Boston to Plymouth

We had a beautiful day to travel the 40 miles from Boston to Plymouth. The sun was shining bright and the waters were relatively calm. The winds were very light and in our face for the last half of the trip. As a result, we motor sailed most of the way.

Mayflower II

Plymouth harbor is very wide and very shallow. Several spits of sand stretch out like enveloping arms from the shoreline. The final approach to the inner harbor is through a narrow dredged channel. The harbor itself is filled with over 400 boats closely packed on mooring balls. The Plymouth Yacht Club launch met us at Red 24, the last nun marker for the harbor, and took us to our mooring. It was right off the bow of the Mayflower II which is a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1630. Our mooring was only a few hundred yards from Plymouth Rock.

We had to wait a while before finally securing Foreign Affair to the ball. First, a paddle wheel tour boat started backing out of her dock and forced us to move out of her way which spoiled our first approach. We tried again once the paddle wheeler was on her way. This time another tour boat cut in front of us as it attacked the pirate ship which was moored about 100 feet from our mooring. We had to give way to the larger, commercial vessel. We waited for a good 5 minutes while the tourists and pirates engaged in a hard-fought, wet, water cannon fight. We kept our distance and maintained our neutrality during the conflict. We finally got to our mooring after the hostile parties disengaged.

We called for the yacht club launch once we had everything shipshape on Foreign Affair. Our goal was to take showers, get our laundry done and enjoy a peaceful dinner ashore. Carla did the laundry while Dwayne went for pizza. The club has a great bar but no food service. All worked out fine as we ate pizza and enjoyed the view of the harbor while doing the laundry. We got back to our boat shortly after 9 pm. Dwayne worked on the blog while Carla read. Another great day came to an end,