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Two Albertans in search of their sea legs…

Today is June 28.  Nearly two months ago, we had the experience of a lifetime aboard Ruby Tuesday in the Bahamas.  The fact that this blog is being written so long afterward is a testimony to the messy busyness of our daily lives.  We have had many moments of reflection in the past two months on the purpose of this endless striving.  While we are landlocked in Calgary (home to cows, Christians, and country music), we are fervent outdoor people and the Rocky Mountains are on our doorstep.  We take full advantage of fabulous hiking, skiing, and climbing when we can tear ourselves away from work.  However, nearly every summer since our children were in diapers, we escaped to the west coast and took to our kayaks.  The ocean feels truly liberating, with life simplified to what you can carry and time marked by sunrise, sunset, wind and weather..…with the opportunity to untether from the quotidian shackles and blow the dust of everyday life off the soul (to paraphrase Picasso).  I had an inkling that sailing would be a natural extension of this experience, on a larger canvas.   I was correct.

Elsie and Lionel have much to teach us of the fine art of living well and we are lucky to have joined them, on their journey, albeit briefly.  In a fit of enthusiasm, I took a week long sailing course more than a decade ago but, much to my disappointment, the other participants were more interested in getting to the nearest port and bar as early in the day as possible.  Elsie and Lionel are real sailors, as I knew they would be.  We observed a purposeful efficiency to the daily routines aboard dear Ruby and a comfortable sharing of duties and negotiated decision-making – shake out one reef or two?  genoa or no genoa? anchor here one day or two?  As newbies, we tried to stay out of the way as much as possible.  I think Lionel may have wished to cast us overboard only once or twice.  I could be mistaken.  The first day was an inauspicious start.  With unfavourable winds we motored to our first anchorage and Ruby pitched and rolled, humbling the landlubbers into spending that day flat on deck, gripping the lee rail with grim determination, retching our innards out.  Elsie looked concerned.  Lionel’s expression was more judgemental.  However!  In spite of a rough first night in the aft cabin, rolling and bumping into each other like two running shoes in a washing machine, we recovered for day 2 and the rest of the trip.  Albert, in spite of his inherent resistance to flaky, new-agey therapies, concluded that the wrist bands do work perfectly, as long as they are put on before the boat is moving, not after one is afflicted.  Once recovered, and interested in learning to work the boat, we watched and clumsily tried to assist.  It did take me (engineer and mathematician) two days to work out the function of the topping lift.   Lionel, ever patient:  “take in the main sheet please….no, the other side…No, the Other line….yes, clockwise around the winch.  I’m sure we learned something, even if we are not yet capable of commandeering a toy sailboat on a calm pond. 

I had the fantastic opportunity of getting up with Elsie to sail at night.  Complete magic.  Ruby performed a graceful, swooping corkscrew dance on the water, and you felt as if you could touch the star blanket overhead.  In my mind I heard a favourite piece of music:  Metamorphosis by Philip Glass.  Tranquil, meditative, surreal.   I was spirited away.   Ruby is a beauty.  She is so wonderfully designed for us unsteady bipeds.  I kept discovering new spots to wedge into comfortably while underway.  She is never silent – I miss the gentle squeak of her rudder at night and the special swish and gurgle when she is settled into a broad reach. 

Today, finally, work is done and I have just packed a sea-bag for our forthcoming kayaking trip to Prince Rupert (long underwear, pile pants and jacket, woolly hat, foul weather gear) and I am fondly remembering swimming and snorkelling in bathwater-warm turquoise ocean.  Hmm.  We will be paddling down the outside passage from Prince Rupert to Klemtu and then taking the inside passage ferry back.  I insisted to Albert that we make a trip plan, with charts, marine radio, and a ferry booking.   Not show up and 'wing it' like a pair of ageing teenagers, like we normally do.  So, he made a plan.  And now we must hustle and bend to our paddles (20 nm per day) to catch the once weekly ferry in Klemtu on July 13.  Hmm.  These wilderness trips are, of course, wonderful and unique experiences in themselves but they most definitely do not include the pleasures of Elsie’s daily sundowner rum punches, warm breezes, and spending the day on deck in shorts and a T-shirt.

Would I go sailing again?  Unequivocally yes, at the drop of a hat.  Albert?  The mountain guide is still somewhat conflicted.  I still jump into action if the water is left running anywhere in the house………

June 2019

In which we cruise up the New England coast, with a side trip to NYC.

