Switching Gears

A new adventure is about to begin. Preparations are underway and have been for a few weeks now.  Traveling down to Salem, Massachusetts in the morning to take possession of our (new to us) boat is just a few hours away. We are making the move from sail to power so the first step will be bringing “Little Prince” home, some 90 nautical miles. We intend to take our time with this trip so we’ll take 2 days to bring it up to Maine.

Here I sit at the galley table, in the middle of the Merrimack River in Newburyport, Massachusetts. We took possession of “Little Prince” and were given a tutorial of how things work but there is a great deal to learn. After carefully mapping out our course we were not able to put the coordinates into the GPS because it wanted an additional decimal. We had the chart so we worked it out with some trepidation. I followed along on the chart while Tim used the GPS to see where we were. Being 90 miles from home in a boat you have no experience with can try a person’s nerves.

Instead of going around Cape Ann as planned we took the shorter route going up the Annisquam River from Gloucester Harbor to Ipswich Bay. It was slow going with limited water and quite a bit of boat traffic. The first hurdle was going through the draw bridge from the harbor into the mouth of the river. It was a narrow entry with a swift tide coming out of the river. Watching the boats ahead of us gun their engines and watching their bows lurch upward we were alerted to how it was going to work. Tim gave it some extra gas and had to wrestle with the unfamiliar steering some but we made it through, both of us letting out a “whew” once we did.

When we had some open water to play with we set a waypoint to a buoy we knew we wanted to head towards that was more than 10 nautical miles away. Then Tim turned on the automatic pilot. The boat kept us on course as we sat back and enjoyed the ride. Once we figure out how everything works this will be a very fun boat. Some very simple thing elude us however. There is an additional monitor in the cockpit which is folded back. We can’t seem to figure out how to bring it forward so I can use it for navigating.

Our route home is now being planned after discussing it last night. We’ll pass by the Isles of Shoals and then head up to Maine. The weather is good and we are also planning on sitting up top today and enjoying the good weather.