Maine Bound

We’re in Maine, anchored there between Peaks Island and Little Diamond Island in a quiet spot.  We’re close to Portland – about a 20 minute ferry ride, but without the bustle and noise of being in the city.  There aren’t a lot of anchorages where you can take a dinghy into the main city so we figured to be near someplace we can take a ferry would be more comfortable and cheaper than getting a slip in town.

The trip here was surprisingly uneventful.  All of our weather forecasts pointed to Thursday as the day to leave Mattapoisett, with the winds starting out strong from the Southwest.  The expectation was the winds would continue into the evening then somewhere around midnight or shortly after die off, then shift to light Northerly winds after 2:00 a.m.  With a total trip distance of about 125 nautical miles we plan on about 20-22 hours of travel time, depending on the wind and weather.

Part of this trip is transiting the Cape Cod Canal.  We’ve done this a few times before – it’s not difficult, you just have to time it right.  The Canal can throw some wicked currents in your face if you hit it at the wrong time, and make for a really quick transit if you do it right.   With currents sometimes hitting five knots of speed, a boat that motors at eight knots will have a slow passage with wrong timing.  A slower boat might be able to get through at all, at least not with the time limits imposed by the canal authorities.

The other timing issue is on the arrival.  If at all possible it is best to arrive at a new harbor during daylight.  When you are driving in a new town on roads at night it’s harder to find your way.  This is a hundred times worse on the water, where it is darker, there are no roads and the marks are few and far between.  It is easy to become disoriented and misinterpret the aids to navigation in a harbor you’ve never seen; even a familiar harbor is very different at night.  The most dangerous places for a boat are near land so you don’t want to do this if you can avoid it.

Our plotted course suggested leaving Mattapoisett at a leisurely 10:00 for maximum canal current in our favor and an arrival time after dawn in Portland.  With this in mind we set out.  Before we could leave though we had to sort out one minor problem, in that we had furled out main poorly a few days before and still hadn’t gotten all the folds in the mast sorted.  The main sail wasn’t coming all the way out and had a horrible slow shape.  So we weighed anchor a bit early and sorted this out, finally getting our full main sail back, and leaving a bit before 10:00.

The sail to the canal was fast and easy, and the transit of the canal was fast.  On the Cape Cod Bay side of the canal the wind was a bit lighter but picked up as we left land.  The only unfortunate thing was the direction – a bit more South and a lot less West than predicted which put it nearly behind us.  My least favorite point of sail, because it is SLOW if you try and hold it.  The only way to make the boat go fast is to sail higher up wind, using the better wind angles to make the boat faster.  Sailing slightly off course this way is actually faster because you can make the boat move more distance in the direction you want because you are sailing a lot faster even though you are sailing off course.  Just like going upwind you zig-zag back and forth to stay near your course.

The Southerlies held until after midnight and never moved West, but the wind died close to 2:00 a.m. as expected.  Accompanying this was a lot of rain in a short period.  With no wind and ocean roll we were making no progress and banging up the equipment.  Cloud cover hid the crescent moon, and the night was black as only a moonless night off shore can; at least the fog we’d had earlier in the evening had cleared.  To spare the sails flogging and equipment banging we started up the engine and begain motoring back on our course.

Portland Head Light marks the entrance to Portland

A bit later the wind came back from the North, but stronger than predicted – blowing 15+ knots instead of the 5-7 we’d expected.  During the day, or on a brightly lit evening we’d have put the sails back up and climbed upwind.  On a pitch black night at 3:00 a.m where you can’t see your sail shape without bringing up a flashlight to look…well we decided to just keep motoring.

The dawn brought sight of land shortly after, and we knew we’d hit Portland about the time we’d planned. 

As we approached port, one pleasant surprise was the Coast Guard barque Eagle was dressed and ready for an escort into the harbor. 

Apparently there was a bit of a parade when she entered the harbor, with fire boats firing their water jets in the procession…some of the crew saw it but I was already sound asleep by then.

 
Overall an uneventful and easy trip, the only disappointment was that we didn’t see a single whale when we crossed the Stellwagon Bank.