USA

Monday 13 August: Leaving Boothbay Harbor, arriving in Portland Maine
Another gloomy morning, dark clouds and a bit foggy. Quick look at the weather shows it will not be sunnier till Wednesday, and having to choose between getting more bored here or being cold in the cockpit, we decide to make a move today.
So at 9.30 am we start our gradual journey southwards. We quickly remember how annoying and painful it is to motor between the thousands of fishing floats. But on the other hand, no floats – no lobster!
As we head out to sea we are confronted by an armada of motor and sailing yachts all coming for the New York Yacht Club gathering at Boothbay. They are going into the wind and tide fully kitted out in waterproof clothing. Even though we are chilly, we are definitely going in the right direction today.
As usual we see lots of wild life, sea birds, seals, porpoises. We also see a yacht race, each boat coming out and then back into the fog. Must be more yachts from NYYC. Nice to see that some are actually sailing to Boothbay.
As we approach Portland mid afternoon, the fog thickens and soon it’s hard to see anything. We motor into Portland Harbor which frankly looks quite drab in fog. We manage to anchor with some other yachts at the mouth of the harbor and soon disappear below to warmth.
After a lunch of steaming Thai curry (perfect for the weather), we debate whether to go ashore or remain onboard, and decide for the latter. Neither of us fancied a walk in the damp and chilly weather.
And of course, there is a failure-of-the-day to attend to. Today’s is our Raymarine MFD in the cockpit. It’s touchscreen function is only working randomly 50% of the time. Again, this equipment is only 18 months since new. After the usual reboot, re-power plus a good slap, Glen gets technical and makes a painful reinstallation of the latest software as advised by Raymarine support center. It makes no improvement to the touchscreen function but it does manage to reset ALL the settings, not only on the MFD but also on all 6 of the i70 instruments! And it takes another 2 hours to get everything back to how it was …. and still no fix for the original issue. Surprised? No, of course not. Looks like we’ll have to find an RM tech while in the US.
Frustrated enough with software issues, we set onto yet more of the same, editing some of our long pending videos. Because the good news of the day is that Oana’s US phone has come back to like. Our T-Mobile SIM had refused to work in the wilds of Maine. So we have 9 gigabytes of data to use before a new month starts tomorrow. A good time to uploaded video compilations. Putting together our Georgia videos somehow makes us feel warmer.
As we sit here with the heater on, it’s hard to believe we were dying for air conditioning just 2 months ago in Savannah!