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Crew: Andrew, Lena, Sergey
The week had been long—particularly long because I had been working 11 hour days and putting in several hours over the previous weekend to get ready for a presentation on Wednesday. So a day sail on Saturday was very welcome as a way to recover my strength.
Our boat was the Camilla, a Beneteau 36.7—the same boat with the giant steering wheel that we had sailed earlier in the year to Provincetown. Andrew asked me to steer her out of the slip. “OK,” I said, “let’s do this”. With the wind directly ahead at us at this point, I did not face any issues getting out of the slip and turning her to starboard. Before raising the sails, Andrew asked me to build some intuition for driving her in reverse and taught me how to rotate her 180 degrees in place with the motor (if I remember correctly, the trick is wheel to starboard, a jolt of the motor in reverse, then wheel to port, followed by a jolt of the motor forward). In reality, the Camilla did not really like the reverse jolt but we did manage to rotate her in place. Kind of…
Then it was time to sail! There wasn’t a lot of wind, but we were going to try to sail anyway. With the mainsail raised, she sailed a bit but not a lot, so we unfurled the jib. The inner harbor had some spots with wind, but it was very spotty. We made slow progress toward Castle Island. Andrew wanted to visit an island. I looked at the chart and both Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster seemed to be able to provide protection from the south wind—not that the wind mattered much for anchoring at that point as there wasn’t any! The Brewsters and neighbouring islands are always fun places to visit—this same crew had visited Calf Island earlier in the year and we enjoyed it. Sergey really wanted to go to Outer Brewster, where he and Andrew had been before—Sergey’s favorite island in the harbor.
We would need to turn the motor on if we wanted to have time to do some island exploration. Sergey turned on the engine—which was fortunately not very noisy—and steered us toward South Channel. Andrew and I were navigating.
I was still thinking about how to guide Sergey through Hypocrite Channel when Andrew asked “where are we going to anchor”. He’s always 4 or 5 steps ahead of me. I immediately said, “we need the cruising guide!” (I remembered how I had tried to google for anchorage in Nahant and failed!), to which Andrew responded “we don’t have a cruising guide” (because this is a blog and not a vlog, you’re going to have to imagine me making the “epic fail sound” here).
I glanced at the chart, and there were a few places where we could anchor. I was looking for depths of 15-20 ft that didn’t get too shallow too fast. What I didn’t consider though was the wind direction. There was a little bit of wind inside the arrowhead-shaped body of water between Calf Island on one side, and Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster on the other. The wind was blowing from the east, strangely enough. We aimed for the region just right of Flying Place, i.e. the channel between Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster, in the hopes that we would be able to row to Outer Brewster, the island that Sergey really wanted to visit.
Just like last time when we had been here, the profusion of lobster traps made for a high anxiety inducing anchoring attempt. I understand that the fishermen have to make a living, but it’s a big ocean, they could drop their lobster traps further away from anchorage sites (and give the lobster a little bit of space to roam free without having to worry about a trap!). Anyway, we aborted the anchoring because we were too close to Middle Brewster, and the wind was not blowing us away from the island as we expected it would. There were really no good anchorage sites along the north coast of Outer Brewster so Andrew made the decision of going around the island and trying the anchorage by the south coast.
Here again there was a profusion of lobster traps. After a careful anchoring maneuver while not getting our propeller caught in lobster traps, we were able to drop the anchor and verify that it was secure. I looked over the life lines and saw dozens of tiny jellyfish in the water—I think they were Mnemiopsis—they looked very cool! They don’t sting and they glow blue-green when disturbed. It might’ve been fun to swim among them but neither of us was very sure about whether the jellyfishes were the stinging kind or not.
After waiting a few minutes to make sure that the anchor was holding the boat, we opened up the lunch buffet! Homemade bread and hummus, compliments of captain Andrew, complemented with smoked salmon and cream cheese, compliments of helmsman Sergey and navigator Lena. Andrew brought some of that nice rosé wine with grapefruit juice that he often brings, which had the double advantage of being a delicious wine and not staining the deck like red wine tends to do.
Then, it was time to go explore Outer Brewster—we inflated the dinghy and off we went. Sergey had seen a gravel beach on the way over that would be a good place to beach our dinghy, so he guided us there. There was indeed a gravel beach next to an abandoned fortification—the only problem was that there didn’t seem to be a way into the rest of the island from here. After looking around we found some rocks to climb and a path forward.
