Why? Why can’t it be a nice clear day, darn it! At 5 am, it looks light but dark in our cabin. A peek through the blinds and all I can see is thick dense fog. I can barely see the rock wall 200 feet away across from the dock we’re tied to let alone the green starboard hand mark just outside the marina. Oh well, this is all part of cruising in these latitudes and I just have to get used to it all over again. It’s cold too and for the first time in many weeks, I dig out a pair of socks and shoes and a jumper. We ease ourselves off the dock quietly and glide away into the white misty soup, hoping we can orient ourselves correctly by mentally ticking off all channel markers while looking on the radar for Boston’s high speed ferries and lobster boats. My job is to check Maynard’s navigation on my own Navionics programme on my tablet and spot the lobster buoys in our way. Again, we used our horn a few times to alert others of our presence and after a couple of hours we were out to sea with good visibility again due to another cold front approaching from the WSW.
We were in Boston for a few days after transiting the Cape Cod Canal in brilliant warmth and sunshine. As we’ve been through a couple of times in 2012, the Canal Master already had our details on file. We were blessed with little traffic and a very easy trip through the 8 mile length of the canal which circumvents the need to round Cape Cod. Again, we needed to time our transit on slack tide as the canal has 5 knots of current at its peak. It saves a lot of time and is one of the highlights of travelling by boat in this area. Because we love the sound of our newly improved ship’s horn, we honked it a couple of times at the waving onlookers along the canal’s banks (mostly for our pleasure).
When in town, we are always in need of transportation. Hiring a car or finding taxis can be very problematic but the solution for us is to use Uber, a transportation network company based in the US, but now launched overseas. We’ve downloaded the app onto our phones and when we need a ride anywhere, we send out a request on Uber and usually within a few minutes a driver will come by and take us wherever we need to go. No tips and no trickery with clean vehicles all based on a star rated system. If the drivers aren’t up to scratch, they are eliminated from being Uber drivers. If the passengers misbehave, they too are blacklisted. Everybody wins, except the taxi companies. We were able to travel all over Boston looking for groceries, maintenance items and things we needed in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the expense. Oh how I wish I’d invented Uber as this is now a multi-billion dollar money making machine.
We’ve decided to keep pointing north, so Maine, here we come. But what‘s that seawater doing in the bilge under Mike’s microwave oven in the crew cabin?