Position           41:40.99N 070:38.45W

Date                Tuesday 13 September 2011

In good military fashion it was such an early start that we had to wait for first light.  Having secured alongside the fuel dock the previous night made the start easier as at 0530 it was only a matter of slipping the lines to be off.  There was of course no wind whatsoever and even by 0900 it had only got up to 9 knots and that, of course, was on the nose; good exercise for the engine!

The aim of the early start was to be at the eastern entrance to the Cape Cod Canal for at a time to get the maximum benefit of the current which we duly did resulting in a turbulent ride as 4 knots of current swirl and eddy their way through the canal.

Toby Baker, the OCC port officer at Wings Neck, warned us to expect a bumpy ride as we came out of the canal and he was not wrong.  The current, and by this time somewhat brisker head wind provided some interesting seas; a smaller sailing boat could have been very wet.

Sid seem overall pleased with his first day’s outing on Caduceus and we took up Toby’s spare mooring at 1455 having covered the 65 miles from Gloucester in 9½ hours, all under engine I am afraid to say.  Perhaps tomorrow would be better.

Toby repaired on board, as they say in Hornblower, for a couple of glasses and then Sid allowed me to cook him pork in a mushroom and white wine sauce.  I seem to remember the odd dram of Caol Ila along the way to an early night.