Finally, I have rejoined Semper V and the girls after two weeks of tieing up loose ends (most of them, anyway) in Halifax.

A smooth flight to Boston was followed by a short train ride to Providence, where Charlie, our boat's previous owner, picked me up and took me to Bristol Yacht Club, the boat, and the girls. We went for a pleasant sail with Charlie and his wife Charlotte, who then treated us to dinner at their amazing home overlooking the Bay.

The next morning, we decided we would aim for Mystic, CT, but the weather had other ideas. It has been sunny and very warm (21C), but winds on the nose from the southwest, first blowing at 10kts at 0800, then increasing to 20+ kts as the day went on, would have resulted in a very lumpy transit along the coast. After poking our noses out past Newport long enough to decide that we really didn't want to get banged around that much, we decided to turn aback and anchor in Newport; we will likely have to wait another day or two before the winds become more favourable out of the northwest.

Marine and I headed ashore in the afternoon, and Marine guided me through the sites they visited earlier last week, including a stop at the public library (to aceess the internet, check e-mails, and update the blog.

It feels great to be with the girls again, and now I can take some of the load off Judy's shoulders, as she has worked incredibly hard to get Semper V this far along, and the girls have done yeoman service as well. For me, the fun finally begins!

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I was beginning to believe that they only had good weather south of the border but today made up for that!
I have so many things to say and have had such little internet access time but here I go.
We left Cohasset and the wonderful hospitability of Mike and Paula Dickey/ Mac Donald. Their house was beautiful and the girls really enjoyed the land rest. We thought that we would head to Plymouth to see the "ROCK" but the weather so so good that we continued onto the Cape Cod canal and hit the tide and went through to Onset. It took me back 20 years to the same trip on Ocean Commotion...except there was less to drink this time!
On Tuesday we headed to a sweet little harbour, Quinssett? and spent the night. It is next to Woods Hole. I stuck my head out to a clear starry night only to find there was not a light on at one of the homes on the bay...just summer "cottages". We had the view of the $100 million house being built...the stone wall was 1million. Guess we are not in the same snack bracket!
I do have to say that I have such a problem with the wealth...have to sign out..time is up..back tomorrow

Note from Steve (still in Halifax...but not for long....!):

Today was my last day at the office before leaving to re-join the girls and Semper V. The office staff had a great send off for me yesterday... Since I work in the wonderful world of public health emergency preparedness and response, things can be a little unpredictable at times. So when I was summoned to my director's office and was briefed in the vaguest of terms that there was a "situation" brewing, and that the scenario had the potential to escalate into something akin to the two-week emergency operation I was involved with over Easter weekend earlier this year, I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or run away. Still, I should have known that I was being set up, since my experience has been that the overwhelming majority of real incidents in this part of the world are scheduled to occur at 4.30pm on Fridays (usually before a long weekend), and it was only 10 a.m. on Thursday.... Anyway, the office is pretty much cleared (that's what I'm telling myself, anyway...) and I'm making final arrangements to leave Halifax Sunday morning. Kiss the crackberry goodbye! The trip to Rhode Island can be summed up as "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles...then Boats!" I will fly to Boston, take the subway to the train station, take the train to Providence RI, and then hopefully get a lift to Bristol, then finally out to the boat.

I should elaborate on Judy's by-line of "horrible weather", which she summed up in a short e-mail to me as follows: "...horrible run from Westport. Wind 35 knots plus and on the nose, very heavy rain, big swells, and lightning just to make it nice. Filed a plan with Coast Guard just in case. The weather broke and we are happily anchored in Newport." And here I was reading the weather forecast on the NOAA website this morning thinking to myself: "I hope they stay put...!" Sigh. Now I have to reassure grandparents that yes, the girls were fine; no, if it had been really really bad, they wouldn't have sailed, etc etc etc. Steph and Marine will be Old Salts by the time I get there!

The laptop is working fine now, so hopefully posts will become a little more regular once I get to RI. Farewell to Nova Scotia!

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Last night was by far the coldest one so far. It was only a few degrees above freezing as the wet, warm air was pushed out by strong north winds. However, we were keen to set off from Marblehead before 9 am to cross Mass Bay to Cohasset. My long time friend Mike Dickey and Matthew, his 7 year old son, joined us for the sail.
Mike and I were discussing how many generations our friendship stretches back. Our grand mothers were very close friends and his dad and mine were closer than two brothers could have been. Our grand mothers enjoyed doing whatever diginified ladies did back then, our dads joined the army together and practised law for their entire careers together and now Mike and I spend our leisure time together on boats with the company of our kids. Hard to explain how important those lifelong bonds are.
We had a fantastic sail today with the wind on our starboard beam/quarter and flew along at a healthy 7 knots and arrived just after 12 noon in Cohasset. It is not a harbour that I would want to enter at night or low tide unless I were the harbour hopper. Sand bars everwhere and where they are not just big piles of rock! Obviously this is not the poor end of town. There are massive homes all along the coast here and no sign of recession.

We headed off to the local playground this afternoon with my girls and Eva Dickey. I was not really paying much attention to where Mike had driven us so when it came time to leave I really was not sure which winding road I should follow. We stopped and asked someone for directions to somewhere that we did not know where and eventually were guided home by Eva.....yes she is 3 years old but almost 4!! Wonderful, I can navigate from Halifax but get lost going to the playground!
We headed to a nice restaurant in Scituate Harbour. This is the community where Steve's ancestors arrived back in the 1600's. Too bad they had not kept some real estate from back then as it would enable us to retire now!

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