Sat18July

My sailing partner is Adnaan (add as in addition, nan as a short form of Nancy) Stumo. Mother from Lebanon, father from Iowa. I stole him from a tourist beach in Puerto Rico where he was giving tourists rides on sailboats. He also has worked as a commercial fisherman offshore Alaska, and sailed with Richard Hudson. Adnaan arrived in New Bedford with his family about 0930 Friday. Mother, father and brother. They were kind enough to take me to get the propane tank filled, then to the groc, and then a special treat of anything I wanted in a little coffee house. That was good. Back at the boat Adnaan and I took everything out to the boat, then circled around and landed on the face dock where the family waited. They came on board, we showed them the boat, then they had to leave, and us too. They are good folks.

We left New Bedford about 12:30, and got to Woods Hole about 1530, right at max current against us, 4+ knots. I was impressed. But it is not but about 100 yards or so, and even at 2 knots it didn't take long to get through. We arrived at Edgartown Martha's Vinyard about 19:00, and anchored (yes, anchored. Not in a mooring field at $40/night!) off a sandy beach. I liked it. It was warm enough to enjoy the foredeck, and the 25 other boats anchored with me, from daysailers to modest cruisers to fancy cruisers. There were two really nice motoryachts in the 75' to 100' range, and three megga-yachts. Interesting anchorage.
This morning the order of business was to buy 10 gallons of diesel fuel. We upped anchor and drove to the fuel dock, to find it swarmed with small boats, three on the dock and many others milling around waiting their turn. There was a big sailboat regatta today and at 0800 all the support boats were gassing up. No hope for us. We anchored, built the dinghy, and got in line for our fuel. That done we re-stowed the dinghy (in a swarm of small sailboats going out to the racing area) and got underway just as all the small boats go out to where they were going to race. They were cluster in three groups of maybe 75 boats in each group. It was obvious that they had left the main channel area open for passing boats, so I went for the open channel area. I got right in the middle when I realized that the reason the area where I was was free of racing boats, was because I was on the racing side of the starting line, and the starting gun had just sounded. one hundred racing sailboats were coming on us, fast. There was no hope of going through them so we turned and tried to stay ahead of them. We couldn't, but it gave us enough time for the fleet to spread out some, we picked an opening between four of them, and cut through. Whew!
My other learning experience today has to do with currents. The currents are manageable, but have to be dealt with. It may look like you are in the middle of a vast expanse of water, but there is always current. And then, to my surprize, when you leave Martha's Vinyard and sail past Nantucket, there are shoals similar to Ocracoke inlet. I was being lazy; suddenly it got my attention. There were 10 miles of channels to negotiate before we got to the open ocean. And a surprize of a different sort. I have been adding layers all day. This morning I was in shorts and a summer shirt. Now I am in four layers. It is really chilly out there.
We are now about 15nm off Nantucket now in the open ocean. Good (chilly) wind and mild seas. We look forward to a pleasant first night out.
Bill and Adnaan
s/v Advent II
You may find it interesting to go to Adventtwo.blogspot.com and look at our track.