Boston to Nantucket
Boston to NantucketIt's so nice to be in a quiet anchorage. We love the tranquil view of uninhabited beaches from a remote, protected harbor, where the only sound is the gentle lapping of the waves against our boat's hull. Needless to say, our anchorage in Boston Harbor did not qualify.
We dropped the hook more or less at the end of Logan Airport's north-south runway. When the wind was out of the north, the planes took off directly over our mast. With a south wind, they pointed their noisy butts right at us. Boston's airport is only about the seventh busiest in the country, but during peak hours a plane takes off about once a minute. We heard every single one of them. During nonpeak hours, the traffic slacked off just enough so that we could hear the MBTA trains rattling by on our other side.
Did I mention the stinky, mucky bottom of treated sewage, or the sirens that inexplicably went off every so often? It was not our favorite anchorage. However, we wanted to see Boston, and since the alternative was a $2.50/ft/night slip (that's $100 per night for our forty feet, and we have to make our own beds, and forget about mints on the pillows!) we stuck our fingers in our ears and coped.
The good thing about this anchorage is that it's just off the docks of the Orient Heights Yacht Club, who kindly let us use their dinghy dock (despite them having about a 50:1 ratio of powerboats to sailboats, and despite their clubhouse having completely burnt down last April, so that they are operating out of a rather dingy-looking trailer). The good thing about the Orient Heights Yacht Club is that it's just a few blocks away from the Orient Heights station on the MBTA's blue line. For 85 cents each, we could get into Boston.
So get into Boston we did. We followed the Freedom Trail, conveniently marked by a red line painted or bricked into the sidewalks, spending two days seeing the major historical sites. We peeked in at the Sacred Cod in the State House, gawked at the gravestones of John Hancock and Paul Revere, and climbed the 294 steps of the Bunker Hill Monument. We wandered around Faneuil Hall looking for restrooms and serendipitously stumbled upon the museum of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston tucked away on the top floor: a repository of random armaments, flags, and other military paraphernalia (the less charitable would call it junk) from the 18th century through the present. And being sailors, we had to visit the Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.
We reveled in the mixed-up eras of Boston, the ancient burying grounds in the shadows of modern skyscrapers. After visiting sites commemorating the politics of 200 years ago, we went to a waterfront park to hear candidates Al Gore and Joe Lieberman talk about their vision of the future, near the wharf hosting the visiting Islendingur, a four year old replica of an eleven hundred year old ship. If there's any place where a time machine seems not only plausible but likely -- where you could climb up out of a T station to find yourself in another time -- it's Boston.
It sounds good in theory, but my own personal time machine had a few cogs loose. I had lived in the Boston area between 1986 and 1989 and was eager to revisit my old neighborhood. What a depressing trip. I got lost several times trying to lead Britt around; most of the restaurants and other businesses I used to go to then are now gone, and I didn't even recognize my old house under a new coat of paint. We meandered across Harvard's campus, which was new to me, and across M.I.T.'s campus, where I used to study and work but which now seemed only vaguely familiar.
True, I lived there for only three years, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it seems unreal to me now. But my mental picture of Boulder, where I lived for ten years, is already beginning to lose its sharp edges. I wonder if, years in the future, when we're settled again in a house with a garden and a couple of cats, living on a sailboat will seem to me like a dream, like something I saw in a movie once but have mostly forgotten.
From Boston we headed south about 40 miles and back in time another 150 years to Plymouth. The inner harbor, unsurprisingly (this is still New England, after all) is chock-full of moorings, and since we were reluctant to pay $35/night we anchored out, about half a mile from town. The only other boat at anchor was a blocky and ungainly-looking big aluminum power catamaran, probably too big for the moorings anyway. It looked like a catamaran on steroids. The wind blew pretty hard the whole time we were there, and we were thankful we had chosen a spot upwind of the other boat -- it had as much windage as a small house, and there was no way we'd want them dragging into us. As it turned out, they did drag one evening, but they realized what was happening before they grounded on the beach, and re-anchored successfully.
The
dinghy dock is right next to the Mayflower II, the replica
built in 1957. No drawings or models of the original Mayflower exist,
but the replica is almost true to the design of typical ships of the
early 17th century. The ship is steered using a whipstaff rather than
a wheel or tiller, and there's no engine. The only concession to 20th
century tourism is that the lower deck has about a foot more headroom
than is strictly historical, so we visitors don't need to walk around
hunched over, as the Pilgrims did.
Pilgrims are to Plymouth as witches are to Salem. We walked past the Mayflower Restaurant to do laundry at the "Pilgrim's Washing Well", which fortunately had modern washers and dryers. The next day we hauled out the bikes and rode to Plimoth Plantation, a re-creation of the original settlement complete with costumed actors portraying the actual historic characters. We were impressed by the authentic construction of the buildings; not only were the boards held together by wooden pegs rather than by nails, but the pattern of marks on their sides indicated they were cut by hand rather than in a modern sawmill. We talked with the "Pilgrims" about their lives and experiences. Later we explored some of the museum buildings which had some thoughtful exhibits on the history of the Plymouth colony and their interactions with the native tribes, incorporating many artifacts excavated from the real Plymouth.
We left Plymouth with a rollicking northwest wind which made sailing south to the Cape Cod Canal entrance an absolute joy. We skimmed along beautifully, no waves to toss us around, and as the wind shifted toward the southwest we just tightened up the sails and heeled a little more. At the canal we took down all sail and turned the motor on, since sailing through the canal is prohibited, and anyway the wind would be directly on our nose through the southwest-trending cut.
