Friday 17 August: Leaving Portsmouth New Hampshire and arriving in Gloucester Massachusetts.
Last evening we set an early-ish alarm for this morning, to allow ourselves some spare time before the departure. We were planning to go back ashore to have a civilized coffee, buy some fruits and record few videos of the town in the beautiful morning light. But after another look at weather forecast and the distance we have to go, we drop the “tourists for the morning” plan and decide to leave earlier. We want to be in a safe place before the rain starts late this afternoon.
We slip the mooring line immediately after breakfast and motor out of the river, admiring the beautiful properties on the water front. The houses, lawns and flowers look particularly pretty on this bright day as we are rushed out of the channel with a strong ebb tide under us.
Once we are at sea, out come the sails. To begin with, the wind is good and we are moving fast, at 8kts. Feels great to be sailing again. Seems such a long time since our last nice sailing day. But soon after that the wind switches a bit, enough to reduce our speed to only 5kts. We are not too bothered about going so slow, a gentle sail on a relatively flat sea in this offshore breeze feels like a treat. We see a rescue helicopter performing what looks like training exercise. We also try some fishing and all we catch is seaweed, so we give up quickly.
The wind drops even further, and as we approach Cape Ann we switch on the engine. As depth gets less than 75m the watch-out for fishing floats begins again. So annoying. We certainly won’t miss these damned floats everywhere.
Mid-afternoon we arrive into Gloucester Harbor, and we pick up the mooring buoy which we booked yesterday through Dockwa, a very efficient online system for booking marinas and dockage. Efficient if you happen to have internet access that is! Our pick up of the buoy was however less than efficient: we dropped the boat hook in the water. Once the mooring line was safely tied to the boat, Glen quickly lowered the dinghy and went for the boat hook rescue, which was quickly disappearing away with the tide.
It is still sunny and we hoped we make it ashore to explore the town and have lunch. But the forecast now shows thunderstorm at 6pm, and the launch boat will be available a bit later. Indeed we can see dark cloud approaching. So change of plans, as we prefer our current dry and warm condition: we remain onboard and have late lunch in the cockpit while listening to the thunders.
Glen tackles the Raymarine chart plotter, replacing the one from the cockpit with the one from the nav station. We will have to send the faulty one for servicing. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that soon.
The rain is not as heavy as we anticipated, and by 7pm it clears. Good, now we can go ashore to see what this town has to offer.
We walk on the Main Street, then to the Man at the Wheel, a memorial and plaques with the names of fishermen lost at sea from 1716-2001. All very nicely done. Interestingly, 6 of the most recent names on the tiles are those of captain and crew of Andrea-Gail, the fishing boat made famous in the book and film “The Perfect Storm”. The ship was Gloucester-based and they had left from this harbour.
The seafront residences and inns are all very pretty, even in this dull light. After a detour through the higher part of the town, we come across a supermarket. Perfect, as we now have a new lot of fresh fruits and vegetables.
On the way back to Cloudy Bay, we stop at Captain Carlos Bar for a beer. The local scene is very lively, and we meet Brittany and Larry, a very nice couple. She sails, and he golfs. Larry tells Glen he couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in the middle of the ocean. And Glen tells Larry that he can’t bear the frustration of a round of golf! Each to there own.
We get the last launch boat back to Cloudy Bay, and the timing is perfect as it soon starts to rain again. Onboard we keep busy for the rest of the evening with bits of admin.
Gloucester video on Sail Cloudy Bay YouTube channel