Then it was time for us to continue southwards. Looking at the map, it looked like there was a pretty big built-up area along the way. There seemed to be some disagreement as to the exact name, so we decided to play it safe and give it a miss. Instead, we sailed for a day and a half to the eastern end of the Cape Cod Canal.
A slow sail to Cape Cod
The sailing was mild and almost uneventful. I say 'almost' because just after we crossed the Massachusetts border with the rising sun, we were ghosting along at just over a knot, when the radio cracked to life.
Somebody out there seemed to be really upset with somebody else out there. The man on the radio let out a torrent of loud swearing in a thick Boston accent (Boston! That's it!). He followed that string with another that had fewer obscenities, but only because it was interlaced with graphic threats of violence to the offender. He seemed to be upset that someone was coming closer to his boat than he would like. Several others came on the radio and mocked him, which only seemed to upset him more. Welcome to Massachusetts! We are told that, locally (and elsewhere), these people are known as Massholes.
Based on nothing other than the signal strength and the fact that we were pretty far from land at that point, I guessed the altercation was coming from a group of fishing boats clustered over a seamount ahead of us. No one had arrived or departed the group for as long as I could see them (It was the end of my watch. Maryanne was awake, but had not yet climbed out of bed.), and they all seemed to be at least a quarter of a mile apart.
As we got closer to the group, I saw that most of them had three or four floats surrounding their vessels about 20 meters off, which could have marked anchors, nets, pots, or something else we didn't know about.
This was going to be difficult. If their gear was restricting these vessel's ability to maneuver, we needed to give way. If they were anchored, we definitely needed to give way. The struggle for us was that we were sailing under our spinnaker, with barely enough wind to hold it up. We were riding a fine line between it collapsing because we were sailing too close across the wind, or having it collapse because the wind was on the wrong side. Without gybing, that gave us about forty degrees of range in which we could steer without the boat drifting to a stop and losing steerageway. That would have then put us at the mercy of the current. Maryanne was getting up and right now I didn't have the time to be going forward and going through all of the motions of executing a gybe.
After trying to sail with the wind slightly on the wrong side to get around one end of the whole group, I realized the current was still going to take us closer to that boat's floats than I'd like. My second choice was to steer as far across the wind as I could to head for the biggest gap between boats, putting us about an quarter of a mile between floats on either side. The problem was that the wind was fluky. Occasionally, the spinnaker would collapse and I would have to make a hard turn downwind to refill it before the boat accelerated enough for me to use the rudders to ease my way back to where I was. It was a while before I realized this plan was going to work and I wouldn't have to resort to my third backup plan of calling Maryanne to come on deck in her underwear to help me do a quick gybe (the process takes about a third of the time with her help). Then we can get out of there sideways.
As we were ghosting through at just under one knot, which, for reference, is the speed that an elderly person who is recovering from surgery walks to the bathroom while hunched over a walker, we heard a noise.
"HEY!!"
A person on the vessel nearest us to port was hailing us with quite a pair of lungs. We immediately recognized the voice as the one we had heard on the radio earlier. That's when we realized it had been US he had been yelling at on the radio since we broke the horizon. It was MY brains that he was threatening to come aboard and roughly remove from my skull for pointing in the general direction of his still-distant boat.
Editing A LOT for brevity, and paraphrasing for our readers with more delicate sensitivities, he basically asked us why, with the entire ocean at our disposal, we needed to sail so close to his boat. He apparently needs a very large bubble of personal space.
"That's not how sailboats work!" I answered (Again, edited for brevity), "Plus, we're nowhere near your boat! You're so far away I bet you can hardly even hear me!"
"What!?"
"Exactly!"
"You almost hit my boat!"
What!? "We didn't almost hit anything! We're at least a quarter of a mile away! Besides, at this speed, even if we did, we would probably just bounce off!"
Another very long streak of threats and obscenities followed. Remember, we were going very slowly.
By now, Maryanne was up and ready to face the public. With a gentle touch of her hand on my forearm, she indicated to me that it was her watch now and that she would be taking over.
Maryanne undoubtedly looks cute and harmless, but remember, she grew up in rural England. There isn't an English primary school kid who can't out-swear a Southie longshoreman any day of the week. Also, she is obviously an accomplished sailor - an English sailor. Not only that, but her first University was in Liverpool. Her response is paraphrased as before, but went something like this:
"My good Sir, you could not possibly have been in any danger whatsoever from our measured course of action to avoid not only you, but even the vicinity of your gear! We're not even going fast enough to cast a ripple of a wake upon you! Furthermore, your threatening and, quite frankly, uncouth behavior (she says it with the extra 'u' in) is most ungentlemanly, indeed! You're are a cad, Sir, and an especially unpleasant one at that! I suggest you consider genetic testing, because it seems likely to me that there is an above average chance that your lineage may include some unwanted, and also very poorly behaved garden pests! Your primary care physician will need that information for any future treatment plans! I would have that person start with the very serious case of halitosis that I can detect from even this great distance! I'm sure it's NOT the fish!"
Or words to that effect.
He was so taken back that his parting shot to us was, "God Save the Queen!!" Oh, yes. That was a good one (and a bit late). We'll be crying ourselves to sleep over that one! I guess the moral of the story is that you never know what kind of day someone is already having when you innocently step into it.
By the time the far end of the same day arrived and the sun had just finished dipping below the western horizon, we were pulling up close to the beach at Sandwich, Massachusetts, to set anchor until the next day's favorable current to go through the Cape Cod Canal.
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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