Bill & Donna
08/08/2012, Provincetown, MA

Provincetown is a lot of fun. Just walking the streets is an experience. There are so many fascinating people to watch. There were street musicians, people in bizarre costumes, body painted women and men, and the occasional drag queen. There is a lot of history too. We walked up to the Pilgrim Monument. Provincetown was the first place that the Mayflower stopped in 1620 after 67 days at sea on their trip to America. The 252 foot high granite tower (on top of a 90 foot high hill) was built in 1907. We climbed to the top and enjoyed the view of the entire area. We also visited the museum at the base. It was an interesting place and definitely worth the effort to get to the top.

We mentioned yesterday about the guy wearing nothing but a towel handing out flyers. We had a nice talk with him. He is part of a show called "Naked Boys Singing". The other show he was hawking was a drag music show called "Icons 3D". We decided to attend the drag show that night. We had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be a blast. There were two "girls" performing as stars like Lady GaGa, Beyonce, Madonna, and more that I had never heard of but Donna knew all about. It was all lip-sync. There were also two male dancers from the Naked Boys group as backup dancers (they were wearing tight black pants and nothing else). They were all extremely talented and it was a great show.

We have really enjoyed our three days in Provincetown but are ready to move on again. We want to get to Maine so we can finally meet one of our sponsor grandchildren, our Midshipman Chris's daughter Elena. Tomorrow we will pull up our anchor and head out to the ocean for about 24 hours. We are hoping to site a whale or two on the way.

Sailing

Comments [2]

Bill & Donna
08/07/2012, Provincetown, MA

We ended up spending three nights in New Bedford. We needed to get out of there - we were getting too comfortable. We had spent an afternoon at the whaling museum, took a walking tour from the point of view of Ishmael from Moby Dick, and even found the Joshua Slocum memorial in the neighboring Fairhaven. We were walking to the West Marine when Bill saw the sign pointing to the memorial. Joshua Slocum was the first person to sail around the world solo. He left from Fairhaven, MA. We went in search of the memorial but we couldn't find it. We asked a couple people who had no idea what we were talking about. Finally we asked a woman who was watering her lawn. She said she had no idea but she bet her husband would know. We told her it was OK and walked on. A few minutes later a car pulled up to us and a guy asked if we were looking for the Joshua Slocum memorial. The woman had gone to her husband and he jumped in the car and came looking for us. He told us to get in the car and he would drive us there - so we did! How funny that he felt the need to do that for us. It ended up just being a big stone with a plaque on it, but it was still interesting. We finished the trip with a visit to the Farmers market to buy some fruit and vegetables.

We also figured out how to fix our autopilot so we were all set to go further on our trip. There were a few loose wires and a couple of adjustments that needed to be made.

We left New Bedford in a very strong wind and had a spirited sail across Buzzards Bay to Woods Hole. You have to time your arrival because it is pretty dangerous going into Woods Hole if you go when the tide is wrong. There is a half hour window every six hours when the water is calm. Other than that the tide rips through at over four knots with rocks on both sides of the channel. We actually heard a Mayday on the radio a couple of days ago where a 52 foot sailboat hit the rocks going through and broke off their rudder. We got there just in time and we were able to get in without any issue. The anchorage described in the cruising guide is gone. It's now completely filled with moorings. We grabbed a mooring but since it was Sunday night there was no one there to collect what would have been an exorbitant fee. We decided it wasn't worth the cost so we spent the night there and left early in the morning.

Yesterday we went through the Cape Cod Canal. It was almost like a parade going through the canal, mostly sailboats. Again you have to time it carefully so you can ride the tide. There were so many boats going through, but since it was the first time we ever have taken our boat through we had no idea what was normal. It takes about 2 hours to go through. When we got to the end we saw all the boats we went through with just sitting there at the end. We could not figure out why they were not going any further. We tried to call a couple of the boats to see why they weren't moving but no one answered us. What did they know that we didn't? Finally we called our friend Giff who is familiar with sailing in this area. He had no idea either. A short while later we heard someone say on the radio that there was going to be a yacht race - well that explained it!

