4th August
Osprey
John Bowering
Fri 4 Aug 2006 22:52
Fox Thoroughfare in poor visibility. The anchorage which had been
recommended for its beach turned out to be very exposed to the south and
we rock and rolled all night to a 5ft swell coming off the Atlantic. Our
crew are now good helmsmen (and women) which makes these tight passages
possible with the skipper doing the navigation with the confidence that
the person on the helm can accurately follow a course and cope with the
cross track errors ? set and leeway to the mariners. We arrived at high
tide which made locating the rocks and ledges difficult with some passages
only 50 metres wide ? a space that calls the GPS accuracy into some doubt.
One of the interesting things about the rolling at anchor is that only
complaints about sleep and unsecured items rolling around were made ?
there was no longer any thought of seasickness. Rishi was up at 0230
pinning down a couple of errant cans that were rolling around and keeping
him awake.
Up at 0600 to a clear day for about 30 minutes where after the dreaded
Maine fog descended and we were stuck for a couple of hours as the skipper
was not brave enough for a pure radar exit through the submerged rocks.
Finally we exchanged rain for fog and ventured out. Headed north through
Casco passage ? again a very narrow 50 metre passage where Aisha had the
helm and made a brilliant job of the transit. We then crossed the bar at
Bass Harbour and with a bit of encouragement from Aisha took another short
cut inside Great Cranberry Island with about 3 feet under the keel on a
falling tide. This cut about 2 hours off our journey to Southwest Harbour
where we now have a comfortable berth for the night and the crew have
departed on a tour of the National Park. Aisha spent nearly four hours on
the wheel and seemd to enjoy every minute. We have hardly used the auto
pilot at all! Tomorrow we have a long and possibly overnight haul to South
Bristol where we plan to be for Monday. We will start decommissioning the
crew and boat there as our engineer in Portland, who will be fitting some
new instrumentation, is hoping we can give Osprey to him about the 10th.
As it is only a couple of days difference in the original plan we have
moved the crew flights home to the 8th and the skipper will take the
vessel down to Portland after delivering the crew to Boston.