Strong winds and chilly days seem to have set in! Also Hurricane Ian is playing havoc with the forecast, with promising weather windows appearing in the forecast and then disappearing almost as quickly! We have been coastal hopping to position ourselves to be ready to make the passage to Delaware Bay whenever it looks feasible.

We left Marblehead the morning of September 25, with a send-off from Kim Pandapas by Chandler Hovey Light. We motored over to Provincetown with the wind on the nose. Off Wood End Light we found an abandoned inflatable dinghy that, aside from being almost swamped, looked to be in good shape. We reported it to the Coast Guard but someone else salvaged it before they got to it. Hope there’s nothing more to the story than it broke loose off someone’s boat. Picked up a mooring in Ptown and settled in to check the weather and decide how long to stay there. We may not have got far but it felt good to be moving at last!

We had a choppy night in Provincetown with waves refracting off a nearby dock and hitting our transom. Note: Avoid mooring number 803 in future! The forecast looked OK for getting to the Cape Cod Canal, with winds due to build later in Buzzards Bay. We decided that a couple of hours of rough weather wasn’t going to hurt us, and decided to leave. The trip across Cape Cod Bay was pleasant. In the canal we were nearly wiped out by a barge which was allowed to blow almost clear across the canal – if we’d been 5 minutes later it would have pinned us to the wall. Phew! Coming down Buzzards Bay we did indeed encounter rough weather, with 8 foot standing waves caused by wind-against-tide conditions exacerbated by a strong SW swell with nowhere to go!. The boat (and crew) handled it well and we eventually made Hadley Harbor, opposite Woods Hole, for a peaceful night.

With lighter winds in the forecast, we left Hadley Harbor early, bound for Block Island. The “lighter winds” lasted about two hours, after which we once again found ourselves bashing into breeze and current on the nose. Aside from that, the trip to Block Island was uneventful. Currently, the forecast looks like we should have decent weather to make passage for Cape May tomorrow, so we have taken on fuel, water and ice, and are taking care of a few jobs in order to be ready to leave first thing. The passage is about 200 miles which should take us about 28 hours. The wind is supposed to build on Thursday morning so the last few hours of the trip may be tough; however after that the weather is expected to be bad for several days – so if we don’t leave tomorrow we may be stuck for a week.

Hopefully next time we post it will be from the Chesapeake, and we will be warmer, cleaner and tied up somewhere snug!