Now we are anchored in Provincetown, MA. We are just outside the mooring field in a beautiful spot. We went in to town for the afternoon and checked the place out. Of course we had ice cream! Provincetown has a well deserved reputation as an interesting place to visit. From the guy handing out fliers wearing nothing but a tiny towel, the posters for drag shows, and the sex toy shops, there is a lot to see. There are also many families and kids jumping off the docks into the water. It's a completely diverse group of people. It was packed on Monday afternoon. I can't imagine how busy it must get on a weekend.

We also scoped out the best way to get our laundry done and go to the supermarket. Today we took the bus to take care of those essentials. It worked out great. The people were nice and we came back with a full load of clean laundry and all the food we could carry. The picture above is as we were waiting for the bus to return to the town dock. We'll probably stay here for a couple of days and get some chores done while we get some more relaxation... then we will head for Maine.

Sailing

Comments [1]

Bill
08/03/2012, New Bedford, MA

We headed out yesterday morning for Maine. Unfortunately, our autopilot decided to completely stop working. That's not a huge problem on short hops but hand steering for 30 hours straight is not only no fun, but it can be dangerous because of fatigue. We decided to stop until we could either fix the autopilot or plan a different course. We are now on a mooring in New Bedford, Massachusetts. There are lots of marine stores and other amenities close by. There are also a lot interesting places to see. This was a big whaling town. The story in Moby Dick (Donna's favorite book.. not) starts here. We plan to visit some museums and enjoy the town for a few days at least while we decide how to proceed. We'll post more soon.

Sailing

Comments [3]

Donna & Bill
08/01/2012, Newport, RI

After we left the marina we decided to take a day or two to catch up on some things we'd been ignoring, like our finances. We still had internet access from the marina so we went and anchored out about 10 minutes away, by a state park with a beach. There was a lot of traffic going by so it was not very calm, but not as bad as some of our other anchorages had been. We stayed two nights and each day about 50 or 60 small sailboats headed out from the beach into the bay to race. Each day we have been sailing in Rhode Island we have seen lots of small boats racing. I said to myself "don't these people work?". It turns out all the racers are children, at least during the business day. Those kids spent about 6 hours each day out on these little boats - I sure hope they love sailing!

Finally we decided we needed to get moving. We pulled up our anchor and motored to Newport. There wasn't much wind, and again it was in the wrong direction. You can get anywhere in Rhode Island in no time at all though if you are motoring. The Newport anchorage was very crowded but we found a place on the edge for our boat. It was a very cloudy day and we knew some rain was coming, but we decided to go out in the dinghy and check out the town. Newport is like Annapolis on steroids! We could not believe the huge yachts that were tied up to the docks. We've seen some huge yachts in Annapolis, but usually one or two at a time. There were huge yachts and schooners all over the place here. First stop was to visit our friend TJ's mom. She runs this huge wharf and retail shop complex in the heart of the tourist district. We tied the dinghy up there and went to find her. We had a nice chat and then went out to explore. The rain started pretty soon after we started walking around so we found a yacht museum where they are restoring a huge sailing ship that was built in 1885. It was pretty impressive. Then we found a shop and had some cakeballs - since it was too late for ice cream! We walked along the tourist spots and decided we didn't need to be in a big tourist town like Newport for long.

Back at the boat it rained most of the night but our anchor held well. We had a good night. In the morning Bill looked out and saw a cruise ship coming into the harbor. We had no idea that Newport was that big a deal. We are enjoying watching the world go by as we sit at anchor. We got a few important things done while we were here. We now have a brand new working radar. We will need it in the next few days.

We have decided to head for Maine. We had thought about skipping Maine because of our late start but we realized that we could be there in two days if we go straight through. We want to go to a SSCA GAM in Penobscot Bay this weekend. SSCA is Seven Seas Cruising Association (we have been members for several years). In the old whaling days when ships met at sea they would get together and exchange news and gossip and just have a party. They called that a GAM. The SSCA GAMs are a lot of fun and we meet a lot of fellow cruisers. We go to a really big GAM in Annapolis each year. This one will be much smaller and less organized. We plan on leaving Newport Thursday morning and going through the Cape Cod Canal. We will then spend about 30 hours at sea and arrive in Maine early on Saturday morning. Maybe we'll see some whales on this trip!

