Showing posts with label New England. Show all posts

New Bedford

Buzzards Bay can be a nasty son of a bitch to get through in the wrong conditions, and instead of the predicted NW 10-15 knots, it quickly turned into SW 25-30 on the day we had planned to move forward from Mattapoisett to Newport. South West which was exactly the direction we were heading and instead of fighting currents and banging into steep ice cold waves for an eternity, we decided to call it quits and ducked into safe harbour in the beautiful fishing town of New Bedford. These photos are from when we arrive in the late afternoon, tied up just before sunset, an early morning wake up and headed right back out to the bay.

We have a friend sailing with us, on his lovely Fuji 35 that you can see in the photos. We'll be sailing much of the trip down to Florida together. Christian who is from Montpellier in France, has lived in Boston for approx. fifteen years for work and love, but though it seemed a good idea to escape the cold now as well. It's a very nice new thing for us. We have never really sailed much with other people/boats, and although our boat is a little faster,  it's pretty sweet having someone to hook up with on arrival to various ports and anchorages.

We stayed at Pope's Marina in New Bedford for a very reasonable winter rate of $0.50/ft. A great place and friendly service, but the dock we pulled into didn't have 30 amp shore power so we slept the whole night without heater which was a freezing experience, somewhere under zero degrees Celsius. Stupidly we had in the rush forgotten to buy additional propane bottles for the non-electric gas heater. I guess we could have moved to another dock and get the electric heaters connected but you know you're tired when you rather choose to sleep in freezing cold bedded under two hundred wool sweaters, than having to move and re-tie up the boat. Or maybe we're just getting used to the cold?

We're now finally in Newport after a night at anchor by Cuttyhunk island, and have finally got a hold on propane bottles for our MrHeater space heater so the nights at anchor will be less chilly. Luckily we have the cold Cape Cold behind us now and air and water is already a tad warmer. We're thinking of sailing over to Long Island Sound tonight or early tomorrow morning so we get that leg done before the arrival of a new Nor'Easter storm that is fast approaching.

Follow our trip on Facebook and Instagram.

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Southbound

Goodbye Captain's Cove Marina in Quincy and everyone else in Massachusetts! We left a few days ago and are now in Buzzards Bay waiting for slightly less wind so we can steer over to Newport. Should happen today. The wind's been brutal so far and air pretty cold obviously. The coldest we've ever sailed. But like I said on my Instagram, we're slowly getting closer to Southern warmth so it will be worth freezing toes and fingers off now for a few days. Our dear friend Michael has been right all along, it all depends on just how many layers you wear. Thanks for all the warm wool sweaters, and everything else you've helped us with over this past year!

Follow our trip on Insta or better yet on our Facebook page where I post daily. Easier to connect to it while underway. You don't need to be a registered Facebook user to check our progress.

If anyone is looking for a good place to keep the boat, winter or summer season, do make sure to consider Captain's Cove in Quincy. We stayed there from April to November and it's a very friendly, quiet and super affordable place to stay. Thanks for great service Kimberly, Tim, Mike and the crew!

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what's worth most

These photos are from a couple months ago. In Boston Harbor Islands. Not this warm here any longer..

So came the winter season in New England, the first snow has fallen though melted for now, and it's been interesting to observe ourselves in this unpleasant second transition from summer to fall to now early winter. A very uncomfortable feeling has again begun tinting our minds. You know the sense of quiet desperation, or frustration if you will. The knowledge of something very uneasy that is about to go down, and the involuntary, almost enforced agreement that we will just have to go through it. Yet again. 

We notice life slowly slipping out of people around us here in the marina. Their faces, expressions and body language have shifted from summery optimistic with strong straight backs and loud laughter, to a bitter hunched discontent and a vocabulary and sound level dramatically scaled down. Nobody likes the cold, yet they all live through it. Put life on pause for half a year. They say it's just the way it is and begrudgingly accept the pain. We know how it is, we were just about to do the same, for the second year in a row. But seriously. Is this what we call life? What are we doing here? Are the work opportunities and the money made here really that much worth? Do we really want to miss out on six months of a year? Ridiculous is only one way to put it.

One day, out of the blue, not so long ago, an email dropped into my account. An email from an old friend that reminded us that we do in fact have similar, if not better opportunities in places where the sun is a norm and not a rarity. Have we just been so busy learning to accept the fact that we will have to go through this again, that we have totally forgotten to look further? We have not yet stabilized our savings accounts so work is still an important part of our lives. As for most people. But are we really okay with checking out from the pleasure of life, just in order to save a few bucks? Because let's face it, it's really not that cheap living in the US so how much do we really get to save? And how many years would we have to do this shit, to feel we have enough money?

