Your personal beach in MA

Yesterday morning we left our beloved anchorage (Hadley Harbor) to mosey on over to the Cape Cod canal. We had to leave early to catch the current in the right direction from Woods Hole passage, but we had to wait for 2pm to go thru the canal and its fierce 4 knot current in our direction, so what do you do in the meantime? well, you call on our local friend to give you tips - and boy did Barry gave us the tip we needed. "you guys should go check out the Weepeckets islands, you'll feel like you're in the BVIs again". We looked up these islands in our cruising guide, they are not even listed. hmmmm.. a bit suspicious. maybe that's a kayakers only destination? we finally found some info on these small uninhabited (except for birds and loads of bird poop) and low and behold, we had them to our onesies. Wow!

  

it was so calm I row Puff ashore (I am loving a little rowing before our day really starts), except these mama seagulls made it very clear we were the odd bird out around here, so we resorted to our favorite activity: frolicking in the water, especially on a day where they called a heat advisory in the region. The water was amazingly refreshing.


By 11am, it was then time to approach the Cape Cod canal to time the passage at 2pm. An easy downwind sail where we just cooked under the scorching sun. Surprisingly, we were the only sailboat going thru at the time which allowed us to enjoy the bikers and walkers on the Cape Cod bikeways that follow the canal and the marvelous three bridges that take cars to eastern Cape Cod. The railroad bridge looks a bit like the London bridge. It lowers its top section when the train carrying the trash from Cape Cod goes by. We did not have to deal with that, unlike the Mystic's railroad bridge that always seem to be closing when we needed to get through.

By 3:30pm, we made it to the Sandwich marina at the mouth of Cape Cod bay, our final stop for the day to replenish on water and get our guano pumped out. We are one of the few sailboats as the marina seems to be mostly for fishing boats. After we a cool dinner in the AC of the Pilot House Seafood restaurant, we walked the 30 min to the Sandwich boardwalk - which made National Geographic's top 10 American Boardwalks list. The boardwalk goes over a very green marsh and a river. Local kids had a blast jumping off the bridge over the river.

After hurricane Bob (1991) destroyed the previous boardwalk, the city of Sandwich, MA, rallied to fix the boardwalk. Ingeniously, it called on its population to fund the project by selling dedication planks. It was a wonderful time chilling after a hot day.

This morning we are off to Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod. It likely will take us the whole day to complete the 21 nm from Sandwich, MA, as they expect no winds, and given Bill's reluctancy to use the iron genny (motor), I foresee experiments of spinnaker without sails and the like. Just hope he does not resort to asking Spencer and I to pull Alizée with Puff....