It just doesn’t feel like summer has started until we make a pilgrimage to Block Island. Of course, it didn’t particularly feel like summer on Block Island either. Too damned cold.
Finally we did make it back though, a bit later and a bit more frenetic than usual but we made it back. And it was good to be back, it truly is a nice weekend destination especially before the crowds.
After confirming that the channel was finally dredged we set our sights on the Block for last weekend. We had a family wedding on Friday night though – which was a lovely affair – so we could not set out as is our preference on Friday evening. Instead we wisely decided to get up at the crack of dawn and leaving instead. After drinking and dancing the night before…and after my wife had been up Thursday all night with a patient.
Needless to say, we did NOT get off the dock by 7:30 as planned. That’s a bit of a feat in and of itself since we are on a mooring and our club’s launch service doesn’t start until 0800. So it makes it a bit challenging to get to your boat for early AM departures unless you have the foresight to leave your dinghy on the dinghy dock to get out to the boat. Fortunately I did, so we at least had that going for us.
Of course I did not have the foresight to remember to refill the propane, or the wisdom to realize the old, extra tank I had in the shed was in fact full, not empty (did you know they have a safety on the new ones, you can’t open them to hear a whoosh of escaping gas to see if they are empty?) So we were unecessarily delayed waiting for propane shops to open. And we had to go to Providence to round on a patient, bring the boat in to the dock, load gear, fix the alternator (more on that in another post), etc.
So around 0930 we were happily under way. The wind was not with us…sailing in 5-8 knots from the stern would have gotten us to Block around midnight so we ended up motor sailing and arriving around 1330 or so (1:30 pm for you lubbers). The theory with motor sailing is you stabilize the boat against rolls with the main at a minimum, if you are luck the wind can also give you some extra speed. We were not lucky.
The most traumatic part of the trip was re-entering the channel. Intellectually I knew it was dredged, however that did little for the knot in my stomach as I took it slowly and carefully. Proceeding up the channel like a box turtle on Quaaludes, we never saw less than 16 feet under the keel.
Of course the stay was nice, albeit brief. Dinner in town, breakfast on the boat as the harbor hurricane made all dinghy rides wet and unpleasant…and it rained. Eventually the rain let up and we got underway a bit after noonish. Expecting lighter Easterlies we rigged the staysail and set out expecting mostly reaching conditions.
It was a reach until we rounded 1BI (the mark North of Block Island). There I learned a valuable, if not rather slow lesson: the Staysail really stinks while up wind. This sail is awesome on a reach – we easily se an extra knot of speed with it rigged. However, I was unaware that it seems to reduce pointing ability – the abililty to sail close to the wind – at least if you don’t have it trimmed properly. Given my lack of sail trim mad skillz, suffice it to say that I was shocked to see us tacking through 120 degrees of wind! Normally it’s closer to 90-95 degrees. When I finally figured out that the best move was to drop the staysail we picked up another 10-15 degrees towards the wind at about the same speed.
Lesson #2 was that the current can kill you – I am sure this contributed to our slow sail across Block Island Sound as well, since it was sweeping rapidly to the South and West…which was a problem since we were trying to sail Northeast. A knot in the face when you are already sailing deep because you are too ignorant to ditch the staysail is just adding insult to injury.
Eventually we got clear of the head on wind AND head on current and reached Point Judith, we did this by simply turning dead into the wind and motoring for 45 minutes. At that point we were headed more North, so we set all the sails and had a nice easy reach home until the wind died somewhere past Jamestown.
Overall a good weekend. I figure any time I learn something without losing any body parts or destroying anything expensive it’s a win.
