42:58.7N 70:36.7W

Thursday - 18^th July

With 40 miles to cover today, we set off at 0740 hours under clear blue skies with barely 2 knots of wind, but in no time at all the wind built up to 10 knots and we again started to hoist Flossie, but as we did so the wind rose to 15 plus knots which is above the designed limits of this sail and so we re-bagged it and just flew the foresail and main which had us ripping along at 8+ knots across the flat sea.

We spotted a few whales in the distance and again two more, possibly Pilot Whales, a bit closer, but nothing interesting or close enough to photograph. The wind dropped away around the middle of the day and so after a short period of motoring we were finally able to fly Flossie for the last part of the journey and ghosted along at 4 – 5 knots in barely any wind until we made the final approach to the Isles of Shoals.

We picked our way between the islands and shoals and slipped into the bay where the granite sea bed precludes anchoring and hunted for one of the buoys belonging to two yacht clubs on the mainland (New Hampshire) that transients can use for free if there are no club members wanting it that night. We had to hunt a for a while as it is not at all obvious which ones these might be and in truth although there are plenty of buoys there, only a handful are available for our use as they are rather too close together to allow us to swing safely amongst other boats. In the end James and Sarah lassoed one and we made ourselves fast, sat back with cups of tea and watched other boats arriving and in one notable case, making a huge hash of things: he had stormed through the moorings, bashing one buoy aside until he finally caught a lobster pot well and truly around his prop.

The main island here is Star Island and it is a sort of religious retreat with a large former hotel as its main accommodation block. This impressive wooden building overlooks the bay and it is all very well-tended and maintained. Some extra entertainment was provided when they held a fire practice which seemed to involve lots of people running around in a random panic mode, whilst all of the rest gathered around the central flagpole.  Eventually the young staff ran into sight with their ‘fire engines’ which are very elderly marina style boat trolleys packed with some of the required gear to pump water from the nearby pond!

A huge thunderstorm over on the mainland (downwind of us) cooled the evening air and we had a very nice evening with a BBQ on deck as the sun went down.

The lad who seems to be responsible for the maintenance and running of the site rowed over to talk to us for a short while and was very keen for us to visit the island in the morning, but as Sarah and I walked all over these islands last year and  we have 45 miles to sail on Friday, we politely declined.