Up early for our longer crossing to Marblehead we were greeted by calm seas and light winds to start the day. The forecast was to have building weather through the day but no more that 15 knots or so of wind and waves less than 1 meter.

As we started through our MAZE of crab/lobster pots to get out of the harbor they became very thick in places. So thick in fact that we really had to weave and wander all over the inlet to get back out to sea. I managed to snag 2 pots during the trip but luckily the lines slid off our rudder without incident. The seas started to build and it was pretty lumpy. The wind was just off our nose and it would have been a difficult point of sail to manage and make any headway, so we decided to motor our way to Marblehead. I very seasick kid, batteries needed charging and I wanted to get some engine hours running so we had good representative oil samples to send in for analysis made motoring a easy decision.

After about 8 hours we started making our way into the Marblehead harbor entrance. Not thinking it was Sunday we noticed the boat traffic getting thicker as we entered. By the time we were at the mouth of Salem Harbor it was wall to wall boats. And half of them must have been drunk because they had no sense of maritime rules whatsoever. Right of way you say??? Yeah right, if you went the biggest you were just in the way period!! Not wanting to risk our new cat to a collision we managed to sneak our way through the entrance and into the harbor.

We had made a reservation through Dockwa for a mooring and figured it would be fairly easy to find our ball. Well… it wasn’t! There are hundreds of mooring balls in Salem Harbor. (see photo) so trying to find one Yellow mooring ball amongst all of those boats was a tall task. Not sure if any of you have used Dockwa or not but in our experience they do not provide you with a basic map of where their moorings are. And most harbor moorings are not numerically aligned but rather scattered all over the place. I was not looking forward to meandering through an unknown harbor praying to randomly meet up with our mooring. We managed to get in touch with the Harbor Master and explained that we had never been to the harbor before and if he could point us towards our Dockwa mooring. He said ‘ You will be straight across from the #5 day marker, look to Port as you approach from the North and you cant miss it”. I was dreading trying to maneuver a huge catamaran through a crowded mooring field but it was getting later in the day and just wanted to hook up and relax. The mooring was exactly where the harbor master had said and we picked up the ball with ease and got settled in.

The harbor had a paid shuttle to go ashore. (And oh yes, we had not tested the outboard or AVON tender that came with Dragonfly yet.) That will be better addressed when we do our “Dingy way of life” section later on in the blog). Ray, our son, was still seasick and this was not a great sail for him so far. Even with Dramamine he was still pretty green on a crossing of more than a couple of hours. So going ashore was a good break for him. We all hopped onboard the water shuttle and headed out for a town tour and a bite to eat. When we got to the dock we asked how to reach her to get a ride back? She said just call on 68 and we will come get you. “Ummmm…. we didn’t bring a VHF” I told her. She just chuckled and gave us her cell number and said to text her instead.

Since we were still in Covid mode we had gotten takeout from a local burger joint, sat down and had a bit to eat. We made our way back to the boat a little later and settled down for a good nights sleep to get ready for our longest crossing of the trip, Marblehead to Plymouth MA.

Cheers

James & Tammy