Provincetown, Cape Cod - Massachusetts.

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sun 15 Jul 2012 23:00

42:02.25N 70:11.12W

 

 

Sat & Sun – 14th & 15th July

 

We set off probably rather earlier than necessary to be sure of the tides to make a safe exit out of the bay, which left us with 13 miles and 3.5 hours to achieve this - and practically no wind.   So a leisurely wallow northwards where we joined all the other boats loitering to await the magic moment when the tide switches direction in the Cape Cod Canal and you can whoosh through on a 3 knot current.

 

We followed a beautiful British yacht, Belle Adventure, and were followed by a tall ship under full (but completely ineffectual) sail, into the canal which was very reminiscent of the Kiel Canal in Germany but otherwise pretty boring and we were spat out at the other end an hour later.   Our speed log is choosing when and how it wishes to work at the moment - perhaps reaching a total of 19,000 miles has done for it finally.   We were also registering winds of force 4, although the other displays clearly indicated 5 knots only......    Let's hope Boston has a good Raymarine engineer.

 

As ever, the promised 20 knots of wind failed to materialise but we consoled ourselves that this would be ideal whale spotting weather.   Crossing the Cape Cod Bay to Provincetown is also crossing the Northern Right Whale "Critical Habitat" - surely we couldn't fail to see one?   We had a very hot motor across the bay and only saw an interesting tuna fishing boat with a vastly extended bowsprit for fishing or a very high turret/crows nest for helming from and what appeared to be a sea-life spotter plane above, and they weren't having any luck either.

 

We arrived in Provincetown knowing that there is an extended mooring field and that anchoring was likely to be outside of the sea barrier, especially as now we are in areas with tidal ranges of 3 metres plus.   What we hadn't expected was to find that all the other available holes amongst the mooring buoys would be filled with crab pots.   We had a good explore of all the possibilities and found ourselves nearly at the southerly beach before we found a good spot becoming the third boat at anchor in a line of outcasts!

 

In the morning we dinghied into town.   Provincetown was one of the first three openly gay towns in the US so it does have a slightly different ambience!   It is primarily a seaside town with fast ferries visiting from Boston and quite a few whaling trip boats.   We had a good walk round and I decided to visit again tomorrow rather than drag poor Rob around every art gallery, of which there are many.   I left Rob and the iPad in a coffee shop while I did the trek up the Pilgrim Monument, a 77m tower commemorating the first landing of the Mayflower after 67 days at sea (before it went on to Plymouth setting up the settlement there.   In the first bleak winter they lived on board the ship and built their dwellings.  A year later of the 57 original pilgrims, 46 had died and one baby had been born).   All the way up the tower, there are granite plaques from other historic towns, including Chelmsford (I was born in the original one) but not quite the right Maldon (instead it was Malden) – it’s still quite strange to see so many familiar names.   Unfortunately one is unable to get that perfect panoramic shot from the top as  health and safety has caged and plastic-windowed every vantage point.

 

One bit of very positive news at last has been the new lease of life of the SSB radio. We have spent any amount of time and quite a few euros/dollars on getting this looked at and modifications made, but finally this seems to have paid off and Rob has been checking-in to the Ocean Cruising Club’s North Eastern US net and talking to other yachts as far afield as Nova Scotia to the north and Chesapeake to the south. This has put us in touch with a number of other member yachts converging on the Maine sailing grounds where we plan to spend most of August. Hopefully we will also be able to resume conversations with yachts such as Scott-Free who are currently heading for Trinidad.