Passage from Maine to Cape Cod #26

We left Broadcove Marina at 12:52 p.m., right on schedule. Ralph mentioned that we needed to leave by one p.m. so as to get though the lobster traps by daylight. He was so very right about that. There were lots of lobster pots as they call them and it was important not to get the engines tangled in any if them. We all kept a good lookout. It's still a little early in the season. When it gets warmer the lobster pots will get denser making it very challenging for large boats to get through at all.

Before we left Ralph plotted our course on with the chart.

Arlene takes a look at where we are going.

We passed this charming place on an island.

For lunch we had lobster bisque that Franci had made from the leftover lobster. It was a great way to start the journey.

Stephen took a turn at the helm.

Arlene took a turn at the helm.

At some point Ralph gave the helm to Franci so he could show Stephen how to do something. Franci saw lobster pots dead ahead and grabbed the wheel making a sharp turn to the left to avoid the pots. We had been told that the auto pilot would go off automatically if you took the wheel. However, when she did this the auto pilot came off of its mounting bracket and it apparently did some other bad things as well. We would have to steer the boat the old fashioned way, by hand.

At some point in the afternoon Arlene discovered the refrigerator was not working. We thought we might have to offload food into the coolers, but Ralph was able to jiggle some wires and get it going again.

While he was busy doing repairs, he went ahead and epoxied the auto pilot mount as well.

It took us 25 hours to get to our destination, Sandwich Marina in Cape Cod Canal.

We did four hour watches. Ralph got very little sleep as he also helped supervise us on our watch since radar was totally new to us. The night was cold and very foggy. Visibility was none and we steered using only the radar. At noon the next day we arrived at Sandwich marina.