Bridges going through the Cape Cod Canal


We are back on the boat after a great visit in Toronto and I hate to say it, but things have turned around and our luck has changed. We have been travelling everyday for the last 5 days and nothing has gone wrong, we are finally getting the summer that we never had and instead of seeing about 1000 lobster traps a day, we are only seeing about 10 or so. Bruce is even getting his naps in and that makes for a happy skipper.

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Drew, Vicky, Bruce and I at Cape Elizabeth for lunch


We left the boat in Gloucester after leaving Rockport and seeing Mike and Lilianne for the last time this trip as they are on their way back to Toronto. We had considered a few places to leave the boat but many were either too expensive or did not want us to leave the boat unattended for 7 days. The harbormaster in Gloucester gave us a good deal and didn't mind us leaving. Gloucester also had train service right into Boston and then it was just a short cab ride to the airport so all in all it worked out fine. The only problem was that there was no launch service to take us to shore and the harbor master would not take us either so we had to leave the dingy on a dock for 7 days. Bruce was worried that it would get stolen or damaged but the harbor master assured us that it was safe parked at the coastguard station as there was always someone there as well as cameras. As we were getting ready to leave the boat another boat that was anchored in front of us started to drag his anchor and come very close to our boat. At one time he touched us and we had to push him off. We called that harbormaster and he assigned us another ball that was not behind the anchored boats. Thank goodness we were on the boat when it happened! The dinghy was also fine when we got back and it mustn't have rained much as it was dry too.

We arrived back in Boston on the 18th of September and spent the rest of the day getting the boat ready for an early morning departure. We needed fuel, water and groceries so it was a busy day and since we were up at 4 a.m. it wastn't hard to get to bed early. We left for Plymouth the next morning and anchored in a bay outside of Plymouth as it was a long motor into the town and we wanted to leave again the next day. We had been to Plymouth once before so we didn't mind missing it this time. We again had to get up very early as we were planning on going thru the Cape Cod Canal and because of the currents, you must go thru the canal on an ebb tide or wait outside the canal for the next ebb. We made it through with not much time to spare as we did get a bit of current against us as we left the canal. We were now out of Cape Cod Bay and in Buzzards Bay. This was like heaven as the wind was perfect for sailing and there were virtually NO lobster pots! We sailed as far as Mattapoisett and as if the day couldn't;t get any better, we were given a FREE transient mooring ball from Brownell Boatyard!

From Mattapoisett we left Massachusetts behind and went on to Newport, Rhode Island. We managed to get a town mooring in Newport and there was a launch service that would pick you up on your boat and take you into town. We spent the afternoon wandering around town and went to a great restaurant where I had the best pizza ever. It was a calamari pizza and was so big it could have fed 3 of us. Which it did as I took most of it back to the boat for Bruce and I to have for lunch the next day. We keep forgetting that we are now in the States and every meal is supersized! We considered staying in Newport for an extra day but the weather has been so great for travelling and we would still like to make it to New York in time to meet up with the 3 other boats from PCYC so we decided to travel while the weather was good and wait for a bad weather day to stay put.

Our next stop was Stonington, Connecticut and from there we could head into the Long Island Sound. We again fueled the boat, topped up the water and got some great fresh shrimp for our dinner. This was probably the nicest evening of this entire trip. We anchored in front of the town on a beautiful warm sunny afternoon and just enjoyed the rest of the day. The sunset was amazing and so was the shrimp. We watched boats sail by with people in shorts and t'shirts or no shirts at all. Hard to believe that this is the end of September not the end of July. I am sure it won't last but it is very nice to have. The water temperature is between 20 and 22 degrees insteat of 9 to 12 degrees so the evenings and days on the water are much warmer.


We are now in the Long Island Sound on our way to New Haven where we will stay for the night. This is where Yale University is and they claim to have invented the hamburger and the pizza here. There is a cold front approaching tonight but it is supposed to be a weak one so the weather should not get too bad. We just heard from the Yacht Club in New Haven and they are giving us a free mooring for the night. The wind has started to pick up as the cold front approaches so it will be nice to be on a ball for the night. From here we will plan our trip into New York City. We will probably get close tomorrow if the weather stays good and then wait for good weather to go through Hell Gate. I am not looking forward to this as everything I read makes it sound quite hellish! We are looking forward to seeing our friends from PCYC and I am looking forward to shopping in N.Y.