We started June anchored in Newport, Rhode Island.  On Saturday, 1^st, we went for a long walk along Belle View Avenue and back along the cliff walk, exiting at 40 steps.  Sunday dawned foggy, so we waited for that to clear before heading ashore then walked to the northern end of the cliff walk to complete it, only to find that it was still foggy here.  Also, being Sunday, the world and his yappy dog had the same idea so we cut it short and returned to base.  On Monday, it was time to head up river.  We picked up at 10:15 and, with 1 reef in for a WNW’ly F4 sailed through the bridge.  Passing Cananicut Island the wind dropped and we were tempted to shake the reef out.  It was well to resist this as, as soon as we cleared it the wind increased to F5 and we had to put in a second so it was a spirited sail up to Goddard memorial State Park, dropping anchor at 13:20.

Anchor up at 09:00 on Tuesday and motored the couple of miles to Apponaug to be hauled out.  As before, they were very helpful and we were soon high, dry and ready for some work. Tuesday and Wednesday were mostly spent scraping and rubbing down, badly needed with several layers of anti-fouling to come off.  There were also a couple of other jobs to be done: draining and re-filling saildrive gearbox oil; replacing anode on propeller and freeing up bolts on steering gear so that I could take up some slack which had developed.  The boatyard helpfully loaned tools, an impact driver to remove to drain plug on the saildrive and a blowtorch to encourage movement of seized bolts on the steering quadrant.  These all accomplished, on Thursday we painted on the new anti-fouling and then packed and tidied, we were ready to leave Ruby on Friday.

 I needed to make one of my periodic visits to Scotland, to see Mr Lowe, the surgeon who had operated on me 5 years before and Elsie had arranged a house sit at New Rochelle, NY, to keep her entertained in my absence.  Public transport being as it is, in the States, I had hired a car for the trip down and used it to top up the propane cylinder before departure.  We then had a not very pleasant drive down the I95 but a much more pleasant welcome on arrival.  The house was very comfortable and our hosts, also sailors, took us out to dinner at their posh club.  Despite us putting on our best clothes (I even ironed my shirt!) we attracted a few side-long glances, but that didn’t put us off our very strong rum cocktails and dinner.  Interesting conversation – despite being life-long sailors, they were of the racing, rather than cruising, kind and had difficulty with envisaging sailing overnight on long passages.  They dropped us off at their house, then returned to the club and their moored motor yacht, on which they were setting off the following day for a river cruise.

While Elsie took the dog, Huck, out for his evening walk, I read the welcome notes in which it mentioned to be aware that he had a tendency to pick up bones.  Sure enough, he returned with one in his mouth.  Elsie couldn’t get him to drop it.  Could I?  I tried.  Growl.  Tried again. Snap, and a large hole appeared in the back of my left hand.  It was now 10 O’clock on a Friday evening, in America, with notoriously high healthcare costs and our medical insurance is only for hospitalisation and repatriation, not minor injuries. We sought advice from our hosts, by phone, but their preferred clinic was closed, so it was off to the local hospital.  As an ambulance would, no doubt cost hundreds of dollars, I decided to drive myself.  Our car was in the garage, which I knew how to open from the outside but not the inside. After a fruitless search for the relevant button, we used the emergency pull cord and drove out.  We now had to close the roller door. Again, I had to resort to ‘manual’ and, in my haste managed to trap a finger and heard the crunch of bone. Things did improve a bit after this as, marvellously, the local administration had a policy of paying medical costs for dog bites (they don’t want them unreported) but, by the time I had been treated and collected a prescription, it was 2 the following morning before we got to bed.  As I was flying out the following night, the fact that this was 7 AM UK time was relevant. On Saturday, I did indeed fly out for a scarce week in Scotland, leaving Elsie to have a great cultural week in The Big Apple.  I flew back in the following Friday, allowing me a day of culture at MOMA then, with another hire car, we returned to Ruby on Sunday 16^th.

Street art NYC

Our plan had been to have a fairly relaxing day on Monday and launch on Tuesday morning.  A look at the weather forecast showed that Tuesday was likely to be very wet so, with car available, we dashed out to do a big shop and prepared for a Monday morning launch.  Once again, the yard proved flexible and we were back in the water by 10:30.  We motored back to our anchorage at the park to check and top up the gearbox oil then it was off to Newport taking advantage of the ebb tide.  For about 4 miles.  Then something made me check bilges to discover that the engine was blowing out its coolant.  Back to the anchorage.  Wait for it to cool down.  Top up.  Run engine for 20 minutes. Then, cautiously, set off again.  This time, the coolant stayed where it should be and we made it back to Newport at 18:00.  Tuesday was, as predicted, fairly horrible so we just sheltered.  On Wednesday, we managed a few jobs, including replacing a hose on the salt water cooling system and installing plugs, that Elsie’s brother had kindly made, into the boarding ladder to, hopefully, stop it trying to eat our new dinghy. We had hoped to move on East on Thursday but again the weather was foul so we delayed.

