DAY FOUR

Pete and Pete remain in Block Island today and tomorrow due to the snow storm that is about to hit New England! Just a minor squall that will allow them one more day of exploration... Today they ate 1 of their 20 cups of brown rice.... and had some split pea soup made by Pete's mom! There was some piracy today... the Petes' boarded 3 ships that had been washed ashore in the harbor. (at the beach they saw 30 seals!!!!) They recovered (pirated) 1. a swimming laddar 2. boat painting supplies 3. scuba gear. 4. rope 5. gaff hook. One of the boats had only one mast, the other two had no masts...
They will weather the storm tomorrow and hunker down below deck... and will continue on to Mystic Connecticut on Saturday which looks like clear skies ahead!
We send them our best!



From: Peter Ver Ploeg

Pete and I woke up late this morning, after a fitful sleep, to discover that our dinghy had carried away in the night. Great. We motored over to the dock and headed off along the shore of the harbor on foot to find it. An hour later, we had our little zodiac back safe and sound and still fully inflated but, it had cost us precious daylight.

At 9:30 we motored out into Block Island Sound and directly into a stiff headwind and steeply stacked 5 ft swells. It was going to be a wet day. After three hours of motoring at full throttle, getting thrashed around by the waves and doused every ten seconds with heavy spray, we realized we wouldn't be able to make any safe harbor by dark and wouldn't make Mystic until well after. When the motor started putting out a black, oily discharge with the exhaust, we decided to turn around. Immediately the spray stopped, the wind dropped to a breeze, and the violent pounding eased into a lazy roll. We hung all our clothes on the boom to dry, killed the motor, raised the jib, and ran before the wind back to Block Island.

The rest of the afternoon was spent apart, independently exploring the shipwrecks and deserted points of the island before meeting back up for dinner.