What kinds of trips?

While my grad course work and other aspects of life keep me ashore, my mind turns to wondering how I would characterize my trips.

At least half of my trips are adventures: either going to new places, sailing in difficult conditions, pushing the envelope a bit in a new boat, or trying to achieve something I haven't done before.  The rest are a mixture: returning to favorite places like Fogland in the Sakonnet River, or Martha's Vineyard or Cuttyhunk; trips with the boys in mind, like the trip up the Cole River with Trevor a few years ago or the camping trip among the Boston Harbor islands with Stephen last year.  A few have been event-related, like the trip in Boston Harbor two years ago to watch the Tall Ships come into port.  Then there are the few that are more about relaxation than about going places--the shortest of these (sailing distance-wise) was my two days anchored in Newport Harbor, there only to sight-see.

My adventure trips are often related to covering ground.  I decided when I was first dreaming about the new boat-to-be that I would sail all the coast of this area.  After 5 seasons of sailing, I've met that goal for nearly all of Narragansett Bay and its islands, nearly the entire lengths of the Providence River and Taunton River (in various drifting and paddling boats as well as sailing), the "Southeast Corner" and sailed parts of the south coast of Massachusetts, Boston Harbor, and Cape Cod Bay.

My most memorable of this sort so far were the very first overnight with the two boys around Prudence Island in '05; from Narragansett to Block Island with the boys (while hurricane Beryl was heading up the coast) and a solo trip from Oakland Beach all the way out around the end of Jamestown and back in '06; the spring trip with Aron and Stephen from Fall River past Fogland in the Sakkonet River, a trip across Cape Cod Bay from Plymouth to Provincetown (our longest so far at 4 nights), an overnight in Lake Pepin with Bea and the two boys on a trailering trip to the midwest, all in '07; '08 trips from Warwick to Fall River, a trip around Aquidneck from Sakkonet Harbor with Stephen, from New Bedford to Martha's Vineyard with Trevor, and a solo from New Bedford to Westport, where Bea and the boys met me for dinner; our '09 trip out of Hingham for the first time to see Tall Ships, our adventure from New Bedford to Nantucket and the near-loss of the Beatrice Ann when she dragged anchor; our '10 trip in Surprise up the Providence & Seekonk Rivers, my solo to from New Bedford to Hyannis, with Stephen from Hingham to Georges Island and camping on Grape I., and now my solos in the Taunton River in December in Surprise, and this year's March float trip in Bebe.

Here are some adventures I'd like to do some time in the future, in no particular order.

1. Sail from New Bedford, through the Cape Cod Canal, into Cape Cod Bay and tour the inside of the Cape. This won't be possible until I have a real motor: the Coast Guard does not suffer passage of boats that can't reliably maintain 6kt all the way.

2. More adventurous than the above: sail from New Bedford across Buzzards Bay through Woods Hole and along the south coast of Mass, around the outside of the Cape and then across Cape Cod Bay to Boston (maybe via Plymouth).  That would be about six days of sailing, most of those days long.

3. Explore Boston Harbor and the coast of Massachusetts Bay

4. Sail from lower Narragansett Bay westward along the Connecticut coast to Mystic: a visit to Old Mystic Seaport was one of the inspirations for my return to sailing.

5. Sail west from Narragansett Bay to Long Island, NY--possibly via Block Island.

6. A kayak camping trip along some of the Indian river trails of eastern Mass.