We lallygagged around in Marion until 11:45 with delicious omelettes and sheer laziness in the heat. This was a mistake because in the afternoon the wind came up strongly from the SW, where we had to go, and the tide was against us too. I flew full main and small jib and it was too much with about 25 apparent wind units. We had to go south all the way to Cleveland Ledge before tacking. Too much heeling said the mate, even when I lowered the traveler. OK, so we will furl the headsail and use only main. But with that configuration we were making only three knots over ground and were being set onto the point that we had to get around. OK, so we motored sailed a few of the miles, till we could turn into the big Bay in which Mattapoiset sits.
Our prior visits were on moorings rented by Mattapoiset Boatyard, on the NE side of the Bay, which are strong moorings. They have a good shower and we took a nice walk in to town. We always ate at the only real restaurant in town, the Kinsale Inn, which states that it is America's oldest seaside Inn, built in 1790. It had a menu with a mild Irish flavor. Well, Kinsale is an Irish fishing town after all.
This time with the prevailing strong SW winds we anchored off the NE shore, somewhat protected by the land from the wind and greatly protected from the waves. For the record, we were at N. 41, 38.9, W. 70, 48.8, in waters that ranged from 10 to 15 feet, depending on the tides, with 60 feet of snubbed chain (except the snubber line fell off and dangled uselessly in the rather calm night). The mooring field was a bit closer to shore, in water that got gradually shallower, so we were not close to shore and with so much room around us and with the nearby boats vacant we acted like the French with outdoor showering, in complete privacy.
With the heat, we turned to tweaking our remaining itinerary until Westport Mass, where we will be meeting HS friends of Lene. (tweaking our itenarary beat boat polishing in the heat that we were experiencing in harbor.) I figured that in the days available, if the tides worked out, we could go to Woods Hole and thence to Nantucket for a few days. That would have pleased me because our friend Rhoda gave me a copy of Nathaniel Philbrick's "Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and its People 1602 - 1890" about the whalers from there. They had made an appearance in Robert Hughes's "The Fatal Shore" which I have been reading all summer, about the settlement of Australia, largely as a penal colony.
But Lene was not keen on going east again so Nantucket will have to wait. Lene's
only prior trip there, on a prior boat, was memorable for the heat, from which we escaped in an air conditioned movie:"Something About Mary" which we enjoyed with Evie and her late husband Selwyn.
Our current proposed itinerary from Mattapoiset is: New Bedford, Hadley's Harbor by Woods Hole in the Elizabeth Islands, Tashmoo Pond (tiny and overlooked until now, a twenty minute walk to Vineyard Haven, Cuddyhunk (at the other end of the Elizabeth's) and then Westport. But like all of our sailing plans, this too is subject to change.
We learned that the Kinsale Inn went out of business three years ago, but there is still a restaurant whose website map suggested to me that it was near the demised Kinsale. It is simply called The Inn at Mattapoiset and is in the same 1790 building, under new management, without the Irish touch. The food was just as good; not great, and I used their wifi to post the last posting and watched our only bit of the Olympics this year. The dinghy ride in to town, six tenth of a mile, was fun and we secured the dink off the wall of the stone pier to a line strung parallel to the side of the pier, about 20 feet away, so it could not bash against the wall. On the return ride we saw big storm clouds, saw bits of lightning above and below, but the storm was far enough away that we heard no thunder, felt no rain and experienced no increased winds. Coming back to ILENE, she was the only boat in the area with an anchor light, making the approach to her stern very easy.
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