Port Jeff layover

We are underway westbound in Long Island Sound. We are headed for Port Washington, since the yard in Mamaroneck is not yet ready for us. It's been a fairly comfortable ride, even though seas are higher than forecast.

Port Jeff from our anchorage, with the ferry P.T. Barnum at the terminal. Tug and barge center frame reminds us of our friend Tim who skippered an identical setup and made this stop many times.

We had a nice four nights in Port Jefferson, anchored in our usual spot (map). During the course of our stay I made two separate pilgrimages to the Amazon locker on the county bus, bringing in a massive haul. My first visit the app had to open full 12 separate lockers, and the second trip was necessitated by the fact that the locker was full and I could not place any more orders until I made the first pickup. I stopped at the adjacent grocery store both times for provisions.

On 9/11 we walked past the 9/11 monument.

With lots of parts now in hand I spent much of the four days working on the solar installation, including drilling and tapping holes in the weather deck and the soft top frame for the wiring, and setting up the breaker box. A separate post is forthcoming with details when that project is complete.

Starting to take shape, with panel pre-wired and ready for wires from the panels and batteries.

The dining scene is unchanged since our last visit, and we ate at Castaways on the patio, Joey Z's, The Pie for their excellent coal-fired pizza, and Billie's 1890 Saloon, where we ate on the deck. While the harbor is emptying out, downtown was still busy in pleasant fall weather. On Friday afternoon we took Vector to the free town pump-out, only accessible at high tide, where we also took on water.

Shaolin booth at the festival, with the colorful heads for the lion dance.

On Saturday we also went ashore in the afternoon to take in some of the annual Dragon Boat Festival. More festival than dragon boat races, we wandered through the vendor booths and watched a bit of the Shaolin Kung-Fu demonstration. We did not watch any dragon boat races, which comprised quite a few public safety teams, including NYPD, as we've done quite a bit of that with our serious dragon-boating friends. There was supposedly a dragon-themed dog costume contest, but we only spotted one costumed dog.

The lone dog costume at the festival. To be fair, the actual contest was at a church several blocks away.

Louise has been struggling with her Windows laptop, which has been insistent on trying to upgrade itself to Windows 11 even though it does not meet the specs. She's been beating on it to get it to either succeed or stop trying, and whatever last steps she took Saturday basically bricked the system. I ended up spending part of yesterday installing Linux on it instead, so at least she can use it until she does something else. Who knows, that may grow on her.

Shaolin demonstration.

We were more or less done with Port Jeff by last night, and this morning we weighed anchor to have a favorable tide at Mamaroneck if they could get us in. The route to the yard and the route to Port Washington are identical up to Lloyd Point, off Oyster Bay, and when I had not heard anything back from texts I've been sending since Friday, I called as we passed the point to get the bad news.

Walking home from the locker I passed this lawn care service, which has this genuine putting green out front as an advertising display. I guess if you bring a putter and a ball you can get some practice in.

The stop in Port Washington is maybe a dozen miles out of our way, but it's a nice protected harbor with a lot of services, and is a good place to wait. It's just an hour and a half from the yard whenever they are ready for us, and I will continue to make progress on the solar project while we wait.

North Fork diversion

We are underway westbound in Long Island Sound, bound for the familiar stop of Port Jefferson harbor. We caught a break today on the tide cycle, and we are flying along at eight knots, with the plotter estimating an arrival well before 3pm.

Post-storm sunset over Sag Harbor.

It was an uphill climb after I posted here last Thursday, with heavy tide against us all the way to Fishers Island. We had the hook down around 1:30 in a brand new spot for us, just outside the mooring field in West Harbor (map). That was protected enough for the conditions, and an easy tender ride to the dinghy dock at the Fishers Island Yacht Club.

After settling in and resting up from the cruise, I tendered ashore to walk part of the island. There are no hotels on Fishers, nor any AirBnB type rentals, and so apart from the occasional visitor arriving via the yacht club, there is no one on this island who is not a local. Everyone waved and was friendly, but I definitely had the sense that I was "from away" as they would say down east.

"Downtown" Fishers Island.

I stopped in to the small but surprisingly well-stocked market, where I found plenty of fresh items, a good selection of beer and wine, and the usual dry goods. Good to know if we ever got pinned down here by weather. I walked through the diminutive town and looped past the lone dinner restaurant on the entire island before heading back home.

