New England
26 July 2014 | Robinhood Cove, Georgetown, ME
Ivy, perfect
Pilgrims,
If you ever wonder how it would be in a cockpit at night I thought up a little exercise for you. Rope off a 6'x 8' area on a porch at night, light a candle and peer out at the night. Often it feels to me as if we are flying, sort of a magic carpet thing. Anyway, that occured to me the night we left the Cape Cod Canal, which is 100 yrs. old this year and sailed to the Sheepscot River and into Georgetown, Maine.
We made a few days stop in the old whaling town of New Bedford. They have a big harbor which has hurricane gate to block the inner harbor from storm surge. We took a mooring and used the launch all week to get to town. The New Bedford Whaling Museum was certainly the highlight, we just missed seeing the last whaling ship left and one that was built in New Bedford in 1841, the Charles W. Morgan. The exhibits of whale skeletons, whale boats, harpoons and a 1/2 model of the whaling ship Lagoda were well done. We found a wood fired pizza place and life was very good.
We waited out a big, rainy storm and then set out to be ready to transit the Cape Cod Canal and spent a night in Onset, Mass. another good harbor.
Our motor/sail up the Cape Cod Bay and the Gulf of Maine was good, just not a lot of wind and from our bow. We saw a few Minke whales, lots of sea birds like Gannets, shearwaters and terns and when we got to the Maine waters in the morning there were harbor seals and dolphin to greet us.
We were received with open arms by our boat broker, Dave and the fellows who worked on Abner last year. The cove is large with lots of moorings and we can dinghy into shore for a nice meal at Osprey or run to town in the loaner car(a Subaru with 187,000 miles on it).
We plan to stay until we get a few jobs done and the Summerfest party is over and then we will harbor-hop around Maine and enjoy.
My sisters and nephew and friend visited on Thursday which was a treat. We had a nice day sail out into the Sheepscot River.
Sending summer wishes to all,
Ivy and Mike
s/v Abner E