Quarantined

There's good news and bad news...

First, the good news. We made it to the US of A! This afternoon we cruised through New Bedford's quite substantial hurricane gate, dodging big fishing trawlers and long liners on the way. We had an excellent passage with almost no mishaps and what most would consider pretty good weather for the North Atlantic in November!

Now, the bad news. We are stuck in New Bedford, at the Fairhaven Shipyard wharf; not allowed to step foot off our vessel other than to tie up. Thats, right after 4 days of being at sea we have the pleasure of looking across the bay at all of the wonderful restaurants and bars, but we aren't allowed to step foot off the boat! Quarantined is the word we have added to our cruising dictionary. This basically mean's when you come in to port and aren't able to check in to customs quite yet, you raise a yellow flag and nobody is allowed on or off the boat. Real brutal to be able to smell the food and beer and hear the music blaring. But we are secluded to Tilikum until we check in with customs tomorrow morning. Here's the kicker, we missed them by 7 minutes!!! 

Oh well, we plan on making a mean meal, having a boat beer or two, watching some Netflix and getting a well deserved good nights sleep. 

Here's what we've been up to since we last posted on the blog. 

On Monday night, the night before we left. We finally managed to finish up the installing radar. One thing that Will and I have found is that Will has a tendency to rush through jobs on Tilikum, even jobs that require some extreme patience, like splicing and soldering a radar cable together. So we enticed our friend, Drew Moores over for some beers and thankfully he knew a thing or two about soldering and had way more patience than Will. The three of us managed to make every connection almost perfect and by the end of the night, we had a working radar! Thanks Drew!

The next morning Will and I woke up and got to work finishing the "last" project on Tilikum, the solar array. We had custom designed our own panel mount and had the stainless steel parts fabricated in Lunenburg. We installed two 100Watt panels in the rain that morning. We mounted them to the top of our bimini and so far they've been fantastic! They have been able to keep our fridge running (vital to keep Sam's insulin cold) and even run the house power for our things like our autopilot (AKA Jeeves), lights, satellite beacon, chart plotter, and all of our other gizmos. Nothing like some last minute boat work! We then spent the rest of the morning running around town completing last minute tasks and then left the Bridgewater Marina around 3 PM on Tuesday.

We motored down the Lahave river and stopped in the LaHave bakery to say goodbye to some family and friends (Thanks everyone for showing up!) and then set a course for Cape Cod. The first night was great! Glassy calm and right out of the river we saw a pilot whale! With the breeze so calm, we motored for most of the night waiting for it to pick back up. Then around 1 AM on Wednesday morning the wind filled in from the northwest and we put up the full main and blade jib. As the sun rose and we rounded Brazil Rock near Cape Sable Island, we managed to see another pilot whale and a school of Tuna feeding on a school of smaller fish. They were jumping into the air doing some crazy aerial maneuvers for us too! It was a great sendoff from the last we would see of Nova Scotia for a while! The wind then died off again so we motor-sailed for most of the day and maintained a speed of about 5-5.5 knots.

On Thursday we got a great wind shift onto our beam and the wind also picked up to about 15-20 knots. In the morning, we had one of the great experiences that every sailor sees as a sign of luck. We saw two porpoises swimming along the mighty Tilikum, just off our bow! They hung out with us for a bit while we sailed where we actually managed to grab a few shots of them. Will and I tried to speak porpoise to them making Flipper noises but I don't think they understood... because all of a sudden they took off in a different direction. It was a great day though! We were under full sail, ripping along averaging around 7 knots and maxing out at 8.5 knots. It was awesome sailing and we were flying! Later in the day the wind picked up to about 20-25 knots and we put in a single reef in the main which balanced the boat nicely.