Nah, this is not for us. I don't know how we could have mislead ourselves to believe it could be worth it. We love life, and we don't need to suffer more than necessary, right?

We will be leaving South. Boat is being prepared. And we are simultaneously studying routes and weighting opportunities in our next new home base. It's not an uncomplicated task to sail South from these high latitudes this late in the year, and rough storms happen more often than they do not.

We're thinking to set sail sometimes right after thanksgiving, out into Buzzards Bay to start, through the Long Island Sound, and hit ICW before Cape Hatteras. Anyone of you done this trip late November, early December? Don't say it is not a good time of the year to do it, because we know and we will, no matter what.

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six months till spring?

Here we go again! Second nor'easter storm approaching in such a short period of time. What does this say about the following six months of winter coming up? We do not look forward to it at all to be honest. Have contemplated whether to put the boat on the hard and live in our friends house on the South Shore for the winter. Or stay on the boat like last year, but with the difference that we'd stay on the boat almost all nights rather than only 75% of the nights that was the case during the previous winter when we had a great little apartment in Cambridge to escape to every now and then.

Neither of our current options are perfect. Because you know, living on a boat in the winter is a very chilly and quite draining business. And staying in our friends house on the South Shore of Boston might've been good for me who have the kitchen nearby, but for Alex whose work is in Cambridge, it would mean four hours of commuting each day (traffic is HORRIBLE around here) and that is naturally not very practical. Plus it would mean we'd have to buy a car since the bike can't be used more than until the first snow falls.

An additional option would be to rent a more accessible apartment over the winter that would be somewhere in the middle of our two work places (25 miles/40 km from the kitchen where I work to Alex's studio). That would be a place that was located near a metro station that we both could make use of. But a minimum of $1000 in rent per month will end up at $6000 USD before the winter is over, and really, those are the sort of bills we're trying to escape by the choice we have made to live on a boat. Hauling the boat or keeping it in a marina are costs enough. Not to mention boat maintenance, winterizing of engine, shrink wrapping, additional heater etc. It just seems silly living with one foot in each world, paying double just for the fun of it.

Winter is pretty much here already but we have still not decided what and where, and we're planning on procrastinating a little while longer just for the sake of.... indecisiveness. The only "good" thing with this procrastination is that the longer we keep the boat in the water just the way it is, the longer can we keep holding onto the slight (tiny) hope of us being able to leave this cold climate behind and sail South. One shall never let go of dreams! haha... oh my god. not sure how we would/could deal with another winter here. Se.ri.ous.ly.

Anyways. There's an expected 50+ knots coming our way in the next 12 hours so we decided to move the boat to a more secure spot in the inner harbor. We're now protected by a larger houseboat. Let's just hope the docks stay where they're at so that said houseboat does not come rumbling into us in the middle of the night. Life on a boat, always exciting!
 
X is more or less where we're at.

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Cape Cod by sunset

That weekend we spent on the cape, fourteen days ago. Mentally trying to prepare for the long cold season ahead by soaking in each day of heat and sunshine available. It's always nostalgic for us to visit a beautiful beach, especially at sunset. Feels like we are meant to be out there on the water, and not on land.

Those prehistoric horseshoe crabs are one of the few living creatures that have outlived the dinosaurs. A species 350 million years old, they are considered living fossils. I read that they come up to shore for mating, but there seem to be another reason to why so many of them were laying dead on the beach.

Apparently it is a very lucrative global business, to harvest horseshoe crabs and their milky blue blood for biomedical research (their blood has no hemoglobin, but copper which makes it blue).

Harvesting horseshoe crab blood (which goes for up to $15.000 per quart!) involves collecting and bleeding the animals, and then releasing them back into the sea. Mortality is correlated with both the amount of blood extracted from an individual animal, and the stress experienced during handling and transportation. Estimates of mortality rates following blood harvesting is up to 30%.

So that seem to be one uncomfortable reason why so many of them can be found dead on the beach.

Because someone stole their blood.
Image from the Atlantic.

Given that 250.000 of them are harvested yearly, it is not a surprise they are an endangered species. Imagine to have survived a few hundred million years in nature but you'll get extincted by human beings in just a couple hundred years. Human nature in a nutshell.

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