Nor’easter Headed this way … Playing it Safe.

Oct 3

Sept 25

Martha’s Vineyard

We enjoyed five beautiful days in Martha’s Vineyard. Bistari, anchored in Edgartown Harbor was a short dingy ride to downtown. Our good Lake Forest friends Rebecca and Jim Baclawski opened their home to us for laundry and dinners of fresh fish and farm grown veggies. A real treat! Jim had fun videoing their first visit on Bistari.

Sept 29

Nantucket

After a beautiful sail from Martha’s Vineyard, we arrived in Nantucket Harbor to gathering winds and waves. We anchored Bistari 3/4 mile out and took Patience our faithful dingy to shore. Beverly Sanchez and Joe Moran, dear friends from Lake Forest met us at the dingy dock and brought us back to their house for abbreviated plans - early hors d'oeuvres and no dinner to insure a return to Bistari before dark. After an enjoyable afternoon we put on our foul weather gear and steered Patience toward Bistari

School of hard knocks

Wind and sea washed our face as we bounced through the harbor. Suddenly with classic drama, Patience ran over a buoy flag bridle and jammed. With no engine we were blowing out to sea. Ken shouted “quick - grab the oars and start paddling”. With determination and submerged panic, we dug in and paddled and paddled and paddled against the current, wind and waves. Safely to dock we secured Patience, resigned to fixing the motor in daylight the following day. Bev and Joe kindly picked us up again, cooked us a delicious dinner, supplied us with a toothbrush and assured us Nantucket had mechanics and outboard motor options.

Friday turned out perfect. After a quick visit to the hardware store for tools - presto, Ken and Joe fixed the motor. We opted to window shop our favorite stores in town, grocery shop, enjoy a nice lunch at Beverly and Joe’s, say our second good-byes and merrily steered Patience to Bistari.

Windy, our weather app predicted building winds from 25 to 40+ kts, or 7 - near gale, 8- gale, 9 - strong gale on the Beaufort Scale. Realizing this Nor’easter was close and would gust for the next four days we opted to shorten our stay. The building winds confirmed the decision. We would leave Saturday for City Island, NY, our safe harbor to ride out the storm, aware we were facing 200+ miles of building winds and bouncing seas.

Racing Ahead of the Storm

Awake by 6am, we completed the departure check list, pulled up anchor and were motoring out by 7am. The 29-hour passage was a success. We monitored the weather and adjusted our itinerary accordingly, we prepared Bistari for heavy weather including well reefed Genoa sail, jack lines, additional strapping, foul weather gear and zipped the Eisen glass. We sent our float plan to Andrew and Letra. During passage we routinely monitored wind, wave and current to ensure waypoints were set to best advantage as conditions changed.

The wind and waves did build as predicted. Wind gusts reached 46kts. We had 10 to 12’ wave swells on our beam making Bistari roll from rail to rail. Thankfully the swells shifted off to stern helping the rolls a bit. Bistari performed like a dream in very heavy weather. With just the genoa out and reefed 70 percent we were still flying at 8-9 knots. Upon arrival, despite being tired, wet and cold we were very, very happy.