Despite the wind cutting our motoring speed down from our customary 6.7 knots to only 5.5, we had a strong favorable current (no coincidence -- we'd timed our departure from Plymouth to catch it) and our speed over ground varied between 8 and 9.5 knots through most of the canal. Then we got to the railroad bridge at the canal's west end.
The wind had increased until it was blowing consistently above 20 knots, frequently hitting above 25, and the canal cut funneled it right in our faces. The strong current was directly opposed to the wind. These conditions create steep and nasty seas, the most well-known example being the "square waves" which build in the Gulf Stream when the wind's out of the north. Fortunately for us, the confines of the Cape Cod Canal and Buzzard's Bay to the southwest can't spawn the mammoth waves of the open ocean. But it was still unpleasant: we battled steep six-foot waves, our speed through the water dropping under two knots as we crashed down into the troughs, our keel bumping and thumping loudly against the water. We repeatedly buried the bow -- the anchors got a good cleaning! Waves cascaded back along the deck, sending spray over the dodger to drench us in the cockpit. It seemed to take fifteen minutes just to make it from one side of the bridge to the other. We had earlier passed a small sailboat with a tiny outboard, barely making headway in the calm water in the eastern section of the canal, and we wondered if they'd survive the pounding of the western end; as the canal widened into the beginnings of Buzzard's Bay we saw another small sailboat which had been dismasted, presumably by the violence of the wind and waves, and was being assisted by Canal police boats.
We fought our way out of the canal and into the side channel to Onset, where we had anchored on the way north. As soon as we turned into the side channel, the waves calmed down, and as we passed into the protection of the spit of land south of the harbor, the wind moderated to a much more pleasant 10-15 knots. The next morning, the air was nearly calm and the waves had disappeared.
Despite the fine weather, shortly after we set out we had a minor crisis, occasioned by my own stupidity. On our previous stop here we'd taken on diesel, and that reminded us that we ought to check the engine hours on the tank we were using to estimate the fuel level (we don't have fuel gauges...yet). I saw that we'd run the engine just over 100 hours since leaving Onset on the northbound trip; our larger fuel tank holds 133 gallons, and we burn approximately one gallon per hour, so therefore we had on the order of 25-30 hours to go, no problem, and we weighed anchor, motored down the channel toward the main channel to Buzzard's Bay -- and promptly ran out of fuel.
Did I mention that it was a narrow channel? And that the wind was barely 3 knots, and the main channel had a 3-knot current? As Britt worked on switching our fuel system to our second tank, I steered with what way we had, but as we approached the main channel and the current began to grab our keel I could see we were in trouble. I didn't want to drop the wheel (we hadn't turned on the autopilot yet) so I yelled, "Quit that for a minute and raise a sail!"
Britt was buried in the lazarette, working. "It'll catch soon, just hang on."
"Get up here. Now. Sail. Up." I had already started to lock off the wheel and uncoil the jib furling line.
He popped his head up just in time to see a red buoy go by very, very closely. "Oops." He pulled out the jib; it filled in the light breeze, not enough to really sail anywhere on but enough to give me way to avoid hitting the very substantial stone pillar which was the next mark. We entered the main channel and I jilled around a little while he got the diesel flowing. Soon we were under power and underway. As we headed toward Woods Hole passage, I checked the logs to see how we could possibly have run out of fuel. There was the answer, in my own handwriting: "100 gallons diesel into tank #2." We hadn't filled the tank, just put 100 gallons in. I'm just glad we didn't run out of fuel the previous day in the canal!
The
wind started to build nicely as we approached Woods Hole, and we
motorsailed through (the currents are very strong and the passage is
somewhat winding) but as soon as we were past the really dangerous
part we turned off the engine. Sailing to Nantucket was just
beautiful, eastbound on a southwest breeze. The sails filled, curvy
white billows against a blue sky, and we clipped along at more than 7
knots.
One reason we enjoyed the sailing so much is that we had finally gotten out of those damn lobster pots. No floats littered the waters of Nantucket Sound, no need for careful attention to the wheel lest we snag a trap line on our prop, and for the first time in a long while Britt tossed a line overboard to do some trolling. As we approached the point where we could turn south and make for the entrance channel, the rod suddenly bent. We had a fish!
Britt
reeled it in, fighting, as I reefed the sails to slow us down. It was
a 26-inch bluefish, a sought-after gamefish for its ferocity on the
line, and in my opinion one of the yummiest food fish of the
Northeast, so we were both happy to catch it. (Some people can't
stand the taste, but I've always loved the rich, slightly oily
flavor, like salmon but blue instead of red.) We had been planning to
go out to dinner in Nantucket, to celebrate my birthday, but I was
happy to have bluefish to eat instead. Most husbands just buy
their wives birthday gifts -- my husband catches my
presents!
After subduing our dinner-to-be we turned for the channel. Since we were almost there we didn't bother rolling out the reefs, but we kept a good speed up all the way up the channel to Brant Point lighthouse. A steady procession of ferries was pouring out of Nantucket Harbor, and we smiled and waved for the tourist cameras as we sailed by.
We anchored carefully in a wide spot in the mooring field, unwilling to pay what we hear is now $55/night for a stupid mooring. To control our swing to match the moored boats, we set up a Bahamian moor (one anchor ahead and one behind, both off the bow). Once secured, we had a few celebratory drinks (aiee! I'm 37 now!) and cooked up a bluefish feast.