9/7/05

Provincetown to Woods Hole, Woods Hole to Falmouth and back to Cuttyhunk.

The past few trips have brought us the best sailing to date, with winds ranging between 10 to 25 knots. Passing every boat in sight has added to my smile wrinkles. Given 7 to 10 knots of wind Cénou does well going to windward as well.

We took a mooring in Woods Hole to visit Winsor where we stayed a couple of days until chased out by the effects of Katrina as it it made it's way up. NOAA was right on the wind direction but wrong on the strength which they had forecasted to be 20 gusting 30 knots. Luckily, and unfortunately, we picked Falmouth as a place to hide out.

The wind was in fact a steady 25 gusting in the low 40's. Celine was blown backwards as she jumped off a wall and I was pushed around by the gusts. Cénou was in the right place in so far as we were protected from waves and the south wind pushed the boat off the dock, but in the wrong place when the nearby beach unloaded it's wind driven sand onto Cénou. The lesson here was to stay away from docks that are close to beaches when it's going to blow.

From Falmouth we sailed on to Cutthyhunk where we ran into some friends from last year who have a 10 year old daughter. So Celine and Anouck had a play date for a couple of days at the expense of home-shcooling. That's OK though, Zia has made it to Cuttyhunk, and they have started home-schooling too. That means the kids can play after school and the parents will be able to form a support group for "worn out teaching parents".

We are now truly headed south as our next stop will probably be Delaware. We wish we could follow Zia to Mystic Seaport and to New York. Nevetheless, before heading to the islands, we really need to fix our windows , and this will not be a small job.

Best to all

Cénou