June 25 and 26 -- Rockport to (and in) Newburyport

Passage across Ipswich Bay was timed to have us arrive during the final two hours of the flooding tide to carry us upstream in the Merrimack River, but not sooner because the current then, in the middle of the tide is too strong -- currents can reach six knots. Because the wind was from the west and the tide flowed to the west, this can set up dangerous steep waves over the bar at the mouth of the river when the both the current and wind are too strong. In fact the Coast Guard broadcasts advisories not to cross if conditions are severe. Today conditions were mild but still there was more turbulence over the bar than in open water. And I divided the 15 miles in the Bay into three hours and with the winds moderately light I put up only the Genoa and made speeds between four and six knots. Lene enjoyed this port tack sail, heeled no more than 15 degrees.

 

While crossing the bar and  heading upstream, Lene was appointed to use the iPad to help identify the buoys and keep us in the middle of the channel. We lucked out in arriving at the bridge just in time for its half hourly opening.

Once on our mooring at the Merri-Mar Marina (in the Merrimack, get it?), we dinked ashore, only 100 yards, to pay our bill and check out the marine store, which did not have the things we wanted. Heading back out to the boat, the outboard died. Fortunately we were only a few feet upstream from the marina dock and the current carried us back to the dock. Meanwhile, let me try it,” I said to Lene. When I squeezed the rubber ball pump, inset in the black hose that carries fuel from the tank to the engine, gas spurted out of the side of the hose. It was cut by pressure of the lifting line when the dink was hanging on the davit bar the last two days. I will have to check it more carefully from now on to prevent a repetition. But the cut was only about an inch from where the hose attaches to the engine. And the parts guy at the marine store/repair yard got the broken end off, cut the good part of the hose flush, sold us a hose clamp and put it on for us to secure the hose again. $4.13, the cheapest boat repair ever.  Also our new Maine electronic chartplotter chip had arrived!

We dinked about a mile downstream with the tide, tied up at the dinghy dock, did the laundry, shopped for a few groceries, and after dinner drove the dink back up stream against the much weaker current.  Again rain in the evening.

Our lay day was gray with periods of rain but hot. The grayness meant relief from the sun and the day in town meant relief for my shoulder which has a bit of pain from too much winch grinding.  I went ashore to fill our dinghy gas tank, only ½ mile walk each way, pay for our second night’s rent and fill three one-gallon water bottles. We brown bagged our lunch and ate with some new friends Lene made. One of them wants to  be a cruiser and  peppered us with questions, which I love. Then Lene got her nails done while I toured the Custom House Maritime Museum. (Readers who dislike museums: please skip the next paragraph.)

The Customs House was built in 1835 and in a most elegant Greek Revival style. We learned, at the customs house museum in Salem, in 2008, that before the enactment of the Income Tax in 1913, customs  -- the taxes imposed on imported things -- was this nation's primary source of federal income. So the Customs House in a shipping port like Newburyport, was a big deal and well constructed.  The museum’s treatment of ship building was not as thorough as in the museum in Bath Maine which we visited in 2008. It noted that the town was the victim of its own success:  As the builders, owners and captains got richer and richer, they wanted bigger and bigger ships until the ones they wanted were too big to cross the bar of the Merrimack and the shipping was conducted in Boston or Portland. Shipping was the most entrepreneurial “high risk - high reward” industry of that time. They also had a good display about the Coast Guard, which considers this town its birthplace. Alexander Hamilton (we last met up with him in his birthplace, Nevis), as Secretary of the Treasury,  ordered construction of fast boats, built here, called Revenue Cutters, to protect the Nation’s income by hunting down smugglers. This revenue service got merged with the lifeboat service and about 200 years later, after further mergers with the lighthouse service and others, into the Department of Homeland Security. There was a good treatment, including many large photos, of a few of the many merchant vessels wrecked in Ispwich Bay. It was a death trap for heavy merchant ships which could not sail closer to the wind than a beam reach and got caught in the bay by north winds, unable to sail out. Interestingly, those who elected to remain aboard were saved while those who got into lifeboats frequently died. They had a room displaying nautical charts from the period prior to those of the U.S. Navy’s Hydrographic office, but it did a poor job of explaining them. Another section displayed this town’s contribution to the Civil War, which included a ship of relief supplies sent to England to support the people there displaced from their textile work by the war's disruption of the flow of cotton. A room was devoted to John P. Marquand, whose books mocking but sympathizing with upper class people, were set here, where he made his home. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939  for “The Late George Apley.” Maybe a suggested read for my book group?

Then we sat for a couple hours in the town’s very good public library, with the NY Times, before a good dinner and a movie, Frances Ha, at the only urban cinema in town, formerly a store, before a dink ride back to feed the kitties and a good night’s sleep.