Block Island to Martha’s Vineyard

Today we plan to make the short 60nm hop to Martha’s Vineyard, the holiday home of the east coast rich and famous. There is a forecast of southwesterly winds 17-22 knots gusting 30 and there is a tide window we have to hit to get through the vineyard sound. If we dont get there in time, we could be fighting a 3.5 knot current and that will be a pain. Our skipper decids that we should go and as long as we average at least 6 knots, we can do it.

Beautiful downwind sailing with a little swell to make the boat squirm a little. F decides we should go faster so he ties down the Genoa with a short sheet. This gives us an extra 0.5 knot I guess and we fly along at a little over 7 knots. There is a view that sailing is a relaxing and easy pastime where not much happens. This is not the case today with the boat corkscrewing along on the top of each swell when the wind gusts. All quite exciting. There are not many going out in this breeze and we don’t see a soul all day.

As we approach the sound, a thick mist came up making identification of the navigation buoys difficult. We are quite reliant on GPS to tell us where to look for the markers at times. We have beaten the tide predictions with about 1.5 knot favourable all the way up. 

Then it it all goes a little ‘interesting’. We launch the stay-sail ( a smaller front sail ) inside the Genoa (the bigger front sail) and try to furl the Genoa. The sail and its sheets get all horribly tangled and it starts flapping shaking the whole boat. We suddenly have to run full downwind to ease pressure on the Genoa so F can go forward an apply his masterful sailing skills to fix it. It is all quite tense now. With the wind now gusting to 26 knots and a swell I really struggle to hold the boat full downwind and eventually the boat gybes violently when a swell turns it more than I had allow for. Mairead takes a swipe from the main sheet and hurts her arm and has to go below. Crap.

We struggle on for about 10 minutes before F manages to finally pull the genoa down and tie it to the rail. It’s a big relief to get things under control and after another 45 minutes of sailing on a close reach in murky mist before we finally get onto a mooring buoy in Edgartown harbour. Phew! As we pull in, the guy moored on the buoy next to us calls over “good sailing out there today!” ..with a knowing grin.

We are all quite relieved and a little elated after the day. The excitement of the last hour left me with a bit of a buzz but remind me that the only people who can fix your problems at sea is you. We down a welcome drink, eat dinner and turn in. It is tiring…all that sitting down, holding the tiller and doing nothing! 

It is exciting sailing though the mist (Mairead wants to call it fog ;-) but makes it a bit more tense that I would welcome. I guess that’s going to be a feature of the next month all the way up to Newfoundland. Apparently that where they make fog…. Maireads arm is a bit sore but nothing broken. You will forgive the lack of pictures of the incident but we were all a little busy.