I was impressed by the fresh produce at the little market on the island.

I never even disembarked the tender back at Vector, instead simply picking Louise up and tendering right back to the yacht club for the half-mile walk to The Pequot Inn. Name notwithstanding, there are no longer rooms for rent here, but the restaurant is something of a gathering spot for the whole island. The food was good and they had a nice selection of drafts.

The nice patio at The Pequot Inn.

We had a very nice stop at Fishers Island and are grateful to the yacht club for the use of their dinghy dock. While I certainly could have walked some more of the island, one night was plenty and in the morning we weighed anchor right at 9am to have mostly slack conditions as we crossed The Race.

While we were basically crossing The Race at right angles, the nuclear attack submarine USS Virginia was coming into the sound from sea, traveling around eight knots on the surface. They were broadcasting a 500-yard security zone and the plotter said we would cross in front of them. Our CPA was close enough that I had to call them to make arrangements, and with just about a mile between us neither of us had to deviate. I snapped a photo as she passed astern of us, but the view from a mile was better through the binoculars. I was surprised she did not pick up her Coast Guard escort until closer to the Thames and New London.

USS Virginia, SSN-774, passes astern of us by about a mile.

As predicted, making slack at The Race meant we climbed uphill the rest of the day. The other slack would have been favorable, but was not until 3pm and would put us in after dinner time. After passing the Gull Islands we made our way into Gardiners Bay and then around Cedar Point and into Sag Harbor, where we dropped the hook in a familiar spot near the gap in the breakwall (map).

That was our second-choice spot; our first choice was occupied by a Nordhavn 60 that was eerily familiar. That's because we had cruised with it for several months when it belonged to our friends Stephanie and Martin and was named Blossom. The new owners have renamed it, but it was still unmistakable. After settling in, we tendered ashore for a casual dinner at Sag Pizza.

Two charge controllers mounted to a backboard. Breakers will mount at left later.

Saturday the wind blew 20-30 all day. Not uncomfortable on Vector, but enough to make a casual tender ride ashore unappealing, even more so in an unseasonably chilly fall. I spent the day aboard working on the solar panel project, drilling holes into inaccessible voids in the millwork and running pull strings to get the wiring for the panels down from the flybridge and into the battery compartment. When I am done I will write the entire project up in a separate post.

I drilled this hole through a cabinet to get into a wall. Always nerve-wracking cutting holes in the boat.

At dinner time we decided to brave the winds and bash our way ashore. We have a blanket we put over our laps to mitigate the spray. With possible rain in the forecast, we just went to the closest joint, The Corner Bar. The rain held off until after we were home, and we had a much calmer tender ride as well.

Part of the Sag Harbor marina behind a low bridge. You need to get your feet wet to get your boat from this section.

Sunday it rained all day, and I once again spent most of it on the solar project. This time, now armed with better information on cable lengths, I put together my bill of materials and started placing orders. Much of it was sourced on Amazon and headed to the locker in Port Jeff. By dinner time the rain subsided to just a drizzle and we headed ashore to LT Burger for dinner. The menu is basically just smashburgers and, honestly, it's not worth a return visit.

Monday was finally a nice day, and I treated myself to a big walk around the neighborhood. I first stopped at the hardware store, where I passed on spending more for eight fasteners than I will pay for 50 from McMaster-Carr, and then into the small but nice library. I've been on something of a public library kick lately, finally stopping in to historic libraries in towns we've been visiting for a decade.

The best I could do to capture the ceiling and fireplace in the John Jermain Library.

At dinner time we met up with local friends Dave and Cora for dinner at Sen. We missed them last season, and it was great spending a couple of hours catching up. When we returned home we decked the tender and made ready for an early start Tuesday morning for Port Jefferson, a nine-hour trip with an early morning favorable tide.

I have no cell signal in Sag so I used the library's WiFi, and also this charger.

That was the plan, anyway, and we weighed anchor just before 7am for the tide. Wind was forecast at 5-10 with waves two feet on the Sound. As soon as we nosed out into Gardinders Bay, however, it was clear the forecast was wrong. It was blowing 25-30, and waves were already over two feet just on the bay. We would have been clobbered if we continued through Plum Gut.

