Marblehead to Maine
01 August 2015 | Marblehead, Ma.
July 31
Up early and the front had passed. Beautiful day but no wind. About 45 miles to Marblehead. Nice comfortable passage and we arrived in around 3pm. Doug and Lucy met us in their dingy and had secured a guest mooring from Eastern Yacht Club for us to hang on. We cleaned up, tried to work on the dingy for a while and still couldn't make it work. We were invited to have dinner on the deck at Eastern Yacht Club at 6pm. Our plans were to sleep on board and set sail at 4am.
After a great dinner as guests of Doug and Lucy, it was apparent that we were going to have a beautiful full moon and light winds. Doug and Lucy had picked up some extra provisions that we were missing and Doug had already brought his gear on board when he met us. At the last minute we said good-bye to Lucy and decided to leave at pm. All hands on deck as we tried to navigate around the lobster traps in Marblehead harbor and up the coast to Gloucester.
After three hours, we began taking shifts. I got off my shift at 2 am with 4 hours off. Moby was next and Doug got the sunrise shift which was magnificent. We were probably 40 miles off shore, beautiful morning and right next to a pod of whales spouting and sounding. Awesome. This is what we came for.
Once we were up, Doug and Moby started to take the generator apart. We were determined to find out what the problem was. Moby and I had found the water strainer filled with seaweed in Ptown, cleaned it and it seemed like the fix would be a simple as figuring out how to prime it again.
Well it wasn't. Between the two of them with Doug's determination to take no hostages and refusing to give up, the generator was taken apart and homemade pieces of wire trying to short past the safety shut-offs. We checked everything twice over. Nothing obvious was working and none of the suggestions in the owners manual for troubleshooting was working. It became clear that this was getting out of our league and going to take a professional certified Northernlights mechanic. Where the hell would we find one of those.
Just so happens, Doug knew that Billings Diesel & Marine services were the best and fit the description. They were on Moose Island....a small island connected by a causeway on Deer Island near Stoneington. So we put Moose Island/Deer Island/Stonington on the itinerary.