Saturday began with some wind from the south, so before noon we hoisted our anchors and both Cailte and Robin headed for the Cape Cod Canal. Our course was a bit more westerly than the direct route for the canal entrance, and then the wind veered to the west. As a result, our progress toward our goal was slowed substantially.
In time, both boats were motoring into a brisk headwind. My first time making this particular crossing was aboard Cailte. This time, Robin was in the lead.

Perhaps due to the strong southwesterly breeze, although we entered the eastern end of the canal right on time for the current to change in our favor, we found an adverse current. That lasted a good half way through the canal, and it warned us of rough seas once we exited the canal in Buzzards Bay, a body of water notorious for its southesterly afternoon chop.
That complicated things, because to enter Onset Harbor, within a mile of the western entrance to the canal, requires some rapid maneuvering. If the water was bumpy, that sharp turn to starboard might be dodgey.
For once, I was introducing Tom to something new. He'd never been to Onset in his 29 voyages to Maine. So I had described the Onset entrance in detail: The green tower on a pile of rocks that marked the near end of the entrance, the green can just beyond that marked the far end, and the currents that sawed in opposite directions within a few feet and that tried to shove your bow onto the rock pile.
I radioed Tom just before we reached the entrnce. Fortunately, we were through the worst bucking that the Buzzards Bay breeze created on the ebbing current.
I made my sharp turn into Onset and, glancing quickly so as not to lose my bearing, I looked back to see Tom, his teeth gnashing as Cailte went through the Onset Waltz.
We both anchored outside the mooring fields of a marina and a yacht club, and the next day all of us went ashore for dinner with my relatives, Betty and Ted Campbell, who live nearby, and with my sister, Janet, and her husband, Dennis.
On Monday, we parted company with Tom, who waited for the arrival of his brother, Mike, to help him take Cailte back to New Jersey. It was another day of motoring, but one punctuated, when we arrived off Newport, RI, our destination, with a fanfare of lightning and thunder that escorted us into Newport Harbor.

The next morning, we were encumbered by a schedule when we motored out through the Gloucester breakwater and headed toward Provincetown, about 40 miles to the southeast. We wanted to be in Onset, at the far end of the Cape Cod Canal, on the next day, Saturday, so there was no chance of waiting for wind to blow us there.
The Sea was slick as oil, with gentle swells, and in the sky sunshine filtered through thin clouds.
We reached Race Point -- the northern tip of the Cape -- at mid afternoon and rounded the southern tip of the hooked beach off Provincetown an hour or so later. The beach was remarkably unpopulated.

It's about three miles from the tip into Provincetown Harbor, where we expected to find Tom Gilmore's boat Cailte anchored. We spotted her from a mile away and made straight for her, anchoring about 150 feet to her north. Later, Tom joined us in the dinghy for an examination of the Provincetown wildlife, which is mostly nocturnal. After dinner and ice cream, we dinghied back through an anchorage dotted with derelict-looking craft that may well have been occupied dwellings.

Out at the York, ME, sea buoy, the wind was blowing.
Hallelujah!
With the Autohelm 4000 doing the steering, we sailed all day long, reaching Cape Ann, MA, by 3:30 in the afternoon, a voyage of 35 miles. The wind had been from the northeast, on our port quarter until we were just offshore from this new cape and about six miles from the entrance to Gloucester Harbor. It had been the perfect day.
But now we had to turn to starboard to make a straight run for the Gloucester breakwater -- and a run it was, with the wind directly from behind along with a following sea that wanted to shove Robin's stern one way or another.
The smart move would have been to keep on a reach until we had the breakwater on our beam, and then to tack toward shore.
Instead, when the action got rough, I brought the sails down and motored for the next hour.
We had called ahead for a city mooring in Gloucester, a port we'd never visited. I grew up in Massachusetts but had never been in downtown Gloucester, a town that played a central role in the book (and movie) The Perfect Storm. It was that book that helped sell me on the Westsail 32. One Westsail had been caught in the storm and easily survived, and that convinced me this was the boat for us.
So our visit to Gloucester seemed in a sense preordained.
There was a drama going on when we reached the breakwater. A sailboat had sunk just off the entrance, and crews were attempting to raise the boat. We went around the two boats on the scene and motored up the outer harbor, about two miles long, while three guys in an old Irwin 30 made us look like neophytes, sailing along with Robin as her exhaust spit out water and steam.
The harbormaster met us when we were inside the inner harbor and led us to a mooring, collecting his fee and offering suggestions for our visit.
But we decided to stay aboard Robin. The dinghy was lashed on the foredeck, there was food in the icebox and we'd had a wonderful day on the water. Why not stay there?

