The next day, we headed out of Newport on our way to the Cape Cod Canal, a short cut on our route north. Alot of fog had set in around Newport, which gave us maybe 1/2 mile of visibility. It was a good chance to learn about sailing in fog, without the conditions being very dangerous. Interestingly, our radar was interfered with by the fog, which we had not known could happen. We sailed to Buzzard's Bay and headed up it, stopping in Mattapoiset Bay for the night, as it was very overcast and getting dark quickly; we wanted to transit the canal during the day since there was supposed to be alot of traffic.

The canal ended up being fairly uneventful. We planned things so that we entered it just as the current was shifting to our direction. Ultimately, we got 2.5 knots of current pushing us through the canal at a pretty good clip. There turned out to not be much traffic; most of the boats were saw were at the outside of the west end of the canal fishing; presumably the canal pushes a good number of fish through it.

We had originally been planning to spend a day in Plymouth after going through the canal. We changed our plans shortly after leaving the canal and headed straight for Maine on an overnight. Mark had a business call in a couple of days and the call would have made another overnight difficult. We sailed up Cape Cod Bay and north east to the coast of Maine. Again, this was mostly motor sailing except for a few hours where there was enough wind that we could shut the motor off.

The second day we made it into Ponobscot Bay in Maine and pulled into Camden, a cute town on the west coast of the bay. The next day was a bit of a mess. I wanted to meet with a mechanic about the vibration we had been having when motoring, we also knew Barbara and Bart were going to be in the area and possibly actually visiting Camden, and I had a call to help a VC with due diligence in the afternoon. In the end, I the mechanic ended up occupying most of the day until the VC call and Barbara and I missed each others phone calls so we didn't meet up even though we were in the same tiny Maine town. Very disappointing. Ultimately, the mechanic felt that the vibration was an alignment issue but they couldn't work on the problem until the following week. We got conflicting advice from Amel that the problem was likely growth on the autoprop and we should first change that out.

The next day, we hiked up to the top of XXXX peak overlooking Camden harbor and came back to town to do some shopping. We found a little store that sold plain baseball caps; Mark had been looking for these since he kept losing hats on the boat. We bought 6 of them and then had lunch at the same pizza restaurant as dinner the night before, a place called Cozzies.

Then we headed up to the next town along the coast, Belfast, where we tied onto one of the city moorings. It took about 6 tries to catch the mooring because the line was wrapped around the buoy chain so even when we hooked the line, neither Dana nor (when he decided to step in) Mark could pull it up to the deck. There may have been some hasty words, after which Dana required an apology of Mark, which she got.

The next morning, Mark dinghied into town to get tools and parts while Dana slept in. Mark was surprised to find the town was pretty well stocked even though it didn't have an actual marine supply store. He went back to the boat and we proceeded with servicing of the bow thruster which had stopped working, as well as continue to leak water. Mark had been studying the process of servicing the thruster for about a week, reading all the available online documentation, including using online French-English translators to translate information from the French Amel web site.

It is a bit of a tricky process because the bow thruster propeller and the shaft it is on have to be removed from the bottom of the boat. While it is easier to do this when the boat is hauled out, it can also be done in water. Amel provides a wooden device with a rope that you attach to the top of the propeller shaft. You then drop the whole thing out through the hole in the bottom of the boat, being careful to hold onto the rope. Someone else (Dana in this case) sits in a dinghy at the bow of the boat and uses the boathook to grab the unit and pull everything in.

While Mark was beginning the servicing, he noticed that part of the bow thruster fibreglass that fits to the outside of the hull was damaged. We went back into town to get some epoxy to repair the broken part. On his way back (Dana was still shopping), Mark was puzzling over whether he knew what he was doing when he noticed he was passing a boat construction building. He poked his head in and found a gentleman name Dan who worked with epoxy every day, as their firm constructs wooden boats laminated with epoxy. Dan said he would take a look at the repair so Mark again dinghied out to the boat to get the bow thruster foot. Dan said he could do it for $25, which was about the same price as the epoxy and glue Mark had just bought. Not a tough choice. Mark stayed to see a masterful job done to repair the piece, probably now stronger than it was before the break. Mark also asked if they could duplicate a wooden shelf in the propane locker that had rotted through. They did that as well, cutting an exact duplicate and then coating it all in epoxy so that the wood would be forever protected from moisture. All told, two repairs came to $89; a repair shop in Solomons had offered to do the shelf alone for $300. The lesson here appears to be that small boat building shops are often the place to go for repairs, as they charge reasonable rates rather than trying to take you for as much money as possible.

Mark was then able to finish the servicing of the bow thruster and get it once again fully operational. This was important because the bow thruster isn't a convenience item on the Northfork; the positioning of the rudder and propeller make steering in tight places very challenging if not impossible without the bow thruster. While the bow thruster was broken for a week, we had to be careful not to take the Northfork into areas that would be problematic without the thruster.

Dana had trouble sleeping the past several nights because of the cold: we apparently had not brought enough blankets. We found a navy blue wool blanket at the Army-Navy store in Belfast that turned out to be surprisingly warm. With all the fancy new materials and gizmos, sometimes it is good to remember that old school is the way to go.

Ultimately, we found Belfast to be a more pleasant town than Camden. Camden was cuter, but in a very intentional way. It was a little too tarted up, as Mark's dad might have said. Belfast felt like a real town that people lived in. It is cute but it isn't fashioned to appeal to tourists.