Wednesday 21st June.

Yesterday’s forecast for today indicated that we’d have lighter winds and the first day without a Small Craft Advisory for several days, so we were looking forward to moving today.  However the morning’s forecast included another Small Craft Advisory.  We decided to set off anyway to Padanaram since it was only 18 nm away, and we could easily return to Onset if we didn’t like what we found. 

As it happened we had a very pleasant beat to Padanaram and decided to continue on to Westport on the same basis.  By the time we had left Buzzards Bay however, the winds were up to 20+ knots with 5 foot seas and, of course, we were beating into it.  Despite a couple of waves of solid water over the windshield, Quinita was sailing at 6 & 7 knots to windward with full genoa and a single reef in the main.  She (and we) took a pounding however in the big waves.  Marc also took a pounding of the mal-de-mer variety.  His anti sea-sickness patch had fallen off in the night and he spent most of the trip lying down in the saloon. 

We entered Westport river and picked up a mooring at 5pm, 41 30.87N 071 04.51W pleased to have made some good distance after several days in Onset. 

Some stats:  The log was fouled with weed for the first ¾ hour after which it cleared itself, so despite having logged 51.8nm, we probable sailed 54nm.  We were beating for 9 hours, so our average speed through the water was close to 6 knots.  However, the direct route (had we not had to tack), was about 30nm, so our VMG (Velocity Made Good), was 3.3 knots.  Such are the vagaries of sailing!

Ships Log: 6284.1, Todays Log: 51.8, Seasons Total: 222.1