Robin is on a mooring in Rocklaond (ME) Harbor. Tom Gilmore went home yesterday morning on a Grayhound. Now I'm waiting for Monica to arrive. I pick her up at the Manchester, NH, airport Friday night.
The trip up was interesting. John Morrison helped Robin get to Cape May, NJ, in three days. Those were uneventful passages.
Tom got on when John left, and we headed out immediately for Buzzards Bay and the Cape Cod Canal. I had decided to forego the passage east around Cape Cod due to the kidney stone attack the day before we left Cambridge.
Four events marked the crossing to the canal. The first was a fish -- about 18 inches long -- that walked on water. Clearly he was being chased by something. He shot up out of the water vertically and, to avoid being dinner, tilted his body forward and, thrashing his tail furiously, managed to run on that tail perhaps 100 feet before energy gave out or gravity prevailed. When he fell beneath the surface, we lost contact. Don't know whether he managed to escape.
The next event was a commercial fishing boat about 50 feet long that approached us from our port side about 50 miles offshore. He drew closer and closer until it seemed that we might be on a collision course. He crossed our bow about 50 feet ahead -- with no one on the bridge or on deck -- in fact, no one in sight.
The third event was a line of thunderstorms off Long Island that caught us just inside the shipping lanes. We couldn't run away. They slammed us for a couple of hours, but we emerged the other side untouched.
Fourth was the time when, in 20 t0 25 knots of northwest wind that came at daylight following the storm, we hooked a bluefish. We landed the 27-incher, and that night, on anchor in a peaceful Hadley Harbor, we had a feast.
There is more, but it is lunch time and I need to get back to Robin for nourishment.

Monica and John's wife, Fran, were set to take us to Robin this morning, leaving home at 8 a.m. But at that time, I was in a local emergency room.
A kidney stone that I didn't know existed decided to strike at 5 o'clock this morning.
I'm fine now, and I think I may have passed the stone. So tomorrow morning at 6:3o, we'll go get John (and maybe Fran) and try to get to Robin early enough that we can make it from Cambridge to Annapolis as we had planned.
But there is an unfortunate new wrinkle. John will stay with me to Cape May, where Tom comes aboard. But John has to stay ashore when Tom boards. A daughter in California is having medical problems.
Monica and I have been reading a Maine cruising guide, and she is getting more and more excited about the two weeks we will cruise there.
The refrigeration did seem to work yesterday when I tried it. But I was unable to resolve the issue with the battery charger.
That's no big loss since I don't expect to have much chance to plug into shore power for the next six weeks. I'll have someone who knows about marine electrical stuff -- maybe Josh -- to examine it when Robin returns.

In the morning, it will be two days until Robin leaves Cambridge, headed for Maine. This is anxiety time, the place before an extended voyage when you are trying to assure that you are ready, that the boat is ready, that the crew is ready.
And nothing ever is completely ready.
Today I got a call from Josh, the electrician, who said he had fixed the refrigeration but that he noticed the battery charger didn't seem to be working. He had to run Robin's engine to get enough juice to run the refrigeration.
I don't have time to ask someone to look at it, so in the morning, I'll do my best to troubleshoot the electrical system. My hunch is that it's the same problem that nearly kept us from the starting line in St. George's, Bermuda, a year ago -- a corroded ground lug under the engine. I'll clean that lug in the morning and cross my fingers.
We don't need the battery charger to go to Maine. It only works when you are at a dock with electricity. But we do need the batteries to charge reliably, so cleaning the lug would be a good practice in any case.
It is 9:45 p.m. The air conditioning is on, blowing cool air over the starboard settee, which tonight will be my berth.
The water around Robin is alive right now. There are thousands and thousands of menhaden rippling the surface of the marina like a hail storm. Beneath the schools, slightly larger fish flash their bright silver sides as they streak up from below to feast.
Under a sidewalk lamp that shines out onto the water, you can see jelly fish with translucent gray bulbs and long tendrils. And you can see crabs swimming this way and that. I had never observed crabs before, but now I know why they are called "beautiful swimmers". They do the side stroke!
They pull with the legs on one side and then glide some distance before repeating the stroke. When they see food or a predator -- maybe a larger crab -- they dart at an acute angle. There are tiny swimmers and larger ones. Under the light, the action is similar to the adolescent excesses found in a mosh pit.
Today, I loaded most of the edible supplies aboard Robin and stored the clothing in the designated compartments. I bought jugs and bottles of water and bottles of green tea and stored that, too. Then I replaced some rotten plywood in the deck box that I was modifying to move the propane out of the cockpit.
In the morning, I'll paint the plywood. But Josh is unable to complete the relocation of the propane tank from the cockpit, so everything -- the gas tanks and the life raft -- will remain where it is.
I see by the National Hurricane Center web site that there are two areas of interest in the tropics -- one in the western Caribbean and the other much farther east. I'll be keeping an eye on those systems from now on. If they develop, Robin will stop in the nearest safe spot and await their passing.
Now, it's time for sleep.

