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’.
