It’s grey, miserable and foggy outside when I wake up. For some reason I am waking up earlier than Mike even on days when my back doesn’t drive me out of bed (I don’t like all this tea making business) and as I glare out of the window at the grey in front of me, it turns even nastier and starts raining. Looking at the weather radar we can see the bad weather stretches from the Chesapeake up to north Maine. We are in the middle.
Photos: Just the ticket – lovely weather
We all end up sitting in the salon with our various pieces of electronic equipment but immediately it stops raining, I send Mike into his black hole to deal with the generator.
He primes it with sea water and starts it. It starts but no water comes out. Not good. He primes it again. Still no water. After the third time he spits his dummy out and exclaims that we don’t need a generator anyway and we are leaving as he has spotted a tiny patch of blue sky and checked on the internet weather radar that the worst of it has gone through.
We pull the anchor up (nice and clean now that it has had a few days of being in sand rather than in mud) and motor out through the channel. Browns Bank is just for the birds today – no boats are out there in the fog.
As we leave Plymouth and start the journey south towards Cape Cod the fog gradually lifts leaving us with a beautiful sunny day. For the first time there are other yachts going in the same direction as us, probably also bound for the canal. A ferry zooms past creating a huge wake, and instead of lessening it’s impact by turning across it as he usually does, Mike lets it hit us side on in the hope that it will force some water into the generator inlet cooling pipe then with fingers crossed, he starts the generator. It immediately starts spewing water back out – fixed – hurray – and just as Mike thought, it was just in need of a good priming. I’ll give it a bloody good priming if it plays up again, Basil Fawlty style with a large branch!
A huge cargo ship, probably a car transporter given the shape, appears on the horizon, getting closer and closer. He is also heading for the canal and on a collision course with us. Suddenly a tug comes zooming out of the canal entrance and the ship starts to slow down. How he was going to take the corner of the canal on his course without clipping the edge I have no idea but the tiny tug keeps him under control and we enter the canal without having to worry about him.
Photo: You wait for something to look at then three boats come along at once
The Cape Cod Canal is hardly the Panama Canal but with up to 5 knots of current against you if you don’t time it right, it’s potential for mishap is high. Mike has booked us into a marina just inside for tonight so that we can start the trip at high tide tomorrow morning which is 9 am.
We get moored up – as usual there aren’t many places to put a cat so we end up adjacent to the fuel dock, right by the Coast Guard boats. As we enjoy our teatime cuppa the enormous car transporter starts it journey through the canal, an incongruous sight in such a narrow, constrained water.
Photo: The car transporter passing the entrance to the marina
Photos: In the company of trawlers and coast guards
Victoria goes off to find the toilet block and comes back ages later saying it was a 4-mile hike down the road. Prone to a level of exaggeration when it comes to some things, Mike and I go off if search of a shop and the toilet block. She’s almost right. Whilst not actually a 4-mile hike, it’s a bloody long walk out of the marina, along a road and across a car park, a long way if you fancy a pee in the middle of the night!
On the way back we get Victoria to join us in a trip to the local lobster and seafood store. It’s all there - alive and kicking, freshly slaughtered or frozen. What an amazing store and everything looks so good which is probably why we end up spending $175. The freezer had better not pack up now.
I have already defrosted cod for dinner so we decide to have a lobster claw for starters. And what a claw. It is huge! I wouldn’t want to meet the chappie it was chopped from!
Photo: One claw feeds three
The light over the marina is beautiful as the sun starts to descend but there are black clouds approaching and in the distance we see lightning and hear the rumble of thunder.
Photos: The light begins to change as the clouds darken
Mike and Victoria hose down the cockpit. So much dirt seems to arrive with the fog and the drizzle, then just as darkness falls the tell tale increase wind hallows the approach of a storm, one that doesn’t exist as far as Mike’s internet radar screens show, but the 40 knot winds and sideways driving torrential rain are real enough. Victoria and I stand looking at the mayhem outside, securely moored to a nice solid concrete dock. She feels that as long as she holds my arm and the door surround, she will be safe. She’s probably right! The lightning crackles and the thunder roars but it is short-lived and half an hour later we are back to normal.
Position: 41 deg 46 min N, 70 deg 30 min W
Distance so far: 2003 miles
Wow Jean. Amazing places you are discovering. Very odd that a storm of that size just turned up. Here in the BVI, we would have had storm advisories a week before. Glad you were on a dock! Hope the weather improves soon and you can work on that sun tan again!
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