It is 90-something degrees outside, but in Robin's saloon, it is quite pleasant. Today I brought the serious hardware back to Robin -- the life raft, the drogue, the survival suits -- and I brought a new lid for the deck box where, I hope, the working propane tank will be moved either tomorrow or during the weekend.

The lid fit well, considering that I'd built it at home and had to work off of measurements rather than build it to fit the real thing. (My carpentry mentor, Bill Haldeman, almost never measures.) But I discovered a problem. The forward wall of the deck box base is rotten. I managed to fasten the lid to some good portions of that wall, but it will have to be replaced -- perhaps not before we cast off for Maine, however.

It has been a busy couple of weeks. I've been rewriting the latest attempt at a youth novel. And I've been attempting to get Bluebird, the O'Day Mariner, some power. Skip, the outboard mechanic in Philadelphia, said to call back next week. He's been having problems getting the old bolts out of the lower unit.

So Bluebird sits placidly on her mooring. I check her every morning when I start my daily run, and I drive to the end of the street every time I go out of the house. But so far, we haven't sailed her. I'm getting some shall I say sarcasm from another member of the household who, unfortunately, recalls how frantically I looked for this boat last summer.
But in a week and three days, Robin will set sail and so for the interim, I have to focus on her needs.
And I have to finish the rewrite.
I've been hoping I could generate some income by writing about the Maine voyage. But a look at the most recent Soundings edition, where there were only three pages of sailboat classified ads, suggests just how difficult that sale may be.
So the trip will be fore pure pleasure, and that is the best kind.
Today I also brought the canned food for the trip. Soup, beef stew, sliced potatoes, peas and canned fruit -- particularly pears for any crew members who might have gastric distress as we round Nantucket Shoals. I also have ginger candy which, when chewed, does seem to calm a queezy stomach, along with Bonine and Sturgeron, a medication recommended by Dan Stadtlander.
The four boxes of meds and first aid supplies are on board, as are the clean sheets, the towels and some snacks.
When I leave here tomorrow, I may not return until the day before the voyages starts. Hope I remember everything.

I am in Robin's saloon with nautical chart No. 13003, Atlantic Coast, Cape Sable (Nova Scotia) to Cape Hatteras (North Carolina) opened on the table before me. I have located the point where, in about three weeks, Robin should make a left-hand turn of 100 degrees -- 40 degrees 20 minutes north, 69 degrees west.
John Morrison and I will leave Cambridge on July 18. Tom Gilmore will join us the following night in Chesapeake City and the following evening (weather permitting,) when we have reached a point about three miles offshore from Atlantic City, we will strike a course of 80 degrees (true). In about 260 miles -- which could be from two days to much longer -- we will reach the turning point.
I selected those coordinates because they are well south both of the Nantucket Shoals and of the shipping lanes going from New York to Europe.
When we reach that point, we will tack to true north(about 17 degrees magnetic) and run straight to Penobscot Bay and Rockland Maine, another 260 miles away.
If we have wind all the way, the whole trip will take seven days. I've allowed 13 days, trying to eliminate the rushing that accompanies most of these voyages.
Normally, we would sail to the Cape Cod Canal and then across Massachusetts Bay and the Gulf of Maine to get to our destination. That would involve two overnight passages and a couple of day sails.
Instead, we've chosen to make it an offshore passage, just for a change. I'm looking forward to the adventure, but we still have a lot of preparation ahead of us before we cast off.
This is actually almost the reverse of the first offshore trip John and I ever accomplished (I think that's correct. it is for me if not for John.)
Several years ago, we crewed for Tom when he brought his boat Kelte home to New Jersey from Rockland. We made that trip in two shots, in a lot of fog and in some good wind.
That voyage was a lot closer to the coast. This time, we'll be rounding the shoals and Cape Cod and sailing by the famous fishing ground, George's Bank, and the ominously named Ammen Rock (very close, if we are on course.)
We will keep you posted.