Sailing

Comments [2]

Donna
07/29/2012, East Greenwich, RI

We had two more days with the kids before they had to go back to Maryland. Unfortunately we didn't get another sailing day because the wind was either too light, or not in the right direction, but we still managed to have fun. The first day we motored to Third Beach at the end of the Sakonnet River (the picture is from the beach looking at the anchorage). Right around the corner was the Atlantic Ocean. Turns out those ocean swells didn't have any trouble turning the corner and making our anchored boat roll all night long. It was pretty rough but we did take the dinghy to the beach to check it out. The four of us lifted the dinghy and carried it up high enough on the beach to not have to worry about it. We thought we could take a hike to the wildlife preserve but it was too far away to walk to. We did have fun looking at all the shells on the beach.

The next day we motored out into the Atlantic. The kids were pretty excited to be in the ocean. We headed back up into Narragansett Bay to Dutch Island Harbor and we anchored there. We all got in the dinghy and left it at the marina and walked into Jamestown, RI. We had read there was a bakery and a supermarket - and that is pretty exciting for us at this point. We walked across town with the intention of taking the ferry to Newport but it turned out the ferry was very expensive and Newport was having a folk festival which meant it would be a bit crazy there. So we did what we do best instead, we bought ice cream!! We checked out all the stores by the waterfront and stopped at the supermarket on the way back to our boat. It was a rainy night so we had an inside barbecue. Dutch Island Harbor turned out to be pretty rough too. Moonraker rolled around all night long. Bill and Sam decided to go to the bakery for breakfast and Emilia and I stayed on the boat. When they came back we pulled up the anchor and headed back to East Greenwich so we could get the kids back to the airport.

Again we were motoring up the bay. There weren't many boats out, but there was one that seemed to be hanging around us. Finally they came close enough for one man to yell something to us. We were very shocked to hear what it was. "Is Randy Rosenbaum's sister on board?" Yes - I was!! But how did they know? We told them "Yes" and had a nice conversation. I then asked the man what his name was. I heard it well enough to call my brother right away and tell him what happened. When I told him the man's name he told me that that was the Governor of Rhode Island!! We looked it up - and yes - it was the Governor of Rhode Island. Randy, who is the Director of the Arts Council for the state, had sent the Governor's assistant a picture of our boat and mentioned that we would be on the bay this week. The four of us were pretty impressed - and it makes a great story for us to tell every Rhode Islander we meet, because of course they all know who he is.

After our brush with fame we headed back to the marina we picked the kids up at and took another slip. We walked to town and got caught in a rain storm but the kids didn't mind at all - after all - they are from Seattle. Randy's son John came and picked us all up and helped us take the kids to the airport. We had a nice dinner with John and his girlfriend Katie. We are sorry to see the kids go - but it will be easier to sleep on the boat now.

Today we had our first real cruiser Laundromat experience. We carried our laundry up into town and it wasn't really all that bad! Then we got even luckier when the people from the boat in the next slip offered to drive us to the supermarket! I know we won't always be this lucky - but we are starting to get used to the cruising life.

Comments [2]

Donna & Bill
07/25/2012, Fall River, MA

Our three days in the slip in East Greenwich went pretty quickly. My brother, Randy, took good care of us. He fed us dinner, took us to the food store, let us use his washing machine, and then took us to see Waterfire in Providence. That was an interesting experience for sure. They light these cauldrons of wood in the middle of the river that goes through town and play New Age music. Thousands of people just walk all around looking at them. Then Randy lent us his car!! We spent the next day buying things we didn't even know we needed. Thanks for all your help Randy!

