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.
