Norfolk -- starting down the ICW

We spent a quiet night at Little Creek Marina catching up on our sleep.  The next morning we washed the boat and headed for Norfolk.  When we left the marina and started down the Chesapeake the water was flat calm, quite a bit different than the day before.

Norfolk is similar to San Diego in that it is a huge navy town with all sorts of navy vessels including aircraft carriers.  It has an amazing amount of marine traffic including tugs pushing huge barges.

We got a free spot in Portsmouth which is just across from Norfolk.  There four other sailboats at this spot so we had a "wee bit of chat" with them.  I was out of rum (poor planning) and we weren't able to find a liquor store....actually John went in search of a store and walked quite a few miles looking while I stayed back with the other sailors.  One of them said he had rum and gave me half a bottle!!!   The sad thing was John doesn't drink rum and he had lots of beer on the boat...what a great Captain and friend.  Just as an aside I've got a bad hip and am not so mobile.

Norfolk is mile one of the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway.  Around 1 PM on Tuesday we started off on our trip down the ICW.  The interesting thing about going down waterway is that there are bridges with only 12 feet of vertical clearance that have to open for boats to pass.  These bridges are on different schedules to open so you have to time your trip and adjust your speed accordingly.  The ones near metropolitan areas are usually closed from 6:30-8:30 AM and 4:00-6:00 PM.  Some only open once an hour and others open on the hour and half hour.  So it's lots of fun figuring it all out.  Here's our first lift bridge.

We went as far as Great Bridge where there is a lock and then a bridge.   There is a beautiful spot to tie up between the lock and the bridge so that is where we stayed along with about six other boats.  We walked into the little town and got a few groceries and a bottle of Mount Gay Rum!!!  We keep buying groceries because we wonder when the next place will be that we can stock up.  As John said we keep buying more groceries than we use.  We figure we could almost make Florida with the groceries we have!!!!

Today, Wednesday we left Great Bridge at 8 AM with all the other boats.  Everybody was lined up in formation ready for the bridge to open.  Today's trip started in a narrow tree lined canal.  Etiquette on the waterway is that if a boat wants to pass another he radios to that boat and says he's going to pass him to port.  The boat to be passed acknowledges and slows down and then the passing boat slows and goes by so his wake doesn't rock the other boat.  It's interesting how you get a string of boats following each other.

We decided to stay at a marina tonight since there was quite a wind and anchoring in this shallow area is a bit tricky.  Tonight we're at the low end marina in Coinjock, NC.

The big power yachts are across the way at the higher end marina.

Manhattan to (almost) the Chesapeake Bay

The next day (Friday) turned out to be sunny with gentle winds so off we go to the East River that takes us right next to Manhattan and out to the ocean.  It's always interesting to go this route as you pass Rikers Island prison and for overflow they have the biggest prison ship in the world.  The best part is going past all the high rise apartments and office towers.  After going past Manhattan with ferries going every which way and low flying helicopters going from Manhattan to the airport we headed out to the ocean.

We got out on the ocean about 4:00 PM and headed down the New Jersey coast.  My watch was from 10-2 AM so I had a wee nap beforehand.  By my 10 PM watch I could see the bright lights of Atlantic City way off in the distance.   Our night went smoothly and as dawn approached we were starting to cross Delaware Bay.  The weather reports said we would have favoring winds that would be no more than 20 knots.  We had a nice day sailing but about 4:00 PM Dixie informed us that the weather was changing for the worse and that we should duck into Ocean City and ride out the storm for the next day.  I looked at the weather reports I had and they said we should be ok since the bad weather would be south of us.  So wanting to get to Norfolk and thinking we were ok we continued on...i.e. we didn't take Dixie's wise advice.

As darkness came the winds changed direction from what the weather reports said and also increased in velocity.  Well to say the least we had a wild night...huge waves and winds up to 30 knots.  We had a real problem making headway so progress was very slow.  We had both our sails up since we thought the winds were going to be reasonable.  The main sail was just flapping in the wind and causing real problems so we eventually decided it had to come down.  So poor John had to go out in this bouncing fury and pull it down and tie it up. The other problem was that on the Delaware coast there is no where to duck in and hide so we had to just keep going with waves breaking over the bow and coming right up over our dodger and then over the back of the boat.  Not much sleep this night.  We pounded on and by daybreak we were near the Chesapeake Bay.  Only problem was now we turned and were heading straight into the huge waves and the wind was still above 20 knots.

Slowly we made our way up the Chesapeake and decided to stop short of Norfolk at the first marina.  Were we glad to get into a nice quiet slip.  Captain John did an incredible job!