To top it all off Randy drove us to the airport to pick up Emilia and Sam, our 16 and 14 year old grandkids who live in Washington State but are visiting their dad in Maryland for the summer. We weren't sure how adding two more people to our already crowded boat would be but we knew that if we had to add two people these were the two to add. Emilia and Sam have spent more nights on Moonraker than any other person besides Bill and I. They are the easiest kids in the world! We headed out on Monday afternoon and went to an anchorage that was only an hour or so away. We had a great sail there with Sam at the helm. When we got there, there was no place to anchor - the whole cove was covered by mooring balls. We asked some people on a boat that was already moored and they said just to pick up a mooring and if someone came who owned it they would just ask us to move. We weren't so comfortable with that but we did pick up a mooring that said US Coast Guard Auxiliary. We figured that would be a safe mooring to take. Also, it's been years since we tried to pick up a mooring ball so that must have been fun to watch too. Once we were settled we put the dinghy in the water and the four of us went over to thank the people on the other boat for the help. They insisted we come on board - they were travelling with their grandkids too, and they were the same age as ours. We did go on board and the kids ended up going on an adventure with the other kids ashore in their dinghy.

The next night we motored over to Bristol, RI and spent the day there. We had a good pizza at a local pizza shop and walked around the town a bit. This town has the oldest 4th of July celebration. They have a red, white, and blue stripe painted down the street to show where the parade route goes. We were able to anchor there, but there wasn't much space between the mooring balls there either. We finished the night with a nice thunderstorm but the boat was nice and secure.

Today we had a great sail to Fall River, MA. We are moored in Battleship Cove. We spent the day touring all the Navy ships that are here at the museum. We went on a destroyer named the USS Joseph P. Kennedy, a WW-II era submarine named the Lionfish, and the WW-II battleship USS Massachusetts. It was a very interesting day and the kids had a great time.

Sailing

Comments [0]

Donna & Bill
07/21/2012, East Greenwich, RI

We spent two days anchored in Great Salt Pond at Block Island. On Wednesday we started with a nice nap after our two nights at sea. Later we went into town and did a little exploring. It's definitely a tourist destination. The local people were very friendly and helpful. We spent Thursday sightseeing. We rented bikes and biked half way around the island. We had heard it was pretty hilly, and even though it's probably been more than a year since we have been on bikes, we weren't intimidated. We should have been! Good thing we aren't too proud to walk those bikes up the hills. We enjoyed seeing the different land forms and beaches that Block Island has to offer. We biked from one end of the island to the other. There are beautiful historic lighthouses at both ends. We also climbed down to the Mohegan cliffs on the south end of the island. These 200 foot high cliffs have a beautiful beach at the bottom with a long set of wooden steps to get down. They are named after the invading Indian tribe that was repelled by the native Indians and driven off the cliffs to their deaths.

We woke up to rain on Friday morning but it was time to move on. We aren't quite to the point where we can do whatever we want yet - we still have a schedule to make and some work to do on the boat. After buying breakfast from the bakery boat (yes, a boat from the local bakery comes around the anchorage most mornings), we took off across Block Island Sound with our sails raised but were surprised that it was just as rough, if not rougher, than the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually we took down our jib and motored toward Narragansett Bay. Bill promised it would be calmer there, I wasn't sure I was buying that. Turns out he was right. We got past all the small sailboat races going on, and found our way to East Greenwich which is where we are going to pick up our grandkids on Monday. Our goal was to anchor someplace, work on the boat, and figure out a way to connect with my brother who lives nearby. Each marina we called said there was no place to anchor so we ended up taking a slip for the three nights until the kids fly in. That will probably work well for us though since we need to do a lot of moving people and stuff off and on to the boat right now and that would have been more challenging by dinghy. It was a real experience for us. We haven't really had Moonraker in any other slip before, not to mention one on a floating dock! The picture is us in the slip. The bonus is that it is right next to the Amtrak train tracks - I am a big train lover! And no - I didn't hear any trains go by all night long.

The other bonus is that it is a short walk to an interesting little historic town. Bill needed to have a lobster dinner and a "not boat" breakfast, so we have tried a couple of the local restaurants too. Today we are going to see if we can make the boat a little more comfortable when we add 2 more people on Monday.

Check out our photo gallery of pictures from Block Island.

Sailing

Comments [1]

Donna
07/18/2012, Block Island, RI

We were lucky enough to have mostly calm seas on our Monday evening to Wednesday morning ocean passage. We took all the seasick precautions and they must have worked, we didn't get seasick. Maybe we wouldn't have anyhow - but better not to have to worry! We ended up motoring most of the way, but we did sail for a while. When I was walking back to the cockpit, after helping with the sails, I looked over the side and was rewarded by seeing a quite large sea turtle swimming on the surface of the water. He was beautiful! The picture above is pretty much the 360 degree view we had for nearly 40 hours. We saw some ships and other boats- but not many and almost none of them very close.

