Last night was a total wipe-out as far as tourism was concerned. After the preceding two days Barb and I were both so bagged that after dinner we had the most cursory of walks about town (very pretty place, by the way, complete with an honest to gosh General Store)) and went straight to our bunk at the unheard of hour of 18h00 and slept through to 06h00 this morning. I guess we really needed the rest.

We were in touch with Moonlight Maid yesterday evening who had arrived at the east end of the canal around 16h00 just in time to be running out of fuel and in time to find that at this time of year all the marinas close early. They had little choice but to tie up to the fuel wharf at Sandwich and wait 'till morning, so I guess we won't be seeing them for a while. Our plans are to continue on to Newport as we have heard that the forecast crappy weather for the end of the week has intensified and if we don't get there today we'll we hanging out here for the duration. It's a 40 nm run but as according to the forecast the winds will be on the nose, what else, we were steaming to make it in the daylight.

We spoke to Alan by telephone at about 11h00 and discovered that they were at Sandwish and were planning to set off to Marion today and were prepared to be weather bound for a couple of days. At least they picked a beautiful spot and they have friends there.

I am writing this from the dock at Newport. Quite a day! We discovered that we had some problems turning to the starboard and after we got in we discovered that the conditions in the Gulf of Maine had that one more little present for us. The movement had caused the load in the lazarette to shift and it had collapsed the box that was supposed to protect the steering mechanism and was inhibiting its ability to turn to the right. To make that discovery I had to shift everything out of the lazarette but we were going to do that anyway to get at the fuel cans. At least it was a relatively easy fix. One nice thing about doing all the work on your boat yourself is that you can figure these things out quickly.

One last thing for the day before I call it quits, we discovered that the 77' motor yacht Convergence was already here having arrived a little earlier in the day. These were the folk that we got to meet the owners and the professional crew back in Halifax. In fact, the owner had taken out a membership in RNSYS he liked the place so much.