We are having problems with our claude@sailtheblue.com. So please send emails to cdsail@mindspring.com.

8/24/05

Navigating in the fog in a large commercial harbor demands some of the deftness that one should have in a bar brawl. Stay away from the very large guys. Also keeping your back to the wall is not a bad practice.

So, that about sums up how we left Boston harbor on a Saturday morning in zero visibility. "Zero visibility" means that we could barely see beyond the bows of Cénou . We left the dock at 6AM only to see the fog bank close in. At that point we wisely turned back into the harbor and anchored to wait it out. The forecast called for fog dissipating in the morning. I suppose I became impatient, or maybe I wanted out of Boston, in any case against Rike's sage protest we headed out, for a second time, at 8 AM..

My strategy was to skirt the green side of the ship channel when I had no other options but to be in the channel, listen to radio channel 13 (that's where commercial traffic communicates) and go outside of the ship channel as soon as possible. That worked relatively well, although anxiety was high, especially when that big guy, whose horn found us in the whiteness, made me wish I had listened to Rike.

Speaking of whom, Rike has become a better radar tech, a job that demands high concentration while looking out for every speck on the screen. As we float in the whiteness she tunes the radar to look far away, maybe four miles. When a speck appears on the screen she has to figure it's "range and bearing", making sure that either the "range" (distance) increases or the "bearing"(relative angle) changes. A decreasing range and constant bearing is a very bad thing.

Ships tend to appear as large "targets" (nomenclature brought to you by the military who first came up with radar) on the screen, but that large target could be a small boat with a big time radar reflector ( there are electronic reflectors that can make a small skiff look like a super-tanker. Their legality is in question though) or a channel marker, a rock or even the float of a lobster pot. Also, the target could be sailing or motoring. In other words, every target is given as careful consideration as an other until it can be identified or passes by unseen in the fog. Fun stuff that makes me hope to never be in fog again and always makes me say "this is the last time I choose to leave in this s---t."

So we made it to Kittery, Maine, in the Piscataqua river. Our trip,aside from the fog, was uneventful. Wind was light and we sailed slowly to our destination.

The Piscataqua river is the second fastest navigable river in the United States, second only to the Columbia River with a current that can be as high as seven knots. While we were watching the current ripping by the first lift bridge, a local told us "many sailboats have gone under this bridge sideways."

We will not be attempting to navigate the river however, and are anchored in Pepperel Cove at the mouth of the river, next to Truant and Zia. Truant is a beautiful sixty year old fifty five foot schooner which fished out of Nova Scotia until it was bought by a man from Gloucester, Massachusetts forty years ago. That man eventually turned it into a Sea Scout boat until it fell too much into disrepair and ended up for sale.

Christian saw it, his wife Michelle loved it and the owner simply gave them the rotting and leaky vessel which they have been beautifully restoring.

Truant is a vessel that needs a full time crew of four or five but only has Christian and Michelle to man it. This is a monumental task. The maintenance alone is a full time job, never mind dealing with all the sail area using only lines and creaky wooden blocks. It took Christian, Joe from Zia and me to "weigh anchor". The 150 pound anchor of Truant and it's 100 feet of half inch chain, give real meaning to the term, which on Cénou is accomplished by pushing on a button. As Christian says, "by the time I get the anchor up and all the sails up, it's time to anchor again."

From Kittery we have started our sail south with a stop in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod. The forecast was 15 to 20 knots gusting 25 from the north. So we thought we were in for a fast sail. The reality is that for the 65 miles of the trip we never saw more than 8 knots and most of the time less. Loads of motoring, much to my chagrin, and a night arrival kept us on our toes.

With GPS, chartplotters and Radar night arrival should be very easy. The only problem is that the harbors and their approaches are loaded with lobster pots waiting to ambush the propellers and leave us dead in the water. So we motored in the darkness into the harbor and gingerly found the heaviest concentration of lobster pots in the harbor. Bingo! At that point I gave up and dropped anchor. Better to hear little bumps from the floats banging on the hulls than diving over the side in darkness or worst, damage our newly rebuilt transmissions.

The highlights of our sail to Provincetown were the whales. We saw a fluke, we saw them spouting, but we never got very close to them. It is illegal to approach whales, but I think the three big whale-watch boats we saw must have some kind of exemption. The way these boats, following the whales with sonar I am sure, power hard from one spot to another, backing down, turning etc and getting within feet of these whales has got to be disturbing. In any case, the sightings made up for the long motoring.

All is holding well on Cénou, aside from the windows, for anyone wondering.

So all is well here, we have started home schooling and that will be, I am sure, a subject in the next e-mail.

Bis bald

Cénou