By Chris Conway

The weather finally cooperated and we were able to get in some great sailing from Gloucester, MA to Portsmouth, NH.  The forecast looked good the night before, calling for 5-10 knots from the South building to 15-20 knots from the Southwest in the afternoon.  We left Gloucester and began rounding Cape Ann (the bump that Gloucester is on above Cape Cod) in very little wind which was disheartening as I didn’t think I could take another 7-hour day of motoring.  As we cleared Cape Ann and headed for Portsmouth, the wind filled in and quickly built up to 15-20 knots from the South.  The course to Portsmouth was North so the wind was dead behind us.  We set the genoa (front sail shaped like a triangle) out on a whisker pole (an aluminum pole attached to the front of the mast).  With the Genoa on the port (left) side and the main to starboard (right) we were running (term for sailing downwind) wing and wing (term for having a sail on each side of the boat instead of both on the same side)!  The boat was moving very well with the waves as they built to 2-3 feet and the auto pilot had no trouble keeping us on track.  I took a quick video of the dinghy dancing around on the waves behind the boat to give some perspective of the sea state.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKvxKs6NlfY&feature=plcp

The motor into Portsmouth harbor was difficult since the outgoing tide was opposing the wind that had been building all day.  The boat was actually thrown around quite a bit by some of the amplified waves in the inlet.  We entered a place called “Little Harbor” and quickly realized why they call it that as there was not a lot of room to anchor and all the moorings looked spoken for.  There was a resort in there called Wentworth-by-the-Sea, but they wanted $4 per foot per night to dock so that wasn’t going to happen.  So then we decided to leave Little Harbor and head up the river to either anchor in Pepperill Cove or see if we could get a mooring at the Portsmouth Yacht Club.  Erica was able to reach the Yacht Club on the phone as we motored up the river and they had room for us.  They also had a dock where we could wash down the boat and refill the tanks.  We worked for about an hour and a half swabbing the decks before heading out to the mooring to get dinner ready and clean ourselves up.

In the middle of getting dinner ready, a line of severe thunderstorms was approaching from the northwest.  I had been tracking this line of squalls for a while so the boat was prepared, but the National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning with the potential for 60 mph winds.  We were on a large mooring so that was not a concern, but I wasn’t sure how the bimini (the back canvas ‘roof’ over the cockpit of the boat) was going to handle the wind.  I reinforced the bimini’s steel tubing with a jib sheet and hoped for the best.  The skies got dark quickly and the lightning increased as the storm raced in.  The wind picked up rapidly, but fortunately for us peaked out at about 30 knots as the rain began to fall.  After that it was just a nice show to watch while eating dinner as the lightning continued for a while and the dodger and bimini provided some shelter from which to watch everything.