New England and south

We love Lake Tashmoo, so much so we stayed here for a whole week. There were a few things driving this and mostly it was weather and then transport ease. Martha’s Vineyard has a great bus service that you can get a multi-day pass for quiet cheaply, so we bought a 3 day pass for $15 and decided to use the 3 days fully. Each day we walked 15 minutes to the Bus stop at the Ferry terminal in Vineyard Haven.


Lake Tashmoo

The first day was a visit to Edgartown which is very pretty and full of lovely historic houses. We visited the harbor and had coffee and muffins at the sea front café. Then we went to visit 3 historic buildings ; Fishers House, Old Whaling Church and the Vincent House, all great buildings and a fantastic personal tour with the guide too! We spent so much time here the day ran out!


Edgartown Street

Edgartown Art

Whaling Church

Whaling Church

Vincent House

Fisher House

The next day we went to Aquinna to see the Gay Head cliffs and Lighthouse as well as the Wampanoag tribal center. To be honest it was all very disappointing for such a long bus ride. On the way back we stopped at Menemsha where they filmed some of the “Jaws” scenes. The town was lovely and we walked the harbor and beach areas and had lunch at one of the small restaurants before returning on the bus.

Gay Head cliff & Lighthouse

Above the cliffs

Coast Gaurd station at Menemsha

Memorial at Menemsha

Menemsha Harbor

Lobsterman's Love Seat

Our third bus pass day was to Oak Bluffs. This is again a lovely town with a huge number of great sights and our favorite was the Gingerbread Cottages that are part of the Tabernacle Campgrounds. This is the original site of 1835 for the annual Methodist church campground and over the years the family tents evolved into wooden cottages where each family tried to outdo the other hence the spectacular cottages today. We absolutely loved spending a few hours walking past a large variety of cottages and talking with some local owners who wanted to chat.

Methodists Campgrounds

Cottages

More cottages

Even more...

Methodist church

Waterfront Home

We also spent some time down by the harbor and saw the Flying Horses Carousel. This indoor old style wooden carousel built in 1876 and moved to the island in 1884 it is the oldest continuously operating carousel in the country with 22 wooden horses with real horse hair. Again we stopped for lunch at a pub overlooking the harbor although eating from plastic baskets with plastic cutlery was a huge disappointment and the food was average. As we left there was a display of jet boot riding from the guys wanting customers, but in 60-65 degree water there seemed to be no takers, brave lads indeed.

Indoor Carousel

Jet Boots

We also spent 2 days exploring Vineyard Haven and the harbor there. We walked the shop fronts and toured the “Black Dog” stores and ship museum. It is a lovely town but very touristy, however we like the shopping with West marine, Ace and a food market where we got great buckets of ice cream.

Vinal Haven Church - built from rocks

 

Wild trukeys on our walk to Vinalhaven

After the Vineyard we crossed the sound to Cuttyhunk harbor mostly under motor as there was little wind. We arrived and anchored outside the harbor as the inner harbor is small and mostly all mooring balls. We rode the dinghy in to take a look around and after a short while a local said “it’s going to rain hard in 20 minutes” so we heed local advice and made a quick retreat. The good news is as we went in we could see space to anchor inside and as the rain was a large thunderstorm we decided to move Moosetracks inside. Well what a difference 10 minutes can make! We got back to Moosetracks as the rain AND fog came over and literally could only see maybe 100ft. We gingerly found the very narrow entrance and slowly made our way in and safely anchored. After 5 more minutes the heavens opened and it rained “cats and dogs” for a good hour!

 

Cuttyhunk harbor in the fog

It was Liz’s birthday the next day and as we loved the anchorage and what we saw of the island, we decided to stay put and walk the island the next day. It has a great view from the bunker at the hill behind town so we walked up to take it in and see the town on the way in and out. It is a lovely town with very few shops (2) and very few places to eat (2) and as it is after high season the historic society was closed so we couldn’t go in. Ah well. We did stop to talk with a group of local ladies and they found our lifestyle fascinating and asked lots of questions. As we were parting one lady asked if there was anything we needed now or later to please drop in on her house and she pointed it our for us. It’s such a warm and welcoming thing to do and makes you feel great about people.