During World War II, Outer Brewster was part of a military reservation (thus the fortifications). Probably because of the low availability of freshwater (mostly from rainfall), the greatest biodiversity in the island is along the intertidal pools. As a side note—during my marine biology days, I learned that the reason why these pools are so diverse is because of the high availability of oxygen, which is very attractive for several underwater and bottom dwelling creatures, but it comes with the disadvantage that the pool can dry off or freeze, leading to a fierce struggle for survival that accelerates the emergence of biodiversity. The rock formation and the pools on the island reminded me of days spent collecting sea urchins from intertidal pools while the waves crashed on my cold and numb legs.
After going around the rocky shore, we found a way to climb to a trail. I was glad that I had decided to wear my jeans that day because the thorny plants were plenty (not sure what led the thorny plants on this island to thrive… or maybe they had been brought here for a purpose, perhaps related to its use by the military).
Sergey found a way into the barracks, which were pretty cool, and then he found the “dungeon” he was looking for—a T-shaped set of corridors that was long enough to be in complete darkness in certain places. We ended our Outer Brewster adventure by climbing to the roof of one of the barracks to admire the awesome view of the Boston Harbor Islands—we could see all of the Brewsters, plus Calf Island and Little Calf, Green Island and Roaring Bulls. We could also see Boston Light, the Graves Light and the city of Boston.
Our return to the Camilla was uneventful, and soon we were on our way back to Boston—contrary to what the forecast had predicted, the wind was coming from the west, not the south. Sergey was once again a helmsman, and I was a navigator—once we cleared Shag Rocks, the wind died, leaving me to wonder whether we should turn the engine on. Fortunately we didn’t have to, as the wind soon picked up again and we were flying toward the Narrows. With the east wind, I calculated, we would have to tack our way up President Roads. When we got there, however, Sergey noticed that he could steer close to the wind and point toward the line of red buoys marking the right side of the channel, which probably meant that the wind had shifted to a south south west direction. Hey, looked like we were going to make it without tacking after all. And we did! After a successful docking maneuver performed by Sergey, the crew lingered in the boat for a while and toasted to another successful day on the water.
It’s easy to get used to this life—knowing that sooner or later Andrew is going to ping me about an upcoming sail, and I’m going to do everything in my power to join him. However, as I witness the weather changing around me and the trees dressing up for Fall, and the inevitable “last day of the season” rapidly approaching, that feeling of “Mono no aware” or the transience of things becomes stronger and stronger. This time of year I often catch myself dreaming about travelling and settling in a place with warmer weather where I can sail year round. But I think I would not easily find anywhere else like Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay. In a way, it is the transience of the sailing weather in these parts that makes this a very special place to sail.
Our boat was the Camilla, a Beneteau 36.7—the same boat with the giant steering wheel that we had sailed earlier in the year to Provincetown. Andrew asked me to steer her out of the slip. “OK,” I said, “let’s do this”. With the wind directly ahead at us at this point, I did not face any issues getting out of the slip and turning her to starboard. Before raising the sails, Andrew asked me to build some intuition for driving her in reverse and taught me how to rotate her 180 degrees in place with the motor (if I remember correctly, the trick is wheel to starboard, a jolt of the motor in reverse, then wheel to port, followed by a jolt of the motor forward). In reality, the Camilla did not really like the reverse jolt but we did manage to rotate her in place. Kind of…
 |
Then it was time to sail! There wasn’t a lot of wind, but we were going to try to sail anyway. With the mainsail raised, she sailed a bit but not a lot, so we unfurled the jib. The inner harbor had some spots with wind, but it was very spotty. We made slow progress toward Castle Island. Andrew wanted to visit an island. I looked at the chart and both Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster seemed to be able to provide protection from the south wind—not that the wind mattered much for anchoring at that point as there wasn’t any! The Brewsters and neighbouring islands are always fun places to visit—this same crew had visited Calf Island earlier in the year and we enjoyed it. Sergey really wanted to go to Outer Brewster, where he and Andrew had been before—Sergey’s favorite island in the harbor.
 |
We would need to turn the motor on if we wanted to have time to do some island exploration. Sergey turned on the engine—which was fortunately not very noisy—and steered us toward South Channel. Andrew and I were navigating.
I was still thinking about how to guide Sergey through Hypocrite Channel when Andrew asked “where are we going to anchor”. He’s always 4 or 5 steps ahead of me. I immediately said, “we need the cruising guide!” (I remembered how I had tried to google for anchorage in Nahant and failed!), to which Andrew responded “we don’t have a cruising guide” (because this is a blog and not a vlog, you’re going to have to imagine me making the “epic fail sound” here).
 |
I glanced at the chart, and there were a few places where we could anchor. I was looking for depths of 15-20 ft that didn’t get too shallow too fast. What I didn’t consider though was the wind direction. There was a little bit of wind inside the arrowhead-shaped body of water between Calf Island on one side, and Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster on the other. The wind was blowing from the east, strangely enough. We aimed for the region just right of Flying Place, i.e. the channel between Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster, in the hopes that we would be able to row to Outer Brewster, the island that Sergey really wanted to visit.
