Block Island, RI USA …
After four years of being stuck in the Chesapeake, first because of the “pandemic” and then because life got in the way of adventure, we are back sailing. We left the fuel dock in Edgewater, Maryland on Tuesday at noon with fenders, dock lines, a kayak and other gear strewn about the deck and headed for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal north of Baltimore. Seven hours of motoring in a dead flat calm to the west entrance to the canal, then up early, (still no wind) and we motored another nine hours to Cape May at the southern top of New Jersey. (Actually, it was supposed to be nine hours but it was more like 11 hours because the engine overheated for the first time in 4,300 hours and we had to inch along for a couple of hours under the jib while Harley tried to troubleshoot and repair the problem. It’s fixed, but he isn’t sure how or why, once again proving that despite being laid up for four years, Kailani has not been cured of being a bit fickle.)
All this motoring was designed to get us into the Atlantic to catch a brief 48-hour weather window with a favorable southerly wind. The wind filled in as planned an hour after we motored out of the Cape May inlet on Thursday morning in the company of dolphins, and the next 31 hours were a cruising sailor’s dream. Twelve to fifteen knots of wind just aft of the beam translated to 6-8 knots of boat speed in essentially flat seas with yet another pod of dolphins alongside as dawn broke. Kailani is back!
These next five weeks constitute a planned New England shakedown cruise to work out the kinks in the systems that have undergone repair and/or replacement in these past months/years while tethered to land. With our plans to go far foreign starting in November it would be best to leave and not be surprised. (Which rarely happens, but it’s worth a try.) As usual we find ourselves out of step with the cruising community as we head north and everyone else heads south to the Chesapeake to await the end of the hurricane season before sailing to the Caribbean.
And speaking of hurricanes, as we write this hurricane Lee is spooling up in the Atlantic and there is a good chance that it will hook north and make landfall in Atlantic Canada. If that happens, we are likely to get side swiped by the back side (the so called “good” quadrant) with storm force winds of up to 50 kts. Until we know for sure what the storm track is we’ll stay here. The holding is good, and the fetch is minimal so the wave action should be manageable. Stay tuned.
As our twenty-year sailing adventure continues it does so without our third crew member who has (willingly and perhaps a tad eagerly) left the boat to attend boarding school in her search for a more normal life and a broader academic experience. We miss her like you can’t believe, and not just because we must stand her watch. For eight plus years we got to see the world through her eyes, and we are grateful for that experience. She will always have a berth aboard.
41 11 N 071 34 W …
At anchor after 381 nm passage
Great Salt Pond
Block Island, RI USA