We eventually got away on the Saturday morning, hoisting sail at 09:00 in a NW’ly F4 to broad reach down the river, gybe and continue along the coast, almost to the entrance of the Cape Cod Canal.  We anchored in Wings cove at 15:45, hoping for a relaxing end to the day.  It was not to be asst arrival checks showed that, once again, the engine was blowing out cooling water.  As we would have to motor through the canal, we could continue no further until this was fixed. We would receive no assistance the following day, it being Sunday so I would have plenty of time to play before handing the problem over to someone competent.  Once things had cooled down sufficiently, I started retracing steps and removed t he ‘boot’ on the end of the heat exchanger, where I had found debris weeks earlier.  The solution (I hoped) was in front of me.  The raw water and ‘fresh’ water cooling systems are separated here by the ‘boot’ being gripped on a bronze seal.  If this had not been done up tight enough…  Cleaned, tightened, run.  A few drips only – hurrah. 

Storm front, Wings Bay.

The tidal current through the canal determined our start on Sunday. It would turn in our favour at 09:00 so we readied at 8, gave the engine a good run and set off at 08:30.  We hoisted , reefed, sail before entering, just in case we had to shut down in a hurry and proceeded through at 1800 RPM, so as to not put too much stress on our still suspect engine. This gave us a speed through the water of about 5 ½ knots though, with a following wind and a building current, we saw 10 knots at times.  This was not quite enough to keep ahead of a following pusher tug and barge and we had to pull over to let them pass with about a mile to go.  Once clear of the canal we hoisted full sail, stopped the engine and accelerated away at 8 knots with a F3-4 on the beam.  This got us into Provincetown at 15:00 and we anchored just off the eastern end of the inner breakwater at the Town.  This time, there were no nasty surprises so we took what we thought was a well-earned rest.  On Monday, 24^th, we had a long stroll around the town in the morning and a shorter one to the supermarket in the afternoon.  As the wind was forecast to go southerly overnight, we picked up anchor and motored over to the town float for water (paid for with quarters in a slot – we paid $3 for about 50 gallons) then to the south of the harbour for a more comfortable berth for the night.  Looking ahead to the following day, it seemed that we would get a good sail over to Boston but could expect rain and, maybe, thunderstorms any time after 14:00.  We, accordingly, rose at 5 and were under way at 05:35.  We started with full plain sail but once we were sure that the wind was steady S3, brought out the cruising chute and had a great broad reach across. The wind started to die with about 8 miles to go so, with rain approaching, we put away the chute and reverted to motor-sailing under main and genoa.

Sunset, Provincetown

Boston harbour is a huge expanse but nor really welcoming to visiting yachts.  I glanced at marinas and saw that we could expect to pay anything from $150 – 280 per night, way above our budget.  There were no other anchored yachts but we had information showing where others had stopped in the past.  This gave conflicting advice so we worked out where we thought we would be least in the way – on the north side, clear of all commercial activity.  That evening, a coastguard boat stopped by.  I had put a flashing light in the cockpit to make us more conspicuous, and he objected to that, but not our position.  Two mornings later, the harbourmaster’s launch called by – his colleague had stopped the previous evening and wanted us to move (we had been on board).  He saw no problem, himself.  That evening, just as we were about to have dinner, said colleague arrived, siren blaring and shouted at us through his bullhorn.  We were to move to his designated spot, almost opposite the fuel dock, where we would be in the way of queueing ferries.  His harbour, we moved. The lack of provision for visitors extends to landing places for a dinghy.  There is one finger pier with space for a boat on each side.  One side is limited to 30 minutes; the other to 4 hours.  As each usually had a, hard, boat moored, we just snuck to the inshore end and tied to a cleat but it wouldn’t work if several dinghies wanted to park.

Boston by night

While in Boston, we took in some of the local history.  On Wednesday, we took a walking tour of the downtown area with an entertaining, and quite informative, guide.  A slow stroll back along the route took us to the ‘Cheers’ bar where we lunched and took photos, along with most of the clientele. 