Took the boating test in Ocean City, NJ, on Saturday morning while Monica went to the beach. I passed. Enough said. They didn't give out scores, but now I'm legal to sail the Mariner on the same body of water where I first began sailing, in a Mariner.
I joined Monica on the beach after the test. It was blazing hot in the sun and cool under the beach umbrella, where I stayed. At about 11 o'clock, we went up to the boardwalk so Monica could buy a book. There was a silver-haired orator in blue oxford button-down with sleeves rolled neatly above his wrists. He was decrying, through a bullhorn, society's dependance on fossil fuels and was exhorting a gaggle of onlookers to seize the Gulf Disaster moment and work for renewable energy sources.
Some time later, after a woman with a waist-length blonde braid and the bullhorn had accompanied a tall young man with a television camera to the edge of the ocean near my umbrella, there were, suddenly, one hundred or more individuals in street clothes gathered, along with the silver-haired orator, near the wet edge of the retreating tide. No sooner could you say peaceful protest than the folks gathered by the sea joined hands in a block-long line, with the orator urging them on.
And then the bizarre happened. Out of the midst of these descently earnest individuals appeared a man with a black and white Hawaiian shirt, black-lensed sunglasses with large, white frames -- and the bullhorn. In an Elvis voice, he began singing "I can see clearly now, the rain must fall . . ."
His pompadour was black and his sideburns were long but there appeared to be either a bald spot at his crown or a malformed skull for there was a dent up there.
One of two silver-haired bathers with Fortune 500 teeth and tans who were standing behind me commented that it figured "Elvis" would be a liberal.
Having completed his vocals, the Elvis impostor joined the hand-holding line at its center, looking from my vantage point under the umbrella as if he were being stretched between the left and right wings of the protest line.
In time, the demonstration, apparently filmed for future reference, dispersed and the "Elvis" man posed with some of the participants for photos.
Odd.

Where was I?
Bluebird was on the mooring. Still is. Her engine was in trouble. Now it's in a shop in a falling-down old warehouse in North Philadelphia, awaiting a death-or-survival diagnosis. A shop closer to home wouldn't even take a look at it because it has three sheared bolts.
So I've been working on other chores. I just finished taking an on-line boating course, a requirement in order to get a New Jersey boating certificate, without which I cannot sail Bluebird on the Delaware River. I'm hoping to take my final exam on Saturday in Ocean City, while Monica goes to the beach.
Next up -- working on the rewrite of the second youth novel attempt. The agent who looked at it called it "very promising" and then did a line edit that will require a few weeks of concentrated behavior on my part. I welcome the notion that, at my advanced age, I may be able to learn something new in the process.
Monica and I went paddling with a group from the boat club on Saturday. The course was on Barnegat Bay. The wind was strong from the southwest. We paddled for two hours. I was impressed with Monica's ability. I think this was her first prolonged trip in a kayak and she did great, particularly considering that for half the trip we were paddling into the wind.
The outing may have proved that it's time to replace my old Folboat. It is 17 feet long and I struggled with it in the wind. It is a two-seater and I really needed another paddler up front.
I just finished a magazine piece that Soundings says they will run. It's the story of my 2003 trip to the Philippines to research the submarine book (Eight Survived, to be published in October by Lyons Press.) I'm hoping it comes out around the time the book is pubished and generates thousands of sales!