Fwd: Grey and dreary

Visibility about a mile, overcast, grey, light wind from astern.
We're motoring along into a sloppy SE sea so it's noisy and bumpy.
Fay has a nice pasta dinner for tonight and Justin brought baguettes
from the Atlantic Bakery in Rockland! ** First sent at 5pm on Friday
night.

Bound for Bermuda

The weather window is open so we're departing later today for
Bermuda. We're joined by JB and Justin from Lyman Morse and should be
in Bermuda by Tuesday or Wednesday. We're looking forward to the
warmer weather!

Moving on

Rainy today as a low is moving up the coast. After almost four weeks
in Newport we're planning to depart for Bermuda tomorrow, right behind
the low. We should to be in Bermuda by Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday
if we're delayed. The tanks are topped, the freezer is full and we're
looking forward to some warmer weather.

Final Specification

I updated the Specification (under Design) with the "final"
specification. It's probably 98% accurate and now we're out of the
building process so I doubt it will be further revised.

We're waiting for a weather window to depart for Bermuda, hopefully on
Friday.

Where's New Morning?

We're still in Newport. We can't leave before next Wednesday and the way the weather is developing it's probably more like Thursday or Friday. But we're using our time to prepare, organize the boat, repair/break/repair a few things and generally get caught up on our sleep.

Just before we departed Maine, Ben Ellison, who writes Panbo, a widely read marine electronics blog name, gave us Spot. See Where's New Morning to see how we're using it.

Still in Newport

We're still in Newport, planning to depart for Bermuda the middle of next week.

To our surprise we've had a pretty busy social schedule. Friends came to visit from California last weekend. Friends we met in Thomaston came down to Newport and introduced us to people here and as a result we've had a lot of evenings out.

Friday we got out for a sail to check on a few changes we made and for Billy Black to shoot some additional pictures. He also gave me the green light to post a few of the pictures he took in Maine. The sailing picture was obviously take in light air which was why we did another set of pictures last week in good sailing breeze.

But it does give you an idea of what she looks like under sail. The other two are just great examples of his photography. The shot to the right is from the swim platform looking forward through the cockpit. And to the left is a shot of the interior from the companionway. He takes long exposures and only shoots in the first and last hour of light in the day; the deep blue gives the pictures a lot of depth. We're expecting to see his pictures in 2-3 magazine articles to be published later this year.

Newport!

Last weekend we completed our first passage, from Thomaston, Maine to
Newport, Rhode Island via the Cape Cod Canal. It was roughly 200
miles and overall a really nice trip. Justin from Lyman Morse joined
us for the passage and stood watch with Fay.

We left on Saturday morning with a goal of being at the east entrance
to the canal by 9am on Sunday morning to catch the ebbing current into
Buzzards Bay. We were able to sail from about 11 in the morning until
midnight, first on a nice fast beam reach, and later with the wind on
the nose. The first half of the evening we had 15-20 on the nose and
had to deviate from our desired course by 10-20 degrees, but with
essentially no swell and small waves so it was a fast ride and
relatively smooth. Smooth enough for Fay to make a great pasta
dinner! And then a 3/4 moon lit up the water magnificently.

By midnight we'd been lifted back to our desired course, but when the
wind went aft we couldn't make the speed necessary to reach the canal
and catch the favorable tide so we had to motor. We motored from
roughly midnight, then through the canal and for another hour or so on
Sunday morning crossing Buzzard's Bay. Then we got 6-7 knots of
breeze so we went back to sailing. The breeze built steadily through
the day until we had 12-15 knots of apparent wind that allowed us to
sail all the way into Newport harbor.

My personal highlight was seeing Weatherly, a classic America's Cup 12
meter which successfully defended the cup in 1962. We were on port
gybe and she was on starboard gybe and I expected than when we gybed
(she had the right of way), she would sail right through our lee.
Instead, we sufficiently blanketed her that she slowed significantly
and we actually sailed back over the top of her! A small victory for
the heavy cruising boat (we had just taken on 3,000 lbs of fuel and
water) over the classic racer.

New Morning performed very well, moving quite nicely in the lighter
breezes and standing up well when we were hard on the wind in 17-20
knots for 4-5 hours on Saturday night. A few gremlins are still
lurking in the electronics and electrical systems, but everything else
performed as expected.

Now we're tied up at the Newport Shipyard (established 1834)
surrounded by mega-yachts and a few state of the art racers like
Virgin Money / Speedboat. We'll be here for about two weeks or so
with lots of projects to complete before the passage to Bermuda; we
hope to leave by November 4th or 5th. But today was a rest day so Fay
had a nice long walk through Newport. I stayed on the boat and
enjoyed the warm weather (back to shorts / flip flops) trying to
perfect a better technique for whipping lines.

