Late Onset

We are northbound in the Atlantic, approaching Minots Ledge and the turn toward Boston Harbor. It's been a miserable morning, and even though we've been underway for six hours already, it's just now calm enough to type. We have three hours to go as I begin typing.

Passing Minots Ledge Light with Boston in the background.

The big news is that we have our mail, finally. Saturday morning I checked with UPS first thing, because the tracking was basically closed as "delivered" and I could get no updates. But they told me it was back at the distribution center and would be on the truck later in the day. We had a quiet day at home after Friday's big push. I cleaned up a few things and did some chart work.

When I checked back in the afternoon they told me it had been delivered. By this time I had missed the window to take the bus to go retrieve it, and it was too late to make an e-bike trip before dinner. Besides that, my Amazon packages had not yet been delivered to the locker another mile down the road, and so I just figured to take the e-bike in the morning (the bus does not run on Sunday). We tendered ashore for dinner at Quahog Republic, across the street from the dock. It was windy on the patio but they have very little inside seating.

Onset harbor from atop Wickets Island, with Vector center-frame.

While we were at dinner the Amazon delivery notice came. A quick check of the weather for the morning, however, revealed it would be raining, possibly well into the afternoon. Thus it was that I dropped Louise back at Vector, loaded up the e-bike, and returned ashore for the errand extravaganza. I stopped at the Amazon hub counter in a liquor/convenience store for my two packages, grabbed our mail from CVS, who could not scan it because the label had been redone, and stopped into Home Deport, Stop and Shop, and the Onset Market for a few items before heading back. I arrived back home just after sunset.

Our friends Bob and Dori aboard Liberdade, whom we had just seen in Newport, also arrived in Onset Saturday evening, and Sunday after lunch, when the rain had stopped, I dropped by their dock to say hello, and to have a look at the FlopStopper system they use for roll remediation at anchor. After looking it over, we ordered one for ourselves to see if it will help. On my way back I stopped at Wickets Island, climbed the spiffy new staircase to the top, and took in the expansive views over the harbor. At dinner time we walked to the Stonebridge Bar & Grill, adjacent to the eponymous bridge. After returning home we paid out more chain and buttoned the boat up for a forecast storm that ended up being a non-event.

One of Liberdade's FlopStoppers.

Even though I had been to the store Saturday evening, I had missed a few items in my haste to return in daylight, and so yesterday I took the bus back out to the shopping center, where I picked up a few groceries, and some nice porter at the adjacent liquor store. I also found a 28mm socket at Auto Zone that neither Home Deport nor Harbor Freight had when I looked on Saturday. In addition to all the stores I've already mentioned, a Dollar Tree and a Tractor Supply are also easily accessible from the bus stop.

I was back home in plenty of time to clean up for an early dinner with Dori and Bob. We met them at the Bay Room at the Onset Hotel, where at 3:30 they were still serving the more casual lunch menu. It was nice catching up; they will be staying in Onset for a while while they explore Cape Cod by car. We decked the tender when we returned home, in anticipation of an early start this morning.

This spray/stream attachment that supplies all our drinking water was one of my Amazon orders. It replaces a nearly identical one that developed "pipe slime" in the hose, likely because the filter just ahead of it removes the chlorine from the water. 

Given that our mail arrived in Onset literally the day after we did, the only reason for the extra two nights is that we've been waiting on decent seas to cross Cape Cod Bay. The forecast said that would be today, and so we weighed anchor at 6:30 to catch the last of the favorable tide on the canal. We had a nice push, whizzing through the canal at the speed limit, with the motor yacht Grace of Tides a half mile astern of us as our only company. The canal portion of the cruise was lovely.

As soon as we passed the jetties, however, we found ourselves in three foot seas on three seconds, rather than the 1.5' seas on four seconds that had been forecast. While those numbers may sound close, they are a world apart in terms of how the boat moves. Generally our rule of thumb is that the wave period in seconds must be no less than twice the wave height in feet for us to venture out.

Passing Mass Maritime in the canal.

That faced us with a dilemma: bash through it, in hopes it would get better further offshore, or later in the morning, or on a slightly different heading, or turn around and run the nine miles back to Onset for another night. The trouble with the first option is things may never improve, and the whole while you are just getting further from shelter, and the trouble with the second is that it can be Ground Hog Day until the forecast is both acceptable and correct.

I tacked around through several different headings and reduced RPM to smooth out the ride, and Louise took some meds to make things a little more comfortable. We opted to soldier through, reserving Plymouth Harbor, two hours away, as a bail-out. By the time we reached the Plymouth turn things had become just barely tolerable, and as I finish typing we've passed Minots Ledge Light and are just an hour or so from protected waters. We will probably end up somewhere near Hull tonight, after a very long day.