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We spent the last two days in Wickford at one of our favorite places, Pleasant Street Wharf with our friends Sandy and Eric who co-own the yard with various family members. Our plan was to stay two days and then to bump down the coast and end up in Norwalk on Thursday afternoon. However, with some rain in the forecast in the next few days and strong winds from the NE we decided to make the run all the way to Norwalk from Wickford today, a run of just over 100 miles, a long way in a boat doing 6.5 knots. We left the dock at 07:30 today under power as the winds were very light and seas calm. We could have waited till Wednesday and sailed in strong NE winds but I don’t want to push my luck with Brenda who has been just terrific on this trip in spite of some really dramatic sailing. Fun for me but trying for her. Ask Brenda what her favorite part of sailing and she will happily say “being anchored”. So, no need to push my luck or do what our son Rob would say was a “career limiting move” by putting Brenda out in yet another snotty day of sailing on our trip home from Maine.
By 10am we passed Pt Judith and expect to be at the Race (where Long Island Sound empties into Block Island Sound) by early afternoon, unfortunately, just in time for the tide to turn against us. We normally cruise under power about 6.5 to 7 kts (a knot is about 1.1 Statute or land miles per hour). When the tide turns against us we will face a head tide running at 2-4 knots against us so it will be slow going for some time as the tides run hard in the eastern part of the Sound. We will continue to buck the tide for the next 7 hours until it turns in our favor and begins to flood or head west. While the current will be against us for the entire ebb tide, we will face a decreasing current as we move further west as it runs strongest in the eastern part of the Sound. After the tide turns in our favor late in the afternoon we will pick up a small boost of about 1 knot as we continue west toward Norwalk. It’s hard to predict how long it will take us to make it to Norwalk which depends on tides and wind but I expect that we will arrive around 2am on Wednesday morning.
This will be Brenda’s first night sail of any consequence but it will be a good experience for her as she is intimidated by the idea of being underway in the dark. Personally, I enjoy being out at night as there isn’t a lot of boat traffic and it’s usually calm.
We will have to see how it goes but we are certainly headed in the right direction.
A few months ago I did a post for our visit to Watch Hill RI and mentioned Aphrodite, a great boat built by the Purdy Boat Company back in in the 30s. It was restored a number of years ago in Brooklin Maine, where we saw her under construction, and is now in absolutely terrific shape. Interestingly, I received an e-mail today from his grandson and historian for the Purdy Boat Company, Alan Dinn, who had seen my blog posts on the boat that his Grandfather had built years ago. He mentioned that he had written a book on the history of the company and is currently writing one about Aphrodite. This is certainly great news and I hope to learn more about his plans.
“Sailors of the early twentieth century knew the reputation of Purdy Boats. “Anybody that wanted their boat kept like it was going to be in Tiffany’s window, that’s where you went, to Purdy’s”, one commented. That reputation for quality, not only in maintenance but also design and manufacture, led many captains of finance and industry (such as Walter P. Chrysler, Nelson Doubleday, Williams L. Mellon and Herbert L. Pratt) and boating enthusiasts (like Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, Adrian Iselin II, George Ratsey, and Charles F. Chapman) to buy their boats from the yard on the shore of Port Washington’s Manhasset Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet just twenty years later, this remarkable producer of custom yachts and racing boats had built its last boat. Who were these boatbuilding Purdys – where did they come from, how did they learn their trade, how did they disappear so completely, and what were some of their classic products? Alan Dinn, a grandson of Ned Purdy, has compiled a rich, authoritative history of the Purdy Boat Company based on official company documents and correspondence and reminiscences of family members and boat owners. The intriguing story of the Purdys is augmented with many photographs and line drawings of classic Purdy Boats.”
Stay tuned for more information on Alan’s new book.
We waved to the Coasties. They waved back. 
If you can’t get a float the only option is to tie up to the pilings. Some prefer this as they can get right ashore. However, you have to climb up 12′ of slimy ladder at low tide. The range of tide here is over 9′. It would have been a tough call to convince Brenda that this was a better option than the float. Not sure how I would have managed getting Rip ashore. You can see how high the docks are, and it’s not even low tide yet. 
They say that this is the most photographed red building in America. How do they know that? I added to the number of photos I guess. It’s very picturesque. And the lobster boats really add to the ambiance. Below us on our float. Very convenient to the dock. 
A view of some of the buildings on Star Island, with the “hotel” and lots of other historic buildings. It’s quite a wonderful little village. Some are community buildings for meetings and such.
The island chapel. It seems that there are a lot of weddings held here. Albeit, casual 
A view through the door of the chapel. What a quaint place. The alter was decorated with local wild flowers. 
One of the lovely stone buildings. The place is well staffed and incredibly well kept. 
There are a collection of dories in the harbor for the locals to use in exploring the 
This light guards the southern approach to the Shoals. This view was taken from Star Island. It was very close indeed. 
This flower, shot on the island, sums up the weather that we have been having all week. 
When the tide is running there are whirlpools all over the place. 
Just across from where we picked up a mooring is property owned by our friends Chris and Pat. They purchased the lot years ago, put in a mooring and dock but haven’t yet put in a house. It’s no wonder that they love this place, it really spectacular. This is their dock. I guess that you have to put in a dock while you can. Saved seat!
