Last Night At Sea, Arrival at Block Island

Thursday, July 28:  At the stroke of midnight this morning, my Wednesday night watch was over.  As I went to bed, the night was beautiful.  Starry skies, clear, cool, and with light wind.  We sailed through most of the wee morning hours, until the wind dropped to almost nothing around 5 am and Ted cranked the engines to motor sail the rest of the way in.

We arrived at Block Island, RI, at 8:50 am, almost exactly 72 hours after we left Hampton, VA.  We dropped our sails and motored into Great Salt Pond (aka, New Harbor) and found a nice spot to anchor near the eastern edge of the anchorage.

Now that we are here, our plan is to rendezvous in the next few days with our sailing club mates and cruise leaders, Stephanie and Lance on MerSea and then spend the next week or so exploring Long Island Sound with them.

We relaxed on the boat for a while, then dinghyed to shore and rented bikes.  We rode all over the island – a total distance of about 15 miles or so.  It has three major light houses and we checked them out and took a lot of pictures.  It also has lots of hills, so Coleman and I were having a tough time keeping up with Ted, who seemed to have no trouble with peddling up them.

When we came back to the boat, Ted went for a swim, while Coleman and I took naps!  Sufficiently recovered, we dinghyed back ashore for a nice dinner.

Back on the boat, Ted and Coleman got into a serious game of chess.  They asked me to use my new smart phone to Google a chess term:  “en passant.”  What?