. She is a rather famous boat, with her own Wikipedia entry. Built at City Island in 1932, she was owned by a man named Cunningham, who invented and installed on her the eponymous rigging gear to flatten the lower part of the mainsail. After winning races and serving in WWII, she was donated to the nearby Mystic Seaport Museum which uses her for educational charters.

Then back under the cockpit with good task lighting, lots of tools and a strong clean paint stirring stick to keep the autopilot pins from popping out of their pits. Cut into two parts, the stick halves are now held in their places by bolts and spacers for the pin attached to the rudder angle indicator and by wire ties for the pin attached to the rudder stock. The sticks are to apply pressure to keep the pins from jumping out. The grey plastic cap holding the ball is to the right in the upper picture and to the left in the lower one.

If this does not work (Thomas Edison tried many different materials as filament for his light bulbs before he found the one that worked) I will try again. 

Dinner reservations at 7 at Noah’s, where we have dined on prior visits to Stonington. Where to seat us?  There was only one table and a woman was also waiting for a table. We asked her to join us and then her name. Jes is retired, has had an interesting life as a nurse and later a spiritual animal whisperer and has left her Ohio home and is trying out various Rhode Island towns. After dinner she drove us to a supermarket and back. Tomorrow we will head east and see how far the wind blows us.

July 11 — Day 4 — Mattituck LI to Stonington CT 28 NM

 The winds in Long Island Sound run more or less east and west. This makes for great sailing with fast, comfortable easy, beamy reaches for those going north or south. But those like us transiting the Sound, are going east or west —  with the wind on the nose or on the tail. Yesterday it was on the tail but not enough so we had to motor. Today was the same direction but strong enough and we sailed virtually the whole way once out of the two mile creek into the Sound. It was a 7.5 hour total passage with speeds gradually diminishing from more than six knots to three as the favorable tidal current wore off.  The difficulty was that with wind behind, the danger of accidental gybe exists (we had a few) and this was compounded by the failure of autopilot, AGAIN!  After working fine all day long yesterday, today the same error message and the same cause. While underway, Lene was at the helm for about 1/3 of the time and we were on the phone with Raymarine tech reps for quite a while. They informed me that the famously strong sticking ability of 5200 glue was wasted because the type of plastic involved (Vinyl?), is so slippery that nothing sticks to it; “That’s why we cold press the pin into the plastic”. They said that they had never heard of the problem we experienced before. They offered to express mail a new replacement part and after we selected Stonington and contacted Dodson Boatyard to get the correct mailing address our night’s destination was thereby selected. But Dodson now charges $125 plus tax for their moorings, so we are anchored behind the seawall, as we have done in the past, in company with some pretty boats including “Brilliant”, 62 feet long with a draft of ten feet and a group of about ten young people aboard.

This shot from the chart plotter shows us at a moment.

The white boat shaped mark at the center of the concentric rings shows ILENE’s position, at 2:13 pm, the time being the bottom entry in the data bar at the left. The thick arrows pointing from our bow shows our course over the ground and speed at that moment 079 degrees magnetic at 5.8 knots of speed over the ground. Those are in the data boxes to the left' and the speed in a shield on the arrow itself. We know that in an hour we will be where the points of the arrows are 5.8 NM away, and hence that the rings are 2.5 miles apart because the arrow heads are slightly more than two rings away. The blue box with the X near the end of the arrows is the waypoint, the point I am aiming at, and the data dox to the left shows Distance to Waypoint as NM. The waypoint is the passage between North Dumpling Island, pictured here, 

and South Dumpling Island. The Dumplings mark the west end of Fishers Island Sound, the water between the mainland(Connecticut) and Fishers Island, the yellow land south of it. Stonington is in the NE corner of that Sound. We can easily zoom in to see the details of any sub area- miracle of modern electronics.

The problem with the autopilot is the little pin jumping out of its pit.

It is such a tiny part; it reminds me of the poem about for want of a nail the horseshoe was lost and in turn the horse was lost, the rider; the battle and the Kingdom was lost. This tiny part may cost us the cruise if we can’t get it fixed.  The connecting rod lies around not doing its job, lower right, in the next photo. The pin should hold the longer threaded rod in place at the end of the lever like part on the left

My friend Dean suggested “lashing” it in place, though acknowledging the difficulty of maintaining the freedom of the rod to rotate on the ball. In the middle of the night I woke with eureka idea. Not lashing but fabricating a plate to be fastened above it, leaving room for rotation of the ball but keeping the pin from jumping out of its pit. Tomorrow’s task.

Someone once described cruising a sailboat as the art of boat repair in foreign ports. I’m hoping to not make a habit of such repairing.

July 10 — Day Three — Port Jeff to Mattituck, 28 NM

 We lost another boater on our way here: John’s boat developed a problem with getting into and out of gear — not safe when maneuvering in tight spaces so he had to head back. Our trip was fine, autopilot did the work again, giving us time for other things, including outdoor showers in the cockpit, miles from potentially inquisitive eyes. The only other time for such showers is after dark.

The only problem is that we motored all the way. There was about eight knots of wind, generally enough for good sailing, but it was from almost directly behind us. The diesel did not strain in pushing us along at six knots, our customary cruising speed. But the apparent wind was only two knots (8-6=2), not enough to be useful. If we cut the engine, we would have made maybe three knots out of five apparent 8-3=5).

