Hurricane Warning!

Better safe than sorry!

We decided to lift the boat out of the water as hurricane 'Irene' approached.

South of us, the winds were very destructive and a decision was needed quickly, as the shipyard filled up.

Front Street Shipyard, in Belfast, Maine,has a wide travel lift, perfect for our beam, the staff are great and extremely helpful. We are now checked into a motel for a while. There we watched the weather channel and became expert meteorologists overnight!!

A great opportunity to catch up on all the laundry and here in Belfast, they have the biggest one that I have ever seen!

There are 52 washing machines and 40 dryers, it's amazing.

It is always busy, full of locals who must not have facilities at home.

Relaxing in the shipyard with our good friends from 'Espirito del Stella', they also lifted their cat out of the water for Irene and good company to explore the local bars and restaurants with!

At the end of the week, we plan to go to England for a break, while we see what happens to the next hurricane, which is moving this way across the Atlantic. It is said to be a bad hurricane season this year, so we are better away from the boat, there is nothing to be done in such gale force winds, except keep safe and watch it on the TV!!

Maine

FOG!

As we approach the coast of Maine in thick fog, the vis is about 50 meters and that is not the only hazard - there are lobster pots EVERYWHERE, and dodging them is serious work.

Daryl said that if I ran over one, I would have to get in the water and free it. That certainly kept my attention on the job!

Camden.

Great to visit this busy town again. Met up with an old friend 'Michael',I used to crew with, 'back in the day'!

Had a wonderful lunch at the yacht club with him and his family and enjoyed talking about old times and watching the beautiful boats sail in and out of the harbour.

In Maine most of the yachts are wooden and in kept in perfect condition, we have just been to Southwest Harbour, where the famous 'Hinckleys' are built and it is just wonderful to see such beautifully maintained boats sailing around here.

There are buoys attached to lobster pots are absolutely everywhere.

Each fisherman's license allows him to lay as many as 800 pots, and they will pick up these pots every other day.

One of the locals at Bar Harbour said that they were harvesting between 1100lbs and 1400lbs of lobsters each day!

This is big money, and apparently there is quite a lot of antagonism between the different fisherman gangs, and they carry shotguns on the boats! Mental note: be nice to the lobstermen.

Maine is beautiful, when you can see the coastline! But so much of the time, it is really foggy and all you can see is the bow of the boat!

But so much of the time it is like this, and motoring along feels almost like floating on air.

We headed for Rockland for the Maine Lobster Festival! What a great event, loads of lobster and good seafood, originally started to get rid of all the excess lobster caught in these waters. Even got interviewed by the local TV station and appeared on the local news that night!!

Cape Cod

After a brief stop in Newport, Rhode Island, we head north again.

We took a short cut through the Cape Cod canal, and here we are following our friends in another cat.

The current can be quite scary in some of these places, running at about 4 knots, it is important to get it right!!

Provincetown, Cape Cod is a favourite spot for the gay crowd.

It is a buzzing place and lots of bars and restaurants to choose from. Lots of live music and plenty of colourful characters to watch!!

After leaving Provincetown we headed north, across a bank where the whales spend the summer. Great to see so many, but very hard to get a good photo of one.

Sunsets at sea are always lovely.

We are doing an overnight sail to Maine now, the spinnaker is flying and the forecast is good!