Position           42:32.63N 070:39.35W

Date                Tuesday 24 July 2012

We arrived in Gloucester with a genoa that was in urgent need of a repair to UV damage on the leach.  This went off to Joshua Bevins, the sail maker who so excellently pieced our gennaker back together last summer.  Completion of this job was the governing factor in the length of our stay.  AS it happens we did not get the sail back until Tuesday by which time we had missed the wind window for an easy sail north east.

The delay did however allow time to catch up on some maintenance.  First my favourite, an engine oil and filter change.  Then some catch up work on winches.  I had not tackled this job before, long overdue, and it was with some trepidation that I started having consulted the manual; not quite the square root of useless but getting on that way.  You Tube however had some good videos describing the process.  Given that WiFi was initially very poor, this necessitated a visit to the Cape Anne Brewery to secure a good signal; and some excellent IPA.

There are lots of parts inside a winch:

and it was a relief to have serviced 7 out of our 11 winches and have no parts left over.  The 4 remaining winches will be done shortly but are not quite as urgent.

We had great fun sort of watching the last stage of the Tour de France cycle race as a series of text updates via the BBC web site.  As the Coggeshall Fox so well put it, “Wiggo for PM”, presumably with Boris on a tandem.

We spent some time ashore walking and visited some of the sites that we missed last summer.

This plaque commemorates the founding of Gloucester as a fishing community on 1623.

Just over the back of the boulder on which the plaque is situated there is a great view across the bay back to the town.

Being anchored in the middle of the inner harbour provides a constantly changing spectacle of both locally based traditional craft such as the reconstruction of a traditional Gloucester fishing schooner ‘Ardelle’

that was taking trips on a regular basis.

The sail arrived back from Josh late on Tuesday afternoon and was bent on by the Mate and I, good test for the hernia and hip repairs, ready for the off on Wednesday.  Josh has once again done an excellent job and picked up a number of other areas that required repaired.

The weather forecast shows some good wind for the first 12 hours.  The other limiting factor is leaving at an hour that should allow us to arrive at Mount Desert Island, about 150nm, in the daylight.  Roll on for ‘Down East’.