Day 4, June 21 -- Block Island to Menemsha, (Western End of Martha'sVineyard -- 42NM -

For today's post, I am copying most of Ilene's daily email to about seventy people, and augmenting it a bit with sentences in brackets.

We weren't in a hurry to leave Block this morning but we got underway nonetheless by 9:15 and followed out a bunch of racers.  Did I mention that this week is race week on Block Island?  These guys are serious and I did not want to be anywhere in their way.

[We overtook s/v Loulou and wished good luck to our sailmaker, Paul Beaudin of the Doyle loft on City Island.]

The first couple of hours were glorious. The sky was blue with wispy clouds… The wind was around 10 knots and from our side… And the seas were very calm.  I was in my favorite position lying on the side settee in the cockpit with Roger behind the helm and my Kindle in my lap as well as a feline or two. And then, as promised, the wind picked up… The seas picked up and we were off to the races. We were flying through the water at north of 8 knots. [42 miles in six hours means an average speed of seven knots. We had full main and Genoa flying on a beam and broad starboard reach.] And then at about 1:30 in the afternoon that nasty fog came in again.  Fog is very scary.  Even though we have radar it is still very difficult to be staring into this fog with maybe 200 yards of visibility all around you and see shapes and not know if it's a boat, a log, a buoy, a lobster pot or maybe just a whitecap as we had 10 foot high rollers again!  Or maybe it's just your imagination.  We have a fog horn that Roger blows every so often.  I hold my ears but I can't imagine what the kitties feel!  In this type of weather I keep them below.  [Radar picked up something dead ahead of us coming at us and it turned out to be a big fishing boat that passed us starboard to starboard, about 100 yards away, which is too darn close, in that we didn't see him till be was abreast of us.]
So, this is us on the first day of summer!

 You can see the fog in my picture. 








That's Roger stowing the mainsail in the stackpack when we were getting ready to enter Menemsha Bight and happily the fog had lifted. 

Finally, at about 3:45 we were safely on our mooring with the intention of showering ashore (more water and hotter water!) and then having dinner at the famous Larsons.

 The view is from our boat and although it looks so close...it isn't when you have no way of getting there!😔
I was waiting for a shoe to drop and it did this evening as our dinghy engine conked out when Roger went ashore to pay our mooring fee of $30.  He had to row back and although the distance isn't great, the current makes it very tough and he is tired after a day of powerful winds.
We have food aboard and since we are leaving for Nantucket at the crack of dawn [to catch the favorable tide], we will just eat on the boat and leave early and get the outboard engine fixed in Nantucket. [Actually, the engine seems to work fine when it is given fuel and the fuel tank is far from empty so the culprit seems to lie in the hose that brings the fuel from the tank to the engine.] We do sleep wonderfully well on the boat. The cats still wake me up at about 530 in the morning but tomorrow we'll be underway by that time.

The beach at Menemsha, with its view to the west over open water, is called Sunset Beach. From the boat the dock was in the way, but the absence of clouds - where is that fog when you need it - made the view less than spectacular.