July 18— Day 11 — Isles of Shoals NH to Jewel Is. ME — 50 NM

Underway  8:20 to 4:20 — eight hours. And it was foggy, estimated visibility 100 yards to 1/8 of a mile; it varies with lighter and heavier patches. Except for the first and last fifteen minutes we did not see a thing: not man nor beast nor boat nor land. We did “see” a few other boats on AIS, and we had radar on and checked it frequently. We did avoid both rain and thunderstorms, which had been forecast, but fog sailing is an anxious strain. —  scanning the horizon constantly, hoping that no other boat is headed toward us like the destroyer that cut JFK’s PT-109 in half and the nearby water, hoping that we can spot and swerve to avoid toggled lobster trap floats. Neither of us wants to be responsible for a calamity due to inattentiveness on watch. We stood watch for alternate hours (the schedule suggested by my mate) while Auto did the real work. With wind behind and not strong, we motorsailed.

Jewel Island is a lovely spot. The anchorage is the crevice, about 3/10th of a mile long, on the NW side, with room for perhaps a dozen boats, though only half that many this foggy weekday night. The south end has a bar that even at high tide will break southern waves like those expected tonight.

The northern end, through which boats enter, is open to the north winds.

I measure the entire island as 1.1 miles long by .3 miles wide at its widest point. Our first anchor drop put us too near the western side so we tried again. And the windlass got stuck at one point so I lifted the anchor by hand. I do not know why it got stuck. It worked later and we are in ten feet of water at low tide with 40 feet of snubbed chain. I was amazed at my strength in lifting the Rocna by hand.

We have been here many times with guests; Jewel has no commercial activity of any kind but rugged natural campsites with rugged toilettes for the environment, trails and lovely features. The “punch bowl”, where horizontal layers of rock crashed forming the vertical sides of, well, a punch bowl. An abandoned WWII tower from which our armed forces tried to sight potential submarine entries; yeah, right, we were out in fog today and the tower seems like folly. But we are tired and did not even lower the dink tonight. The trails are footpaths and if you get lost, keep going and you will come to the water’s edge.