Yesterday, we got underway. Spring weather forecasts led us to avoid the planned trip across Boston Harbor from Lynn to Hull, only to prove as insufficient for planning as if we’d gone for a tarot reading.
Long tacks north and south got us east to Gloucester, a sufficiently salty town for our feelings of excitement about our great adventure.
You see, we’re sailing to the Azores. That island chain is no longer a fabled destination to be written about, by me in Lysistrata Cove, as a remote safe haven. It is now just over the horizon.
Before we commit ourselves, our boat, and our cat to the lonely vissisitudes of the One Big Ocean (Northern Altantic subset), we’re sailing and anchoring and testing all our gear, new and old. Having just installed a PET (primary energies tower, with 4 – 100 watt solar panels and a 500 watt wind generator) and a new windlass, among other things, we need to be certain that it all works.
This morning, after a long quibble with myself about courage, I took the helm, James dropped the mooring pennant, and I sailed Cetacea off and out of the harbor. After my worries about tight quarters and flukey wind, it was a joy to succeed without hijinks and start across Massachusetts Bay.
Beluga Greyfinger is starting to settle in to the motion but hasn’t quite decided he likes it.
We’re making decent time, though there’s less wind than forecasted. (See above re: spring forecasts.) Soon we’ll be sailing over Stellwagon Bank, a whale playground. I think I’ll go see if I can spot any.