We haven't done any updates past Tuesday, as we've been working out how to deal with the events of that day. After the successful breakfast of Mackerel that Alec has already written about, we headed for Long Cove in Muscongus Bay and anchored just before lunch. While getting lunch ready a bit of a thunderstorm was approaching, but seemed a safe distance away. It was not! We suddenly experienced a huge bang and flash of light. At first we weren’t quite sure what had happened, as the winch in the cockpit and the watermaker had both got minds of their own and started spinning and pumping away. We turned them off, checked everyone was OK, checked the bilges for leaks and then once the storm had moved a bit further away went on deck to check. We had definitely been struck as the antenna on top of the mast was missing in action.

Once we started checking systems we found that almost everything electronic was fried. All our navigation instruments, the SSB radio and VHF radio, both autopilots, the watermaker, the inverter, the alternators and the list goes on. Fortunately there were a lot of things still working like the engines, fridge, stove, interior lights, and the second VHF radio that is on the radar tower. We contacted our insurance company, and within an hour they had assigned a marine surveyor and we had scheduled to meet him on Thursday afternoon in Rockland. Rather than risk foggy weather that was a possibility the next day, we upped anchor and motored north to Rockland. It was different to do it all with no electronics, with the paper charts out in the cockpit, and steering by compass. (We didn’t completely regress as we did have navigation software running on the iPad as a backup :-). Alec was a big fan of the paper approach, particularly as he had the helm and I was working beside him as his navigator at the charts.

After reviewing the situation with the insurance company and the surveyor, and considering our schedule for getting south in the fall, we have decided to focus on getting everything fixed as quickly as possible, so we are going to jump down to Fairhaven Shipyard in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts as soon as we can after a weekend visit from friends. As hard as it is for me to do, we’ll hand pretty well everything over to them to take care of – they’ll be able to address all the issues in parallel, whereas it would take me weeks and weeks to deal with them one by one. In addition, it will be easier dealing with the insurance company with a third party providing the quotes and assessments. Hopefully we’ll be in the shipyard for just a couple of weeks, and then pick up our tour from Nantucket onwards.

Mark.

[Sorry no image with this one - but google can provide some pretty spectacular ones if you look]