Cheerts!

Thursday morning, we toured the State House (the ‘Parliament’ building for the state) once past a very easy security check, we were allowed to roam almost at will and had a guided tour with a very quietly spoken and somewhat confused guide. Lunch was a hotdog in the park, accompanied by some nice, easy, light jazz, then off for another tour in the afternoon t o look at some of the sites relevant to African American history in the town.  On Friday, we self-guided our way out through the north side of the town, past Paul Revere’s house and church to Bunker Hill, where the British won the opening battle of the war of independence but not convincingly enough to deter the colonials from continuing.  Down the hill, we visited the naval museum but missed out on visiting the historic ships as time was getting on.

Bunker Hill memorial

Our plan was still to get up to Canada as soon as practicable, but the weather was not co-operating.  The wind was either light or from ahead.  It looked, however, as though we might get a 24-hour slot of sailable wind starting on Saturday morning.  In order to take advantage of this, we picked up anchor at 16:20 on Friday and headed out to shorten our voyage by 10 miles or so.  At first, we had light wind right ahead but, once clear of the harbour, we were able to put it on the bow and hoisted full sail.  As we did so, the auto-pilot tripped out on low voltage (even though the batteries were fully charged).  Checking to battery monitor showed wildly fluctuating voltage and the charge controller was dark. We immediately shut down the engine to investigate.  Nothing obviously wrong and at the, second, re-start the problem disappeared.  Fingers crossed it was a one-off glitch but, when time permits, I will do a thorough investigation of wiring.  The wind built and veered, to give us a beam reach and 8 knots, so we passed by our intended stop and continued on to Marblehead.  This shallow bay is 2 miles long X ½ mile wide so you would think there would be plenty of space to anchor.  The entire area is, however, covered with over 2300 moorings.  The plan was to creep past the ‘no wake’ buoys and drop the hook before the mooring field.  Being New England, even this space was taken by fishing floats but, after a little searching, we found just enough space, anchored and tidied up.  A helpful local stopped by and told us that, as it was now 8 PM, we could take a club mooring.  As thunderstorms were forecast, we took this option and had a late supper.  A quick check of the weather showed that our hoped-for window had disappeared and we could only expect about 4 hours of wind around the middle of the following day.   While taking the mooring made us more secure in the event of strong winds, they completely died in the night and I was woken by the tump, tump, tump of the mooring buoy on the bow.  Oh well.

We woke to the sound of thunder and a sailing wind so let go at 07:20.  The first couple of hours went well and we hoped for a decent distance but, at the time the wind was forecast to start, it died so we popped into Rockport harbour and anchored in Sandy Bay. As usual, there were many fishing floats but we found a big space to anchor and had a lazy afternoon.   I was woken at midnight by a grating sound.  Fortunately, this came not from the keel but the anchor cable which must have wrapped itself round a rock.  Winds were light so we left it until morning, then shifted closer to the old harbour.  After a leisurely breakfast, we dinghied ashore and strolled round this very touristy town.  We passed on the tarot readings and lobster rolls but did manage to locate a grocery and a laundromat.  Ashore again in the afternoon to take advantage of the latter so, with nearly full fuel and water tanks ad clean clothes, we are ready to head up to Canada.  What could possibly go wrong?

June Stats: 

Over Ground   194
Log                  212

May 2019

In which we say goodbye to the Caribbean for another season and head up the East coast of the USA.

May started with us, including Albi and Di, at Warderick Wells in the Exumas. The winds and showers of the previous day had abated and we went for a good walk down the island, pausing to re-instate our driftwood tribute at Booboo Hill. In the afternoon, Albi, Di and I went for another snorkelling trip to the Emerald Rock area. Again wonderful with an amazing variety of fish and corals. On Thursday, we let go late morning and sailed, under genoa only, downwind to Norman cay. As we arrived, the chart plotter turned itself off. And on. And off again. Fortunately, I had charts on my phone and was able to navigate in. Experimentation showed that the plotter was completely unusable so I dug out the spare, which didn’t display AIS. We would just have to do without that. The anchorage was comfortable enough but not spectacular. On Friday we had an earlier start and sailed, alternately broad reaching and goose-winged almost to Nassau, turning just a couple of miles short to anchor at Rose Island beach. This seemed crowded but, as 4 O’clock chimed, most of the tourist boats disappeared and we were able to work our way into a prime spot. From here we swam across to the fringing reef and spent an hour or so drifting along it for another wonderful display.

