Labor Day Week Cruise 2025

First Things First

We were way overdue for a bottom cleaning. The antifouling bottom was not doing so well visually or performance wise. On our previous outage, we were struggling to hit 5kts under power. In the past, we’ve always hired a diver to clean at the marina but it turns out that our current marina (Safe Harbor Wickford Cove) does not allow this. Of course they kindly offered to short-haul us to power wash the bottom. So the only real good option was to book an Oldport Mooring in Newport and hire a diver there. We’ve used Elite Divers in the past and booked them again.

When we were shown to our “mooring” by the Oldport Launch Boat, it turned out to be a floating dock instead. This is because Newport was busy preparing for the upcoming Newport International Boat Show and some of the show docks were out in the harbor on moorings. We tied up to one of these (as did the diver’s boat).

With that out of the way. we had pizza aboard with some Newport neighborhood friends.

We Love Third Beach but we rarely go there. We’re a little too tall to approach it from the north under the Tiverton Bridge and getting to it from Newport Harbor is usually a bouncy intense upwind sail. We often exit Newport Harbor motor-sailing so we can make some better upwind progress and then fall off to the east toward the mouth of the Sakonnet. That’s what we did this time and we did the 13-ish miles from Newport pretty easily.

In the afternoon there were some severe thunderstorms passing to the north of us. At around 1900 some weather finally hit us featuring some impressive cloud formations and a torrential downpour. Winds never really picked up, but we did spin 180.

Hiking, Swimming and Scenery. Cuttyhunk is still a favorite for these things. Once again, we anchored outside of the pond. We knew that most of our time there would not be in a favorable wind. The normal SW which Cuttyhunk offers great protection to was replaced by NW, N, NE and E winds starting the first night we were there. We ended up spinning about 270 on our anchor.

Looking ahead at the forecast and considering the time we had left, we decided to skip the Vineyard again and sail back to Block Island. This is definitely the best time of year to go to Block anyway. There would be wind the next day starting very early in the morning and dying by about 1300. So we set the alarms to leave at 0400 for the 37 mile sail to Block.

This would be our first nighttime sail this year. Our friends in cuttyhunk wondered how we avoid lobster traps. Well we usually do – but not this time.

I was up on the bow with a spotlight doing my best to look for traps. But at time: 0445 local, position: 3 nautical miles west of Cuttyhunk, I snapped a photo of Linda at the helm in the dark, As soon as I pressed the button we heard click click click click click… running down the port side. We both new instantly that we hit a trap.

Usually the buoy pops back up to the surface behind and and you continue on. Not this time. The boat slowed and we knew we were hung up.

We dropped the main sail immediately (in a big mess all over the deck since we were so far off the wind) and rolled up the genoa. Winds were behind the beam blowing about 11kts. Linda called the coast guard and I got on the phone with a very sleepy Boat US dispatcher. During our communications, waves were banging very hard (and loud) against the transom. (This was a very unnatural attitude for the boat to be in).

At some point, the banging got quieter and then stopped. And soon we both noticed that we were actually making way at about 1.9kts. We put out a little sliver of the jib and were doing 3.9kts. Somehow, we wiggled off it! The next big test was if the prop was free so we started the engine and put it in forward – no problem, totally smooth. We closed off our communications saying the crisis was over and continued on our way.

Here is short snip of our track right around the incident.

A Beautiful First Light behind the boat and a much less worried crew…

Block Island is nice after Labor Day. The party scene dies down a bit and it becomes a bit more peaceful. I worked the day job while there but we managed to play in the water quite a bit on the SUP and Kayak. Winds were very light the whole time we were there and mostly out of the N or NE. Conditions in the anchorage were smooth and quiet and we were treated to some beautiful sunsets.