We left Newport Monday morning planning to do an overnight heading to Manhasset Bay just on the edge of New York City.  The forecast for the day was southwest winds of 10-15 knots.  About an hour into our trip the winds were hovering around 20 knots gusting higher which had us bashing into big waves and making slow progress.  So time for a new plan...we'll make our way to New London Connecticut about 30 miles ahead and overnight there.  We found a mooring ball close to the entrance and John cooked another of his gourmet meals so all ended well.

It's now Tuesday and the big "plan" is to leave around noon and slowly make our way the 80 miles to Manhasset Bay arriving there first thing Wednesday morning so we had daylight to enter the bay.  As we motored along in a light wind and consulted the weatherman we decided we needed to get there as soon as we could.  So we sped up realizing we would be entering in the dark.  As we motored along we had great lightning storms going on around us so it was quite spectacular.  As seems to be our luck just as we are entering the bay it starts pouring with rain.  We had John up on the bow with the spotlight and in we came among all the moored boats and found a good mooring buoy...3:00 AM in the morning...good night.

We knew Wednesday and Thursday were going to be windy and wet but didn't realize quite how miserable it really was.  We took the water taxi into town, did our laundry, food shopping and found a West Marine.  As you may know I love West Marine and love to wander about looking at things .......well, I have found my addiction is nothing compared to John's.  I think he could spend the whole day there.  I'm sure he did about 20 rotations through the store.  I think he knows more about the store and what they carry than the store clerk!!!

Another gourmet meal on board as the rain pelted down.  Nice and cozy.

I woke up late this morning and found John with tools spread everywhere having a wonderful time repairing all the little things that need to be done on a boat.

Our plans for tomorrow, weather cooperating are to go through a small canal to the East River which borders Manhattan and fuel up before going out on the ocean.  The next segment of our trip takes us down the coast of New Jersey past Atlantic City and on to Norfolk Virginia.  It's about a two hundred mile trip so we can only do it if we have a two or three day good weather window as there are not many places to duck in and hide.

One thing about sailing from point A to point B on a sailboat is that you really can't have a schedule as you just have to take what the weather man sends you.  We are sure learning the truth of that!!

We left Marblehead early on Friday in pretty dense fog.  Out we went dodging the lobster traps and actually found a favorable wind so on a beautiful sunshiny day we were able to sail for six hours.  One thing we have found is that when the marine forecast says the winds will be 10-15 knot with gust to 20 we know it will be much more .  Our top gust was 31 knots and the wind averaged 25 knots.  We can live with these winds but they certainly build up big waves.  We sailed until the last two hours when we had to motor sail through 25 knot winds and big waves.  We headed for a marina that is just inside the Cape Cod Canal and were glad to tie up to a dock.  Our luck seems to be that we are always beaten up in the last two hours.  It's so wonderful to arrive at our destination and finally relax
....rum helps here.  We had a wonderful dinner at an incredible restaurant attached to the marina.

The Cape Cod  Canal takes us from the Cape Cod area to Buzzards Bay off Rhode Island.  It has a strong current of up to 3 knots so one has to hit it just the correct time to have the current going with you thru the eight mile canal.

We left our marina about 8:00 AM and whistled through the canal going about 10 knots per hour.  Unfortunately when we exited the canal we had headwinds of 20 knots blowing against 3 knots of current so it was another wild hour and a half of big short choppy waves beating us to death.  After we survived this it was clear motor sailing into the wind.  Hurricane Gonzolo contributed huge swell on our way but despite conditions that resembled a washing machine we had a great day and ended up on a mooring at Newport, Rhode Island about 5:00PM.

Being a great Americas Cup fan Newport was the scene of the Cup for 150 years before the Aussies took it away in the 80's.  The boat right next to our mooring was Columbia which was the first of the 12 Metre designs and won the cup in 1958.  There are also a few other Americas Cup boats here including Weatherly (the 1962 winner of the cup) and others.  Tomorrow we head for Long Island, NY on an overnight as we are getting a little behind on our a schedule.  John blames it all on Maine and the lobster traps!!

Our Tuesday (maybe it was Monday, it's sort of hard to keep track!) Portland was for me a great break....I didn't wake up till 9:00 AM and I asked John if we should enquire about the marina and being John he had been up at daybreak, registered with the marina, got us codes for the gate, done his laundry at the coin wash and arranged for help with our problem with the boat.  Probably the only reason I don't get fired is that crew is hard to find!!

Meanwhile John and a friend in Nova Scotia had figured out what was wrong and got everything working.  I lazed about, did my laundry and read my book while he was doing all the work.  John heard about a huge marine store downtown and couldn't resist going for a visit.  He was like a kid in a candy store.

