Finally, after 3 long weeks of boat tasks and moving in, we made it out of the boatyard and went for a sail.  After reconnoitering the channel (such as it is) at Sandy Point with Tom from the boatyard yesterday, we went after it ourselves today.

We waited till slack current and high tide and left at about 1245.  We were very nervous about Sandy Point, but today we never saw less than 8 feet of water. I was so glad to have checked it out yesterday, since the marked and charted channel is no longer useable and we had to go extremely close to the island.  When we passed the point, there was a family on the beach and we said hi in a normal conversational voice to them.

We made it though the pass! Whew!!

We then continued motoring through Little Narragansett Bay in 4-5 kn of wind on the nose. Once we passed Watch Hill Point, we turned more south and we finally able to raise our sails.  We put up all three plain sails.  We had between 8-10 knots of wind and the boat made 6-7kn of speed the whole time.  Although we were close-hauled the whole way, the wind direction was perfect and we never had to tack and ended up exactly on our arrival mark.

Full Sail

Now we are on a town mooring here at Block Island.  Apparently during the summer this is a very busy tourist place, and can have up to 10,000 people per day.  Also, there can be up to 1000 boats here, but tonight there are 6, counting us.

Quiet Harbor

Tomorrow we’re planning to go explore the island with friends who came down from Burlington.

Overall, a great first trip on WildHorse!