We stayed in Hadley Harbor across from Woods Hole on our way to Nantucket. Hadley would be filled to brimming and not much fun to visit during the summer, but we had only a few other boats in the harbor with us this time of year. We couldn't get off and go ashore, as the islands are privately held by the Forbes family, but just spending time aboard Chaos with the views and quiet solitude of this harbor in the spring was a delight.

We spent over ten hours and figured we might well have sailed 60 nautical miles to go all of 20 nautical miles to Edgartown. Our fate was sealed the previous evening when I stated my desire to finally explore Robinson's Hole, a desire which had been frustrated time and again by weather conditions. It appeared that if we made an early start from Hadley, we could sail in Buzzard's Bay along the Naushon away from our destination, traverse Robinson's Hole, and still be in position to get a fair current through the Vineyard sound around East and West Chop on our way to Edgartown. Although it was a little out of the way, Michael and I both looked forward to a quick exploration of Robinson's Hole before going on the Edgartown.

However, the next morning after having light winds, we made it to Robinson's a little over a half hour behind schedule. The winds died to almost nothing as we entered the Vineyard Sound. We drifted across the sound hoping for the wind to pick back up, changed to our 135 genoa jib, realizing the wind would be staying light, and then finally started to sail. But we were now a couple of hours late, and the current was beginning to turn against us. We spent hours and hours with a cold wind in our face watching a few hundred yards of East and West Chop slowly move behind us as we tacked back and forth from Woods Hole to the Chops. Finally we made it to Edgartown and a most welcome dinner ashore.

The trip to Nantucket was more typical of spring. We should have switched back to our 110 jib, but instead we worked unnecessarily hard for a few hours finding every way to reduce the power of our mains'l and heads'l. We managed to just make it to Nantucket Harbor without roller reefing the genoa as the winds went into the mid 20kts. By now we had put two reefs in the main, moved the traveller down, hardened up the outhaul, hardened the main sheet, put more tension in the main halyard, more tension in the genoa halyard, and moved back the jib fairlead car to flatten out the heads'l foot as much as possible, and allowed the head of the jib to twist off. Well, we enjoyed that exercise, even if it was unnecessary.