September 24 -- Newport RI

Here is a picture of Kristen pickin some corn at Plymouth Plantation. Most of our Plymouth pictures are included in a project the girls did on Plymouth. We should get that uploaded in the next few days. Having some technical difficulties!

Sept 19 (Friday) – Plymouth Mass
We started the day with showers at the yacht club and then went down to see the Mayflower II. Last night, Dave noticed on a list of events, that today is Home Schooling day at Plymouth Plantation and a discount is available. What a discount! It was 50% off – enough to pay for our mooring tonight! We had a great day looking at Mayflower II which is quite a bit like Hector, and then taking the bus the three miles to Plymouth Plantation. The plantation is wonderfully done. There is an introductory movie about 1620, the Wampanoag natives that lived here at the time and the people that came on the Mayflower. There is a recreation of part of a Wampanoag village. There are wampanoag people there that are not in character, but are in costume and it is very interesting. They have some houses that are made out of big pieces of bark, tied to a structure made of bent saplings. These are fairly permanent dwellings and they do not move them around. Inside there are beds around the outside that are made of wood and covered in about 6 inches of furs. The insides of the walls are covered in woven mats. There are spaces in the ceiling for the smoke from the fires to get out. Apparently, with the fires going in the winter, it stays about 60 – 65 degrees inside the house. The wampanoag also had summer houses that were the same basic sapling structure, but were covered in woven mats made of bull rushes. They carried the mats from place to place so they were reusable. From the Wampanoag village, we moved on to a recreation of the village of Plymouth around 1625, a few years after the original pilgrims arrived. There were many characters in the town in role of people that actually lived there. It was wonderfully done and really interesting. On the bus we met another family with one 7 year old daughter they are just beginning a five year adventure on their trawler Emily Grace – named for their daughter. After our adventure at the plantation we got another bus to Walmart and got groceries (my Sobey’s blood felt really weird doing that!). When we were going back to the boat in the tender, there was this tiny, old lady and a younger man in the tender with us. They got out at a small open boat with the controls in the centre – the lady went right to the controls. I guess she is 88 and lives alone in a cottage out on one of the islands near the entrance of Plymouth. It is unusual for anyone to go with her. Pretty amazing! After the groceries were put away we went out for supper as a reward for the previous two long days of travelling.

Sept 20 (Saturday) – Cape Cod Canal
The three girls went to shore to take Rudder for a walk and to find out about getting diesel in Plymouth. We learned that the town fuel dock wasn’t able to supply fuel, and that it was difficult to get a sailboat into the fuel dock at the marina. In the end, we got the tender driver from the yacht club to take us to the marina with our jerry can and we got 6 gallons of diesel, enough to get us to our next destination of Onset, Mass, just on the other side of the canal
We left Plymouth around 10 under sunny skies and light wind with the intent of getting to the Cape Cod Canal just at the start of the ebb current. There is a lot of current that flows through the canal, and you are far better off to go with the current. We arrived at the canal at 1:30 as planned. We heard on the radio that they were going to be lowering the train-bridge at the other end of the canal at 2:30 when a tall ship that was travelling with us was through. Of course it could motor much more quickly than we could so we went as fast as we could so we wouldn’t have to wait 45 minutes for the bridge to go down and then up again after the train went through. Fortunately we made it! The canal is beautiful. In total we went under two fixed highway bridges and the train bridge. Just at the end of the canal we turned into Onset Bay. We were able to get fuel and then went and picked up a mooring off the town dock. The town is as quaint as we remembered. It doesn’t look like it has changed much since the 50’s. We got a couple of groceries and then made pizza for supper.

Sept 21 (Sunday) – Onset to Hedley Harbour
It was a beautiful, warm sunny day. The kids did a bit of school work and then went to town and got slushies. They had a great time swimming – the water was about 20 degrees. We went exploring a bit in the dinghy. Around 2:00 the current changed in the canal and we left Onset. We headed across Buzzards Bay to a little anchorage near Woods Hole. There was a lovely breeze blowing – right on the nose. We decided to sail anyway and sailed back and forth across Buzzards Bay. There were lots of boats out there on such a beautiful sunny Sunday. Eventually we put the sails down and motored the rest of the way to Hedley Harbour. There were supposed to be a number of public moorings there, but when we got in the harbour there were boats on every mooring. We were just turning around to leave and someone said they were about to leave so we waited a couple of minutes and took that mooring. We were all tied up by around 5:30. It is a pretty spot, but the island that surrounds the harbour is privately owned and they don’t want anyone going to shore there. There is a little island at the end of the harbour and the public is allowed to go there so we were able to take Rudder to shore.

Sept 22 (Monday) – Hedley Harbour to Cuttyhunk
We left mid morning and sailed the 20 miles or so to the island of Cuttyhunk, the last island in the Elizabeth Island chain. By the time we arrive there the wind was blowing 15 – 20 NE and it was quite rough even inside the harbour. We had some lunch and then put the dinghy down and went to shore. We had a lovely walk around the island. There are quite a number of houses, but only about 30 year round residents. It would seem the primary means of transportation on the island is by golf cart! We had a nice chat with a lady that has lived there year round for about 4 years. It can get pretty desolate in the winter when the harbour freezes over and there really isn’t much way to get to the mainland. The moorings are expensive here ($40)

Sept 23 (Tuesday) – Cutttyhunk to Newport RI
The weather doesn’t sound great for travelling the next few days so we figured we better leave Cuttyhunk. Block Island doesn’t sound that protected from the NE winds either so we headed to Newport Rhode Island, back closer to the mainland. We left around 7:30 after putting a reef in the mailsail incase it was really windy, and putting the dinghy back up on davits. Instead of a stormy day it is a nice and sunny day and we had a lovely sail with 10-15NE winds coming across our beam. We got to Newport around 12:00 and picked up a mooring at OldPort Marine for $45. It is $30 on a town mooring but it is a lot farther across the bay to town and we don’t want to have to cross the bay in the dinghy if it is rough. Dave and Kristen did the laundry and Annie and I went looking in shops. Annie and Kristen found Rhode Island charms for their bracelets – Kristen got a Nantucket Basket and Annie got a starfish.