Back Home in Boston

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Yesterday was my longest singlehanded leg, 73.22 nm (but who is counting). In total the round trip was about 150 - 160 nm which isn't bad for my first major trip alone. As i left Mattapoisett you may have seen from a picture beneath that I was in fog. this continued until the Railroad bridge in the Cape Cod Canal. Fog was such that vessels were making radio calls alerting of their position, heading and speed.

Winds were low throughout the day reaching perhaps 7 knots maximum. So I thought I would use this to practice low wind sail trim. after a few hours i got bored, turned on the engine and headed for home. Part of the sail practice was putting up the spinnaker. I made a video and will post later. I have no idea how long the video will last. At one point i had 5 kts of true wind and was managing to get 4.5 kts speed over ground (no current). This was with the spinnaker up which really accelerates you. With our asymmetric spinnaker we can sail from a run to a close reach. This is very versatile and allows good sailing even under relatively light winds. However, when winds are at 3 kts or less our cruising boat struggles as she wasn't designed for this. However, it was good to know i could make headway even under these conditions.

Returning to Boston harbor in the middle of the summer in an evening always provides a picturesque view with the city as the backdrop to sailboats racing in the inner harbor. I counted 51 boats in the inner harbor alone.

It was good to get back to land and when i did I could feel the sway after being at sea for a few days.

Overall I estimate that I, together with crew, sailed Prairie Gold about 700 nm. Last year we closed out the season with 2000 nm. Hope we can achieve that this year too. we current have just over 1000 nm on the clock this season. Regardless of how far we have sailed it has already been a successful season with our enjoying the pleasures of family and friends on Prairie Gold. Now its time to clean and repair small items.