We waved off altogether and instead continued north and around the corner to Greenport, where we dropped the hook across the channel in Dering Harbor (map). The mooring field has expanded and we found ourselves in slightly deeper and less-protected water, but we were in a bit of a lee and it was comfortable enough.

This store full of little rubber ducks of every persuasion is always a highlight of Greenport.

The channel itself wasn't too bad, and I tendered ashore to get in a walk. I was surprised to find the dinghy float missing and a sign on the fixed portion of the dock saying No Docking. I ended up circling around the ferry dock and tying up at Mitchell Park Marina, where the $1/foot day rate cost me $10 for the dinghy. The dockhand confirmed what I already suspected, which is that no one would notice or care if we tied up to the fixed portion of the town dock. The float was destroyed in the last storm, and I would guess the town is trying to minimize their liability.

Really?

I strolled town a bit to see what was new, picked up a few needed provisions at the IGA grocery, and filled my growler with Black Duck Porter at Greenport Harbor Brewing. The town was quiet and the marina nearly empty — the whole place clears out after Labor Day. My $10 covered to the end of the day, and we tendered back to the dock at dinner time and walked to old standby Andy's. Not many changes in town since our last visit.

Yesterday conditions were still unfavorable for departure and we spent another day in the harbor. It was gray and rainy all morning and I spent most of it lining up a pair of 600w solar panels, which we will have to drive down to Pennsauken, NJ to pick up. After lunch we tendered ashore to Shelter Island for a walk.

The historic jail is right next door to the Greenpart Harbor Brewing company, to the left. To the right is the Stidd helm chair factory.

We had figured to need to bash our way over to Greenport again for dinner, since my web search in the Dering Harbor for a restaurant had come up empty. But on our walk we passed a nice-looking Italian place, Isola (clearly they did not pay the vig to Google), and I called and made a reservation. We also passed an inn, Chequit, with a nice-looking restaurant, and a drug store with an honest old-fashioned soda fountain.

Soda fountain in the drug store. Frozen in time.

In the evening we returned to Isola for dinner, which was very good, and we also walked out to the ferry landing and back. I filled the tender at the local Mobil station, and we looped through the harbor on our way home, finding a better spot to anchor next time. We again decked the tender for an early start this morning.

We'll be in Port Jeff at least two nights, maybe more, while I collect all the materials I ordered on Amazon, and wait for the shipyard to be ready for us. Our next stop from here will be Derecktor Shipyard in Mamaroneck for paint touch-up and to install the solar panels. I expect to be there at least two weeks, and I will try to update the blog at least once while we are there.

Newport redux

We are underway westbound from Rhode Island, headed for Long Island Sound. We had a lovely three days in Newport, with good fall weather and calm conditions. Our new FlopStopper arrangement is working well, and we deployed it right after dropping the hook off Ida Lewis Rock (map), where our preferred spot was open when we arrived at 2:30.

Sunset over Newport Harbor from our anchorage.

We had watched the great post-Labor Day exodus on Marine Traffic, but we were still taken by how much emptier the harbor was than when we left six weeks ago. We saw plenty of available moorings on our tender ride ashore for dinner at The Smokehouse. As we approached Bowen's Wharf we could see the temporary docks already being built out for the Newport Boat Show that starts a week from now.

Tuesday after fueling the tender I landed at the Ring Park dinghy dock and had a nice walk around the neighborhood. At dinner time we tendered to Long Wharf and met up with good friends Dorsey and Bruce at Brick Alley Pub. We always have such a good time with them.

This bench is alongside St. Augustin Church.

Yesterday I dropped Louise off at the Elm Street dock, which is now sporting a 20-minute limit sign, new since our visit in July, where Dorsey picked her up to run errands. Dorsey also dropped off a pair of charge controller from Bruce for my upcoming solar project, and of course I ran right back home to learn all I could about them.

Rochambeau.

In the afternoon I tendered over to Newport Neck and had a walk around the outside of Fort Adams and down to Sail Newport. As always, the area around the fort was gearing up for some sort of weekend festival, and prep was underway for a sailing race.

The small basin north of the fortification is lined with granite blocks. Something once tied to the iron ring embedded in this one pulled hard enough to move the block out of line. Not these lightweight docks.