I also introduced John to Uber the taxi service so we both used it succefully...it had only started in this area a week and a half ago.  I think he's hooked on it.

The next day we left trying to get as far as we could go.  We ended up in Portsmouth, NH at one of the most luxurious marinas I have ever seen called Wentworth on the Sea. John went up to find if there was a grocery store nearby and came back with the keys to a courtesy car that was part of our $50 overnight charges...what a deal!  John being John and Brian being Brian off we headed to the West Marine store!  It's like going to Costco where you always buy things you don't really need.

John got a surprise call from Dixie and she was in the area and going to meet us for dinner.  So we met at a restaurant downtown and then she came and spent the night with us.  When we boarded, John rushed on ahead of us and was madly trying to clean up the boat....we really don't make that much of a mess?

Wednesday we headed out early to try and make as much distance as we could and ended up in beautiful Marblehead MA.  It's a huge harbor with about 2000 boats moored in it.  We were fortunate that the Harbor Master let us tie up to his dock which is right in the heart of town.  What an amazing town where the houses close to the docks are all +300 years old and incredibly we'll taken care of. A real early New England town.  The dock master told us of a great restaurant up the street where we had one of the best sea food meals I've ever had.  (Kelly the picture)

We woke up ready to head south but after looking at the weather decided to stay here another day.  This was a good call as soon after it started to blow and the rain poured down, so much so they initiated a flood warning.  So, what to do.  I went back to bed until noon while John was in his element doing all sorts of maintenance and repairs......what a nice guy he didn't even wake me up to help!  It poured rain the whole day so we just hunkerd down in the boat.  Tomorrow we leave early heading to a marina at the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal.

Dixie and a friend arrived on Tuesday Round noon to pick up our ripped sail so we all joined the trip to Rockland Maine where the sailmaker was located.  We arrived at 2:00 PM and he said he would have the sail repaired by 5:00.  We toured the town, picked up the sail at 5:00 and were on our way to a very special restaurant to celebrate John and Dixie's anniversary.  The restaurant we went to called (I'll get the name later) is supposed to be one of the ten best in North America?  After a wonderful meal we headed back to Bar Harbor for the night.

The next day we headed off to Southwestern Harbor which was going to be  an easy sail of 30 miles in light winds but turned out to be motoring straight into 25 knot winds and huge waves.  The biggest problem was trying to dodge the lobster pot buoys while the sun reflected off the water amid huge waves.  We finally arrived in the setting sun.  We vowed never to arrive anywhere so late again....somehow the next day we forgot our lesson.  Something to do with sleeping late in the morning!!

Now we are at Thursday and we leave late but it will be a nice sail, decent winds and sunshine.  True, for the first two hours until the winds blew up to over twenty knots and the waves were at least eight feet and we were going directly into them.  We took many, many waves over the front of the boat washing back to the cockpit.  Every time we hit one of these huge waves it would stall us so progress was slow.  Since we realized we would not make our intended destination we found an inlet that would partially protect us.  I keep forgetting to add that in these huge waves we still needed to maneuver around all the lobster pots.

Our little inlet also had lobster pots and wind so we anchored in the back end but had to keep watch in case the anchor let loose so chalk it up to another 4 hour watch night.  It's amazing how a glass of Rum makes you forget all the problems!!!!

I think I left off as we were leaving our hurricane hole.  We headed off for Boothbay, about an 8 hour trip again into a heavy wind and big waves....so obviously no sailing.  We sort of wonder why we are in a sailboat...oh we'll!!  Our good old Yanmar desiel keeps trustily (is that a word?) working away.  It's great to be with John as he checks the engine hourly along with whatever else he's down below looking at.  I don't want him to find out on my boat I only check things like that once a month or so!!!

Boothbay is another gorgeous port with boats everywhere and huge houses lining the shores....and of course it has our enemy the lobster trap everywhere.  We found a marina with a restaurant so all was well.  We went in for dinner expecting to order a giant lobster dinner only to find out it was a Turkey buffet with all the old folks from town.....I keep pretending that I'm still 40 years old!

Off we went Sunday with plans to go 20 miles out to try and get beyond the lobster traps and do an overnight run to the Cape Cod canal.  Even when we were 25 miles from shore there was still the "enemy."  We came to the conclusion that when it got dark we would not be able to see any of the traps so we decided to change our course so we would be in a harbor by dark.  But as our luck seems to go all of a sudden the alternator and the tachometer quit.  So back we headed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire where they have boatyards for repairs.....but the problem was that the last two hours of our trip would be in the dark.  Our, or should I say John's solution was for him to stand at the front of the boat holding a search light while I steered through the traps.  He would shine the light on the traps so I could see them and if I was getting to close to one that I hadn't seen he would use an air horn to warn me.  Everything worked like a charm and we got into a marina with repair services.

