Charleston to Maine, day 12 – whale watching

Saturday 7 July: Boston Harbour to (level with) Portsmouth
Today we move again, towards our final destination, Bar Harbour. Leisure morning again, and feels nice not to plan the departure at the crack of dawn for once. Nice weather today, the air is still fresh after the rain yesterday.
As we leave Boston Harbour dodging fishing floats, we spot a whale watching tour boat speeding passed us and heading straight out at sea. On the spur of the moment, we decide to follow it as Oana wants to see whales. Well, follow isn’t exactly doable, as it speeds at 35kts and we are doing only 8kts, but we hope it will remain on the AIS and we can track behind it.
One hour later we are on the contour of the Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary, where there are few small fishing boats probably with the same objective as us: to see the whales. To begin with, we only see spouts of water, but not long after we start spotting the whales, the fins out of the water a few times, then the tail as they dive down. Amazing creatures, and we are beyond ourselves with excitement.
When we leave the sanctuary the wind, although low, tempts us to sail, and since we are not in a rush, we give it a try. Sails out, and we move on at 5kts. Not our usual speed, but it’s peaceful. The wind is quite cold, and out of the sun we feel a bit chilly. What a change in the temperature, from melting hot 2 days ago.
We continue to sail gently throughout the afternoon. The sun sets in a beautiful orange-red haze, it will probably be our last sunset while sailing for a while.
After sunset, we gybe the genoa so that we can actually go into the right direction. The tent goes up, with all sides zipped on and we suddenly feel cozy in the cockpit, protected from the cold wind. Our winter cloths go on too, trousers, socks and fleece! And so we sail slowly into the stary night as it gets cooler and cooler.