It's good to be out of Maine and starting our trip.

Last few things

We got back from California and took off for four days of cruising for
a final check. Just after we got back from California they hauled the
boat and cleaned the bottom. There was a lot of marine growth and
barnacles in particular. With a clean bottom and steady NW breezes we
had two of our best days of sailing. We were able to sail all the way
from Pt. Clyde to Rockland, and two days later we were able to sail
all afternoon from Seal Cove on Vinalhaven back to Pt. Clyde (and then
motor up the river to Thomaston).

We found a variety of things that needed attention so we've been back
in Thomaston for the last couple of days. Fortunately the yard made
very good progress and things should be wrapped up today. The fuel
truck is coming in a couple of hours to fill our tanks and we'll also
get our propane tanks topped up.

Fay has done lots of provisioning at the local stores where she can
get great produce, meat, cheese, crab, lobster, shrimp and of course
great bread from Atlantic Bakery. The freezer will be full upon
departure!

It's raining today, but should clear up this afternoon and the
forecast is for lots of sun this weekend. We plan to depart for
Newport late Saturday morning. With a fair breeze we'll be at the
Cape Cod canal on Sunday morning to catch a favorable tide and sweep
us through to Newport by mid-day on Sunday. The journey begins.

Back in the yard

We ended up staying in Somes Harbor longer than expected as the
remnants of hurricane Ike went through, dropping our barograph to
996. Then we returned to Seal Cove on Vinalhaven for another quiet
night. The next day we departed early and picked up friends in
Rockland for the trip back to Thomaston, via Muscle Ridge and all it's
many rocks, islands and ledges.

Tomorrow we're returning to California for 10 days while the yard
finishes up the boat. There are a variety of remedial jobs, plus some
modifications based on our initial experience. We'll also get hauled
out, clean the bottom, check the prop and zincs and generally prepare
for our departure from Maine. The rough plan is to depart for
Newport, Rhode Island the second week of October, then on to Bermuda
when we get a weather window in early November.

While the weather has been clear and beautiful between the fronts, the
temperature has really dropped and it's time to head south.

Escape from Thomaston

Last Tuesday we finally escaped from Thomaston, straight into fall and a nasty stormy day. We were literally in shorts and t-shirts in the morning, and full foul weather gear in drenching rain followed by a thunderstorm five hours later and 40 degree temps in the morning. But we escaped and are now able to spend some time sailing in Maine.

We spent the first night about 20 miles (as the boat motors) away in Long Cove, not far from where we had the christening in Tenants Harbor. The wind blew and we got bounced around quite a bit since the cove is quite large and not well protected from the south. And the next morning when we raised anchor it was like raising a dredge, we had a huge scoop of Maine on our bow.

The second day we had a delightful sail to Seal Cove on Vinalhaven (is this where LPs go to die?). The boat really sailed nicely in 10-25knots of apparent wind from a close reach to hard on the wind. Seal Cove was a spectacular anchorage that we had all to ourselves with barely a ripple on the water. As there was poor weather coming our way we pushed on the next day to Somes Harbor (search for Somesville in Google Earth) at the end of Somes Sound on Mt. Desert Island. This is now our third night here as the weather has been unsettled with a mix of rain and wind. And besides, it's quiet and beautiful here. This picture was taken from the boat this morning after a lot of rain and wind last night.

We're adjacent Acadia National Park so today we took the bus to Bar Harbor (a disappointing visit as it looked like any other cruise ship stop, crammed with schlocky stores) and rented bikes. We then caught another bus which took us and our rented bikes to Acadia National Park. Within the park we road more than 20 miles along the carriage trails in the park. A really beautiful ride and it felt good to get some aerobic exercise.

Maine is incredibly scenic, though the weather is not always as beautiful as the scenery. Sometimes I think that Maine made a deal with the devil; they got the incredible scenery, but had to accept some questionable weather and those using the waterways are cursed with navigating through literally several hundred thousand lobster buoys! And though we try to avoid them, we've chopped up our fair share.

Depending on the weather our next stop will probably be Burnt Coat Harbor on Swan's Island.

Electrical diagram

I haven't had time to write a narrative, but I've posted a conceptual schematic of the electrical system.

Nice cruise, now back to finishing the boat

We had a nice cruise with a night in Pulpit Harbor, then two nights in
Cabot's Cove while a small front moved through. We spent the time
unpacking boxes and trying to get settled on the boat. Fay took
charge of the dinghy with her own 2hp engine, total independence! She
went ashore on North Haven, picked wild berries and then walked to the
market to buy fresh crab. Then I was treated to a great dinner of
fresh crab cakes and wild berries. This is the cruising life!