The boats moored near Robin made clear this was a working harbor. This lobster boat, rather trashy looking, was not quite as picturesque as those we'd seen in Maine.

Nor was this commercial fishing boat going to win any councours d'elegance. There was not a waterfront mansion in sight . . .

. . . only blue collar tenaments. With no glitz to lure us ashore, we had dinner, read our books and watched the sun set behind a cathedral that stood on the far side of not some fancy waterfront bistro but a steel-sheathed warehouse on a barnacle-encrusted wharf, just north of the harbor's Coast Guard station.

With darkness came sleep. Monica was in the V-berth, where there really is only room for one, particularly if one needs to make middle-of-the-night visits to the head. I was in the main cabin on the starboard settee.
It was about 10:45 p.m. when I woke. I saw Monica, only a shadow, up in the cockpit, moving around.
Why is she out there, I wondered? The night was pleasantly cool, and Monica seldom wakes once she falls asleep.
Then she began fumbling with the companionway screens.
"What are you doing?" I asked. I couldn't imagine why she had gone to the bother to replace the screens if she went out to get some air.
She hadn't.
I knew this now because there was a flashlight shining through the screen into my face.
As I climbed over the lee cloth and out of my berth, the shadowy figure moved to starboard. A moment later, I was standing on the companionway ladder, fumbling with the screens.
Just beyond the dodger, two feet away from me, a large man was attempting to climb over Robin's two-strand lifeline.
Then I saw the boat and the other man. The boat was small as was the other man.
It was still confusing me, what was happening, so at first I didn't realized that the man in the boat was trying to start an outboard motor, maybe flooding the engine.
There was nothing I wanted more for the big man to climb over the lifelines. And now there was nothing I wanted more than for the outboard to start.
But I was also now aware that we had been boarded by thieves, and I was angry. Although they hadn't been aboard long enough to take anything, I didn't want them to get away with their felony.
So I reached down inside the companionway where two headlamps are hung by their straps over a regular flashlight mounted there. I seized one of the headlamps, brought it up, turned it on and shined the light at the bow of the theives' boat, where I could read their registration number. I tried to memorize it.
MS 0106, I thought.
"We've got a gun," the scrawny man operating the boat hollered. "Don't come any closer or we'll use it."
I had no intention of getting any closer. But now I was forced to think about our vulnerability if the invaders really had a gun. We were unarmed, I thought, and I got the feeling in my chest you might get staring down the barrel of a loaded pistol.
I kept the light shining on the boat, and finally the outboard motor caught and the boat began to ease in reverse away from Robin's side.
When the scrawny guy -- he reminded me of the rock star Kid Rock -- got the boat far enough aft, he motored slowly past Robin's transom. I stared into his eyes, the flashlight still shining on the boat.
"Don't try to follow us," Kid Rock said. "Or we'll come back and get you."
I realized now that he was the brains of this nincompoop operation. I also saw now that the boat was a center console about 16 to 18 feet long and that, on a tall antenna amidships, it flew -- a Jolly Roger, a pirate's flag.
The thieves motored west, toward the cathedral, and then south, near the Coast Guard station, which I was now calling on Channel 16.
"This is the sailing vessel Robin calling the Coast Guard or any law enforcement agency in Gloucester Harbor," I said, and then waited.
It was probably 15 seconds later that a young woman Coast Guard watchstander responded. I described what had happened and the culprits. She asked for my cell phone number and the called me.
The watchstander told me that a 25-foot Coast Guard boat was being dispatched to investigate.
By now, Monica had been awakened by the commotion and was standing on the companionway ladder while I stood in the cockpit, watching the thieves circle the harbor, heading now east and stopping in what I thought was called Smith Cove. Once again, the big guy's flashlight came on, bobbing about as if he had boarded another boat.
"I can tell you where they are right now," I told the watchstander.
Moments later, Monica and I saw the red and green lights of the 25-footer emerge from the darkened Coast Guard station and move slowly across the harbor, heading toward the flashlight.
Half way there, the red and green navigation lights disappeared, but we could see the silhouette of the 25-footer advancing toward the thieves.
Suddenly, a blue police light was flashing and a flood light or spotlight was piercing the darknessand we heard excited voices.
It was a few minutes later that we got another phone call, this one asking whether the Coast Guard could bring the culprits by for my identification.
Of course, I said.
The Coast Guard had the center console cleated alongside the 25-footer, and two Gloucester City police officers were in the center console, where Kid Rock was handcuffed in his pilot's seat and his beefy sidekick was in the bow facing aft, handcuffed.
The police sergeant asked if I could identify the suspects. Yes, I said. Pointing to Kid Rock, I said: "He was driving and he made the threats." Then I pointed to the big one and said, "He came aboard."
The sergeant turned to the big one and said: "What do you have to say to that?"
"I swear on my childrens' graves, I never was on that boat," he said.
"Shut the f... up," the sergeant said. Then he looked down to the deck of the boat, turned and, directing his next question to Kid Rock, he asked: "You have a permit for those lobsters?"
The two were locked up that night. Kid Rock was wanted on outstanding warrants. They both were charged with breaking and entering a vessel at night, which apparently is a federal offense. They were also charged with threatening bodily injury during the commission of a felony and threatening a witness during the commission of a felony.
Monica says she never wants to return to Gloucester.
I thought it was a much better time than reality television.
By the way, the thieves were captured at a place called Pirate's Point.

