Day 13 – Salem to Boston

Our last day was the same leg, but in reverse, as our first of the vacation. Since we didn’t need to be home until 5pm we thought we would get up at a relaxed pace. The wind was blowing all night and had not let up in the morning and since it was coming form the NE Salem harbor, which faces east, was a little rolly. We checked the weather forecast and saw that there was a small craft advisory with winds about 20kts sustained and the radar show a band of rain over Philadelphia and New York. Since they typically travel NE up the coast we expected to get wet again later. However, the strong winds were our savior as we made record time to Boston.

We dropped the mooring line at 9:30am and headed out of Salem Harbor. As soon as we turned to the south we had the sails up and continued to sail until we were at the marina. Once we passed Marblehead we turned SW and had 6-8 foot swells. Since the winds were from the NE and we were heading SW we were on a dead run to the north channel of Boston harbor. We went wing-on-wing in 20kt winds (true) and were screeching along at hull speed. At times we would surf to 8.5 kts. We made record time to the marina. We have done this trip many times and normally expect it to take 4-5hours for the 21 nm. We made it in 3h 15 mins.

As we were approaching Boston we saw the good old sites – they sent out the welcoming committee in the form of the tourist speed boat “Codzilla”.

We had to navigate around four tankers anchored in the harbor as well as an exclusion zone for the LPG tanker.

We saw the Nantucket Lightboat, that is being refurbished, downtown Boston and one big sailboat

The coastguard station,

The marina

And of course – Old Ironsides, The USS Constitution which is adjacent to our marina, “ The Constitution Marina”.

Some statistics from the trip
13 legs
470 nm in total
53 hours of engine use (ouch that hurts, but it doesn’t hurt our pocket as much as a powerboater’s)
18 harbor seal sightings
18 dolphin sightings
and we caught one meager little mackerel. Mind you dragging a lure at 5-7kts is not ideal for fishing, so I will take it as a mark of pride that we didn’t catch more because it meant that we were actually going places.