July 25 -- Sebaco Harbor Resort to Boothbay Harbor, 19 Miles

1. The heavy fog persisted so a quiet morning in which I tried to discover the source and then, from our friend Dean of s/v "Autumn Borne", the fix, for a small leak from the galley sink drain. Thanks, Dean! I also spent some time comparing the newest Embassy Cruising Guide for New England, which we acquired during this cruise, with the old out of date one. But some of the changes are not improvements. They deleted the chartlet for the anchorage at Sakonet where we stayed: there is no money to be made from anchorages. They deleted the arrows from the charts showing the direction and strength of tidal flows, why? They created a whole new large section devoted to "Mega Yachts" -- that's where the money is. But they also made some improvements in addition to updating the information about each place mentioned. For example they have drawn the shape of the docks of each marina, improving NOAA's charts. I also copied out information that I had written on the pages of the old book into the new. 

We set out at noon when the fog had lessoned. With heavy rain predicted for the 26th, we selected the mooring field of Tugboat Inn in Boothbay Harbor as our destination. Here one can find both ketsup and plumbers putty, a barber shop, a book store and a movie theater, and a free shuttle bus to get us around. In short, a good place to wait out a rainy day.
The fog continued, though mostly not as heavy, until our arrival at 3:45. Strong wind from the south so we motor sailed southward and detoured a bit west of south to keep a bit of wind in the mainsail during the first part of the passage when big waves and tidal current were heading us. Once we turned east we shut down the engine and sailed the rest of the way into the harbor, but using only the main. In fog slower is better and headsails make for speed and impair sight and hearing. So without the headsail, the full effect of adding more than five percent to the boat's weight, at its very bottom has not yet been tested.

Above is a picture of the route taken from the MFD from the left down, across and to the upper right - the red dots at bouys. The pink line shows our track and it goes into the lower left corner, away from the heavier black line with t he arrows to show how we tried to avoid motoring directly into the big seas. The boxes have something to do with the tide and I'm not sure what it means yet.