Newport, Rhode Island via the Cape Cod Canal. It was roughly 200
miles and overall a really nice trip. Justin from Lyman Morse joined
us for the passage and stood watch with Fay.
We left on Saturday morning with a goal of being at the east entrance
to the canal by 9am on Sunday morning to catch the ebbing current into
Buzzards Bay. We were able to sail from about 11 in the morning until
midnight, first on a nice fast beam reach, and later with the wind on
the nose. The first half of the evening we had 15-20 on the nose and
had to deviate from our desired course by 10-20 degrees, but with
essentially no swell and small waves so it was a fast ride and
relatively smooth. Smooth enough for Fay to make a great pasta
dinner! And then a 3/4 moon lit up the water magnificently.
By midnight we'd been lifted back to our desired course, but when the
wind went aft we couldn't make the speed necessary to reach the canal
and catch the favorable tide so we had to motor. We motored from
roughly midnight, then through the canal and for another hour or so on
Sunday morning crossing Buzzard's Bay. Then we got 6-7 knots of
breeze so we went back to sailing. The breeze built steadily through
the day until we had 12-15 knots of apparent wind that allowed us to
sail all the way into Newport harbor.
My personal highlight was seeing Weatherly, a classic America's Cup 12
meter which successfully defended the cup in 1962. We were on port
gybe and she was on starboard gybe and I expected than when we gybed
(she had the right of way), she would sail right through our lee.
Instead, we sufficiently blanketed her that she slowed significantly
and we actually sailed back over the top of her! A small victory for
the heavy cruising boat (we had just taken on 3,000 lbs of fuel and
water) over the classic racer.
New Morning performed very well, moving quite nicely in the lighter
breezes and standing up well when we were hard on the wind in 17-20
knots for 4-5 hours on Saturday night. A few gremlins are still
lurking in the electronics and electrical systems, but everything else
performed as expected.
Now we're tied up at the Newport Shipyard (established 1834)
surrounded by mega-yachts and a few state of the art racers like
Virgin Money / Speedboat. We'll be here for about two weeks or so
with lots of projects to complete before the passage to Bermuda; we
hope to leave by November 4th or 5th. But today was a rest day so Fay
had a nice long walk through Newport. I stayed on the boat and
enjoyed the warm weather (back to shorts / flip flops) trying to
perfect a better technique for whipping lines.
It's good to be out of Maine and starting our trip.
