North we go!

We met up on March 15th at JFK airport, Jenny arriving from Europe, and me from Dutch Harbor. We rented a car, drove to Rhode Island, and set to getting the boat ready to go into the water after her long, cold winter layup.

Thankfully, everything seems to have survived the winter just fine, which we were somewhat concerned about considering the record cold that New England encountered.

We had the hull painted at New England Boatworks while we were away, and they did a really nice job. Hall Spars also replaced our standing rigging, so the boat’s not only looking great, but all of her critical components are updated and ready for more offshore work.

A friend lent us a vacant apartment for a week, so we didn’t have to live on board prior to launching, which was really nice, as temperatures were still in the 10 degree range overnight. On about the 20th, we launched through a skim of ice and moved back on board full time. We’ve got a good diesel heater on board, and managed to stay comfortable despite the cold. We handled some odd jobs each day over the next few weeks, including the installation of a new autopilot. Mostly, though, we were just killing time before moving even further north. April was going to be cold enough, March would have been unnecessarily rugged.

Anyway, we got out of NEB’s fine facility on the 16th of April, enroute to Mid-coast Maine. We didn’t have any designs on making this a really fast trip, since it was so damn cold at night and there are pots EVERYWHERE on this coast. Our twin rudders and bulb keel are not very pot-friendly. More on that later.

Nights 1 and 2 brought us to Fairhaven Shipyard in New Bedford harbor. We spent a couple of nights there, with the keel in the mud at low tide. We were, as usual, assured that we would have plenty of water in the slip. Even when I told the dock guy that we were on the bottom, he was insistent that it was plenty deep there, and that there had once been a boat there with a 12′ draft! I broke out our little hand-held depth sounder and discovered that it was a foot deeper toward the back of the slip, so once we were floating again, we hung the stern out into the basin a bit and were aground no more.

We then transited the Cape Cod canal, tying up in Sandwich at the little basin there for what turned out to be a 4 night stay, thanks to a gale passing through. Anyway, it was a really delightful little place and we were happy to stick around. Our only bitch is that the Coast Guard was right there and they managed to leave their siren on all night on one of their boats, along with the flashing blue lights. It would wail at top volume for 1 minute every 5. I called them on the VHF in the morning to let them know, but got answered by the New England HQ, so they had the pleasure of relaying the message to the sub-station. I could tell by the guy’s voice that he would enjoy making that call. We got a big kick out of seeing one of the cadets running down to the boat at top speed within minutes of the call. The remaining days we spent doing a lot of walking around and riding our bikes. There are bike trails running the length of either side of the canal, and it really is beautiful there. We also bought a 2 month supply of some really tasty crab cakes there at the local fish market. I went in wanting 20, but they told me I could have a full case of 50 for the same price, so I came back with a seriously big box of cakes for the freezer, to Jenny’s horror.

Gloucester was the next stop, where we just spent one night. We wound up in a little marina in town which was nicely protected from every direction but SW. Through the night the wind came up to 20-25 from exactly that direction, causing us to have a pretty miserable night getting jerked around in the slip. We couldn’t get out of there soon enough.

We had a fine sail up to Portland, at least for the first half. For the first time in a while, we were able to enjoy some double-digit speeds for a few hours. Fishing gear was everywhere, however, and in the bigger seas that the wind kicked up, a lot of it was really hard to see. Finally, our luck ran out and we caught one of the setups with the keel. The boat came to a stop, and 10′ down, I could see the offending pot warp trailing off into the depths. Fortunately, I was able to back the main and jib, and sail the boat backwards for just enough to get the warp off the keel. Unfortunately, during the rapid turn after getting off, the port rudder grabbed the same setup. We hung by the rudder for a while, with waves breaking into the cockpit while I fashioned a knife on a long stick apparatus (which will be with us and at hand from here on out), but before we had to cut the gear off, we finally popped off and were on our way. Ugh. An inspection at the end of the trip revealed a bit of a rope cut on the leading edge of the rudder, but it’s just cosmetic. The rudders are heavily overbuilt on this thing due to their location, with nearly an inch of carbon fiber in the skins, so at least the things can take some abuse.

I think that normal lobster pot buoys will actually pop off the boat just fine, but this was a bigger setup, with a big polyform buoy which was a lot more difficult to get away from. I’m sure we’ll find out about that theory. We’ve seen thousands of pots out here, and we understand that there’s only a tiny fraction out there of what there will be in a couple of months. Time to buy a really thick wetsuit, I think.

Apparently, we are the first pleasure boat to come up the coast that anybody’s seen this year. It really hasn’t been all that bad with the cold, I don’t think that we’re doing anything all that crazy to sail up here at this time of year, but we have certainly been on our own since leaving Rhode Island. Nothing could be better, being out where there are no crowds. We’re definitely happier cruising during the off-season.

Other than that, we’re done traveling for a bit, and will be standing by here in Maine until leaving for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in July.