Now we're back in Thomaston for another week of work on the boat.
Miscellaneous carpentry tasks need to be finished, a few rigging items
and some electronics to be sorted out. We'll spend Tuesday and
Wednesday in Camden while they work on the boat, then come back on
Thursday to see how everything is progressing. If all goes well we'll
leave on Friday for another 10 days of shake out cruise.

We just got a CD from Billy Black with some stunning pictures of the
boat. Now that we have some bandwidth I'll try to post some of those
in the next few days.

First night

Last night was our first night anchored out. We're off Conway Shore
on Vindalhaven, about 7 miles east of Rockland.

Beautiful sunset as we anchored. Too many lobster buoys but otherwise
incredibly scenic.

And strangley we have intermittent cell coverage so I can get out this
message. Next is getting the sat phone email working.

Please excuse the typo's and brevity. Sent from my iPhone

Equipment failure

No, nothing on the boat, my computer died. As a result I've been
unable to post pictures from the christening party. Lyman Morse is
grinding through the punch list and we're planning to move onto the
boat Friday. Then we'll spend a day or two getting settled before
leaving for a few days of sailing.

The rain has backed off a bit and we've had several sunny days. Last
night we went to the Union Fair, a very nice local fair with 4H club
animals, lots of junk food and our favorite: the DEMOLITION DERBY! A
surprisingly small grassy field area contained by some fairly modest
concrete barriers that kept the spectators about 20' away from the
smashing cars, steaming radiators and burning tires.

The computer should be back next week so when we're back from sailing
I'll post some pictures.

Wow! Three days of parties and we're exhausted!

We were overwhelmed by the efforts of our friends and family to
celebrate New Morning. Many people came from California, up from
further south on the eastern seaboard, and even as far as London.
While the rain poured down (canceling some flights and causing
delays for everyone) we celebrated at the house in Tenants Harbor on
Friday afternoon followed by dinner at the Dip Net in Pt. Cylde.

But on Saturday the weather was glorious! The lighting was
spectacular at the Lyman Morse dock in Tenants Harbor where Caitlin
did the honors and broke another bottle of champagne across New
Morning's bow. Everyone toured the boat and the comments and
compliments were very gracious! Then we moved to In Good Company in
Rockland where we had a great dinner and enough wine to cause more
than on person to dip into the aspirin locker on Sunday morning!

Sunday the weather was more spotty with sun in Tenants Harbor, but
thick fog just outside Southern Island. We did venture out in the
morning and again in the afternoon, but the fog, lobster buoys and
light air conspired to make both trips a challenge. None the less
everyone enjoyed getting away from the dock and getting a feel for New
Morning when underway.

That's a quick report, we'll post pictures and more later this week.

The last 1%

We're moving forward. The last 1% is the most painful. We take two
steps forward, then one step back as we solve two problems, but expose
another. But in the process we hope we're creating a reliable vessel.

We spent three days on board last week and took a 3 hour trip down the
river and then back to Thomaston. We exposed some problems, but also
had a nice afternoon on the water. The weather has been pretty awful
with lots of rain and some thunderstorms. The upside is that the
heavy rains are giving us confidence that we don't have any deck leaks!

Fay and I are now moved into a rented house for two weeks, letting the
yard work on the boat while we prepare for the christening party on
Saturday and seeing all of our friends who are making the trek to
Maine. We'll post some pictures of the party and the almost finished
boat next week.

Dawn is breaking

Dawn is breaking and we can the see the light! A variety of issues
have been addressed and we think the important ones have been
resolved. We're looking forward to getting on board next week and
seeing her entirely put together for the first time!

Always darkest before...

The proverb says "It's always darkest before the dawn". Since our
joyous launch things have gone steadily downhill. We are in the midst
of a major dispute with the builder, the original delivery date has
come and gone, and several systems designed by Lyman Morse are working
well below our expectations. Furuno has also fallen far short of
their promises, delivering buggy software, or in some cases no
software at all, which now has us scrambling to create an alternative
navigational solution.

Our hope is that the second half of the proverb will hold up and the
dawn will arrive, illuminating a situation that is not as bleak as it
appears today.

Aspirations

We aspire to park our naked butts on a secluded beach and look out across the calm, warm waters of a tropical lagoon (suitably covered with sun screen of course). Pretty much like Paul and Gina Rae of New Zealand, seen here admiring their Hylas 44 Solace in the Tuamotu's while sipping a nice cold Heineken.

New blog, updated look, I think it's fixed

We've changed our blog system so that we'll be able to email in entries while traveling. It took some work to get it to mesh seamlessly with our older entries, but it now seems to be working.

We also changed the page header and tweaked the colors to simplify the layout.  We hope you like the new look!