Sailing Vessel "Waterdancer": Scituate

It is almost October. The summer season is over. We have been getting our feet wet to adjust to the winter season by visiting our friends at Constitution Marina.

Dinner at CM the week before

So with a few fellow friends, we decided to make one last sail to Scituate. Ususally Scituate is not a destination for us. It is more a stopover if we have a late start, or if we quite did not make it to Boston. It is about 3 hours away. It has some nice restaurants, but we usually like to hang out on our boat, so the small, crowded mooring field offers good protection, and friendly people, but not much else.

In any case, after a mandatory swap of the outboard on the dingy to my old 2HP Honda, (I broke the starter cord on the 15 hp) we headed out around 10:30.

Entering Scituate Harbor

Although the start was calm and beautiful, as we entered the Boston Harbor Light area, the entrance rollers started. We had about 10-12 knots of easterlies with an offshore storm. Needless to say, Waterdancer hoby-horsed and then rolled on the short chop all the way past Minots light.

Choppy seas going to Scituate, (not really visible in the picture)

The wind was reasonable enough to sail, but with the dirty bottom, and the choppy seas, we decided to motorsail all the way in.
After (what seemed to be ) a 30 minute wait for EX-Rider, we finally got a mooring. Our friends Steve & Jan and Martin & Darcy arrived about 30 minutes later on the 43 Chris Craft and grabbed the mooring next to us. A bit later Rick and Rob sailed in and grabbed another mooring.

Scituate Harbor

We all got together at on Seize the Dream, and started to pull out the snacks, and food. Eventually we decided to just stay on the boat instead of going to the restaurant.
It was a great night, and we went back Waterdancer around 10:30.
Next morning, I wend over to Seize The Moment and we had some breakfast.

Trip back, passing Minot's Light

We left around 12:30, and had a much calmer trip back.
Once in Boston, we went inside of Calf Island. That has been an area I wanted to explore, since I had never been there. It was an interesting place, protected, with rocks all around us.

Calf Island

Afterwards, we had a great sail up the North Channel, then back to the club. We spent some time on our mooring and then came back to the docks to settle in for the night.