Gloucester Massachusetts

We have made it to Gloucester MA and are stopping for a couple of days to let a front go by.

We left Coinjock early Tuesday morning. We have four bridges and one lock to deal with between Coinjock and Norfolk and hitting them on time for openings is a problem. More of a problem this year then previous. The last bridge in Norfolk is having problems and instead of opening on demand they are opening only at 9:00 am, 12:00 noon, 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm. If you miss one opening you have to wait for the next. We wanted to make the 3:00 opening and that meant we had to hustle. Problems started at the first bridge. We were about ten minutes early and called to be clear for the next opening. This bridge opens on the hour and the half hour. We were on the hour. For some reason he didn't open on time, he was five minutes late. The next bridge down the line also opens on the hour and the half hour. Unfortunately, because we were held up at the first we missed the half hour opening. We had to sit in place and wait for the next opening. The next problem was at Great Bridge, the third in the chain. This bridge only opens on the hour. We were on schedule to be there on the hour until we got held up on the others. We had to sit and wait for the next opening. What should have taken an hour took two, making me nervous about making the 3:00 bridge. The good news: we still made the opening and were in Norfolk. We continued through Norfolk and made the turn into the Bay and motored out the Bay entrance turning north to Block Island just before nightfall.

We were out in the Atlantic and on our way. The wind and waves were behind us and we set sails, shut down the motor and continued through the night. Morning found more of the same, following winds and seas. During the night Thursday, the wind shifted to the SW from the SE. This caused problems with the sails switching from one side of the boat to another, a very dangerous event. We chose to drop the sails and start the engine. Two days and nights of sailing offshore, one of our best runs. We arrived at Block Island about noon on Friday. One week of travel and everything worked out perfectly.

We spent the night at anchor and left Saturday morning for the Elizabeth Islands, aiming for Cuttyhunk the first night. Since we had an early start and we were making good time motoring we continued on to Hadley Harbor. Hadley Harbor is one of our favorite stops. Our friends Lee and Cheryl from Martha's Vinyard called and said they would join us for the evening. We arrived, launched the dinghy and ran over to their boat for dinner and stories. In the morning we went back for coffee, bagels and more stories. Soon they had to leave and we spent the rest of day exploring the harbor in our dinghy and doing a bit of clamming and harvesting mussels. Fresh clams for dinner, nothing better. Sunday is a very busy day with the locals but by evening most were gone and it was another peaceful night. Another high point was meeting another couple on their Pearson 424. They are the original owners and it was great to see one of our boats that was still in almost original condition instead heavily modified by several owners.

Monday morning we took care of a few things waiting for noon to come so we could pull anchor and move on. We needed to wait until noon to leave so that the tide would be right when we got to the Cape Cod Canal. If you try to fight the tide instead of riding with it you can have a miserable trip. Riding with the tide we picked up an additional three knots of speed. We exited the canal around 4:00 pm and turned towards Gloucester. We had planned to just continue up to Maine but our weather service was warning about high winds Tuesday night and Wednesday. Thus our decision to stop at Gloucester. The winds were too light to sail so we motored, however this time we needed to go as slow as possible. We had 50 miles to go and could do that in about ten hours. This would put us into Gloucester about midnight. We do not enter strange harbors at night, therefore we needed to travel as slow as possible and arrive at sunrise. It got to be a long night with a bit of excitement when we ran over a lobster pot line and got it caught on our propeller. We were fortunate that it came off without having to go into the water to clear it. As we got closer the harbor it was obvious we were still too early and since there was no wind or waves we just stopped and floated for a couple of hours. In the morning Cori watched a great sunrise as the lobster boats headed out to check their pots. We then fired up the motor and in a couple of hours were inside the harbor and maneuvering into the inner harbor to pick up a mooring. But first we circled and photographed an outstanding example of a square rigged tall ship that was anchored in the outer harbor. Once tied up we launched the dinghy and went to town to pay for the mooring and check out the town. After lunch and aimlessly wandering up and down the streets we went back to the boat with a stop at Ginger Nut, one of the cruisers we met last winter in the Bahamas that is here also. We plan to see a little more of the town tomorrow, pick up some fresh fruit, milk and vegetables and continue North on Thursday.