We were saddened to hear of the passing of our friend Brad Taylor's mother and the brother of our other friends Don and Arlene who spent some time with us at the beginning of this trip. It is always hard to be away from family and friends but it is especially hard at times like these. Our thoughts and prayers are with you guys and we wish we could be there with you.

Happy Birthday to me! Today is the last birthday that I plan on celebrating and it really just feels like another day on the water. Not quite the same when you have to get up and make your own breakfast and then make lunch for the skipper because he is busy sailing the boat! We have now arrived in City Island, New York and it is a great place to spend your birthday. There is one main drag with about 1000 restaurants on it. We are moored at the City Island Yacht Club and they have a 24 hour a day launch service so we didn't even have to be back by 8 p.m. We asked a few people where they would suggest we get dinner and everyone told us Arties, so that's where we went and we had a great dinner, so all in all it wasn't my worst birthday ever. Today, we finally got to do some laundry and get a few groceries. Bruce met a new friend here and he drove us to the laundromat and picked us up again. While I was doing the laundry, there was a salon next door that had a special on a manicure and pedicure for $23.00, so I said what the heck so between the washing and the drying, I got both sets of nails done too! You got to love New York! Tomorrow, we go shopping!!!!!

Well we have now logged over 2000 nautical miles and have had quite the adventure, sometimes more of an adventure than we want! When we left Toronto in June we were pretty naive and thought this would be an easy trip. We have found that it is a lot harder than we imaged and even though there has been great days, there have been more bad days than we want!

Bruce raising the American Courtesy flag

We are now in the United States, having left Yarmouth in the evening for a night crossing into Bar Harbor, Maine. Mike and Liliane(Zero Gravity) had left early in the morning to go to Gran Manan. We decided to skip Gran Manan and meet up with them in Bar Harbor. The night started out with great clear weather and a beautiful full moon. About 7 hours into the trip, the fog began to appear again. We were hoping once we left Nova Scotia we would also leave the fog behind. We arrived close to Bar Harbor in the early morning. Bruce was asleep in the cockpit and I was at the wheel when I saw a lobster trap floating in the water. The next thing I knew they were everywhere! I quickly woke Bruce up and he drove while I directed him around all the lobster traps. This was not an easy job as it was still very foggy and I had to open up the enclosure to see all the traps. This meant that not only was I tired, but I was cold and wet! We managed to get into the harbor around all the traps and tied up at the town dock to wait for customs to clear the boat. It was at first frustrating trying to get ahold of them but once we did it took about 2 hours for them to get to the boat. The customs officer was great and issued us a cruising permit on the spot and was gone in now time. We went out to a mooring ball and decide to go for a walk around Bar Harbor and have a rest in the afternoon. The city of Bar Harbor is on Great Desert Island and most of the island is a park that has all sorts of biking and hiking trails. J.J. Bean (sporting goods store) provides a free bus called the Island Explorer all over the island and it is a great way to get around and see everything. We returned to the boat after our walk and thought we would sleep and then have a nice quiet dinner. The next thing we knew it was 8:30 at night and we had slept right thru dinner! Mike and Liliane arrived that same evening a day earlier than we thought. They were on a ball when we got up having arrived at about 8 p.m.

We spent the next day exploring Mount Desert Island by bus. We took the bus to Northeast Harbour. Mike and Liliane had to wait out most of the day on their boat waiting for customs to clear them as there was a cruise ship in and customs was busy with them so they were unable to come with us. We were all staying another day so we took the bus into Southwest Harbor. We had lunch together and went to a couple of Marine stores as there always seems to be something we need.

We left with Mike and Liliane the next day and went to a beautiful anchorage on Marshall Island. We had hoped to visit Isle Au Haut but the anchorages there were not good for the winds that were forecast. Marshall Island in uninhabited but had a nice beach to dinghy over to and take a short walk.

Zero Gravity at anchor in Marshall Harbor

We left Marshall Harbor early the next morning for Rockland, Maine and this was by far the worst day we have had since leaving Toronto! Rather than head out to open water, we took a couple of thorofares thru some beautiful islands but also thousands of lobster pots. A book I am reading "Sailing Away from Winter" calls this coast the confetti coast. The lobster pots are so plentiful that it looks like someone thru a bunch of confetti into the water. Sailing around these pots makes for a very stressful passage. We both have to be on the lookout constantly for pots as well as other boats and buoys as well as navigate to our destination! Bruce is definitely not getting his morning and afternoon naps in anymore and that makes him a bit testy! We finally got the perfect wind to sail and we were afraid to put our sails up as that would give us one more thing to think about and we were already on overload. Many boats were passing us under full sail and plowing thru the pots. We couldn't believe how they didn't pick up the pots.