Mattituck Creek winds two miles, generally south into Long Island to a rectangular basin where we anchored. But from the Sound, half a mile off shore, you will miss the entrance buoy unless using GPS.

The charts are old, published before a recent survey. We got a somewhat anxious text from Josh and Ally: “Can we go in? The chart says it’s only three feet deep.”  The answer was yes, it has been dredged since the chart was published, we had been there two years ago with A five foot ten inch draft, but stay in the channel, mind the buoys, watch your depth sounder and call the Marina, which depends on boaters, if you want assurance.

Wildlife, commercial fishing boats and big power boats line the creek’s sides, though much of it n.looks primeval. We dropped our anchor twice but drifted on its scope too close to other boats before we found the magic right spot. There were six boats on anchor, and room for perhaps six more. The Marina which lines the east side of the basin charges $6.25 per foot per night, plus tax!!! Hmmm, times 43 feet, well you can do the math. We could afford it but strong winds were not expected so far inland and we had a pleasant night. 

We finally got to meet our traveling companions, Josh and Ally, and their friendly dog Cherry. Her coat is somewhat the color of cherrywood but they changed her name from Jerry to Cherry to avoid confusing her.

We went over to their beautiful, meticulously maintained boat by dinghy with a bottle of wine, after a delay while I repaired the outboard thanks to knowledge from Harry imparted to me in Massachusetts last summer. They set out  delicious snacks.

“Neaera” is 33 feet long, and is a Rassy, a forerunner of Hallberg-Rassy, with teak decks, lots of gleaming brightwork and an amazingly new look. They have owned her only one year and told us that at the home mooring she is protected from the destructive effects of the sun by being completely covered with  a custom canvas cover when not in use. She is also old fashioned with brass fittings and winches and lacks a working autopilot (we commiserated). She has a pressure alcohol stove and we recommended an inexpensive update to a low pressure one, for safety and ease of use. 

Then we all dinked to the rickety municipal dock and strolled through town and beyond to a supermarke about ten minutes past town. Good exercise for zcherry, and for us all. Our first landfall since we set out. Contrary to a rumor, there was no indication of a fee for the use of the dock. Then dinner at the Marina’s restaurant, “Windamere”. Josh and Ally met in grad school at Columbia, and both have public service jobs. Ally, a commercial litigator in her native New Zealand, now works for that nation at the UN. Josh works for an NGO promoting applied measures to achieve world peace. Lovely new friends, who we would like to sail with at home, but per the itinerary of the Club Cruise of which, with our departure tomorrow, they will be the only boat, they have one more day in  Mattituck.

July 9 — Cruise day 2 — To Port Jefferson — 18 NM

 After a good night’s sleep I resolved to try bleeding the Diesel again; maybe, being tired and frustrated, I had not been thorough enough yesterday. As usual, Lene assisted with the careful pouring while I pumped madly away of the little lever behind the engine that I can feel with my thumb but not see. This time no discomfort because the engine was not hot. And it worked! We let it run an hour to charge the refrigerator. So the ice blocks were only helpful, not crucial and no mechanic is needed for now.

Two of the boats in the Sunday morning race near us in Northport Bay with the four towers in the background.

Also, I checked out the autopilot and the new part for which I’d paid $50 (including shipping) had failed. The grooved shiny brass pin had fallen out of the plastic piece!  Another tube of 5200 was sacrificed and when cured it will hopefully be the last time we get the error message AURORELSE.  But while it cured, today’s 4.5 hour passage was all hand steering and gave me an appreciation for what it was like in the old days. We are soft and cannot steer as strait as Auto.sail trimming gives way to the necessity of keeping a hand on the wheel and an eye on the heading.

We sailed under small jib and main on a quite close starboard reach along L. I.’s north shore. Apparent wind varied from seven to twelve knots under threatening skies

Lene took the helm quite a bit and made tea when off watch. 

After we had turned south to enter the breakwaters guarding Port Jeff the heavens opened up for a sudden brief torrential downpour. Alphie Girl was caught in the cockpit and told us with a stentorian voice that she did not like the large cold drops that hit her. Lene took her below; I stayed at the helm. The wind was not strong but everything was wet and cold. When I handled the snubber line that was wet from the seawater, it’s warmth caused me to realize how very cold it had become.  I recalled a night here with Capt. Jim, maybe 25 years ago, when on anchor we watched a big ugly storm bear down on us from across The Sound. But in the end the cell parted and passed on both sides of us; like the Israelites in the Red Sea, we remained dry shod. 

We are secure on our snubbed anchor against projected 8 to 10 knots from the SE Sunday night. I read of deadly flash floods in nearby Rockland county; that is one weather hazard that we do not face afloat. Massive sudden downpours merely raise the sea level beneath us. And I was pleased to note that the close hauled sailing the last two days have not reopened the leak at the mast boot; the dampness within was caused by the drying of what had got soaked without.

 Our invitation to share food and get to know the other boaters on the cruise was adjourned until tomorrow night in Mattituck when drier weather is promised, which is the last night we will be with them before heading for further horizons.