Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 10 Sep 2007 15:13
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42:02.798N 70:10.972W
Friday (9/7) - another day, another sail.
Lots of wind. It started in the right direction and then just to annoy us,
shifted to nearly on our nose. The second half of the day we did the
sideways crawl towards P-Town. Except we weren't crawling. We were
speeding at 7 knots [non-boater translation: 8.1mph]. Which means that we
watched our destination slide by sideways really fast.
And there were whales. We could tell where
they were by where all the whale watching tourist boats were. We felt
sorry for the whales. Imagine having your every move watched over by
hundreds of humans with cameras - kind of like the whale version of a reality
show except the whales didn't volunteer for the humiliation. At least
the whale we saw up close only had to worry about two humans and one
camera. See the whale tail picture below. This one was pretty
close. We didn't even get nervous this time.
When we got to P-Town, the wind was still pretty
strong at 20 knots [non-boater translation: 23 mph] so picking up the mooring
was a little bit of a challenge. I went up to the bow with my 10
foot long boat hook, all confident that since I'd done this once before, I could
certainly do it again, and hopefully on the first try this time.
Well, it took three tries, causing Don to circle the boat around through all the
other boats moored nearby (who, of course, were all watching us and
giggling). At the same time, the engine overheated and started acting
strangely (more entertainment for the neighbors). The second picture below
shows the mooring area and the fairly rough water (justification for
my poor mooring line pick-up performance).
On Saturday, Don the maintenance guy got up and
fixed the engine problem (the engine cooling water impeller somehow decided to
deconstruct). The maintenance man has been quite busy. In two months
of time on the boat, he has fixed the bilge pump, changed the engine oil twice,
generator oil once, and water filter twice, fixed the boat speed indicator
several times, fixed the steaming light, fixed one of the autopilots,
defrosted the refrigerator/freezer twice, adjusted the GPS to play nice
with the electronic chart software, checked out a problem with the back-up
battery charger, done whatever you have to do to big-ass batteries to make them
happy, and most importantly, fixed the toilet so that the stuff we flushed down
would stop making a reappearance. I'm sure there are other things I am not
even aware of that the maintenance guy fixed. Good thing we brought him
along.
For those of you that have never been to P-Town, it
is something. The best word I can think of to describe it is
'colorful'. The picture below might give you some flavor for what I am
talking about. The 'Spank the Monkey' storefront is one of the more
colorful in town. I don't know if you can read the fine print, but it
says, 'A Fine Jewelry Store'. Really? A fine jewelry store? I
wouldn't have guessed it from the outside.
We decided that the best activity in P-Town is to
sit in an outside bar with a ridiculously tall and fruity drink (ok, I had the
fruity drink, Don had wine) and people watch. Which is what we did.
At least until dinnertime, when we moved to a restaurant, sat on the patio and
people watched while we ate.
Tomorrow (Monday) we head to Plymouth, and from
there will work our way a little north (I know, not the right direction) to meet
some friends in Hull Bay for the upcoming weekend.
Anne
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