Wednesday night racing was interesting again - 4th out of 6...
We were dicing it out with Nepethe - a Tartan 34 - heading for a mark we're on port tack, he's on starboard and therefore has right of way so I begin to luff up to allow him his way and he suddenly dives below us... Great! However, he decides to cut it close to our stern - too close - and loses control and his anchor and our pushpit miss by about 3 feet! To compound the problem, our luffing made it impossible to gain the mark - so I end up tacking in front of him - causing another near miss! Even though he manages to get around that mark ahead of us, we ended up beating him to the next mark - because he set off for the wrong mark! We'll take it any way we can get it!
The wind was up - as was the chop - so it was a wet ride ride for all!
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With the lousy weather predicted, we decided to do some work on the boat. I replaced the house battery bank with 4 new Trojan T125's, giving us 480AH. Looking forward to more normal usage and recharging instead of the erratic, turn the fridge on and watch the amp hours drop from 420 to 200 in about 2 hours! Our fridge isn't that big!
We also worked on the bilge - Laurie cleaning out years of nasty stuff and then I re-plummed the fridge drain. For some reason it shares the bilge pipe - so every time the bilge operates, whatever doesn't actually exit the pipe, backflows and fills the fridge! I have fixed it to a degree - but it still needs a little more. Not sure why we don't just drain the fridge to the bilge...
We left the boat on Saturday night, favoring air conditioning at home. Sunday, we sailed in very light air to Ram Island, just outside of Mattapoisett and swam. Afterwards we sailed over to Aucoot Cove in a strengthening - becoming strong breeze of 20+ kts. A nice relaxing day with a boisterous finish!
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Continuing our racing improvement, last night we competed again in the Wednesday night series at Mattapoisett. This time it was really thrilling!
We got a good start - first across the line, and headed off on a starboard tack, unfortunately well below the line of the other boats, but by the time we got to the windward mark, we found ourselves deucing it out with three other boats. We rounded by the skin of our teeth and set to chase the other three boats (three others were well ahead of us already) and managed to catch and pass two boats on the downwind leg.
Unfortunately, a poor rounding saw us at the back again, but right behind Nepenthe when we made a tactical error, deciding to dive under him rather than tack away through fresh air. Nevertheless, despite once again following a much lower tack, we found ourselves reaching for the windward mark again, with Summer Girl tacking just in front of us and Nepenthe coming up on a tighter tack. We manage to reach the mark first, bowling the other two out of the way and then rushed back downwind again.
Again we rounded poorly, but kept ahead this time and extended our lead on the tack sufficiently to allow us to tack in front of Nepenthe without fouling him - but had a scary moment as we see his bow aim right at our midships - for an awfully long time before he finally tacked.
Going for the last windward mark we misjudged the lay line a little and had to add a tack to make the mark, but did it well, maintaining our lead of the back of the pack and we rounded the mark and headed for the home run, keeping our distance from a hard charging Nepenthe. Summer Girl apparently had to add the same tack to make the windward mark, so she was long gone.
At the finish line the wind's suddenly rose along with nasty rain - at least it held off for the race.
A thrilling race - but not sure if Laurie's up for quite so much excitement!
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Is it a whale? Nope, it's a $1,000 Scup!
That's the first fish caught by a Balme with our (ok MY) closing in on $1,000 worth of fishing equipment!!! (I don't think it's really that much honey!!!)
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What an excellent weekend!
We left Mattapoisett on Friday afternoon - getting away from the dock where we watered up and re-fueled at about 2:45 and sailed into a breezy 20kts right on the nose with 3ft seas under jib and reefed main. We had Laurie's grandson Matthew along for the ride.
The boat performed beautifully and we reached across to Woods hole before tacking towards New Bedford, then towards Quick's Hole and again tacked out down Buzzards Bay before taking a final tack into Cuttyhunk, arriving in the inner harbor about 7:00pm where we managed to anchor along the side - avoiding the $40/night mooring fees.
Saturday morning was beautiful, and saw Laurie and Matthew go exploring on the beach, looking for periwinkles for fishing bait and swimming. Meanwhile Bill stayed aboard and installed a new Raystar 125 GPS antenna - to replace the old unit which was proving unreliable and able to only achieve 3 satellites. After lunch we headed to the beach, which was crowded - so we came back to the boat and swam and fished of it.
After dinner (Swordfish from the local merchant) we headed to the pier to fish - and wonders of wonders, Laurie scored the first and only catch of the evening, hauling in a 4" Scup!
On Sunday we repeated the activities - Laurie and Matthew headed for the beach searching for more Crustacea and Pelagics while enjoying the worm waters and sand of the harbor channel. This time Bill fixed the water cooling system for the fridge - which has never worked! The fix entailed taking the pump apart and putting it back together - seems to work now, but who knows how long for... the fridge certainly seems to get colder now though :)
After a swim off the boat - and a swim to meet Bob, Clarise(?) and their son Tucker on their boat 'Kokopelli' next to us in the anchorage, we had lunch and then set off for home, leaving at about 1:15pm. Wind was behind us all the way, requiring just a couple of gibes to get us there in decent time.
We arrived back on our mooring at 5:45, posed for a quick team photo and headed back, with a bucket full of periwinkles and hermit crabs for Matthew's collection!
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OK, the image associated with this post doesn't belong - a hangover from our Scottish photos... Isn't he cute?
So we're back in the US and sailing again...
Saturday and Sunday we day-sailed from Mattapoisett - returning to the mooring on Saturday morning so that Kyle Medina could assist me in fixing the radar (turned out to be miss-wired by yours truly!). We've spent more nights on our mooring this year than ever before - and enjoying it. Mattapoisett is a nice harbor!
In spite of dire weather predictions, we had good weather both days - with the exception of a five minute shower on Saturday when we headed over to Wild Harbor just north of West Falmouth on the Cape. We had a lovely swim in very temperate water - but recognized that this location gains it's name for a reason - the prevailing south westerlies funnel straight into the harbor making for a rolly anchorage.
On Sunday after Kyle fixed us up we headed towards Hadley's Harbor, but at the last minute diverted to Quisset Harbor/ A beautifully peaceful lunch was enjoyed - as well as more swimming!
Through the weekend we had good wind between 10 and 16 kts for the most part - and basically planned our itinerary to enjoy good sailing!
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