Hinckley - At a dock, waiting for genset repairs

Volvo Ocean Racer - speed!

The weather is great but we're waiting for Monday when the repairs on the genset start. This marina is deceptively difficult to dock at in any kind of wind. Although there appears to be a seawall between the marina and Narragansett Bay, the seawall is wooden and does not go down to the seafloor so current is free to flow through the marina. The seawall does block the waves pretty well but not the current. With the wind blowing 20+ kts and the current flowing 1 to 2 kts, a 45 foot sailboat tried to dock this afternoon with disastrous results. They wound up t-boned against the end of the dock next to us but finally worked their way into the slip with much screeching of grinding of fiberglass on the wooden docks. They had just bought their boat and the skipper wasn't that familiar yet with the handling characteristics. Well, nobody was hurt and the boat didn't seem to suffer permanent damage. The skipper came over afterwards with a bottle of wine for the efforts we put in to help him into his slip.

Our little boat is the one with the short mast

Meanwhile, I worked some on cleaning out the siphon that puts the A/C cooling water overboard so that works again (there is always something to do on a boat!) After wine on the back of the boat, we once again took advantage of the nearby Melville Grill for dinner (if you're ever in the area, be sure and drop by).

We found that Hinckley is not the only yard with expensive ocean racers in the area. Next door there was a Volvo ocean racer cooling its heels ( see photo). To a sailor, these boats are beautiful but they sure spend a lot of time on the hard. The dollars spent per racing hour must be astronomical.  You can see from the photo of the marina how small our little boat is amongst the giants, quite modest but it's home for us.