Wild, wild ride to Cuttyhunk, Mass

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Tue 17 Sep 2013 22:54

41:25.5N 70:55.4W

 

Monday & Tuesday – 16th & 17th September

 

Monday was cool and wet to start off, but there was no wind at all and the tide was in, so we left our mooring briefly to edge our way to the head of the bay and the fuel dock to pick up some diesel  and then over to the town dock for water (the fuel dock does not have water it seems!).  As we approached the town dock we had our lines taken by Jeff who was the duty launch driver for EZ Rider today and he stayed and chatted for a while. It transpired during the day that there were only two boats in the harbour with people on board so we were 50% of his customer base.

 

Then after returning Serafina to her mooring we called Jeff for a ride back into town so we could do some grocery shopping etc.  Jeff helpfully recommended a small coffee shop (this was endorsed by the hardware store) and we enjoyed coffee and two superb homemade muffins at ‘Coffee Corner’ and had a long chat there with Eileen who was running the place that morning.  We then had a major shop at the big grocery store and whilst I took all of this back out to Serafina in Jeff’s launch, Sarah went off to one of the plethora of beauty saloons here. She then planned to have a bit of time shopping, but it seems that there are actually very few real shops in town and given that the holiday season is over, there was nobody around.

 

It seems that this little harbour is rammed all summer and as there is no anchoring allowed, the mooring buoys are always fully occupied. But right now it is all running down and boats are being taken out of the water for the winter so it is all very sleepy today in stark contrast to yesterday which was the end of their final weekend of the summer and lots of enthusiastic racing.

 

There is a long peninsular that leads out to the lighthouse that gives this harbour its protection and the houses all along there are known locally as ‘The Irish Riviera’ as the homes are all owned by the rich Boston based Irish Americans.

 

Monday night was pretty noisy as the forecast northerly winds of 25 knots began in the early evening and once they had gone round a little further to the east, there was also an unpleasant swell surging into the harbour all night. We of course being pretty much the biggest of the boats here, were sitting on the buoy nearest the entrance and so we had a very lumpy night.

 

On Tuesday morning we got up at 0630 hours for the big sail down to the Cape Cod Canal and onwards if possible. The wind was still blowing at 20 – 25 knots and the seas at the entrance to the harbour were pretty fearsome, delivering huge crashing surf on the rocks on the southern side of the mouth of the bay. The forecast was clear that this wind would ease before too long and the wave heights were expected to be 3ft to 4ft and also diminishing.  So we donned our foul weather gear and lifejackets and set off around 0730 hours. We unfurled the staysail for power and stability, but the opening moments were pretty spectacular as we ran into something of a wall of water at the entrance and the first huge waves that greeted us broadside on, pretty much rolled us on to our side at an angle we have never experienced before anywhere. We assumed (wrongly) that this was just the special situation at the mouth of the bay as the seabed shelved up to the land, but as we made ground offshore it became increasingly clear that this was going to be one mother of a rollercoaster ride. The wind increased instead of decreasing and before long we had 30 plus knots of true wind and 10ft waves that were coming over our port quarter (the back, left bit…) causing us to slew dramatically, particularly whenever one of the extra big ones piled into us. This is not Maine, but there are lobster pots aplenty here as well still, and so in addition to fighting the waves, we had to maintain an eagle eyed look-out for these pesky traps which in these sea conditions was next to impossible as the big waves would engulf the buoys and drag them under and out of sight, only for them to pop up barely yards ahead of us.

 

But the good news was that the first leg of this trip was all downwind and only partially across the big marching rows of white topped waves, but it was 30 miles and so we rather endured this sail instead of relishing it. The next excitement was the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal as this has a breakwater to provide protection, but these massive waves were rolling directly into the entrance and it is also very shallow, so the actual turn into the canal was one of those ‘hold your breath and clench your buttocks’ moments! But of course Serafina coped with all of this magnificently and we rounded the red marker buoy and shot through the maelstrom of white water and emerged safe and sound in the complete calm behind the breakwater and the start of the Cape Cod Canal.

 

Sarah’s timing was spot on and so we rode the ebbing current along the canal at a breath-taking 11.9 knots over the ground (over 4 knots of current under us all the way) and emerged barely an hour later into Buzzards Bay. We still had 18 miles to run to our preferred destination, but we were now ahead of time and with the wind still blowing over 20 knots we shot along over the comparatively flat and protected waters of this bay down to the very shallow and incredibly narrow channel that is the entrance to Cuttyhunk.

 

Cuttyhunk is a simply wonderful location and this is why it is a jam packed mecca for yachts throughout the cruising season. It is a completely enclosed pond with just the long very thin and shallow channel for access. The space inside is very restricted but totally protected and in order to fit so many boats in at the peak of the summer, the place is almost completely given over to the 50 fixed mooring buoys which are so close together that we do wonder how they can all tie up and not constantly bump into each other! However, there is also a very small anchoring area and given that this is mid-September we had no difficulty in finding a nice spot to drop our hook and sit back and relax after something of full on day.  More yachts did come in during the rest of the afternoon and we found that we were anchored next to a beautiful ketch called Christmas who are very good friends of Iain & Fiona on Ruffian. The entrance and anchoring was not without its moments as we had arrived at dead low tide and so we were grateful for our forward looking sonar to aid us were edged around this very shallow bay.

 

Lovely sunny evening and the wind did begin to ease around sunset and there is the promise of a much easier day tomorrow. But reading emails from various friends who are also at various stages of heading south, the standards of current weather forecasting for the east coast of the USA leaves an awful lot to be desired.

 

We did however spend a little time in the late afternoon marvelling at the couple on the boat anchored in front of us as they assembled the dinghy they had on board that splits into two halves. They put this together in the water and then added their four children (two toddlers) and promptly rowed off to a distant beach and then all went off for a long walk. All this at the end of a day afloat – pretty heroic we felt.