Plymouth to Rockport to Portland Maine

Catacaos
Graham Shaw
Mon 5 Jul 2010 20:36
43:50.9N 069:38.2W

Did I mention it is cold here? The days are lovely but at night it drops
considerably. We passed by Boston on the way to Rockport as we will probably
stop there on the way down. Just off Boston is the Stellwagen banks, where
the
whales hide out, so I was on whale watch for most of the day. Late
afternoon a few sight-seeing boats were ahead and that is when we saw our
first whale of our so far nearly 14,000 mile trip. I was so excited, we
hung around and spot some more whales, blowing and breaking the water, sorry
none on camera all too far away. This was a real treat as I have been
waiting from the beginning of our journey to see a whale in open water.

Rockport - what a lovely little town, very quaint, with lots of art
galleries,
every artist in America lives here I think. You have fun anchoring as there
are so many pots about, in fact everywhere you go in Maine you are on the
lookout for pots. We managed more spinnaker sailing the following day on
the way up to Portland. Again more whales spotted, I am far too slow with
the camera. Also there were lots of seals coming out to see us.

We decided on stopping at Portland for 4th July celebration as they were
putting on a big display with orchestra, this being the first time they have
tried this.
The lovely thing was they were also broadcasting live on the radio, so we
did not have to go ashore to hear the music. There was a huge turnout, but
we had the
perfect spot for the fireworks. Before this all kicked off we had a wander
around the city then took Lucas for another train ride. Loads of boats came
around to the anchorage for the display and music, I always worry at times
like this as it tends to bring out the idiots on boats, and yes we had a few
to keep us occupied before the music started. There were lots of police,
coast guard and harbour patrol boats keeping everyone in order.
The event was super, the music was by the local symphony orchestra, and the
fireworks were intergrated with the program as it got darker, they went on
for about 1 1/2 hours, until a fire started within the fireworks, luckily
enough the fireworks were almost finished by the time the fire took a hold.
Four
fire engines arrived, but they left the fire to burn itself out. When it
didn't after a hour, they came and put out, by then all the fireworks that
had
not gone off had exploded in the fire. Not sure how the fire started but it
was
pretty large in a short space of time, we were a good distance from danger
or stray fireworks. Lucas even managed to stay up for the fireworks, last
year he slept through all of them.

We have learnt a new word in American. When your anchor drags, we would say
it has dragged, but here they say it drug!!!

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