I was disappointed to see high winds and seas and rain predicted for the first day of our trip. Captain Dan and I met Captain Michael in Stonington and put on our foul weather gear, as it was already raining a bit. As we left the dock and headed out to the harbor, you could see the whitecaps and a sharp chop out in Fisher's Island Sound. I was already feeling a touch seasick from the anticipation of bad weather on our first outing of the season.

We decided to sail in the lee of Fisher's Island out to Race Point and discovered calm seas and moderate to light wind along the south shore. We all decided it would be a great idea to call it a day and a great first sail of the season and pull into the harbor on Fisher's Island. Instead of getting seasick on the way to Sag Harbor, I enjoyed a great hike on Fisher's Island.

The following day the winds and seas were predicted to still be around 35kts and 6 ft, but the sun was out. We sailed through The Race and turned to a broad reach all the way to Block Island in over 30kt winds. Surfing with the seas and the wind at our backs going 13kts through the water on our optimistic knot meter, we made it to Block Island in no time. We decided to sail around the south shore to the the leeward side of Block Island and into Old Harbor. Again we avoided strong winds and big waves and found a spot on the old town dock in Old Harbor, Block Island.

As we pulled into the dock, a fellow was shooting his Nikon at near motor drive speed and kept asking me "what kind of boat is this?". He obviously had his breath taken away by the grace of Chaos as she arrived in Block Island. Another fellow who had the look of an old salt referred to the weather conditions and said, "you guys are crazy." I explained that our course had been with the wind and seas and that we had enjoyed a pleasant sail all the way from Fisher's Island. His "you guys are crazy" exclamatory remark suddenly seemed a bit rash, given my description of our enjoyable passage. He went away quietly.

We enjoyed a several hour hike along the beach north of town almost all the way to the northern point of Block Island. Michael was questioning the need to circumnavigate the entire island on foot, and we finally agreed to head back.

The ride to Newport was uneventful, although we enjoyed raising the spinnaker for a good part of the ride.

The lesson and revelation of this trip was that we  fully enjoyed sailing without struggling too much by making small changes to our plans. We stopped early and pulled into a harbor with great protection on Fisher's Island. We chose to go to Block Island, allowing a broad reach in 35 kts of wind, which was a pleasant, fast ride on Chaos, instead of a much more difficult point of sail to Sag Harbor. After two days, the weather was fine for  our sail to Newport. We were able to enjoy sailing in conditions that could easily have ruined a trip had we made slightly different choices along the way. For me, making these small adjustments and discovering easy ways to enjoy difficult conditions is a new layer of skill that is developing from a base of knowledge about sailing technique, harbors in New England, weather analysis, and other basics of seamanship.