Yesterday morning, I went forward and dropped the mooring lines. I keep Grace on a mooring at the Hingham Shipyard Marinas. Dropping the mooring lines is the first step in my 7 1/2 month journey - both a physical and a metaphoric step.

The first leg was down Cape Bay to the Cape Cod Canal, through the canal to Wings Cove in Pocasset, where I picked up a friends mooring for the night. For those who wish 'fair winds and following seas' - I had fair, although gusty, wind, and following seas - 2-4 ft, and it was roll-y, roll-y. Waves would swing the stern around, gusts would cause the boat to round up, and the dinghy, which I tow behind, would surf down a wave almost to the stern, swing left or right, and then the towing line would jerk it around. The poor autopilot worked hard to keep course.

My general plan is to move as quickly as possible through Long Island Sound, catch an ebbing tide through Hell's Gate to the East River in NYC, out to Sandy Hook and down the New Jersey coast, up Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, down to Chesapeake Bay. That's about 500 miles. I'd like to have time to explore the Chesapeake before meeting my group of travelers in Norfolk VA - Mile 0 of the ICW. I have a target date of meeting them on Oct 18.

I'm having technical difficulties getting the chart function of this blog working. For those who wish to follow me, click here for the SPOT map. I've added a few pictures to the picture gallery