Early Friday morning around 1 AM, the winds picked up again from 20-25 to about 25-30 (windy!), so in the middle of the night Will went forward and put in another reef and furled up our jib about a quarter of the way. Then things got interesting. We had moment that got both Will and I's adrenaline pumping! At about 3:30 in the morning I woke Will up asking him very nonchalantly "Hey Will, is there supposed to be that much water in the boat?" At his feet there was about a half a foot of water covering the floorboards. Talk about a rude awakening!! He rose up out of his bunk faster than I have ever seen him move and started the emergency bilge pump without even saying a word to me. He told me later, "I scanned my mind thinking of what could have caused this: busted thru-hull?, deck leak?, plumbing failure? When I finally arrived on, "did I flick the switch back on the head after I used it last?". It turns out I didn't, I flicked the switch, pumped the water out and everything was back to normal." Turns out that that job of installing an anti-siphon on the head that we never got around to just made its way back to the top of our priority list. We closed off the entire thru-hull to prevent future incidents, and wont re-open it until the anti-siphon is installed. If that wasn't enough, around the same time we were running the engine to charge up our batteries and all of a sudden the low oil pressure alarm went off! Thank God it was an easy fix! We added oil and continued on sailing due West until we reached about 12 miles North of Race Point on the Cape. 

At this point we decided we weren't going to be able to make it to the Canal by night-fall and even if we did, we weren't sure if there was a safe anchorage or berth. To add to it, there was a small craft advisory for the area so we needed to make sure to find a good anchorage for the night. We decided to head for Provincetown. We called US Customs to alert them to our change of plans and they told us that it was fine just don't get off the boat and to raise our yellow quarantine flag. I grabbed a yellow Island Sol t-shirt and tied it to the side-stay, "That should so it".

We had an unfavorable wind direction heading to P-town so we decided to drop the sails and motor directly into the wind and swell at a slow and sluggish 2.5 knots. We beat through waves, bucking up and down for around 5 hours dodging fishing buoys the whole way until we finally reached Race Point. As we were about to round the marker buoy into Provincetown Harbor we noticed a couple hundred Gannets dive bombing the water spread out by about a quarter second. It was an amazing "Planet Earth esk" moment. As we got a little closer we noticed about 20 dolphins swimming along the surface where the Gannets had been fishing! What we surmise was happening based on our degrees in Planet Earthology, was that the dolphins had rounded up a school of fish and were picking them off one by one and as the Gannets plunged into the sea to pick off the others. What happened next was nothing but amazing and quite hard to put to words. Just as we noticed the dolphins, they noticed us and they immediately diverted their course to directly at us. Before we knew it there we 30-50 dolphins heading straight at us at mach 10! They swam as if they were going to ram the boat but then at the last second, they dove underneath us and began to swim along side. They followed us all the way in to the harbor and were so close that you could reach out and touch them!!

We finally arrived in Provincetown Harbor and hailed the harbormaster. They said that we were good to anchor wherever we would like as everyone else had hauled their boats for the winter. We set our anchor, made dinner, watched a movie, and got the first decent nights sleep in 4 days. 

Will and I have both learnt something about the ocean on our first real bluewater passage. Mother nature is awesome, yet unpredictable. The sea will beat you and test you, but only to make sure that you've got the right stuff to be out there. If you can take the beating and withstand the blow, she'll reward you with her beauty in the end!

We woke up the next morning at 5 AM and motor-sailed across the bay headed for the canal. We motored through the canal waving to people on the shore, and then motor-sailed the rest of the way to New Bedford. When we eventually arrived in New Bedford, we weren't able to hail a single marina or yacht club, so we just decided to motor up to the closest available wharf and waited for US Customs. 

Just after Will and I discussed our plans to take a bus into New Bedford to check things out, get a decent meal, a shower, and maybe a beer or two, we got a call from the customs agent saying that we missed him by 7 minutes and that we were not allowed to step foot off the boat other than to tie up and that we must wait for him until tomorrow morning to check in. 

So here we are, sitting on our boat, at a mystery wharf that we can't go up to the building to see if its ok to stay here, eating some mystery meats out of the fridge and drinking the last of our Canadian beer, and watching some Netflix. Actually, there are worse ways to spend a night than that I guess. 

Cheers, 

Capt. Sam