Sailing North – Virginia to Provincetown 2019

We had a whirlwind month of commissioning, launching, and continued in-water preparations to get Moment ready to sail out the Chesapeake, offshore into the North Atlantic, and eventually up to Provincetown.

Pretty close to our target day and time, we sailed away on May 21st with following seas down the Bay. The winds were north so we had a couple gybes, but sailed very fast. As we passed through the Bay Bridge, we trimmed in the sails and moved more toward upwind sailing until about sunset when we lost the wind. We ended up doing about 24 hours of motoring  until we were able to use the wind again and head more offshore. It’s pretty amazing how you can wake up a sleeping diesel engine and tell it to go go to round the clock and it listens to you!

With Cape May to port, we began receiving favorable winds to allow us to point offshore and begin using the wind. As we sailed in the North Atlantic below Long Island sound for about 2 days, the winds steadily increased until we had to take the headsails down in the middle of the night.

It was the middle of the night as we were entering Buzzards Bay and our timing for the Cape Cod Canal was not favorable until the next morning. We decided to duck into Mattapoisett Harbor and grab an outer mooring ball to get about 5 hours of sleep before moving on.

By the time we woke up, the wind was howling. We motored through the canal, fueled in Sandwich and then set to cross Cape Cod Bay. Wow, it was windy. There were gusts to 50MPH and we had only a sliver of sail out. We were taking WALLS of water across the bow and not making the best speeds. It’s crazy that the home stretch out of the ocean was our toughest leg, but we persisted on and made Provincetown by about 5PM on Friday of Memorial Day … just in time for happy hour!

Here comes a really fun and exciting season in Provincetown!!!