Saturday began with some wind from the south, so before noon we hoisted our anchors and both Cailte and Robin headed for the Cape Cod Canal. Our course was a bit more westerly than the direct route for the canal entrance, and then the wind veered to the west. As a result, our progress toward our goal was slowed substantially.
In time, both boats were motoring into a brisk headwind. My first time making this particular crossing was aboard Cailte. This time, Robin was in the lead.

Perhaps due to the strong southwesterly breeze, although we entered the eastern end of the canal right on time for the current to change in our favor, we found an adverse current. That lasted a good half way through the canal, and it warned us of rough seas once we exited the canal in Buzzards Bay, a body of water notorious for its southesterly afternoon chop.
That complicated things, because to enter Onset Harbor, within a mile of the western entrance to the canal, requires some rapid maneuvering. If the water was bumpy, that sharp turn to starboard might be dodgey.
For once, I was introducing Tom to something new. He'd never been to Onset in his 29 voyages to Maine. So I had described the Onset entrance in detail: The green tower on a pile of rocks that marked the near end of the entrance, the green can just beyond that marked the far end, and the currents that sawed in opposite directions within a few feet and that tried to shove your bow onto the rock pile.
I radioed Tom just before we reached the entrnce. Fortunately, we were through the worst bucking that the Buzzards Bay breeze created on the ebbing current.
I made my sharp turn into Onset and, glancing quickly so as not to lose my bearing, I looked back to see Tom, his teeth gnashing as Cailte went through the Onset Waltz.
We both anchored outside the mooring fields of a marina and a yacht club, and the next day all of us went ashore for dinner with my relatives, Betty and Ted Campbell, who live nearby, and with my sister, Janet, and her husband, Dennis.
On Monday, we parted company with Tom, who waited for the arrival of his brother, Mike, to help him take Cailte back to New Jersey. It was another day of motoring, but one punctuated, when we arrived off Newport, RI, our destination, with a fanfare of lightning and thunder that escorted us into Newport Harbor.