We ended the day with Bruce and Dorsey at Harbour Court, the former gilded-age mansion of the Brown family that is now the Newport home of the New York Yacht Club, with a storied history here. To paraphrase Billy Joel, we might have been laughing a bit too loud, but we managed to make it all the way through dinner and a couple bottles of wine without being thrown out. We put our yacht club burgee on the dinghy before landing there.

The spectacular view from the NYYC, taken from one of the few places photography is permitted on club grounds.

It was a great three days, and we could have stayed longer, but our weather window was either today or sometime at least a week from now. And as much as I would have enjoyed seeing the boat show, especially since we already had a primo spot in the anchorage, we want to have enough time for both our boatyard stop and some enjoyable time in NY before the onset of winter pushes us south.

We would have decked the tender last night for our early start this morning, but we wanted to leave the FlopStopper deployed overnight, and loading the tender would have meant retrieving and re-deploying it, so we just left it all for this morning. We had a great push with the ebb out of the harbor, and seas are calm, but the price we will pay for beating the weather this afternoon is to claw our way through Fishers Island Sound with over a knot and a half against us.

Vector in the harbor as seen from the old stone pier. Those enormous cranes behind her are actually part of a ship, we think to service wind farms.

Tonight we'll be anchored somewhere off the north shore of Fishers Island, and then we'll be in the somewhat protected waters of Long Island Sound. We'll take a week or so working our way west to Derecktor Shipyard, where we will have some paint touch-up done and fabricate a rack for some solar panels.

Late Onset.

We are underway westbound in Buzzards Bay, bound for Newport, Rhode Island. We've been in Massachusetts for a little over six weeks. As enjoyable as it has been, we wanted to reserve a little of what's left of the season for New York, and we have a stop to make at the boatyard that will cost us a week or two.

Vector at anchor in Onset Bay, as seen from Wickets Island.

In my push to get the last post done and posted while we were underway, I managed to omit an important milestone, namely our 21st "nomadiversary," which passed on our final day in Cambridge. Our peripatetic life is now old enough to drink. We did lift a glass to mark the occasion at dinner.

Shortly after I posted the blog, we made the turn into Onset Bay, which, at nearly max current in the canal, involved a couple of very big rolls as I centered the boat in the channel in a broadside cross-current. This somewhat tricky entrance is old hat for us now, and I was ready for the eddy right at the entrance to try to spin us around. We had the hook down in our usual spot (map) before 4pm, and we tendered ashore for a pizza and a pitcher at Marc Anthony's, which has become an Onset arrival tradition for us.

This "toy library" is adjacent the public beach.

Friday the conditions were not favorable on Buzzards Bay to continue, nor was the tide cycle favorable for westbound current in the morning, and so we settled in for the day. I had a nice walk around town, at the end of which I stopped in to the market for some stout, and the local Ace hardware just to browse. They have a great selection of stainless fasteners and some marine hardware, and I was stunned to find a very good price on Rustoleum Cold Galvanizing Spray, so I grabbed a can. I had been disappointed when I went down to our paint locker during the thruster replacement to find I had none aboard.

1883 Lounge at the Glen Cove Hotel.

At dinner time we returned to the historic Glen Cove Hotel, which looks for all the world like a haunted house from Disney or maybe the Addams Family. This time we dined in the 1883 Lounge, which is in the basement with the exposed stone foundation from that year. It was quite interesting, even though there is no natural light whatsoever. The prime rib, offered on weekends, was tempting but we felt we could not do it justice and we each ordered something lighter instead. We were done and gone before the musicians even arrived to set up.

Having stayed through Friday, we were now committed to stay through Sunday as well. Just driving the boat on the second- or third-busiest boating weekend of the year is a challenge, but finding anchorage at the end of the day is nigh impossible. Places like Cuttyhunk, Woods Hole, Marthas Vineyard, and even New Bedford are popular destinations even on normal weekends, and are overbooked on the holiday. Newport would be right out, and even Onset was busy.

I paid $2 for a day pass, though I only needed to spend $1.50 for the round trip. Next month the bus service will become free, as it had been in New Bedford on our last visit.

The Onset/Wareham buses only run six days a week, and so on Saturday I made an excursion to the Cranberry Plaza to pick up a few things. I replenished the "disposable" paint brush supply at Dollar Tree and loaded up on groceries at the Stop & Shop. They do not carry beer so I also stopped at the package store next door, where I was happy to discover the Sam Adams Octoberfest is now available. With an hour to kill between buses I also browsed Tractor Supply, but needed nothing there.

