The real trip begins
21 September 2013 | NYC
Did a "touch and go" in Edgartown just long enough to grab showers and a take out dinner. The weather for tomorrow does not exactly look perfect but we decide to go for it as we are looking to get south to warmer weather. Up early and as predicted the winds are strong - as in 20 knots out of the north. Everything is a wrestling match - getting Casey to shore - getting the dinghy secured, even getting off of the mooring was a huge challenge with the winds. Once underway, the normally placid Edgartown harbor is being very nasty. The 20 knots winds must be working with some ebb current to create rather nasty waves - short period and steep - coming straight from where we are going. We actually end up "tacking" under motor so as not to take the waves on the bow. It takes a while, but we make it out of the harbor and are able to foot off toward Vineyard Haven.
As we move through the day we are able to foot off more, set more sail, and by mid day we are flying down Vineyard Sound with a favorable current at 9+ knots. This is the reason that we put up with the AM foul conditions. Chrisy makes it clear that it will not be repeated. The favorable current stays with us all the way to Block Island and we make great time.
Tomorrow will be a little different for us. So far we have been cruising in very familiar waters. The Edgartown, Nantucket thing has been done dozens of times, and we have been in very familiar waters. Tomorrow we turn left out of the Great Salt Pond and don't return to Jamestown. The real part of the trip is just beginning.
As we pull up the anchor in the Great Salt Pond and head to Long Island Sound, Chrisy and I are both struck with how lucky we are to be doing this. On the one hand it seems a little crazy to quit jobs that we both loved, sell our wonderful house, and move onto a boat. On the other hand it has also been perfectly natural. Ok maybe not in June when we were moving all of our belongings into storage, but this has been in the plans for some time.
Our first stop in Long Island Sound was Old Saybrook and a very shallow mooring field in a well protected harbor. Our normal routine when it gets shallow is for Chrisy to call the depths and for me to pay attention to where we are going. As she calls 10, 7, 5 - she casually sits down so as not to get impaled by the dodger and stops calling the numbers. "Chrisy - not calling the numbers isn't going to make them go up." We draw five feet and the depth sounder actually read 3.9. We breathed a little easier as the numbers started to go up. I know that we will run aground a few times on this trip - just not today. We grab the first open mooring and settle in for the night in a new harbor. The trip has begun.