To leave or not to leave. That is the question. We awoke to a clammy fog in Marblehead Harbor. And everything in you says �Hunker down and read a good book.� But you don�t get there that way. So we prepared the boat, plotting a course of 36 miles to the south to Plymouth, Massachusetts.
We�d been into Plymouth before and found the location to be friendly to sailors.
So off we headed into the murky day with one-mile visibility.
Our course took out �way out into Massachusetts Bay. We had to cross the main shipping channel for Boston Harbor. As we slugged along, with no wind and a flat sea, we monitored the captain of �The Big Red Boat� as he spoke with Boston Harbor Pilot. He was bring in his ship and needed piloting help in the fog.
By 1100 hours, the sun burned off the fog and spirits lifted. The bay has a thousand lobster men working the water, plotting a course to their painted buoys that mark their traps. Out here in the vastness of nothingness, they knew exactly where they�d put down their baited lures to the lobster.
By 1300, we passed Minot�s Light, a stark finger of a lighthouse that stands warning of the hundreds of rocky outcroppings on the southshore of Boston.
We switched on the autopilot to take the drudgery out of the trip. Because there was little wind, we didn�t even put up the sails.
The buoys to mark the entrance to the Plymouth Sound were passed at 1545 but it took another hour and 10 minutes to wind our way through the sand flats and channels to the inner harbor. Because we are expecting a blow from the southeast, we decided the prudent thing is to take a mooring and get greater protection than we would in the outer harbor. We did pass a couple of hardier souls in their boats � one of them with a British ensign fluttering from his stern. He looked salty with a low-slung gaff-rigged sloop that was not more than two feet above the water.
I need to mention a visit we had with another sailing couple at the Dolphin Yacht Club in Marblehead last night. Deanna and Cliff Peterson, out of Tempe, Arizona, chatted with us while we awaited the showers at the club. They live aboard a cunning little 27-foot Nor�Sea sailing sloop. She only draws 4 feet. AS a result, they are able to trailer the boat from Arizona to where they want to sail. They�ve done Alaska (twice), Baja California, and this year put in at the Chesapeake Bay and had cruised to Boothbay Harbor, Maine. They�ve been doing this four six years and seem pretty much at home in their little boat. We need to learn a lesson from them in their tighter use of space. There is a huge difference between the cubic footage of their Nor�Sea and our Willard. We might have 50-75 per cent more volume. But we have managed to fill that volume to the point we have slowed the boat down to make it hard to get her above 5 knots. Last year, we were managing to sail her at 6.6�7 knots. It may not seem much of a difference. But you find it makes the days underway much longer. Our 36-mile voyage today took 8.5 hours. Ugh. Simplify. Simplify.
Good news: The yacht club launch just came over to settle with us. �$35 please, skipper.� I gulped at this outrageous amount. He then said, �Will you be using launch services?� I said we would not (it�s a short row to shore). Then I can�t charge you anything, he said, with a smile. Mmmm. I said the right thing!
