Fujin Voyages 2011: Trip to Portland Maine early September

18:43 Leaving Boston

Our departure was unfortunately delayed by prior commitments (jobs) until about 6:45 pm. We had the boat mostly provisioned the day before. It was going to be a moonless 95 mile sail through the night. Bob estimates arriving in Portland at 2:43 the next day (and he wasn't far off).

Rounding Deer Island with Boston fading into the distance

We had great wind leaving the harbor. Great in terms of strength, but awful direction. We figured we could start sailing as soon as we got round Deer Island. When we made the turn, the direction was good but it started weakening. Still we got all the sails up and made around 4 kts.

Unfortunately, it continued to die and within just a couple hours we were motoring. This would continue for the next almost 10 hours. Ugh!

The instrument pod around 2am

It was a very dark night with no moon. The stars were incredibly brilliant though and we could see quite a few meteors. It also started to get a bit foggy around Cape Ann. I tried to spot the lobster pots before hitting them but it's really almost futile. As my friend Phil says "just run over them and hope for the best".

First Light off the coast of Maine

After so many hours of motoring, I was really looking forward to first light. I needed to sleep! I think this is the best part of overnight sailing - that color as the sky just first starts to light.

As expected, the sun came up and we also got a little breeze. We put the sails up and Linda took over but it was such a beautiful morning, I didn't want to just go to sleep so I grabbed a fishing pole. No, nothing but who cares.

Multi-tasking

yaaaaay wind yaaaayyyy

ZZZZZZZZZZ
I went below and fell into a deep sleep for a couple hours. When I woke up, I heard some "ticking" noise. To me, it sounded like a halyard tapping the mast in the wind. But when I got up to the cockpit, the noise was coming from below somewhere in the drive train! I quickly pulled everything out of the aft cabin and removed all the access panels. We had some sort of rotational noise happening but I didn't know where from yet. It didn't sound like the xmission, or the stuffing box. It sounded more like it was from under the boat. My only guess was that a zinc came loose on the prop shaft and it was flopping around on there. We went with that theory and continued on to Portland.

Casco Bay chart

Almost to Portland
After a few more hours, we could see the light at Cape Elizabeth. Once we rounded the cape, there was only about 5 or 6 miles left. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

For some reason, Linda took lots of pictures of shirtless Lobstermen

Landed
Finally at about 2pm, were were on our slip at Dimillo's Marina in Portland. I quickly became unconscious.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

After getting settled and checking in, we had a quick bite and beer at Dimillo's Floating Restaurant and then headed out to explore Portland.


Best Pizza ever

We were tired but we had a plan to see a band at Geno's Rock club on Congress St and they didn't start until 10pm. We lasted for a few songs and headed back.

Portland Day 2: Morning Boat Maintenance
I thought I'd dive under the boat and see if my guess was right about the loose zinc. Sure enough, the zinc (the only zinc) was ready to fall off. I grabbed a hex wrench and with a few dives was able to tighten both screws. Man is the water cold in Maine!

Have hex key, will dive

Seals zigzagging in the channel outside of DiMillo's

The Visitor
Our buddy Greg drove up to Portland to meet us for what should have been a day sail around the Casco Bay islands. The wind had other ideas though and it got very light around the islands. Our only choice was the open bay and even this was pretty light.

Scenes like this are common in Casco Bay

Greg is promoted to skipper

Portland Day 3
Today, there was actually some wind but we chose to be tourists and explore the town. Exploring of course includes shoe shopping.

I'll take one of each

Portland Day 4: Forecast says...
Head home. We were looking at 3 days in a row of South or South-west winds. We decided to leave a day early and break up the trip since it would involve a lot of motoring. We had no reservations anywhere and it's a holiday weekend.

Portland Sunrise as we head out of the harbor. Destination unknown

We finally decided on Portsmouth NH as our next stop for the day. As we rounded Cape Elizabeth, we got a decent angle on the wind and were able to sail a bit.

Linda hoisting the Main in her PJs

Rough ride
The sailing didn't last long. We were just too high up into strong winds and 4 foot seas. We had to revert to the Diesel for most of the way to Portsmouth. We spent most of the day getting beat up pretty good on these waves. We both took the blue tablets but Linda got pretty sick.

Seasick

We were finally able to sail for the last few miles into Portsmouth. We picked up a ball in their transient field but then they moved us over close to the yacht club on a ball which just opened up. The Launch driver was even nice enough to give us a lift into town.

Whaleback Light in Portsmouth Harbor

River Current on our mooring ball

Foggy Portsmouth Morning

Day 5: Off to... ???
Today we switched roles. Linda sailed and Bob was galley whench and communications officer. Bob did better in the galley. I couldn't find any place that would take us for the night either north or south of Cape Ann. We got a really nice breeze off of the NH coast at a decent angle and had the toe rail in the water!

Linda in the galley at 30 degrees

Almost

Back in Massachusetts
We still didn't know where we would spend the night but Linda wanted to visit the Plumb Island area just north of Cape Ann. We decided we would try a passage through the Annisquam River. Slack current was not until 4 or 5 pm so we anchored off the beach for a rest and a quick swim. The water is much warmer than in Portland!

Swimming near Plumb Island

Annisquam Passage
The Annisquam is a narrow, shallow, twisty shortcut through Cape Ann. There are three bridges - two of which have to be opened to pass under. What could possibly go wrong. We were a bit nervous about trying this but we went for it. We were at high tide and slack current so it should be pretty easy.

There is a strict no-wake rule in the river. As usual, power boaters seem to generally disregard this rule and some were quite impatient with us only going a little over the speed limit. They were passing us and throwing up nice wakes. Bastids.

%^&$%^# power boaters bearing down on us.

Your 5 foot draft boat is in 2.8 feet of water

Fun with Depth Sounders
Our depth sounder has a habbit of screwing up once in a while and displaying an alarmingly shallow depth. It of course chose the annisquam channel to do this. Here we are in "2.8 feet" of water (we need 5 feet). This tends to be a little unnerving.

First bridge Rt 128

Second Bridge. The Amtrak RR bridge. This is normally open

Home stretch. Gloucester harbor on the other side of the last bridge

Found Lodging
Linda went below for about 5 minutes and came back up announcing we had a mooring in Marblehead harbor for the night. She is definitely communications officer from now on.

Heading toward Marblehead. Salem power plant stacks ahead

Day 6: Homeward Bound
We left Marblehead early the next day and headed straight for Boston. Once again straight into the wind. Once we rounded Deer Island we were able to sail nice and fast for the last leg. Just then an LNG tanker decided to come out and we had to circle around and kill some time as it passed.