The sail last Sunday went quite well, and I thought it deserved a report. Especially since it was my first day-long sail after breaking my ankle back in July. My friends! It’s hard to put into words how happy it made me to be out there, breathing the fresh air.

We left soon after 9am on ebbing tide. By that time, Hurricane Dorian had already moved up to Nova Scotia, but the weather forecast suggested its last leftover in Massachusetts Bay. Our original plan was to stick our nose out of the harbor to check it out.

And indeed, as we started to round Deer Island, we got some fresh wind (and swell), and the boat was happily flying down North Channel at 6 knots. We decided to seize the opportunity and go to Marblehead for lunch.

Of course, as is typical for Boston, the good weather didn’t last for long. As we sailed past the red and white buoy “NC” (marking the beginning of the main approach to Boston Harbor, from the north), the wind had calmed down significantly. Soon it became apparent that Marblehead was not happening that day, and we decided to anchor by Nahant instead—something I had never done before.

As we enjoyed otherwise pleasant and warm weather, it took us a few tacks past Nahant itself and Egg Rock (a small rocky island nearby) before we finally ended up in a nice cozy cove between Nahant and Little Nahant. On our way, though, we saw two unexpected animals: a couple of huge colorful butterflies checking us out, and a few dolphins swimming in the distance here and there.

This was only the second time I saw dolphins in the Boston area; unfortunately they were too far to take pictures. But I cannot leave you without photos of these beautiful animals; so here are a couple from the happy dolphin pod I saw at the end of July off the island of Cuttyhunk, at the edge of Buzzards Bay, where it transitions to Rhode Island Sound.

Back to Nahant: I have carefully planned a relaxed anchoring under sail, but then at a critical moment our jib roller furling mechanism got stuck and refused to furl. We had to jibe away to find more water and try to solve the problem, and then we heard Koby’s scream from down below. Turned out that we lost an entire perfectly good pitcher of sangria that he made the day before and brought for lunch.

Little Nahant. Photo by Lena

With the jib furled by hand roughly, we motored back into the cove, dropped the anchor across from a wide sandy beach, and finally enjoyed a traditionally scrumptious lunch feast provided by Koby, with some emergency Romanian spirits from Sergey. The big swell waves coming from the ocean spectacularly broke ashore, while the wind coming from the land kept us safely away. Quite a few people on the beach were swimming—or, rather, mostly standing in the water. Lena also decided to test the waters, but it turned out to be too cold for her taste.

After lunch, the wind situation hasn’t improved much. We decided to head to Graves Light, and reassess the situation later. The new owner of the Graves has done a lot of work restoring and improving the oil house, and rebuilding the walkway to the lighthouse. (Check out his blog.) The lighthouse was beautifully lit by the afternoon sun, but the wind has remained anemic.

We decided to head back, but to make things a little bit more interesting, to take a road not often taken: past the partially submerged rocks of Roaring Bulls, then Hypocrite Channel between Green and Little Calf islands, and then Black Rock channel. When we were by Roaring Bulls, I thought that it was time to get some mechanical help, but soon found that the engine wouldn’t start no matter how nicely we asked it. I called the sailing club to report that, but they couldn’t help us over the phone, and so we continued sailing.

Then Sergey, who had been sleeping below, came up to the cockpit and somehow managed to start the engine. Some people have a magic touch indeed… oh well. So we continued to motor-sail, me at the helm, happy that I can at least steer a boat,—and it took me just about 10 minutes to run over a lobster trap and foul the propeller.

The engine died right away. The boat stopped in its tracks, caught by the trap line. (Now I know exactly why they are called lobster traps!). My crew made me proud: even though stuck next to rocks, out of normal shipping routes, and late in the day,—nobody panicked, and we managed to fish out the line with boat hooks, cut it and sail away, though with a part of the line attached the float itself still wrapped around the prop.

I sailed back to the channel (South Channel, to be exact) to have more water around us, and from there we called the club again to report that we lost the engine again. They said that they already had sent somebody in a motor boat to look for us (which was an unexpected nice touch). We continued sailing towards the city, and as we were approaching Deer Island, Leo, a young man in an imposing hat, motored toward us. We explained our predicament, he told us to heave-to on a port tack (apparently these boats have the prop on port side, so writing it down here for future reference). Then he motored right next to us, and using a boat hook easily untangled the line with the big yellow float. I took it as my catch of the day.

We had Leo to stay long enough to make that the engine would start—it did!—and as he was speeding away, we furled our jib, and to our surprise, this time it furled properly!

Seeing all our problems solved, and enjoying a beautiful sunset and a crisp Boston evening we motor-sailed back and docked around 8pm, already in the dark. 11 hours out there: this day was definitely not wasted. Butterflies, dolphins, lobster trap floats… Really, the only true loss was the pitcher of sangria. Next time, we’ll work more on our sangria preservation techniques.

Photo by Koby. Title photo by Lena