We tendered back ashore for dinner at the Stonebridge Bar & Grill, who have the least expensive lobster rolls we've seen in quite some time. On our walk afterward we noticed the town starting to fill up for the annual Illuminations festival. We only knew about this because the police had set up road signs warning about the traffic. There was music in the park all evening, and at 9pm, 1,500 red flares were lit all around Onset Bay. We took it all in from our flybridge; it was impressive, and more pleasant than we had expected. The anchorage and moorings were full for the event.

Illuminations.

After the show the rest of the evening was quiet. Well, right until Louise turned in for the night, when I noticed flashlights just off our bow, where a big Krogen was trying to drop anchor, literally right on top of ours. I barked at them on the radio, Louise came back upstairs, and moments later the harbormaster, who was out and about patrolling after the chaos of festival departures, intervened. I think someone from the patrol boat actually boarded the Krogen to help them get situated, as they were clearly fatigued and confused. They left at 5:30am, so I expect they were not any more rested at their next port.

I tried to capture the scale with this 360° video. The gaps are where there are docks or rocks instead of beach.

Yesterday was a quiet day aboard after a morning walk. For dinner we walked to Quahog Republic, completing the entire circuit of Onset dinner joints. The beachfront place next to the town pier went out of business earlier in the month, closing for the season before even completing their live entertainment bookings. We decked the tender after returning to Vector for an early start today.

This row of gray circles on the beach at Wickets Island are the ashes of the flares.

As I finish typing the plotter is projecting an arrival into Newport by 2:30. Marine Traffic shows a giant exodus from the harbor, which gives me some hope for a good spot in the anchorage. We need to be moving on from there by Wednesday or Thursday to make Long Island Sound before the weather turns against us, and I am hoping we'll get a chance to see our friends in town in the two or three nights we'll be there.

Thrown out of Cambridge

We are underway southbound in Cape Cod Bay, headed for the canal and our southward migration for the winter. We had a lovely final week in Boston and Cambridge, wrapping up a bit more than five weeks in the Boston metropolitan area.

Vector anchored in the Charles Monday night, immediately adjacent to the "floating island," with the Boston skyline in the background.

I neglected to mention in my last post that just before we left for dinner, we were overflown by a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey, no more than 500' overhead. It rattled us out of our seats to see what was going on, and I could not imagine why a military aircraft was so low over the Charles. When we stepped outside, there were a few other large helicopters hovering over Boston.

Our forward camera caught the V-22 passing overhead in light rain. We were in the rotor wash.

Thursday morning we met our friends Erin and Chris at the Fiedler Dock and walked to breakfast at a great little place called Bakey. Our walk took us through the Public Garden, past the Make Way for Ducklings sculpture, and into Boston Common, where we found the Osprey along with three USMC helicopters as well as armored vehicles sitting in the northwest corner of the park.

We found it the next morning in Boston Common.

Not a military takeover of Boston, but evidently part of the Marine Corps' year-long 250th birthday celebration. I can only imagine what it must have been like for random passers-by to be suddenly confronted with a V-22 landing on Boston Common. I found some news footage online.

At Bakey you can watch them making the pastries. That's an enormous sheet of dough.

On our way back from breakfast the mayor was addressing a small crowd at the display, and just before we arrived back at the tender a pair of USMC fighters flew overhead. While we were out the wind picked up to 20, and I lost my beloved Bahamas Music Festival ball cap on the ride home, circling back just in time to watch it sink to the bottom of the Charles.

Swan Boats at the Public Garden.

We had a very pleasant five days on the Charles. I walked all over Boston and part of Cambridge, we went out for dinner nightly on one side or the other, and we met up with Chris and Erin a few times. One evening they picked us up and drove us to their favorite dive out in Wayland called the Dudley Chateau. I discovered the local boutique grocery, Brothers Marketplace, just a couple of blocks from the dock for a few necessities, including sandwiches for dinner one night when Louise was having a particularly bad allergy day.

The inside of an Osprey as seen from the aft ramp. I went back stag the next morning to see the exhibits.

I was happy to see this stenciled on a Super Stallion. Man that's a big chopper.

