We Pahked the Cah* in the Hahvahd Yahd

A short(ish) recap of an eventful and restful time arriving to Boston and the surrounding area.

The Passage North

The passage itself was exhilarating but tiring. Sailing (almost) nonstop for 4 days will definitely take it out of you. Having had the experience of doing a passage with Lisa and Andy from Kinetic Sailing when moving the boat up from Georgia to Delaware certainly helped set expectations and made us much more prepared, but 2 vs 4 people makes a load of difference. The crux for a continuous passage is that to ensure someone was keeping watch on the boat at all times we ran a ~4 hour shift schedule, meaning that each of us was on watch for 4 hours at a time while the other person rested before swapping out. This translated to a lot of individual solo sailing time.

You get into a sort of weird rhythm after a few cycles where the insanity of waking up at 2 in the morning, brushing your teeth and making a coffee somehow start to make sense. Seeing a fiery moonrise over the horizon at 3 am helps justify the delirium (hard to take a good picture so look it up!).

On the day shifts we would sometimes stay up with each other to hang out and sail together. While tempting, especially after lonelier night shifts, the risk is that by the time the next shift rolls around you haven’t had enough time to recoup and you feel like you’re bare knuckling through it. A combination of pop girlie hits, podcasts and squats helped keep me up through some of the dragging early hours. That said, there is a blissful serenity to being out alone on the pitch black night sail, with nothing but you, the stars, the sails, and the sea.

The only blip in an otherwise smooth trip was the early morning after we first departed from Lewes. Just outside of Atlantic City we hit some gnarly 10 foot waves and heavy winds (and a bout of seasickness for yours truly 🤢). After about 30 minutes of getting rocked around and going nowhere we decided to duck into Atlantic City for a few hours before heading back out. (Check out the album for photos of what it looked like inside afterwards).

Boston Harbor

Despite having been to Boston many times before by various forms of transit, sailing in was the first time I appreciated the multitude of quaint lighthouses and cute islands spotting the harbor (34 to be exact). The array and variety of boats parading around the harbor was quite a sight to behold (and made motoring in a dash more exciting). Totally gave me a new appreciation for the city that I usually enjoy hating on…

Boston ribbing aside, TJ and Jina’s wedding was fantastic. A beautiful celebration of love with great views, great people, great music and lots of soju 🎉. An additional bonus was getting to invite my college friends over for a tour of the boat so they could see our new digs and stake out claims on the guest room. While 8 (and a half) people are probably a bit too crowded to sail with it was the perfect amount for hanging in the cockpit dockside.

In order to facilitate easily getting to and from the wedding we decided to dock at a marina in downtown Boston for one night (as compared to at anchor which we usually do, the free.99 way). This also provided a more stable location to climb up the mast to investigate why our masthead light wasn’t working. ...Effectively a 55ft high lightbulb change. Michael did the honors of climbing up using our nifty harness contraption while I cheered him on using our (not-so-)secret service headsets. Unfortunately the light couldn’t immediately be fixed so we’re exchanging for a new one (the manufacturer SignalMate provided excellent debugging support). Stay tuned for round two of “The Climb.”

Lynn, Lynn (the City of Sin)

Getting to Boston in time for the wedding was quite the sprint (… by sailing metrics… the slowest form of transit we could take 😅) so we were looking forward to some rest time afterwards. Unexpectedly this ended up being a week in Lynn, MA a city just north of Boston’s urban inner core. As we were leaving the marina we noticed a tucked away anchorage just inside the arm of Nahant and decided to give it a try. Our planned 1-2 day layover ultimately turned into a 6 day sojourn.

Lynn (despite it’s historical moniker of being the City of Sin) had just what we needed. A quiet anchorage out of the way of the busy Boston harbor, a nearby dock that made it easy to get ashore, a number of cheap stores within walking distance for reprovisioning, a metal scrap shop for (finally) dumping our deceased dinghy motor, and a nice long stretch of pretty beachfront perfect for morning runs.

Most notable about our time in Lynn was hosting our first dinner guests! Steve and Rachel graciously made the schlep up from downtown Boston to enjoy a nice sunset BBQ and catch up on the latest crazy wedding gossip. It was our first test of hosting guests on the boat (and flexing my new trad wife cooking skills) and it went smashingly. While they were the first dinner guests I know they won’t be the last 😊

After weathering a brief set of squalls on Thursday followed by a gorgeous rainbow, we finally heaved anchor from Lynn and continued our adventures north. Here’s hoping we didn’t take too much of Lynn’s notoriously smelly algae as stowaways 🤞.

New Adventures

With the wedding behind us and no specific deadlines to hit we’re now fully in sailing “vacation” mode and taking things much much slower. Our general plan is to inch up the New England coast between now and August (any and all recommendations are appreciated).

Next up Salem 🧙‍♀️, Gloucester and Newburyport!

*boat (obviously)

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Photo Album

(Trying a new approach where I embed a full album instead of individual pictures!)