Our beginning

I was invited by John Apfeld to help move his sailboat, a Freedom 39 from Mahone Bay Nova Scotia, near Halifax to Florida.  Of course I jumped at the chance.  I was told our journey would take approximately 6 weeks.  John and Dixie, his dear spouse and I have done trips similar to this before so I knew this was a no brainer.

I arrived in Halifax  on Monday September 29th and stayed at his gorgeous home in the beautiful Annapolis Valley for several days as we prepared the boat for the upcoming trip.  Our plans were to sail down the coast of Nova Scotia and cross the Bay of Fundy to Maine.  In our previous trips we had never sailed down the Maine coast so this seemed like a great opportunity to leisurely explore coastal Maine.

After preparation our plans were to set sail Friday night and spend two nights sailing to Bar Harbor Maine.  If you are an experienced sailor, one of the rules is to wait for a good weather window.  The marine weather report for Friday night and Saturday was for winds of 25 to 30 knots and 10 to 15 foot waves....so guess what we did....stayed on the boat at the marina and hoped Sunday would be better.

In the meantime the Town of Mahone Bay was having their annual Scarecrow festival.  All the businesses and homes on the Main Street have figures dressed in all sorts of exotic costumes on their front lawns.  Even though it was cold and rainy there were huge numbers of visitors.

Sunday started out with heavy rain, fog and high winds so we just hunkered down for the day thinking we would probably set out on Monday.  About 4:00 in the afternoon the weather window started to look more promising so we decided we would head out.  After getting everything ready we left the dock at 5:30 heading for Bar Harbor, Maine.  What this meant was a 90 mile trip down the coast of Nova Scotia and then rounding Nova Scotia and sailing a 120 mile stretch across the Bay of Fundy to Maine.

Everything was going well for the first two hours until it got dark and we found that our red/green navigation lights weren't working. We kicked ourselves for not checking this before we left but what to do....head back or try to improvise.  This is where I am glad to be sailing with John, he always seems to come up with great solutions to problems.  So he was able to rewire the lights and all was well again....anyway for a while.  I think what John and I are finding is that as soon you solve one problem another one pops up.

The winds were blowing at about 20 knots but we were doing well so John took the first watch of 4 hours so I went off to bed.  It wasn't very long before I was rudely awakened with John shrieking we've got a problem...get up and help.  Apparently one of our battens had ripped from the sail.  So we were able to retrieve it and back to bed I went.  You guessed it after about another hour of sleep John was bothering me again...this time it was a little bit more serious...the main sail had ripped up at the top so we had to get it down and stowed.  We got the foresail up and the motor going and continued
on our way.  We were still only about 30 miles from our start. So back to bed I went....but by this time I couldn't sleep.  So after tossing and turning I finally got to sleep.  John being John decided to stay on watch for longer than his turn so I didn't have to start my watch until just before the sun came up.

In the meantime John got on the sat phone and asked Dixie to find someone who could fix our ripped mainsail.  One of Dixie's many, many great attributes is she is able to research and find the best person who could solve our problem and as usual she found a sailmaker who could repair our sail as soon as we could bring it to him.

The rest of our trip to Maine was pretty uneventful....the winds died to nothing so we motored on with incredible sunsets (add pictures here!) and under clear sky's and a full moon.  We arrived at Bar Harbor at 8:30 am Monday morning and quickly cleared Customs.

Bar Harbor Maine is a real tourist town.  The big event this time of year is the people coming to see the fall colors of the trees.  When we arrived there was a huge Princess Cruises ship disgorging 3000 bodies into the town.  It was hard to walk down the streets there were so many bodies.  Being purist sailors we turned up our noses at this nuisance!!!  In the meantime ((I like that phrase) Dixie and a friend were driving on their way to meet us and take the sails to our sailmaker who is a couple of hours away.  This may sound like I'm getting old and giving too much detail but if you are interested (even if you are not!) we went out to dinner on the early bird special and had a lobster dinner for $19.

There are many lobster fishermen here and the price of selling their lobster has been very low.  Last year they were getting only $2.20/lb but this year it has gone up to $5.00/lb.  I forgot to mention that on coming into Bar Harbor for 20 miles out there are lobster traps with their floating buoys everywhere.  One has to keep a constant lookout for the buoys and man oeuvre around them so you don't hook one on your prop.  John is not too impressed with all these tiny bobbing floats!