Fantasy Island

We’ve just spent two full weeks at Block Island. Beach walks, swimming, reading, eating and drinking, hanging out with our boating friends – what could be better? We’ve had marvelous times at Block before, particularly an unexpectedly long stay last August when the winds took their time coming around to the right direction for leaving. In the year since, we have fantasized about coming back, practically every daydream about living on the boat revolving around this special place.

When we first arrived though, our excitement about being here was dashed a bit by the actual experience. Having our anchor drag was completely unexpected, and we were quite sobered by the knowledge that only luck had prevented a costly accident. We were also irritated by the over-crowded anchorage. Somehow, in all of our fantasies, there just weren’t so many people here!  

 

Acacia

Notably missing among all of those people were our friends Lynne and Rick, whom we had met last year here in Great Salt Pond. Their boat, Acacia is a Southern Cross 35, a twin of our own Valkyrie. We seem to be simpatico in many other ways as well, and had spent some wonderful times with them on both visits here. Now they will forever be associated with Block Island, and although we’ve known for a little while that they would be up north in Maine with their boat when we arrived, it turned out to be a big disappointment not to hear Lynne call out to us with her characteristic New York/Italian accent, “Way-ow!” We really missed them.

It only took a couple of days to recover our love of the island though. Over this past year, Rick and I have gotten into walking nearly every day around our Baltimore neighborhood. We’re trying to keep that up - as much as that is possible while living on a boat – and Block has been wonderful for walking opportunities. We walk into town to visit the library, the post office and the grocery store. We walk along the beautiful crescent beach almost every afternoon. There are even hiking trails all around the island.

Sunsets here are a complete pleasure. We sit out in the cockpit of our boat, eating dinner and sipping wine while watching the ever-changing colors in the western sky. Who needs Netflix when you have this? The boating community has a Block Island tradition of blasting horns at the point of sundown, and often there’s a cannon blast too. It can be a little annoying while you’re trying to enjoy a sunset, but it’s very short-lived, and once I learned to put in earplugs ahead of time, I found it much more charming. We even participated on a couple of evenings.

Then there was the super indulgent pleasure of dinner at the Spring House, a long awaited meal preceded by drinks on the lawn. This experience from previous visits is so etched in our minds and so anticipated that we can’t seem to imagine ordering anything new from the menu. We’ve been salivating for those familiar dishes all year, and even though we peruse the possibilities with great interest, we end up ordering exactly the same items every time we are here. I’m guessing that we might be more adventurous if we came here more often, but this time at least, we went with the old tried and true, and it fulfilled every wish.

Amid all the pleasures of Block, we’re still struggling with the dinghy question. Although we love the Trinka, she doesn’t make our lives easy. We used to pull our inflatable up on a pebbly beach without a second thought, or motor it in to a dinghy dock full of other boats simply looking for a slightly open spot to cram ourselves into. Now we have to worry about scraping the bottom of our beautiful little boat, or scratching her perfectly painted sides when touching other dinghies or their motors. Rick has taken to anchoring her away from the other dinghies and then wading out to get her when we come back. The shame of it is, with all of that extra care and attention, we’re really not using her the way we had envisioned. Our fantasy had been that we would spend many happy afternoons sailing her around the anchorage here at Block. In the two weeks since we’ve been here, we have only sailed her once.

As it so often happens, the reality didn’t quite live up to this particular fantasy. It took Rick an hour or so to get Yalma rigged up for sailing, and once aboard, we had a difficult time getting comfortable. We had decided to take the oars with us on our maiden voyage in case of some calamity, and they take up a fair bit of space in this little boat. Then we had to seat ourselves in some way that would keep us out of the way of the boom. We both had a good time, but we weren’t out very long before we wanted to get back to our bigger boat where we could stretch our sore limbs. Then Rick had to take it all down again. In the week and a half that followed, we intended to go out sailing many times but somehow . . . it just never happened. One of our elderly neighbors in a cool old motorboat had a sailing dinghy, and we watched him take it out almost every day. He looked like he was having a blast, but I’m convinced it was just an act to make us feel bad.

During the past few days of our stay we were finally joined by Lynne and Rick. Sadly, we didn’t have time to go fishing or birding with them, but it was wonderful to spend a few evenings together, eating boat prepared meals and chatting. They served us an incredible Portuguese paella with mussels and clams fresh caught by Rick (Lynne’s Rick, not mine).  The Spring House has nothing on them, let me tell you!

 

Rick and Lynne

We left Block early yesterday morning, sailing all day to Onset, MA.  Pulling in late in the day, we anchored – carefully this time – and dinghied in to fulfill another fantasy, an army sized portion of Marc Anthony’s pizza and clams!