Arrived Quissett around 1630. We took a town mooring in the
protected harbor, loaded the bikes, and made our way down to Woods Hole, about
1.5 miles south. As many of you know Woods Hole is famous for its underwater
ocean research as well as where the ship that found the Titanic was home
ported. It is also one of the ferry ports for both Martha’s Vineyard and
Nantucket. The town is only about 3 blocks long. After riding around town for
about a half hour and seeing most of everything, we had dinner at the small
market and ate outside overlooking the Eel Pond (aka town lagoon.)
Why is it
when ducks are begging for food we consider it cute, but when seagulls are
begging for food we want to shoot them? Just saying
We had considered trying to pick up a mooring in the Eel
Pond as it is very protected, but when we read that the bascule bridge opening
was just 31 feet wide, we decided not to try to squeeze our 23’ double-wide
through. Now after seeing most everything Woods Hole had to offer, in less
than an hour we were glad we skipped WH as one of the places we stayed for the
night.
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| Bridge to the Woods Hole Eel Pond |
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| The Eel Pond in Woods Hole |
Quissett Harbor had no amenities but was much, much nicer. It may be the prettiest and most protected
harbor on the cape; a safe haven surrounded by tall trees and beautiful homes.
And the harbor had WIFI!!!!
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| Quissett Harbor looking out towards Buzzards Bay |
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| Quissett Harbor |
The weather forecast for the next day called for high winds
out of the west Tuesday evening late with the wind tapering after 0900 on the 3rd.
The winds came in at around 0300. I clocked one gust inside Quissett at 25 kts.
Indeed by 0900 the winds had dropped to around 15 kts when we got underway to
ride the current through the Cape Cod Canal. We shot up and made it to the NE end of the
canal, a distance of over 22 miles, in under 3 hours.
If only the winds had held on, we would have had a wonderful
sail NE to Provincetown. But as luck would have it, the wind had died to around
7 kts. So we motor sailed the 22 miles to PTown at the very end of Cape Cod.
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| Cape Cod Canal RR bridge. |
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| Wicked current. |
By the time we arrived the Ptown, it was almost dead calm. I
decided this was the perfect opportunity to finish the calibration of the autopilot.
I followed the instructions, put the boat through its paces, and the autopilot
was re-calibrated… except for one nagging detail - the heading on the autopilot
monitor was almost 30 degrees west of the boat’s actual heading. This also
affected the little boat diagram on our chart plotter; it too was showing the
bow pointing 30 degrees left of the actual route. I would have to do more
reading. But at least we could now set the autopilot on a course and we could
drive hands free.
We chose to anchor just east of the breakwater on the
outside of the mooring balls. We were nicely protected with the NW and N winds
forecasted. We could actually see the sandy bottom, how NICE!
You know the drill, bikes into the dink, dink ashore, then
bike the town. We stopped at a little market to buy bread and asked the clerk
if he had a map of the town. He explained that downtown Ptown is really only one
street; art galleries on the west end and shops, ferry terminal, bars and
restaurants in the center and east end. He gave us suggestions for dinner and
the flattest shortcuts around town. Hills are evil.
The most prominent landmark is the tall Pilgrim Monument up
on the hill. It seems the pilgrims stopped here first before moving on to
Plymouth. The second biggest landmark looks like a church but it is actually
the town library.
We ventured in for
WIFI and the librarian suggested we go upstairs. WHOA! In the late 70s-80s a
local group built a ½ scale model of the fishing schooner, the Rose
Dorothea. There’s a SHIP inside the
library! They had to cut holes in the
ceiling for the masts. Waaaaaay kewl. We caught up on email and FB, walked around, and had dinner.
Wild crowd. So glad this is off-season. 
Tomorrow we head to Beantown.