Cuttyhunk Harbor

View from Bunker hill

Our next stop was Block Island, RI which is in the middle of the sound and a 40+ mile trip to windward this day. We tacked a few times but had a reasonable angle so it worked quite well. The harbor is large and as we are out of season it was very empty and easy to find space. It’s hard to believe that’s not always possible most of the summer! We liked the island a lot as there are numerous trails and lots of attractions, it is really geared for visitors! We walked into town twice, once up and down the beach and once via the road then stopped for lunch at the Oar on the harbor side and enjoyed the views of the harbor & Moosetracks.

 

North Lighthouse

Block Island entrance

Rebecca

One of many beautiful beaches at Block Island

We visited the Zoo or that’s what we called it anyway as they had lots of captive animals there. We also stopped over to visit another IP in the harbor s/v “Carol Jean” with Carol and Glenn on board it was great to chat with them for a few hours. We also stopped by m/v “Summer Star” with Atle and Kristina as we noticed their St Petersburg YC burgee on the bow. It was a great evening chatting with them and sharing stories of our travels and theirs since Florida.

The Zoo as we called it

 

African crowned crane

Tank the tortouse

Skippy?

A camel that's been here since 4 months old

Well we felt we could easily spend a week at Block Island and get our bikes ashore to do the trails, however a weather window opened up for us. Now since they come about one a week we wanted to get this one. So reluctantly we started to stow everything and prep Moosetracks for the 2 day, 2 night passage to Cape Henlopen. It’s a full on Atlantic passage so we took it seriously. We removed the outboard and secured them, strapped the dinghy tightly with cross braces, fitted jack lines then made up the sea berth and stowed everything away. It was forecast to start as a west wind at 10-15 and clock (move clockwise) to North at 20-25, East at 10 then South at 10-15. We had a really slow start as the current was against us and we only made 2-4 knots for the first 3 hours. As we got to sea and the wind went North it increased to 20-25 knots then gusted 25-30 but since our track was SW we just tried to keep the wind 20-30 off our stern so we had good speed and an easier ride. It worked perfectly to forecast and we gybed Moosetracks in the early hours as the wind came through to the East. All in all it was a fabulous trip; 233 nm in 44 hours for and average of 5.3 knots with no motoring. Nothing broke, no one was sick, the food was great but we caught no fish!

Cape Henlopen is a state park and being on the south side of the Delaware river the anchorage is nice and sheltered behind 2 breakwaters. We arrived at 2am so we quickly settled Moosetracks down and got to bed. We awoke at 10 am and not wanting to waste our stop we launched the dinghy to explore the Cape. It has beautiful beaches surrounding the cape as you can imagine so we trekked over to the far side and then up and around the point of the Cape. The Atlantic beach is a mecca for beach fisherman, so Devin’s Brother Duncan can relate, this place is wall to wall SUV’s (Ute in Oz?) in the summer but now it had only 30-40 SUV’s out fishing so we walked easily along the beach and chatted to a few fishermen and women.

Beach Fishing at Cape Henlopen

The Delaware river is very tidal and has strong currents, so it’s important to time your transit to not fight them. There is also a canal at the top connecting it to the Chesapeake Bay, called appropriately enough the Chesapeake and Delaware canal (C&D canal). The really fortunate part for us is our arrival was perfect as the calculated departure was 8 am the day we left and I love it when I can see (daylight) at both ends of the trip when on canals and rivers. So we didn’t have to get up too early and left before 8 am and caught the tide the entire day, it pushed us up the Delaware river then changed perfectly on cue as we entered the canal. Now I don’t know if this is just planned that way by canal engineers or our luck but either way we are thankful. The entire trip was 75 nm and we did it in 11 hours for a 6.8 knots average speed, now that’s amazing!

C&D canal

So here we are in the Chesapeake Bay, a long time in the making as we choose to avoid the hot summer here and avoided it on the passage north. We did hope to leave behind the lobster pots of the north behind us but here the crab fisherman are out and their pots look just the same so it’s back to constant vigilance while motoring and no night time motoring in case we catch a line in our propeller. So far it looks beautiful and hopefully as we have 4-6 weeks here we will have some great adventures.

Crab boat laying out pots

We are headed south like migrating birds and our journey to Trinidad is going to be a great 6 month adventure starting in December from Florida. We hope everyone is prepared for fall whatever that means for you and wish you all well.