On my many walks I hit two different Amazon lockers, including one just across the street from the Cambridge dock, for parts for the FlopStopper setup, a new hoist cable for the davit, and other projects. And I found a replacement drive leg for the thruster at an outfit in San Diego, who drop-shipped it from the distributor in Louisiana. Two-day shipping got it to Chris and Erin's place on Monday.

The Frog Pond, a splash pool in Boston Common. Closed for cleaning at this moment.

We were having such a nice stay that we contemplated staying to the end of the week, departing just ahead of the likely chaotic Labor Day weekend. But with the drive leg schedule to arrive in the afternoon, I started making calls first thing Monday to find a yard that might be able to haul us for the swap. Labor Day weekend marks the start of "haulout season" in the northeast, heaviest in late September and October, wherein locals start hauling their boats out for the season.

I ordered a swivel and some thimbles to make this FlopStopper tether from leftover 3/16 Dyneema.

My first call was to MarineMax in Quincy, where we had remembered seeing their spiffy brand new 75-ton lift, which had not been at all busy during the couple of weeks we were in the marina there. They agreed to do it for a fair price, and offered me a slot either Wednesday or Thursday. We opted for Thursday to give us one more day in this lovely spot.

COVID aced Louise out of her cherished box of Sees chocolates on our trip to California, generally unavailable on the east coast. So when I saw this display in Brothers I had to buy a box, even at $25 for 11 ounces.

Maybe that's what jinxed us, but later that morning we had a visit from the marine unit of the Massachusetts State Police. They were very nice, but had the bad news that we were not really permitted to anchor there. I had not turned it up in my fairly extensive research, but evidently the MA environmental code only permits it in marked anchorages, of which there are none. There is an exemption for certain special events, such as the annual Independence Day fireworks.

Vector anchored in the Charles before we moved. The duck boat at right is in the channel. We finished a lot closer to the floating island. The moorings behind us are private and there is an annual lottery for them.

Apparently this is only enforced on a complaint basis, and they got a call about us being "in the way" over the weekend, probably from some scullers. And the officers intimated we could stay longer if they got no more calls, but we judged that too risky. We were out of the navigation channel, but further into the river than we could have been, on account of having put out a large scope to shelter from Hurricane Erin. Most likely, had we weighed anchor, shortened scope, and tucked further into the mooring field we might have escaped notice completely.

There was a celebration at City Hall Plaza for Ukrainian independence day. This singer was having a hard time competing with the Marines on the other side of the plaza. Behind me are a dozen or so festival booths.

I explained that we were stuck in the river until the following morning, since we had already missed the window to get under the Charles River Bridge downstream of the lock. They were very understanding and asked us to move closer to the moorings. We did that immediately after they left, dropping the hook on just 50' of chain, as close as possible to the nearest moorings, one of which held not a boat but the Charles River Floating Wetlands (map).

The competition. The Marine Corps Rock Band from Quantico. They were very good, but it was odd to see Marines in service dress uniforms bopping around on stage. I was handed a 250th birthday guitar pick.

While that put something of a damper on things, we were very happy to have gotten the six pleasant nights that we did. The several locals, who keep their boats on the Charles, who had advised me that it would be no problem were incredulous, and one even sounded outraged, which just goes to show how obscure and unknown this statute is. When we asked the police how we could have known about it, all they could say was that we could ask the harbormaster.

Even the duck boats got in on Marine Week.

We made preparations to leave in the morning when the bridge lock-down ended, and I went ashore for final provisions. In the evening we took the T into town and met Erin and Chris for one last dinner at The Merchant Kitchen & Drinks, where Chris handed us the drive leg that arrived earlier in the day. After returning home I made one last trip ashore with our accumulated recycling and put it in a Cambridge recycling bin.

Newbury Street is closed off every Sunday for a pedestrian mall.

Tuesday morning I left a message for MarineMax to see if we could move our haulout up a day, and at 9am we made ready to depart. We had a short tide window and could not delay, but this was the morning the Duck Boats, which had been passing us all week on tours, decided to conduct training. There were fully a dozen of them in the basin, conducting drills and practicing maneuvers, including towing one another. I made a Sécurité call before we got underway, and again as we approached the canal to the Craigie drawbridge.

In all the times I've been to Boston, I had never made it to the fabulous public library.

