Cuttyhunk Island 41°25.6’N, 070°54.8’W

Last night we sailed from Newport to Cuttyhunk Island, the most westerly of the Elizabeth Islands. We left late and about an hour out ran into dense fog, but worked our way along the Rhode Island and then Massachusetts coastlines, slowly beating to windward and against the ebbing current. Although mid week, there's still lots of traffic around, mainly commercial, and especially approaching Buzzards Bay, a major shipping channel with its own traffic separation scheme in effect. To facilitate safe passing in the fog, we chatted with two ships: first with Otter, an ocean going tug that was pulling a disabled fishing boat, and then, Libre Ocean, a giant car transport ship, that was incidentally the largest blip I have ever seen on the radar. Although we passed both with around 0.25 nm clearance, we saw neither (although you could smell the exhaust from the larger ship, and we distinctly crossed its wake). Needless to say, we crossed the inbound/outbound shipping channel with a lot of care, and kept the nearby shipping familiar with our intentions via 'sécurité' broadcasts on VHF channel 16 .

It was still very dense fog, and pitch black when we arrived in Cuttyhunk, around 10pm. I have been here 4-5 times before so know the approach pretty well, a slow southward arch upon reaching Little Penikese Island. Still, when we were 0.10 nm from the breakwater, we still couldn't see it (despite that it has a red flashing light) and the bell marking the entrance was very close, and not a little scary. Although just ghosting along at less than a knot, we still came within a boat length or so of some anchored sailboats: that was enough - rather than risk the channel we found a shallow spot in the lee of the island and anchored for the night, flying our anchor lights (and a few others) and relieved to have a good radar reflector.

Amusing this morning to wake up: Cuttyhunk harbor has about 200 sailboats in it, there are six outside, and we are between two islands, one fairly large with houses on it, and there's even a seaplane tied up. For all we knew last night we could have been on a different planet.

If you have Google Earth, and want to see where we are, copy this this lat/lon and paste into the 'fly to' section:

41°25.6’N, 070°54.8’W

Today we're up early, and will continue to sail - now in beautiful sunshine with a 10-15 knt NW breeze - up Buzzards Bay.