Successes

I achieved two of my goals for yesterday’s sail – sail and have a fun time and beat the personal best solo sail of 72nm.

Part of the reason for doing this trip was to evaluate whether I feel that I have it in me to compete in the Newport 160 race (yes a 160nm solo race) that is required to qualify for the Bermuda 1-2. In the Bermuda 1-2, one person sails to Bermuda from Newport where they pick up a second crew member to sail back to Newport.

I set sail solo on Saturday morning to see how this will go. I headed out NE with easterly winds. The wind direction would not allow me to take one long tack past Cape Ann so I headed towards Marblehead, but then had to tack to the Southeast to make some distance from land. As you can see from the SPOT GPS tracker I made a few tacks. The next one was under sail power alone (more about this later). Then I headed further northeast before deciding to change my destination to Provincetown. Another boat and I were in a race, we were well matched making little ground in one another, then they turned back to Marblehead (chickens). I was on a close haul towards the tip of Provincetown, but the wind started to turn from east to southeast to south pushing me further back to the mainland. Ahead I could see a storm over Cohasset and Scituate and it was a focused storm on Prairie Gold’s radar too. I tacked to port, now able to head east because of the change in wind direction and started to try to out run the storm by moving northeast. However, the storm was catching and moving in that direction too. Consequently I did a quick tack across to south to minimize the time in the storm. As you can see from the radar it was an elongated storm so I sailed across the narrow part. I quickly reefed down both sails (reducing sail area in anticipation of high winds) and made my way across the storm. Winds did not climb above 15 knots, in fact they dissipated to 15 kts. However, I left the sails reefed until I exited from the storm. There was a lot of rain, but it was warm and I was wearing shorts which would dry quickly. After the storm passed, I tacked again to the east and set out for Stellwagen bank and points beyond.

I set on a course that would allow me to sail on a close reach (about 60 degrees off the apparent wind) since this would allow me to turn around 180 degrees and head back to Boston with a similar point of sail (close reach). This is a preferable way to sail over a close haul (30 degrees off the wind) because it is less bouncy and faster.

As I was passing over the western edge of Stellwagen bank I saw a whale. I believe it was a humpback. As it passed the stern of Prairie Gold it sent a giant spray of water in the air as it exhaled. What a glorious site.

I continued east until I calculated that I had enough distance to beat my 72nm goal. About 20 minutes prior to turning around I started to make dinner – burgers and salad. Once dinner was made, I safely stowed it and at the 44nm elapsed part of the trip I turned 180 degrees and headed back in a westerly direction to Boston.

I have never had a burger that tasted any better. Its amazing what a day of sailing, salt air, and a storm will do for the appreciation of a burger.

As I was returning there were a couple of whale watching boats from Provincetown in Stellwagen Bank area talking about the two humpbacks that they were seeing. I will take this as verification of my identification of the species of whale that I saw.
I continued to sail at over 6knots towards Boston. I turned at 6:14pm and docked in the marina at 12:15am. The trip was a total of 81nm with 37nm being in the return leg. Taking 6 hours for 37nm put me at a little over an average speed of 6knots for the return. Overall my average speed was 5.7knots, and that included some slow stuff initially, with a maximum speed of 8.33 knots. I had good winds from about 12 noon until I docked shortly after midnight (15-18 knots apparent) and only used the motor while in Boston harbor.

It is quite amazing how quickly one gets into the groove of sailing, especially as you are leaving congested waters. The combination of a 10 minute intermittent radar scan with alarm if a radar reflection is detected, 360 degree lookouts every 10 minutes and few vessels (when away from the mainland) make sailing a very relaxing and even mesmerizing event. I could have pushed on further, but with responsibilities this evening – a business dinner – I thought it better to get a night of sleep. For me the worst part of sailing is the anticipation of a storm. You see it on the radar, you see it in the air but you don’t know what it will pack. Once you are in the storm you just deal with it and it is usually less bad (so far at least) than the anticipation. One of my friends says “if it really gets bad hove to, drop warps of the back of the boat or set a sea anchor, go beneath close the hatches and open a bottle of whisky”. I hope not to have to encounter that storm.

Before closing let me return to turning under sail power. During the tacks around Marblehead I decided to try to control the direction of sailing by using the sails, not the rudder. I trimmed the sails so that there was no weather helm, then clamped the rudder in the center position. Then by moving the mainsail up towards the wind I could turn the boat towards the wind and away from the wind I could turn the boat in the same direction. So then I determined whether I could turn the boat through the wind by manipulating the position of the mainsail. It worked first time. Of course, theory says that it will, but there is nothing like trying it. I need to try this more often and see how much I can sail at different wind angles in this manner.

Here are a few more pictures from the day (all post storm) and of the sun setting behind the clouds and entering Boston harbor.