Swimming in the Harbor

Crew: Andrew, Lena, Sergey

For most of the year, the water in Boston Harbor is too cold to swim—but for a few short weeks every summer it is just warm enough (that is, warm enough to avoid hypothermia!!). Having tested the waters a few days before, Andrew was confident that he could do it again—so for this sail we had a mission: to find a nice anchoring spot and go for a swim! 

We arrived at the dock around 9AM. Our boat was Amorina, a Sabre 30—probably one of the oldest boats owned by the Boston Sailing Center,—but a sturdy lady nevertheless. The GPS/chartplotter was broken, which made it the perfect boat for this chart-obsessed crew! The boat laid waiting for us at the end of the dock quietly, ready to take part in an adventure.

Knowing that we had to be back at around 3PM, there was no time to waste! Sergey and I raised the mainsail and unfurled the jib as Andrew pointed us into the wind. As we unfurled the jib, we noticed something terribly wrong—there was a flap at the foot of the jib that should not be there. After a bit of investigation, we concluded that the jib halyard was unlocked and therefore not all the way up. Amorina used a clutch system that we were not familiar with: instead of locking when the clutch was down, it locked when it was up. Sounded odd since anyone can accidentally sit or walk over the clutch (like I did at some point!) and the sails would come tumbling down. It was not until later that we discovered that there was a way to lock the line even when the clutch was down. Live and learn!

The wind was weak and blowing from the South East (SE). That meant that we were going to have to slowly and patiently zigzag our way out of the inner harbor since SE was our heading. A smaller boat on our port side was also struggling to catch enough wind in her sails. It was a shared struggle and we empathized with them. However, we had a motor and they didn’t. Noticing a few sailboats further south in the channel that seemed to be happily sailing with plenty of wind, we concluded that we needed to turn on the motor and get out of the shade of the Boston buildings. Which we did. We looked at our friends in the smaller boat, they looked at us as they heard our engine roar. I felt a little guilty—but later we found out that they managed to get out of the no-wind zone by themselves—which made me feel less guilty!

The wind was indeed better out of the shade of the Boston skyline and soon enough we were happily flying our sails toward the outer harbor. We had several options once we cleared Castle Island. We could go find a public mooring—Spectacle, Peddocks, Georges, and Gallops Islands all have public moorings—or we could anchor somewhere. As Andrew would say, “We have a perfectly good anchor and we know how to use it!”. In order to moor, we would have to go through either Nubble or the Narrows channels and—because of the SE wind—they would both require us to zigzag our way across, which would be annoying since those channels are narrow and we were short on time. So we decided not to do that and instead anchored just by the North East side of Spectacle Island. We approached the shore and when the depth sounder showed 10 feet of water under us, we furled the jib half-way and turned the boat into the wind. 

Andrew had a special treat reserved for us: we were going to be anchoring without a motor! Sergey and I waited for the boat to stop and once it did, we dropped the anchor. It went down vertically as expected and soon enough we felt it hit the bottom. The main was still up and some combination of wind and current turned our boat around such that in a few seconds the anchor line was under the boat and at risk of being caught by the keel! During our trip to Provincetown we had managed to catch the anchor line on the keel and it had taken us a while to figure out a way out of that mess.

We trimmed the main in order to drop it, which seemed to help with reversing the rotation likely caused by the current rather than the wind (a boat will naturally turn into the wind… unless the force exerted on the boat by the current is stronger). Since we did not have plans to go anywhere (other than swimming, of course), we didn’t care too much. We decided we would deal with that later. For the time being, we were all eager to jump in the water! After all, that was our mission for the day. 

The water was not unpleasant—there were pockets of warmer water and pockets of colder water but we all enjoyed the freedom of being able to swim around the Amorina. We did not see any jellyfish this time in spite of several warnings of giant jellyfish having been seen in Boston Harbor. After the swim, it was time for lunch. Andrew had brought a bottle of Rosé with hints of grapefruit which was a very pleasant addition to the sandwiches we made. It felt nice to hang out in the cockpit after a swim. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, but be present and enjoy each other’s company.

Since we had to be back by 3PM, we didn’t linger there for very long. The anchor line was still resting on the keel so we would have to be careful bringing the anchor back up onto the boat. We tried unfurling the jib half way but there was no easy way to rotate the boat without wind. Sergey and Andrew ended up pulling on the anchor line in the hope that it would rotate us enough to force the bow to rotate toward the anchor. What happened instead was that the anchor came loose and they just pulled it back at the stern. Which was awkward... but it worked! Sergey carried the heavy anchor to the bow and we secured it. Then we were ready to sail again! With jib unfurled and mainsail raised, we were on our way back home. 

With the wind now to our port side and the tide with us, the trip back to the dock on a beam reach was easy and relaxed. We were almost at Castle Island when Sergey and Andrew felt the first drops of rain. We knew rain and thunder were on the forecast for late afternoon but were hoping that we would be back in the dock by then. Sergey quickly went to the salon to change into his bright yellow foul weather gear—Andrew and I decided that it might be a good idea to waterproof ourselves also. Other boats didn’t seem as scared by the potential of a downpour as we did. Plenty of motor boats and sailboats were buzzing past us on their way to the outer harbor. The wind seemed to be getting stronger.
It was only 2.30PM when we approached the BSC, so Sergey—who was at the helm at the time—decided that we hadn’t sailed enough. As a result, instead of dropping the mainsail at this point like we would normally do, we just kept going—past the U.S. Coast Guard docks and up toward Charlestown where we got a glimpse of the USS Constitution before coming back.

Foul weather gear

The USS Constitution in Charlestown

Once at the dock, we celebrated another successful day on (and "in") the water by drinking a bottle of red wine that Andrew had brought. In spite of our efforts to get rid of Andrew’s cases of wine, he pointed out that we still have a long way to go! Which means we need to work harder at it next time!