Thursday, September 19, 2013

Day Four, continued


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George and I napped for two-three hours, awoke around 10 AM. The ebb had begun in Buzzards Bay, and the wind was light but favorable -- northwesterly, more or less. So we hoisted the main and sailed ourselves off the anchorage.

This is always a bold, perhaps needlessly bold, move. Or so I fear. But I was eager to get going, and didn't want to putt-putt out into the channel, and heave-to, or try to motor head-to-wind, while raising the sail. That's a tedious, arduous process on this boat. The forces involved are so much stronger than they were on the Scapegrace (STTL).

It worked out OK, though we had to make our way over some flats with ten feet of water. George was steering and I was trying to recover the anchor.

It came up nice and clean and crisp from the sandy bottom, but then, rather ludicrously, the anchor rode was streaming out sternwards at maybe a 45-degree angle; we must have been making three knots or so under sail. I was actually worried that it might come up and bang into the prop, or the rudder, so I strained my elderly muscles to the utmost, and found that three knots of headway, added to the not inconsiderable weight of the anchor and its chain, was almost more than I could handle.

Only almost, however: panting and gasping and sweating like a pig(*), I finally rassled the thing aboard and into its bracket.

The wind held pretty fair and took us out of Buzzards Bay, but began to exhibit a strange weak levity, as Dr Maturin says in a different context. It became pretty clear, as the day wore on, that we would not make it to The Race -- the narrow, turbulent entrance to Long Island Sound -- in time to ride the flood. And besides, we were tired.

So 'long about sunset we nipped into a little bay near Watch Hill and dropped the hook. Map above.

As usual with me, the only thing this anchorage could boast was shallow water and land within swimming distance, if the worst came to the worst. In any kind of weather, from almost any direction, this would be a bad spot. But the forecast for the next few hours was benign.

George's photo of the lighthouse on the point, below.

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(*) Why do we say that? Pigs don't sweat.











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