This is the view up the creek from Chris and Pat’s place. No wonder they plan to build a home here. The early morning mist was hard to capture in a photo. It was dead calm and VERY quiet. Perhaps too quiet for me. As you can see, Rip was really getting into the calm and zonked out in the dink. This summer he has gotten very used to being on the boat and just loves to SLEEP, SLEEP, SLEEP. 
Some local wild life, a great blue heron. It’s a big bird that stands over 3′ tall. Not the greatest photo as it was dusk when I took the shot. 
I went ashore to ask for permission to use a vacant mooring and met Chris and Pat’s next door neighbor Ed. I think that he’s mostly retired but has a lobster license and runs about 50 traps in his spare time. He says that lobstering “keeps me out on the water”. Makes sense to me. Ed was insistant that he make a lobster dinner for us but our schedule wasn’t quite flexible enough to stay another night. However!!! Ed’s offer is just too good to pass up so we hope to see him when we return next Friday to Maine and Pandora. 
This photo (see Pandora just off the dock) really gives you an idea of the 9′ tides. That’s the dock where we ate. Amazing views!
It’s always nice to have fresh flowers aboard. We actually have a “secure” vase down below so that the flowers don’t fly all over the place when we are under way.
Here I am up the mast to fix the wind speed and direction indicator that had gotten a bit sticky and wasn’t properly registering low wind speeds. A trip up the mast to get the sender unit, a little WD40 and a toothbrush on the bearings, a trip back up to put it back and it was as good as new. Fortunately, we have an electric winch that can pull me up the 63’ mast without any sweat. I also had to tend to a loose bulb in the anchor light that was refusing to cooperate. The bulb is a new LED that draws about 1/10th of the power of the old one. Most of the lights on Pandora have been replaced by LEDs, and now we can turn on most of the onboard lights in the evening and only pull a few amps, a massive change from the past. It’s a real plus as now the solar panels can keep up with our electric useage even if we don’t run the engine. 
That’s me way up there. Yes, it’s really high! The photo below is what I saw looking down. Notice the solar panels on the bimini. They are really great and supply most/all of the power that we need. 
You can see a long way from that high up. I prefer to not look down but somehow it’s less intimidating when viewed through a camera. Not!!! 
As I write this we are in Winter Harbor, a really narrow cut in the eastern coast of Vinalhaven where we anchored the other night following a visit to Burnt Coat Harbor on Swan’s Island. It’s about the narrowest place we go and not many boats come up this far as the channel winds around past some unmarked rocks that are right in the middle of the channel. This picture doesn’t show how narrow it really is as the tide is high covering all of the mud flats and rocks. I have been here many times and haven’t hit one yet. On this visit only one boat ventured further up the creek. As we came in we saw some seals and osprey. Later we saw an eagle too. Very remote and hardly a house to be seen. Our dog Rip appreciated the gently sloping granite ledges to get ashore without getting his feet dirty or wet to do his business. 
That’s a view of Pandora from on top of one big granite ledge. 
Rip surveying the scene. Master of all he can see? Perhaps not.
An osprey nesting on top of an old granite quary ruin. It’s fun to think about what life must have been out in these islands back when thousands of men (mostly) worked out in the islands cutting stone. Granite from this area was used to build the New York City Post office and many other buildings prior to the advent of concrete’s wide use as a structural building material. 
Pandora safely at anchor in Winter Cove.
There are endless things to look at as you cruise the coast. Here’s a very nice boathouse we saw yesterday. 
We also see an endless series of great boats. Here’s a lovely schooner sailed by an “older” couple. I expect that he gets help keeping the varnish and paint up. Actually, an army of help is probably about right as it was in pristine condition. 
What’s a blog about Maine cruising without a few lighthouse photos. The one above is off of the entrance to Burnt Coat harbor on the southern end of Swan’s island. The one below is in Fox Island Throughfare. Many of these lights are privately maintained by a lighthouse society and a few are in private hands. There is a lot of support to keep them looking great so they will be around for years to come. 
Not a bad sunset last night. 
I woke up really early today, Tuesday, at 04:00. Who knows why. Nice to watch the sunrise but that didn’t last long as the fog soon rolled in. Let’s see what it looks like an hour from now. Very excited as Brenda (and Rip) will be here this afternoon. Hope that they get up early too.
What a difference a day makes. We left at first light and dropped the mooring at 05:30. Just after we cleared the end of the Cape, we spotted two large whales, probably finback basedon their size, spouting a few miles off. What a sight. I hope to see more as the day progresses. There is a very moderate wind but it’s just about on our nose so we are motoring with the mainsail up and making about 7kts over the bottom helped by a 1kt current as the boat speed is about 6.2kts. (A knot is about 1.1 statute mile per hour). Our course to Rockland Maine will place us over Stellwagen Bank, an area with a very large population of whales. On past trips, this is probably my 13th crossing, we have seen many whales and some have surfaced within a few hundred feet of the boat. It’s best to stay away from them but sometimes they come over to check us out and it’s amazing just how large they are.
