We woke up early because we wanted to be off the mooring between 5 and 6 am. We planned to go to Menemsha which we estimated would be a 9-10 hour sail However the weather had other plans for us. The harbor was socked in with fog and we had to just wait it out. We finally got off the mooring around 9.
We motored out of the harbor through the channel and then proceeded to put up the main sail. As we finished putting up the sail, I noticed the dingy was half full of water. It has been taking on water over the bow as it plowed through the waves. We had taken the motor off, as it customary for a long sail. This was our first leg without the motor on the dingy. The change in weight distribution resulted in the bow being lower and allowing water to splash in over the bow. This was a problem!
We slowed down by putting the engine into neutral and pondered what to do. We decided our first effort would be to pull the dingy closer to the boat and bale it with the bucket on a rope that we typically use to swab the deck. We got about 50% of the water out and started motoring again but decided it was riding too low in the water and would just fill up again.
We put the motor back into neutral and took down the sail. Then we lowered the swim platform, pulled the dingy up onto the swim platform and dumped as much water out as we could. Who needs fitness blenders when you have a dingy full of water to haul out! Then we added another line to the dingy painter (line) to make it longer and started up our journey again. This seemed to work and the dingy was no longer taking on water. Crisis averted!
Oh, wait, not yet, we motored on and, about an hour later, the fog rolled back in and we only had about 1/4 mile of visibility. Luckily the boat has radar and we were both on lookout. We only saw one boat that was close to us and we used the horn to alert them to us. Eventually the fog cleared and we were back on our way.
After all that we decided to go to Edgartown instead of all the way to Menemsha. We pulled into Edgartown around 1:30. What a day!
We spent the afternoon relaxing on the boat. We didn’t go into town because we didn’t need anything and because we didn’t want to put the motor back on the dingy, only to have to take it off again for the next leg of our journey. Needless to say we had dinner on the boat and an early evening.
Sorry another day with no pictures.