Onset to Boston, MA

Going north of Cuttyhunk you could choose to go around Cape Cod and visit Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket on the way, but few people do. Instead, most boats go through the Cape Cod Canal which saves several days often spent beating in rough open ocean conditions with few places to tuck in when there's bad weather. The canal is a cut with no locks, all at sea level. The two bodies of water it connects flow back and forth with the rise and fall of tides. That creates a current that you want to be on the right side of, or it'll be a long trip if you make it at all. Of the few towns you can wait for the right conditions in, we chose Onset Massachusetts. It was a nice downwind run to the town mooring we'd reserved for a few nights.

First bridge on the Cape Cod Canal approach

Onset is a small town that's mostly remarkable for a long beach with clean, warm water that flows in from Buzzard's Bay. The Gulf Current races up the east coast and fills Buzzard's with warm tropical water that our instruments read at between 80 and 86 degrees, so warm I thought the thermometer might be faulty. The town is very well set up for mariners and they operate a floating dock for water and pump-out as well as a mooring field with a launch service. It reminded us of Port Washington in Long Island which is another town happy to have transient visitors. We took the opportunity to have my in-laws visit and we had dinner in a neighboring town before visiting Plymouth and taking a stereotypical selfie at the Rock.

Before too long though, it was time to keep working north towards Maine and when the window opened we headed through the canal for Boston. We weren't sure we'd make landfall there before sundown even though we motorsailed a good amount of the way, but we arrived with time to spare and took up a mooring at George's Island in Boston's Harbor Islands. These moorings are in great shape and maintained by the city, but there are no services and things are quite exposed to swell and wakes. We had a rocky night and found later that our refrigerator was not refrigerating. Having been beat up and now in need of repair, we decided to head into the harbor and try to find some help and a calmer anchorage.

We struck out on finding a refrigerator specialist who could come take a look at our unit so we filled the fridge with old-school block ice and enjoyed a day out in the town where we lived for a few years after I returned home from overseas. Coming from New York, Boston always seemed like a much more liveable city with slightly more sane commute times and cheaper rents. This has changed somewhat, but it's still at a scale I think is easier to deal with. We checked in on some old haunts and relaxed on the mooring while we planned the next move and frantically searched around for fridge repair dudes. That search had a happy ending, but that'll have to wait for the next update.

-Shiloh Crew