Here comes Maine!

Its been 6 days since the last blog entry, and 2 of those days involved no travel, yet we still have covered all of Long Island Sound, Rhode Island Sound, Buzzards Bay, the Cape Cod Canal, Cape Cod Bay, and Massachusetts Bay, to land us here in Gloucester MA.

Two of the travel days were looong ones:

- Last Friday Riggs and I did all of L.I. Sound, from Manhasset NY to Essex CT, something like 90 miles. The weather and currents were mostly favorable, and we wanted to get into Essex before the start of what was a very windy weekend.

- Yesterday we had B.I.L. Dennis aboard and went from just east of Essex, all the way to Onset MA, at the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal, with a fuel-up stop in New Bedford MA, again maybe 90 miles. This time we were driven by the desire for an early-morning entrance into the Cape Cod Canal to catch the flood current.

In between we hunkered down for the weekend gales, with Spray safely at a mooring at the Essex Yacht Club, but Riggs and I living in luxury at Marsha & Dennis' house an hours drive north in Ellington CT. A real bed, great meals, hot showers. Wow! Riggs even learned a new game.

By late Monday afternoon we (now including Dennis) were back aboard Spray, and headed out the CT River, then east 10 miles or so to anchor in Jordan Cove. Tuesday was our marathon run to the Cape Cod Canal. Today was a pretty good run too:

- Anchor up by 0600. Through the canal with 4-5 knots of assisting current,

- then into Cape Cod Bay, heading NW past Plymouth MA,

- then turning straight north for a 28 mile run across MA Bay, directly to Gloucester. We had fun playing chicken with the 'Nosmo King' tanker shown below.

Tomorrow we are gonna try the Annisquam River shortcut thru Cape Anne, then up past MA & NH to pull into Portsmouth for the night. We'll probably set foot in Maine!! Stay tuned.