Saturday dawned and it was the end of our guests’ holiday. We motored into Nassau harbour and dropped them off at a fuel dock, then headed north east up to Egg Island at the top of Eleuthera. With the wind blowing at 12 – 15 knots from the south east, we had a perfect beam reach and, as we were following the line of the Eleutheran fringing reef, we had flat seas. Bliss. The shelter at Egg Island wasn’t as great as we had hoped but rigging a bridle on the anchor cable kept us head to swell and made for a comfortable night. We were up at dawn on Sunday for the 50 mile leg to Little Harbour. We made slow but steady progress, initially under full plain sail, then with Main and cruising chute, with a following F3. The tide was flooding on arrival so we had a smooth entrance. We couldn’t work our way in far enough at our intended spot so continued 4 miles further north to anchor in the lee of Lynard cay. There were several other boats there but we managed to find a secluded spot. On Monday, we motored the twenty miles to Marsh Harbour and anchored while I got my diving cylinder filled and we went for provisions at Maxwell’s, the biggest supermarket in the Bahamas. We got a little carried away and bought rather more fresh meat, fruit and dairy than we could reasonably eat between here and the USA, where imports of these are banned but at least we wouldn’t go short on voyage. A further 5 miles of motoring took us to Archers Cay to anchor for possibly our last night in the Bahamas this year. Today was the fifth anniversary of my operation. At the time of diagnosis, I was told that my chances of surviving this long were about 20%, so we had a little celebration, with a bottle of wine to wash down dinner. The celebrations were cut short by a plague of flying ants suddenly arriving and infesting the saloon. Much spraying of insecticide and sweeping up of ants ensued.

As always with a long voyage in prospect, we had been watching the weather closely. A good slot had come and gone a week before. We couldn’t take it not only because we had guests on board but we would have been in the period of purdah after the expiry of our previous American Cruising Permit. Another slot was approaching. Not ideal, they seldom are, but we might be able to break the back of our northern passage, getting as far as Beaufort N.C. or even Norfolk, Va. The forecast was for light winds to start with and maybe for a while in the middle but we might be able to get past Cape Hatteras without gales, headwinds or having to traverse the Intra Coastal Waterway, saving 4 days of motoring. Another early start to motor the 35 miles to Spanish Cay, our last possible fuel stop, only to find that we had to wait while they took fuel from a barge. I was in two minds whether to continue, both because of the delay and because their tanks would be stirred up, possibly contaminating the diesel. I figured that, as there was a long distance from tanks to pump, we would be getting our fuel from what was already in the pipeline and we had a leisurely lunch, getting away after 1600. This only just gave us time to exit at Shroud Cay in daylight but we managed it and settled for heading north using motor assistance in light easterly winds. Surprisingly, these freshened and we were able to stop the engine and be sailing by sunset.

We hoped to gain assistance from the Gulf Stream but, to begin with it was too far to our west. It then swung east, so we decided to head directly north to intercept it, 300 miles away and, hopefully, hitch a ride all the way to Hatteras. The first night we made slow but steady progress, then had to put a reef in for the next 24 hours as the wind increased. On Thursday afternoon, the wind died to a F2 and, to make our ‘slot’ we motor assisted. The wind increased again overnight and by midnight we were feeling the effects of the Gulf Stream which gave us a nice push as we turned to follow it but more motor assistance was required on Friday. We turned north again on Saturday morning, broad reaching towards the entrance of the Chesapeake. As we followed the coast, the wind veered and gave Elsie a great F4 beam reach through her night watch. We passed the Chesapeake bridge at 08:00 on Sunday, dropped sails at 10:15 and motored up the Elizabeth river to berth on a private dock, owned by the OCC port officers, Greta and Gary, at 12:30. These lovely people not only provided us with somewhere to stay but gave us lifts to fill our propane cylinder and other shopping. Greta even did our laundry, not an enviable task given the state of it after nearly a week at sea. Immigration came to visit us that afternoon and I went round to the local CBP office on Monday morning to obtain a new Cruising licence for Ruby. This time, I made sure that it was only valid for 8 months, so that we would not have to delay re-entering the States as we did this year.

