Underway

Starting slowly: Cuttyhunk and Newport

After a nice dinner out Saturday night I stayed aboard at the dock and departed Red Brook Harbor early Sunday morning.

The first few legs of this trip are intentionally short (25-35 nm) to allow both me and the boat a chance to adjust. On the first day we rode a brisk NE wind down Buzzards Bay to Cuttyhunk for the night. This is one of may favorite local spots even though it is usually a challenging sail with normal summertime SW winds. And the harbor is often completely packed with visitors. Not so this time: With wind from behind it was only a few hours before I was snugly moored in Cuttyhunk Pond with very few neighbors. Good thing as heavy rain and strong (25-30 kt) wind arrived just after sunset and lasted most of the night. I sleep really well on the boat so the rocking and noise weren’t a problem.

Monday morning we took off for Newport with strong winds and clear skies. The wind remained around 20 kt all day but the seas built as we got out of the lee of the Elizabeth Islands and into the part of Rhode Island sound that is wide open to the Atlantic.

I played with different sail combinations all day. Andante is a cutter – she carries two headsails in addition to her in-boom furling mainsail. Much of today we used both the yankee (a high-clewed 110% roller-furled genoa) and the smaller, hanked-on staysail with a double-reefed main. We had a great 3-sail broad reach for quite a while. Eventually our course required sailing dead downwind and the 6-8 ft quartering swells made it challenging to keep the sails full. We eventually made it to Newport an hour before sunset. I quickly hopped on a launch to get some groceries (greens!) and ice and made it back to the boat just in time for sunset.

I’ve figured out how to share more than just the last few days of positions. This link should allow you to see everywhere I go beginning on our departure date:

https://maps.findmespot.com/s/KBYB

(Note: I also changed the location of the Spot tracker in the boat for better performance. You can see that many more of the 10-minute tracking pings were successfully received on the second leg than on the first.)

Up next: Mystic, CT.