The Final Send Off

Sunday September 20

John and Carolyn came over for a last good bye.  Rushed out of the house at 7:45am.  Leave time is 8am so we are already late!  Genoa, Ryan and Eowyn came down with us to say goodbye and return our van to the house.  Carolyn also dropped by muffins, cinnamon rolls, coffee for Bob and juice for me.  Very nice touch, especially as we had no time for breakfast.  

:Lilly, Walt, Lee and Peggy accompany us to Block Island

We cast off from Kingman Yacht Center at 8:45am and our friends sailboat, Efficacy,dropped their mooring and pulled out right ahead of us.  We had a good run to Block Island with Efficacy sailing a good bit of the way on a nice reach.  We arrived at the Great Salt Pond on Block Island at 6:30pm.  Our radio is working intermittently and we could not get the harbormaster to hear us.  He told us to pick up any green town mooring unless we were 47+ feet so we did.  We did find a comment in the Waterway Guide that 40+ boats should take an orange mooring but we figured we would confirm that once we were settled.  Once on a mooring we could not raise the harbormaster so stayed put even though the wind was up.  During the night we kept a vigilant watch and sure enough, we drug the mooring about 20 feet.  Should have taken an orange mooring!   Another lesson learned “Always err on the safest side”.  For dinner, Efficacy could not get their dinghy motor started so Lee and Walt rowed in and we picked up Lilly and Peg.  We had a great dinner with all six of us.  What a nice send off day! The winds were choppy from the NE so it was a wet ride back to the boat.  Peg and I got drenched but I had the better deal as back on board K2F I got a nice hot shower.  (I hope Peg doesn’t read this!)