The CheeseBlock 360

After having the chance to catch up with Nica, Jeremy, Julian, and Maddie (of Calypso) in Deltaville, we departed the Chesapeake and gladly headed for the more mild temperatures of New England. We had to motor south to make our way to the mouth of the bay, but once we passed over the bridge/tunnel, we raised the sails and started making our way towards Block Island.

The forecasts had promised 15 to 20 knot winds from the southwest, but at first we were met with lighter winds from the south east. Thankfully everyone felt comfortable with foredeck work, so sometime after eleven the first night (Sunday), we set up the whisker pole for the genoa and rigged a preventer on the main and began our downwind run towards home.

Monday dawned early with drier air and cooler temperatures than we had on the bay. With the sun up we were ready to try trolling for fish. Since we were running wing and wing, it was going to be hard to slow the boat when or if we got a strike. Therefore, instead of using the trolling rod and real, we let out the hand line (nice 100lb monofilament) with simple cedar plug. Within an hour or so, the bungee cord it was hooked to went taught and we knew something was on the line. Still moving at over six and a half knots, we tugged in our catch little by little. And as it got closer to the boat, we could tell we had another mahi-mahi. Not something we were expecting this far north. This one, however, wasn’t as big as our previous (26” vs. 50”), and we decided to throw it back. What we really wanted was a tuna. The cedar plug went back out and somehow we forgot about it for a while. Finally the kids noticed that the bungee was taught and we started hauling in the line to see what we had caught. Low and behold it was a tuna! It must have been on the line for a while, because by the time we got it on board it hadn’t much fight left. The amount of meat on the fish was amazing. We all had seared tuna for dinner that night and still we had at least eight pounds of filets left. It was nice to know Chasseur was going to be in Block Island and we would have someone to share it all with.



Later that day the sea treated with another gift, an amazing dolphin show that took place all around Ohana. In addition to having them scoot along in our bow-wave, this time we were treated to jumps and flips and tail slapping. Hopefully the attached video works and you can get a little sense of what we experienced.

The wind kept up for much of the next evening, but eventually died on us, leaving us to motor sail the last day and a half. But we arrived in Block Island with Chasseur helping to guide us in at night. Josie had made a estimate that our arrival time would be eleven o'clock (arrival time being when we passed the first buoy marking the channel). The blinking light came in to sight and the buoy was abeam of us at 10:59 exactly, Josie had guessed correctly. The night time temps were now in the low 60s, so we fished out fleece blankets that we hadn’t seen in months and all settled in for a great night's sleep.

Having stayed in Block Island for the 4th of July weekend, we are now slowly making our way towards Boston -- exploring the Elizabeth Islands and trying to remain in cruising mode and ignoring the siren calls of land based life.

-- Peter