Wednesday morning, Tom got out earlier than we by perhaps 45 minutes. He was heading for the Isles of Shoals, off the coast six miles from Kittery, ME, and Portsmouth, NH. We were going to visit cousin Carol and husband-in-law Buzzy in York, ME.
Weatherwise, the trip turned out to be a carbon copy of one John Morrison and I made a year earlier, when we left from Boothbay Harbor and stopped in York to visit my college friends, The Old Mike, The Old Flag and The Old Hol. The sun was out and shining brightly in a cloudless sky and the ocean was oily flat.
And just like the year before, the wind finally arrived when we were about five miles north of Cape Neddick Lighthouse on the north side of York Beach. Some say it is the most photographed lighthouse in the world.

By the time we passed the lighthouse, we had a good breeze, enough to motorsail by the cliffs where Buzzy and Carol have their camper. But the sails came down quickly so that we could enter York Harbor. The path into the harbor is bordered by hidden ledges, and there is a spot where you have to make a sudden turn to starboard, crossing a current that seems determined to drive you on a point of land no more than 150 feet away.
We took a town mooring -- there is no room to anchor in York Harbor -- and got showers in the nearby marina. Showers posed a greater risk to life, if not limb, than the navigation into the harbor. There was standing water in the pan of the shower, water that only drained by spilling over the top of the pan, grungy water that one suspected harbored as yet undiscovered life forms. Tom's PhD Candidate daughter, Rosaleen, who is preparing for a disertation in marine biology, could break new ground in that shower.
Buzzy and Carol picked us up after our showers and took us back to their camper, parked on the top of that cliff with a spectacular view of the ocean and the rocks below and Carol fed us a wonderful dinner while we exchanged stories in the cool evening air.
We slept aboard Robin, but in the morning we went to breakfast with Carol and Buzzy at a place on the beach before we caught the last of the ebbing current out of York Harbor.