Bill and I worked out a watch schedule of 3 hours on, 3 hours off, during the night time, and 4 hours on 4 hours off during the daytime. Bill said he thought he noticed some flying fish and this morning when we anchored in Block Island he found one lying on the deck. He had taken his last flight unfortunately. We had a pretty relaxing couple of days, even though we originally thought the autopilot was broken. That certainly would have made the trip less relaxing. Bill was able to fix it - but we are not sure for how long. I was able to pick up a book and read - which is something that I have not been able to do in months!

Comments [6]

Bill
07/16/2012, Cape May, NJ

In a few hours we will be leaving for Block Island. It is an open ocean crossing directly from Cape May NJ to Block Island (off the end of Long Island, NY). We should arrive there on Wednesday morning. The trip should take a little less than two days. The weather report is great.. winds out of the SW at 10-15 knots increasing to 15-20 knots. That's a great downwind sail. There are no storms forecast. We won't have internet, email, or phone until we get there.

Our all night sail down the Delaware Bay was a good practice run for sailing all night. We have our bilge pump problem fixed. The rigging has all the cotter pins installed. We have our emergency strobe lights attached to our inflatable life jackets (with harnesses) and we have our new man-overboard alarm all set up. It screeches an alarm (on the boat) if the person wearing the FOB goes in the water. We also installed new pad eyes for us to clip into in the cockpit.

It should be a fun trip. We'll blog again when we get to Block Island. The picture is sunrise off of Cape May while sailing the Delaware Bay on Sunday morning.

Comments [1]

Bill & Donna
07/15/2012, Cape May, NJ

The definition of cruising: "Fixing your boat in exotic places". One day as cruisers and we can fully appreciate this definition. We left on Saturday morning as planned, only an hour and 15 minutes later than expected. The picture above is us leaving the marina to start our adventure. Luckily our son Ian was late coming with breakfast and to see us off. If we had left on time we would have been greeted with a nice thunderstorm. We sat out the thunderstorm and then got underway. We knew the boat wasn't necessarily ready to go - there were a few things definitely not working and some questions about other issues we had recently noted. Unfortunately we are on a schedule so we went and figured we would make the best of it.

The plan called for Chesapeake City for the night. Three quarters of the way there we accidentally discovered that the boat was sinking - or at least the bilge was filled with water to the floor boards. We knew there was a small leak somewhere - we didn't realize how bad it was, and we had somehow turned off the high water alarm. This was a problem. We were able to get all the water out with our bilge pump but we didn't know where the water was coming from. We got into Chesapeake City and anchored, ate dinner, and started searching for the leak. That wasn't so easy since every inch of this boat is full of "stuff". Bill had a good theory of where the water was coming from, but we had some inconsistencies with his theory. We checked every thru-hull and couldn't find any evidence of leaking. There was no water coming in through the propeller shaft or the rudder shaft. We think that the water is coming in through the bilge pump hose. It's not looped up where it comes in the boat so when the outlet gets underwater, because of the engine or waves, water just runs into the bilge. We need to replace that hose anyway so we are going to put in a new one with the proper loop before we leave Cape May.

Either way, we knew we weren't going to fix the problem in Chesapeake City, and we were anchored next to a loud restaurant and bar on a Saturday night. Best answer - pull up anchor and motor on to Cape May, 11 hours away, through the night. Maybe not the smartest answer, but the one that made the most sense at the time. As it turned out, it was a pretty good night and we didn't have any more trouble with the leak. We took turns sleeping and had an uneventful journey. Our new AIS worked great. We were able to see all the big ships on our chart plotter before we even could see their lights. It made things much more relaxing. Note that I said "much more". We need to get used to night sailing again. It was still a bit stressful at times.

All in all, we are very happy to be on our way. It seemed like we would never get going. The next big event is the two day passage to Block Island. We will watch the weather and leave in the next day or so. Stay tuned!

Sailing

Comments [1]