The duck skippers were smart enough to keep clear of the canal as we passed through, but we ended up in a clot of them as we waited for an MBTA train to clear the Tower A bridge. I had been apprehensive about making the tight turn into the small recreational lock chamber with no thruster, and Louise was ready with a fender to fend the bow off the lock walls, but the lockmaster agreed to let us through the larger commercial chamber, which involves a lot less maneuvering.

The reason why the MBTA bridge is called "Tower A."

Once out in the harbor we set a course for Quincy, hoping the yard would be able to move our haul to Wednesday. While one more night in Boston, anchored in the harbor, was tempting, today is a better day than tomorrow in Massachusetts and Cape Cod Bays to be making the passage. En route we realized our friends Kristina and Atle aboard Summer Star, along with mutual friend Stephanie who is cruising with them, we still anchored in Hull Bay, where they had stopped to shelter from Erin. We reached out to let them know we'd be nearby.

The library has three eateries. This is the Tea Bar, on my list for our next visit.

That resulted in an invitation to cocktails and dinner aboard, and so instead of Quincy (actually Hingham) we proceeded just a little further to Hull, dropping the hook almost exactly were we had been five weeks earlier (map). That put us just a 50-yard dinghy ride from them, fortuitous in the heavy chop that evening. It was a very pleasant evening and we enjoyed seeing their Outer Reef; the last time we saw Summer Star it was a Nordhavn. They weighed anchor and headed for the Cape Cod Canal the next morning. Between when we dropped the hook and when we headed over for dinner, I spent an hour in the thruster bay unbolting the motor and drive spline, and cracking the mounting bolts.

New drive leg before painting.

When I finally reached the yard they rescheduled us for a 2:30 haulout yesterday, and so we had all morning to ourselves. First thing in the morning I painted the new drive leg with antifouling, having sprayed it with primer the day before. The chop of Tuesday evening was gone and we tendered ashore to the Hull town dock to get in a bit of a walk. In the five weeks since our last visit they have erected a sign limiting the dock to 30 minutes, but that was plenty for our stroll.

If you want to eat in the restaurant, tie up at the marina's dinghy dock instead.

We weighed anchor for Quincy at 1:15, and were at the lift slip 20 minutes early, in light rain but also light winds. We only had a five minute wait and we were hanging in the slings by 2:20. Lift operator Tony suggested we had about two hours or so of favorable tide to get us back in the water.  Vector is the largest vessel they have ever hauled here. Louise, who sat in the office while I worked reports that pretty much everyone who went by asked about us.

John Singer Sarget murals on the top floor of the old library.

The fresh bolts that come with the drive leg are 5mm too short for our application, and I ordered the right ones from McMaster-Carr Tuesday morning. Thankfully they arrived before we were in the lift, and I got started right away on removing the props and mounting bolts and pounding the old drive leg out of the boat. The yard had Kristin, from their haulout crew, stay with me an lend a hand as needed throughout the process.

One of a pair of colorful staircases at Cambridge Crossing.

Everything went smoothly, but getting all the old sealant off the tunnel was a challenge. In the process I managed to remove some paint down to bare steel; Kristin went and found one of the painters for me who was able to get a little one-pack primer on it and some bottom paint before I installed the new leg. Even with the extra 20 minutes for paint to dry and another ten for the sealant, we were back in the water just before closing time.

I always knew Boston had its own Cardinal. This one is not Seán.

Marina manager Lindsay was happy to let us tie to the fuel dock while I did the inside work of bolting up the motor and testing, and also let us top up our water tank and walk over to the restaurant for dinner. Sharing a prime rib was an excellent way to end an otherwise difficult day.

Vector dominating this rather small 75T lift. They maxed out both the spread and the lift.

Not wanting to overstay our welcome, after dinner we dropped lines and made the short cruise to our regular anchorage south of Grape Island (map), where we had the hook down just before sunset. I went down to the thruster bay every couple of hours to look for leaks; the sealant takes 24 hours to cure fully.

Final sunset over Boston as seen from our anchorage in Hingham.

This morning was a 7:45 departure to catch the last of the ebb leaving Hull Gut and out past Minots Ledge, then pick up the flood south through Cape Cod Bay. We will have a very good push through the canal and power-slide into Onset before dinner time. We've been so busy with everything else that we have no plans beyond tonight, and I have no clue where we will hunker down for the boating chaos of the holiday weekend.