On the evening of Labor Day, when we returned to Halifax from our family reunion on Lake Superior, we realized the weather lined up for a departure to Massachusetts the next day. We had already decided it was time to conclude our nearly two-month-long tour of Nova Scotia, so we quickly provisioned and prepared the boat for the offshore journey back to the US.
The trip started with very light wind and we had to motor, but after about 40 hours, the wind filled in and we were able to sail very briskly. We are still learning the best way to take these longer trips with just the two of us. We need to maintain a 24 hour watch and also make sure we get adequate sleep. This time, we experimented with longer night watches of six hours apiece. While the watch can get long, it made a huge difference in our rest to be able to sleep up to 5 or 6 hours at a time.
We arrived to Salem, MA at about 2:30 am. Arriving in the dark at an unfamiliar location is never easy. This location added the bonus of lobster traps scattered throughout the entrance to the harbor, sometimes right in the middle of a channel. The traps can be hard to spot, especially at night. If we hit one, we can snag the propeller and create a huge mess for ourselves. We were so happy to finish picking our way through the lobster pots to a clear area in the harbor, drop anchor, and get a few hours of sleep. We completed the 370 nm journey from Halifax to Marblehead in just over 60 hours: 2 days and 3 nights at sea. This was the longest non-stop journey we have done just the two of us.
Once we were rested, we made our way into the nearby marina and tied Tilia up at a dock. Our sailing friends, Kim and Scott, live in Marblehead and keep their boat Kailoa, a 46 foot monohull, in the marina in Salem. They so very generously moved their boat to a mooring ball and hosted us in their slip during our visit.
We had a wonderful time in Salem and Marblehead. It is always a delight to connect with sailing friends when our plans place us in the same place for a few days; this was extra special. Kim and Scott were crew-mates with Anne on a sailing trip between Portugal and the Azores and have shared so many great tips about places to visit in the northeast. We’ve had a few chances to meet each other at locations on the east coast, but now we got a chance to see their home and town. They showed us their historic home and some of the highlights of the area. We had fun socializing until it got too late on multiple nights!
In addition to socializing with Scott and Kim, we got some much needed boat chores done. We spend very little time on a dock, so we took advantage of the easy access to laundry on shore, a courtesy car to go to the grocery store, and the unlimited supply of water for washing the boat. With some boat chores concluded and a promising weather window, it was time to keep moving south.