This did however build up our confidence and we decided when we passed through all the thorofare that we would put the sails up and sail the rest of the way to Rockland! It was a great sail the rest of the way until we took the sails down and realized that we must have a pot wrapped around our rudder as we had no steerage. When we put the boat in gear, it also made a horrible noise so we also figured that we had a pot around our prop! So much for the $200.00 blade we installed before leaving to cut any ropes that got caught on the prop. Luckily we were in open water and not in any danger of grounding. We called Boat U.S. which we joined before leaving home as they over free towing to members, but there was not a Boat U.S. operating out of Rockport. We got ahold of Zero Gravity and they sail that they would come back and tow us into the Rockport Harbor. Just inside the harbor was a safe place to drop the anchor and take a look at the problem. As they were swing around to put us into the wind to drop the anchor, their engine quite and they had picked up a pot also. They quickly dropped the anchor beside us and now we both had big problems. We felt terrible as they were helping us when it happened. Liliane and Mike are experienced divers and Liliane offered to suit up and go have a look at both boats. Bruce was very happy about this as the other option was for him to go into the water. Once in the water, she realized that she would also need tanks as the ropes were wrapped tightly around and she would have to spend some time under water to cut them. She manages to free Zero Gravity in about 15 minutes, which seemed a lot longer, and then swam over to our boat. It took much longer for her to free our boat and by this time she had been in the water for about 45 minutes. Even with a wet suit on it is a lot of time to be in water that was only 18 degrees. By the time she surfaced she was freezing and a bit hypodermic! We quickly brought her onto our boat and she got into a hot shower and then we wrapped her up in blankets and made some hot coffee! She was shivering so much, she could hardly talk.


Liliane in the water off Zero Gravity!

Our friends from the Mary T, Amy and Ken, were also in Rockland so we moved the boats over closer to them after we were free and we all went out for dinner together. This was the day that I was ready to come home and feeling quite homesick as I was missing a family get together for Bruce's mom's 85th birthday as well as, another friend's mother's 80th and Lindsay's first day back at school! Everything that could go wrong, was going wrong and we were both getting fed up about this time and feeling exhausted from it all! However, once we thought about it, we realized how much worse it must of been for Liliane as she was the one that had to do all the work freeing us! If she was still willing to keep going after all she had been through, we certainly could too! After a nice meal with friends and a good nights sleep we felt better. We stayed in Rockland for an extra day and took some time to get groceries, fuel and clean up the boat a bit.

From Rockland we motored over to Boothbay Harbor and anchored off the town. It was a really cute touristy town with lots of shops etc. We travelled with Mike and Liliane again and we all went out to dinner.

We left early the next day for Falmouth Foreside, which is just 5 miles outside of Portland. Our friends Brad and Anita have a good friend here that set us up at the Portland Yacht Club for the night. We had a drink with Drew on the boat and then went out to dinner with Drew and his wife Vicky. Drew and Vicky lent us their car for the next day and we went into Portland's Old Port to browse and go to another Marine Store! It was Drew's birthday during the week and Vicky was planning a surprise birthday dinner at the yacht club for him on Friday night. I sort of blew it by asking them to join us for dinner on Friday night and Vicky was forced to tell him about the surprise in order to explain why they were busy and not able to have dinner with us! They invited us to join in the birthday celebration at the club for dinner. What we didn't realize is that they also invited about 20 other members of their family also. We had a great time and enjoyed meeting so many new people. We then went over to Drew and Vicky's for cake. I must say, I have never seen a bigger carrot cake in my life! All I can say is Drew better get ready for next year's celebration if this year is any indication of the party's Vicky puts on for a non milestone birthday!

We will probably leave tomorrow with the Mary T, as Zero Gravity went a bit further than us the last couple of days. We will likely catch up with them again hopefully. We are working our way to Marblehead where we will leave the boat and fly home from Boston. Drew thinks that this would be our best bet and we agree. He has also given us tons of other advise and contacts which will come in handy as we continue our trip South. Will probably be home next Wednesday or Thursday if the weather forecast is right.