Boston to New York City - Day 2

Westport Harbor

[Kyle] By the second day out from Boston the winds were still from a favorable direction but much less strong. We spent much of our time crawling along on a flat sea in wind that we could barely feel. For most of the day, the current comprised about two thirds of our progress to our next anchorage. Poor Maryanne usually has to put up with getting up at some ridiculous hour because I always plan trips to be with a following current as much as possible. For some reason, these never seem to occur during the middle of the day so the requirement is either get up really early or stay up really late. Since we don't like going into an unusual harbor at night, and since pretty much all the harbors that we go to are unusual for us, really early usually wins. It's not so scary leaving a harbor in the dark of morning that we came into the day before. On days like this one, our planning really pays off because we don't need to resort to the engine in order to make progress against a foul current, particularly if the wind is light or in the wrong direction for us. We can just drift to our destination, which is pretty much what we did.

We arrived just as the tide was changing back at Westport Harbor, Massachusetts, named, I suspect, because it is the westernmost port in Massachusetts. The harbor entrance winds past beautiful beaches and big boulders that are really pretty once you're past them and on the inside. Inside the harbor itself, the currents were strong and variable. Long Island Sound/Buzzards bay has weird tides. Maine has huge tides but they're all pretty much the same at the same time. Chesapeake Bay uniformly has small tides and pretty weak currents. Here in Long Island Sound, it's not unusual for two harbors that are right next to each other to have dramatically different tidal ranges. This causes all of the water to slosh back and forth much more rapidly than you would expect by just looking at the tidal range.

Anyway, we found a spot over a sand flat with good holding against the current that must have been too shallow for anyone to have considered putting a mooring on and spent the rest of the afternoon watching all of the activity in the harbor. One thing that got Maryanne particularly wound up was a boat with four fisherman on it that kept landing one or two fish every time they went by. All we had that day was one lure with the tail bitten off right behind the hook. Damn!