Customs House, Norfolk

It had been a poor spring on this coast and the temperature dropped again overnight so we were walking around in jackets, long trousers and shoes with socks which all felt very uncomfortable. We also had to dig out the duvet and even ran the central heating on Monday evening. Getting the chart plotter fixed was a priority, as we find AIS invaluable. What I wanted was to combine the good bits of our two plotters to make one that worked. A local company couldn’t do that but sold us yet another one that did. I called Pete, the man from Oriental that worked with us there. He thought that he could fix the on/off button problem so I sent that set off to him. The VHF radio, which hadn’t been receiving for 6 months, was sent to Standard Horizon in California for them to fix. Each of these required walking twice to the post office: once to obtain a box, bubble wrap, etc and once to post. As it was 1 ½ miles each way, we got plenty of exercise. Having got these, and a few other little, jobs done we took some time for sight seeing, including the nautical museum and the battleship Wisconsin.

Again, we were watching the weather, hoping for a good slot to sail up the coast, hopefully as far as New York. Several twelve to twenty four hour periods looked possible but it seemed that if we left Chesapeake bay on Sunday morning we might get all the way. We had farewell drinks with Gary and Greta on the dock on Friday evening, then went for a valedictory American breakfast on Saturday morning at a diner – stack of ‘cakes, eggs bacon and maple syrup. To catch the tidal currents, we left the dock at 12:30 and motored down to the bridge, anchoring in the lee of one of the islands where it changes to a tunnel. The forecast had now changed to give a sailing wind that evening so, after a little rest and a good meal, we picked up at 19:30 and headed out.

The tide had now changed and we had to battle it for the first few hours crossing the mouth of the bay. As soon as we had cleared it, the wind veered and we were now on a broad reach and we continued, either broad reaching or goose-winged running, for the next 24 hours. Fog descended on us in the small hours of Sunday and stayed for 24 hours, making us very thankful for the AIS and radar, though there was little traffic. On Monday morning, as we passed up the coast of New Jersey, came another decision point. If we turned 20 degrees to port, we could be at Atlantic Highlands, the gateway to New York, in 6 hours; 20 to Starboard and we could be in Block Island, gateway to Rhode Island in 24. We had time to spare but, given how long it might take us to negotiate New York and Long Island Sound, we opted for the latter.

A month earlier, when servicing the main engine, I had had to replace the impeller for the raw water pump as blades were missing but had never got round to finding and removing them. This bit of laziness now bit as, on starting the engine to charge batteries, no water emerged from the exhaust and it quickly over-heated. Out with the portable generator which, fortunately started first time.

I was wakened on Tuesday by the sound of Elsie taking reefs out of the mainsail, as the wind had dropped. This proved to be only temporary and had to soon put one back in. As we approached our destination and I considered how to drop the main without using the engine, the wind suddenly increased further to 30 knots so I quickly went from one to three reefs, almost solving that problem. When it came to dropping the last bit, it came down neatly enough on a close reach. We entered Great Salt Pond at Block Island under a small amount of genoa, starting the engine only once inside to lower and set the anchor. A few hours rest, then a tidy up and investigation of the engine. The missing impeller blades were found in the heat exchanger and the cooling system was working again. The sun was shining and the temperature was, supposedly 17 C, but it felt might cold to us and we snuggled down with the heating on that night.

We stayed 2 nights at Salt Pond. We didn’t go ashore but shared evening drinks with Connie and Tony, a Canadian couple on a 38 ft Wauquiez, Sage. On the 23^rd, there was a nice SW’ly F4-5 so we headed downwind to Newport under just the Jib. We spent the rest of the month here, just enjoying the views of beautiful boats, having walks ashore and another American diner breakfast at Bishop’s. It being Memorial Day weekend, there were specials on at the supermarket, including fresh lobster at $6.99 a pound so we made pigs of ourselves with that, stuffed clams, king prawns… I also experimented with making American style breakfasts on board with bacon, eggs and pancakes with syrup. A good start to the day, but no lunch required.

Bishops Diner

On Friday 31^st, we took a bus up to Providence, about 30 miles away. We had intended to do a self guided walking tour but the ap wasn’t working well so instead we went to the state art museum which is located at the college of design. This had an eclectic mix if everything from pharoic Egypt to video installations, by way of byzantine art, impressionists, 19^th century furniture and patchwork quilts. There were also a couple of exhibitions of silverware and picture printing methods.  I guess if you were taking someone who is never going to another museum it covers all the bases. 2 Monets, 2 Picassos, 2 Rodins, etc. We agreed on the return journey that we have been spoiled by seeing some of the greatest pieces of art at so many major galleries and are now disappointed when we are in the presence of something not quite top rate.

Monthly stats

Over Ground    1296
Log                   1045