Day 5 June 22 -- Menemsha to Nantucket -- 40 NM

Well the prior three passages of this cruise involved mostly strong SW winds from near or aft the beam - fast. Southwesterlies are the "prevailing" winds in this area of the world, but one can't expect such ideal wind all the time. At least today's passage was not a beat, but it was a very light wind day. So the diesel worked throughout the six hour  passage, though I was able to fly the Genoa during three of the six hours of the passage, which gave us a half knot speed boost. What gave us a big boost during the first half of the passage, thanks to our 6 a.m. departure,  was the tide in Vineyard Sound.  It was sunny and warm and a pleasant passage. The crew likes such passages.

Several fast and slow ferries passed us near Nantucket.

Brant Point, marks the entrance to the well protected deep harbor from which Captain Ahab's "Pequod", and hundreds of other whale ships departed; and most returned. We had wanted to visit Nantucket last summer, having last been here during the Club Cruise in 1998. How do I know the year?  There was a heatwave and we escaped the heat by seeing  "There's Something About Mary" with Selwyn and Evie; that movie was released that year. In 1998 we still had my first boat, the 28 foot Pearson, "Just Cause", and it was Lene's first two week cruise.

But last summer the timing of our visits with Lee and Patti in Hyannisport and then Greg and Kathy in Provincetown left no days for Nantucket.  Having read Nathaniel Philbrick's history of this island -- up to the 1890's (when tourism replaced whaling) -- gave me a new appreciation of the place.

There's something about Nantucket though: bring money; it's expensive. Philbrick told me that the Quakers, who ran the whaleships, drove a hard bargain and so do the present day Nantucketers. Our mooring is $70 per night and that does not include launch service which is $5 per person, one way!

We contacted Chris Parker, the weather guru. He told us that a Sunday and Monday passage to Shelburne Nova Scotia, which was our target date, is actually the best weather for this trip in the next ten days, a mixture of good wind pushing us and light wind requiring the engine, but no storms and headwinds. I figure that with these conditions, we can average better than 6.8 knots and hence not require a second night out in the North Atlantic. We will Chris call back on Saturday to confirm; then the forecast will be more accurate. I recall that our passage from Saint Martin to Antigua in 2010 was delayed by about a week awaiting "clearance" from Chris for a safe "weather window".

We stopped at the fuel dock for 8.8 gallons of diesel, to top off for the long passage to Nova Scotia, and called a mechanic, Tim Lewis, to look at our dinghy outboard. He came with his assistant to our mooring on a work boat loaded with every imaginable hand tool and fixed the problem in ten minutes. Yesterday I had figured that the problem was not the Yamaha engine's fault, but in the hose. Well the culprit was not the hose either, but the plastic pickup tube in the plastic fuel tank that Yamaha sold with the engine. The tube picks up fuel from the bottom of the tank and feeds it to the hose. It had fallen off and was lying uselessly in the tank. Without that tube, the hose just sucked air from the top of the tank, and the engine won't burn air. A very high price for two men for their one hour minimum, but Tim had both the expertise to know the problem and the tools to fix it, he and came to our boat on short notice and gave us a discount and he has a good sense of humor. So no $20 round trip launch rides for us!

We each needed to sign documents before a notary, a service which Sharmia, the manager at a local Cape Cod Bank cheerfully provided for free. We did some shopping, took shore showers (free at the Harbor Master's office), had good tuna, freshly caught and imaginatively cooked by the chef at Pier 14 Restaurant, and chatted with some folks from Norfolk on their Island Packet at one of the docks. Then we were picked up by our new friend, Sally, who took us on a tour to Siasconset, the community at the eastern end if the island.