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!!