Tuesday morning we steamed out of Boothbay Harbor and headed for Casco Bay. We knew that Tom Gilmore had spent a couple of nights at Jewell Island, northwest of Portland a few miles, and we decided we'd go there, too.
This was our first return to Jewell Island since our very first cruise to Maine in 2006. Jewell was our first stop then in Maine, and we arrived in a thick fog with almost zero visibility.
At that time, I had second guessed my plotting and decided to redo a critical waypoint where we planned to round the western end of the island. I thought we would be passing between a red buoy on our starboard and a green one to port.
Then, in the fog, I saw the red to port. I steered sharply toward the buoy, which vanished in the fog before I reached it.
Next thing I knew, there were waves breaking over the top of rocks fifty feet ahead of our bow.
That was then. This time, we returned with a bit of trepidation, but also with a chart plotter.
A foggy day had turned clear before we crossed by the first islands of Casco Bay. But then, as the afternoon sun began slipping from its high perch, a wall of dark clouds appeared in the west. Lightning came a bit later, and soon, with the radar on and Jewell in sight, we stopped dead in the water. The radar screen was nearly filled with solid green splotches, indicating thunder storms.
We were about equidistant from Jewell and a rocky outrcopping offshore with a lighthouse. My concern was whether the storm brought winds that could blow us all the way to the rocks -- about two miles to the southeast.
Monica went below while I stood under the dodger with a foul weather jacket on and my eyes scanning through the heavy rain that arrived with the storm.
The wind never built, and in a half hour, the storm had passed by. We resumed motoring toward the east end of Jewell, now accompanied by a pod of mink whales off our starboard beam a couple of hundred yards.
(Mink whales look like dolphins in the way they swim, curving up to the surface in gangs. Their dorsal fins are sharper and relatively smaller than those of dolphins, but the animals themselves are larger than their mammal cousins.)
The sun was sparkling when, at about three o'clock, we rounded the end of Jewell to head into the narrow slit of an anchorage on its northeastern shore. We could see four or five boats already there. One looked familiar.

Cailte, Tom's Creekmore 46 which he built himself, was the first boat inside the anchorage. We circled and anchored off his transom. Soon, he had rowed over in his 10-foot Cape Dory dinghy, and Tom and I went ashore to hike on this historic island, where during World War II submarine chasers were stationed to hunt German U-boats.

First we crossed to the ocean side of the island to see the "Punch Bowl", a lagoon that fills with water at high tide and empties only partially when the tide ebbs. There was the caracass of a dead seal on the bank of the Punch Bowl.

We hiked to the western end of the island and climbed one of two concrete towers used by the submarine hunters to triangulate the position of subs offshore. (I believe Tom told me they never actually intercepted any subs.)
Then we dinghied back to Robin, where Monica prepared dinner.

Another storm cell threatened and Tom woofed down his meal before rowing back to Cailte. When the storm passed, the scenery in the setting sun was unbeatable.

Not so fast.
The fog had lifted in Seal Cove, and there was almost no current when we got outside and passed through the narrows.
But we found fog farther down the Damariscotta River. There was a little visibility -- one hundred feet, perhaps -- so we could see the lobster pot buoys ahead, and we could see the lobster boats before we were immediately upon them. Because we were motoring, it was no problem to turn on the radar.
Boothbay Harbor was in the next notch west along the Maine coast. John Morrison and I stopped their in 2010, and Monica and I had visited one rainy summer day by land several years ago. But this would be Monica's first visit by sea.
The fog was relentless, and on the radio we heard chatter between boaters and the Coast Guard about a 26-foot sailboat that had run aground on a rock entering Boothbay Harbor. Between the chartplotter and the radar, however, we were able to reach each of the navigational buoys on our route outside, and soon we were turning in toward Boothbay.
Now, however, we became disoriented, at one point heading on the wrong side of an island. When we determined our actual location, we once again found the right buoys and, after calling ahead, tied Robin to a mooring at the Carousel Marina. The showers were clean and inviting. And then we took the dinghy across the harbor to have dinner in town.
Monica had her first lobster of the cruise in a waterfront restaurant, and I was able to sample that most delectable of deserts, orange-pineapple ice cream. I got the five-scoop dish, which came with a warning from the cashier that I was attempting an absurd feat.
I ate the whole thing.