North to Block Island

It's now Friday morning. We sit on a mooring in Great Salt Pond at Block Island. We arrived here yesterday afternoon after two interesting nights at sea.. We left the Severn River Marina on Monday as planned and made our way across the Chesapeake Bay to Kiptopeke State Park on the Eastern Shore where we anchored comfortably for the night. We enjoyed a pretty sunset and peaceful, short night's sleep. Our schedule called for a 6AM departure. Once out in the ocean, we dealt with a bit of a headwind and chop that gave us a bouncy ride for several hours. Things settled down during the latter part of the day, which we enjoyed.

With a crew of three (our daughter Jennifer has joined us for the trip north) and a two hour helm schedule, we each were able to have a break of four hours for sleep. Since we'd all taken Bonine to prevent sea sickness, sleeping when not on duty was easier than it might have been otherwise. The medication made us all pretty sleepy. Working against us in each of the overnight were brisk winds and a 4 foot or more chop which we continued to bang into. When bouncing around in bed, it's more difficult to sleep.

It was our good fortune that shipping traffic off the Delaware Bay and NY Harbor was light. What ships did show up gave us no trouble, since the AIS unit gave us all the necessary info to stay out of their way.

As a brief side note, another of our instruments did not help us as we'd hoped: our auto pilot. I had installed the second replacement computer for the instrument but was unable to give it a thorough testing before departing. It acted just as the last edition had – unable to hold a course for more than a few minutes. I managed to get technical support on the phone, but this problem seems to have them baffled. For us during the trip, it means that one of us must be steering the boat at all times. Since we'd become accustomed to letting the auto pilot do much of the steering when offshore, we find this situation to be much more tiring.

So much for venting frustrations. During our traveling up the coast, we continue to be reminded how varied is our East Coast. The coast of Virginia and Maryland along the Eastern Shore is nearly all salt marsh with little in the way of signs of civilizations (and no cell phone service.) In contrast to this, the south coast of New Jersey is quite built up. All the reading I had done about Cape May focused on the quaint old homes of this vacation community. Nothing was mentioned about line of tall buildings along the water. These extended with only a few gaps for miles up the coast. The eastern end of Long Island looked as I had expected – many large and small homes overlooking miles of beach.

Block Island is a beautiful spot about six miles off the coast of RI and 12 miles east of Montauk Point, Long Island. The island has a large protected harbor with a couple of marinas, many moorings and room to anchor...at least at the moment. The moorings, we were told, had just been put in for the season. It seems that this is a busy place beginning next week with the annual Block Island Race Week. From then on to Labor Day, we're told that the place is full and very busy. Marina slips and moorings are pricy when they're available. The anchorage is generally full also. That said, the island offers high bluffs overlooking the ocean, miles of beaches and a quaint town that is similar to towns on the coast of Maine. A ferry service runs form the mainland regularly to bring vacationers. If I didn't know already that the movie Jaws was filmed on Martha's Vineyard, I would not have been surprised if I was told that it had been filmed here. It has a look and feel of the Amity Island of the movie.

It's rainy and cool today, so we're getting the boat cleaned up, catching up on sleep and making decisions about how and when we'll continue this journey to Maine. As this is written, our plan is to leave here tomorrow for Onset, MA at the western end of the Cape Cod Canal.

I leave off this blog with another comment on a topic I've discussed before in this blog. As we travel into NE where we lived for so many years and so many of the places are familiar to us, I find it easier to answer the question as to where home is: it is here on Carpe Diem. Each anchorage will offer familiar surroundings with friends and family nearby which merely strengthens that feeling of being home.

Captain Bob

Carpe Diem