A Tale of Two Chemists: Passage to Maine

Passage to Maine

Tuesday 11^th – Wednesday 12^th August 2020

We’ve “sailed” up to Maine quite a few times in the past and on most occasions “sailed” isn’t really accurate because we ended up motoring for most of the journey. This time was different, the weather forecast for Tuesday through Wednesday predicted robust southerly winds, and they were correct and we were able to sail for 90% of the passage.

Tuesday started on a mooring in Scituate Harbor, Massachusetts (about 20 miles south east of Boston). We took the dinghy into the town dock and being as careful as possible (masks, hand washing etc) visited the local supermarket to get some more fruit, veg, milk and bread. Once back on board Cotinga we prepared for an offshore passage … hauled out and deflated the dinghy on the foredeck, gathered together warm clothes and checked our safety equipment and made some sandwiches for our evening meal. Gloria’s phone call to Social Security to set up her Medicare went fine and we departed Scituate Harbor at 3.30pm.

Initially the winds seemed quite light so we poled out our genoa and sailed wing-on-wing. Within an hour or so the winds had filled in and we were flying along. However, the wind also generated a short period swell, that started to make the ride very “rolly”. As sunset approached we took down the genoa and sailed on with just the main. The wind blew at 20 knots from the south all night, sometimes gusting to 25 knots and it was a very lively ride. Thank God for scopolamine patches, which both of us were wearing, or we would have been incapacitated by sea sickness. As it was we both felt reasonably well and we took 2-hour watched throughout the night. Our primary objective was Tenants Harbor in Maine, about 125 nautical miles away as the crow flies. However, we also planned a number of fallback options to head to if needed. It wasn’t comfortable sailing the direct line to Tenants harbor because the wind was right behind us from the south and the swell was coming in from the south east on our starboard quarter, causing us to rock from one side to another quite violently. So we gybed ant took a course more to the north-west, keeping the wind off of port side and allowing the waves to ride through from behind. It’s amazing what a difference a slight course change can make. Unfortunately we couldn’t continue in that direction so had to gybe again later. I got to see the moon rise just before midnight and Gloria got to see the sunrise. The most worrying thing happened in the early hours of the morning when I was on watch and we got caught up in the line and float of a lobster pot. I knew immediately what happed, I heard a strange sound and then the boat slowed dramatically from greater than 6 knots to less than 3 knots. I couldn’t see the line or the float and was pondering what do next when I heard more odd “scraping” noises and I saw the float behind us and our speed picked back up. Wow – did we get lucky! It would have been impossible to stop and dive under the boat in those conditions. We would probably have had to drag it slowly to the nearest harbor and try and fix it then, not knowing if they were caught around the rudder or jammed between the hull and the propeller (We have had both of these situations occur in the past). You cannot see lobster pot floats in the dark and they can be almost anywhere. This one was probably 10 miles off the coast of Cape Ann, but in the morning we started to see pots about 15 miles offshore of the coast of Maine. By mid-morning we still had about 35 miles to go to Tenants Harbor, with now fairly light dead downwind sailing and confused seas. We were both pretty tired so we opted to head to the closer option of Linekin Bay, near to Boothbay Harbor. For the final two hours we gave up on trying to make the most of light winds and turned on the engine and motored into a lovely protected anchorage within the Bay, arriving at 1.30 pm after a 22 hour passage.

43 50.651 N, 69 36.913 W