No whales. But we covered the 45nm from PTown to the marker off Boston Harbor pretty quickly; most of it around 8 knts, with the bow tearing the waves open and flying off the tops. Fun too to have a chat with my mate Steve Jancys half way across Cape Cod Bay out of sight of land - still amazes me you can do that.
So the difficulty we had today was that we set off for Marblehead. Normally I plot out the day's course over a cheeky glass of sauvignon blanc in the evenings, then load them in the plotter and GPS for the next day, and yesterday was no exception. 'Cept shortly after leaving PTown we changed our mind and decided to sail to Boston. Sure, I've been to Boston a number of times with work, but sailing? I knew the harbor was a cluster of islands, shoals and and an airport, with a 9.5' tide and consequentially large tidal currents. We were still trying to work out an anchorage as we passed the outer lighthouses, and this with gusty 25 knt breezes pretty much on the nose.
[and we overheard this conversation with the United States Coast Guard:
Boat: Coast Guard, you out there? I'm taking water.
CG: Boat taking water, this is United States Coast Guard sector southern New England channel 16, go ahead Captain.
Boat: I'm taking water!
CG: Boat taking water, this is United States Coast Guard sector southern New England. Roger captain, can you give me your position?
Boat: Position? How would I get that? What position? What do you mean by position?
(I love this bit - very unusual the CG crack)
CG: Look, where you at?
Boat: Oh, BAWSTON HABAH!)
Ultimately, we passed the sure (but boring) bet of a safe anchorage in an out of the way place in the hope we could sneak a little bit of after dark anchoring somewhere right in the heart of the place. So we spent an hour or two short tacking up the harbor, between the islands, in a stiff breeze, waving at the ferries and trying to beat all the other sailboats.
There's something special about sailing into a major city. We tacked right up under the sky scrapers of the financial district, just for a look. Here we saw a guy hanging on his boat with his headphones on....I was able to yell out to him, and ask whose moorings these were...the end result is that we are moored 40m from the Boston cityscape. Yay!
What's also fun is that we're under the offices of a former client with whom I worked a while back, Grantham Mayo van Otterloo, or GMO. They have spectacular offices looking out over Boston harbor from Rowes Wharf. This client was a good guy, and a sailor too, but I remember him most because he has the 'hot seat'. This is a seat that gets the direct sun in their office building's meeting room, and if you're in it - as I've found to my peril - it gets pretty damn uncomfortable. GMO are a major investor, and many a disappointing CEO I suspect has found themselves directed to the hot seat with the task of explaining why it will be better next quarter.
But for me, looking up from the sea, there's something else that's special. Many a meeting in those offices, try to concentrate as I might, I gazed out over the harbor, and thought, one day, just one day, it would be fun to sail right in here, right under these buildings, RIGHT IN HERE!
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