Just like last time when we had been here, the profusion of lobster traps made for a high anxiety inducing anchoring attempt. I understand that the fishermen have to make a living, but it’s a big ocean, they could drop their lobster traps further away from anchorage sites (and give the lobster a little bit of space to roam free without having to worry about a trap!). Anyway, we aborted the anchoring because we were too close to Middle Brewster, and the wind was not blowing us away from the island as we expected it would. There were really no good anchorage sites along the north coast of Outer Brewster so Andrew made the decision of going around the island and trying the anchorage by the south coast.
 |
Here again there was a profusion of lobster traps. After a careful anchoring maneuver while not getting our propeller caught in lobster traps, we were able to drop the anchor and verify that it was secure. I looked over the life lines and saw dozens of tiny jellyfish in the water—I think they were Mnemiopsis—they looked very cool! They don’t sting and they glow blue-green when disturbed. It might’ve been fun to swim among them but neither of us was very sure about whether the jellyfishes were the stinging kind or not.
 Jellyfish |
After waiting a few minutes to make sure that the anchor was holding the boat, we opened up the lunch buffet! Homemade bread and hummus, compliments of captain Andrew, complemented with smoked salmon and cream cheese, compliments of helmsman Sergey and navigator Lena. Andrew brought some of that nice rosé wine with grapefruit juice that he often brings, which had the double advantage of being a delicious wine and not staining the deck like red wine tends to do.
Then, it was time to go explore Outer Brewster—we inflated the dinghy and off we went. Sergey had seen a gravel beach on the way over that would be a good place to beach our dinghy, so he guided us there. There was indeed a gravel beach next to an abandoned fortification—the only problem was that there didn’t seem to be a way into the rest of the island from here. After looking around we found some rocks to climb and a path forward.
 The gravel beach that Sergey had seen |
During World War II, Outer Brewster was part of a military reservation (thus the fortifications). Probably because of the low availability of freshwater (mostly from rainfall), the greatest biodiversity in the island is along the intertidal pools. As a side note—during my marine biology days, I learned that the reason why these pools are so diverse is because of the high availability of oxygen, which is very attractive for several underwater and bottom dwelling creatures, but it comes with the disadvantage that the pool can dry off or freeze, leading to a fierce struggle for survival that accelerates the emergence of biodiversity. The rock formation and the pools on the island reminded me of days spent collecting sea urchins from intertidal pools while the waves crashed on my cold and numb legs.
After going around the rocky shore, we found a way to climb to a trail. I was glad that I had decided to wear my jeans that day because the thorny plants were plenty (not sure what led the thorny plants on this island to thrive… or maybe they had been brought here for a purpose, perhaps related to its use by the military).
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 The Camilla and Boston Light |
Sergey found a way into the barracks, which were pretty cool, and then he found the “dungeon” he was looking for—a T-shaped set of corridors that was long enough to be in complete darkness in certain places. We ended our Outer Brewster adventure by climbing to the roof of one of the barracks to admire the awesome view of the Boston Harbor Islands—we could see all of the Brewsters, plus Calf Island and Little Calf, Green Island and Roaring Bulls. We could also see Boston Light, the Graves Light and the city of Boston.
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Our return to the Camilla was uneventful, and soon we were on our way back to Boston—contrary to what the forecast had predicted, the wind was coming from the west, not the south. Sergey was once again a helmsman, and I was a navigator—once we cleared Shag Rocks, the wind died, leaving me to wonder whether we should turn the engine on. Fortunately we didn’t have to, as the wind soon picked up again and we were flying toward the Narrows. With the east wind, I calculated, we would have to tack our way up President Roads. When we got there, however, Sergey noticed that he could steer close to the wind and point toward the line of red buoys marking the right side of the channel, which probably meant that the wind had shifted to a south south west direction. Hey, looked like we were going to make it without tacking after all. And we did! After a successful docking maneuver performed by Sergey, the crew lingered in the boat for a while and toasted to another successful day on the water.
It’s easy to get used to this life—knowing that sooner or later Andrew is going to ping me about an upcoming sail, and I’m going to do everything in my power to join him. However, as I witness the weather changing around me and the trees dressing up for Fall, and the inevitable “last day of the season” rapidly approaching, that feeling of “Mono no aware” or the transience of things becomes stronger and stronger. This time of year I often catch myself dreaming about travelling and settling in a place with warmer weather where I can sail year round. But I think I would not easily find anywhere else like Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay. In a way, it is the transience of the sailing weather in these parts that makes this a very special place to sail.
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