Victoria and I are forced out of bed early today as we have the long hike to the toilet and shower block and need to be ready to leave by 9 am in order to get the favourable current through the canal. Of course we are ready in time – by the skin of our teeth, but ready nonetheless.
It’s a beautiful day with a clear, blue, completely cloudless sky and not much wind so we motor – surprise, surprise.
After finding people less than forthcoming over the last few days, it’s Sod’s Law that all the friendly, talkative and interested people arrive on the dock ready to chat just as we are ready to leave and we are probably known as unfriendly Brits who couldn’t wait to get away. Oh well.
We leave the calm of the marina and enter the Cape Cod Canal and are immediately taken and helped westwards by the current. Well, when I say helped, we are mostly helped although the going sideways bit in the swirling whirlygigs is a bit questionable!
We go through some lovely waterside park areas, full of people cycling, jogging and doing other such sweaty activities but it’s all very pretty and the houses are of the usual architectural style – shingled, clapboarded, Dutch barn shaped, and BIG, let’s not deny it.
We pass under a succession of bridges and at our approach to the first one I can’t believe we’ll fit under it. Jeannius has only been under one bridge – the Bridge of the Americas where the Atlantic Ocean officially meets the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Panama Canal. These are definitely lower but Mike says our mast is only 61 feet high and we should get under. We do.
The third bridge is weird but very clever. It is a flat railway bridge, looking from a distance anyway, as though it is only just above the water level. As we approach it though, the whole bridge starts to rise (pulled up hydraulically or by a pulley system, who knows) until it reaches the top level of its towers. Very nifty!
The actual land-enclosed part of the canal is only about 7 miles long, the remainder being a channel through the surrounding small islands and out into Buzzards Bay.
Friends of ours who live in Padanaram have reserved us a mooring at the New Bedford Yacht Club so we head straight there. The club launch comes out to meet us and takes us to our allotted mooring ball just inside the breakwater. After attaching ourselves to it (much easier with Victoria’s help now she has remembered how to do everything) we settle down for lunch. After filling ourselves up with fried scallop salad, Victoria and I head off to look around the village, while Mike waits aboard for our friend Bill to arrive.
It’s very civilised, very pretty and very, very quiet. There are only a handful of shops – mainly overpriced clothes shops and establishments selling nice little things for the house, although there are a lot of estate agents. Oh, and an ice cream shop, the busiest place around. Victoria and I sample one and it is simply delicious, served in a thick, home-made waffle cone – totally slimming. I look at the clothes shops and manage to find a white linen jacket on an outside clearance rail for £20 reduced from about £100. I’m happy.
We walk around the neighbourhood for a while, looking incongruous on legs rather than in a car. We are slightly surprised to find a sculpture of a trumpeting elephant in the front garden of one house –very strange garden art!
We take the civilised launch back to the boat and watch the Wednesday night yacht club regatta just over the breakwater. Bill is racing in it and hopes to do well.
After watching the beautiful sunset we join Bill and his daughter Claire and son-in-law, Clay (or Beaver – he confusingly has two names) for dinner. The club restaurant is so packed we don’t get a table until nearly 9.30 pm by which time I am somewhat light-headed (Bill managed to get the bar tender to find some Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc and I have been enjoying it). The food is good but we have to leg it back to the launch afterwards as the drop off service is supposed to finish back at the club at 10 pm. However, Eric is sitting in the launch waiting for us, even though we are late. Being friends of ex-Commodore Bill certainly helps!
Position: 41 deg 34 min N, 70 deg 56 min W
Distance so far: 2029 miles
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