Onset – Cuttyhunk – Wickford

We watched the sun come up, what a beautiful morning! Its once again 6:30AM and we are actually sailing towards Onset. Both sails are out and the motor is off, wow! When we are on this kind of trip, more often then not we are motor sailing to our next destination. Today was different. The winds were just right so that we could sail close hauled. Three wonderful, quiet hours, and then the winds increased and shifted just a bit and we were back to motor sailing. But it sure was fun! We arrived at the Cape Cod Canal just as the current changed. We took the sails down and motored through the canal (sailing through the Canal is prohibited). As was predicted, the winds picked up quite a lot. As it always seems to happen when we go into Onset the wind was howling, but with Bob at the wheel, we took on fuel and water, and then went to our mooring. The launch stopped running at 6 so it was dinner on board. It was a quiet night.

The winds were once again due to get high in the afternoon, it is Buzzards Bay after all. Cuttyhunk is a short distance away so that is where we headed. Cuttyhunk is not my favorite harbor. The moorings are very close to one another and I feel like we are in an apartment building, where you can see and smell foods being cooked, cigarettes being smoked and all the social chatter. Going ashore was nice, however, as we were able to take a nice walk.

We were happy to leave at 6:30 the next morning. Our destination today is Wickford, RI, on Narragansett Bay. We were rolling a lot (winds were 16-20, seas were 3-5 feet) but with our main up we were able to ride through the waves quite well. Another short day - arrived about lunchtime and picked up a town mooring just past the breakwater. It’s a long dinghy ride to town but worth the ride. What a beautiful town. The main street is full of historical homes dating back to the 1700’s. Most are well cared for and the streets are just lovely. It’s a really nice place with restaurants, art galleries, antique shops, boutique clothing shops. Our good friends Joe and Michele from Simple Life live in Cranston, about a half hour drive away. One of our goals was to be able to spend some time with them. They met us at the dinghy dock the next day, took us to the market and then we went out for dinner together. Great fun. The next day as we were going to town we ran aground and damaged the propellor of the dinghy. At first we thought that we broke a shear pin. After Joe called his Yamaha mechanic we determined that we don’t have a shear pin, that the prop was damaged and needed to be replaced. Believe it or not, we had a new prop on board that we had purchased for a spare when we bought the engine 18 years ago. About ¾ of an hour later we were in business again! The car was back on the road - Wohoo!!! Once again our friends picked us up, this time driving to their house for delicious pasta and home made meatball and sausage spaghetti sauce, and a really nice wine of course, Yumm. We hugged goodbye with a promise to see them again soon as they are going to be going south to the Bahamas and will be traveling down the Chesapeake Bay right past us. Hopefully we will get back before they pass us!