MELBOURNE TO ADELAIDE

Freedom Now arrived safely in Melbourne on January 22 and we were able to visit her (under escort) on the dock. We accompanied the Australian Quarantine Service officer on his inspection and were told in rigid tones "The boat can't be moved from the dock until it has been fumigated". It was another 4 weeks before we saw her again. Our agent arranged for a company to carry out the fumigation. They erected a tent over her but before the fumigation could be completed the tent was shredded in a storm. The fumigation company could not complete the work for another week. They probably had to get a new tent made. Then the trucking company claimed they couldn't move it without a wide load permit and the bureaucratic wheels that issue such permits could take another week to turn.
Feb 18, the boat arrived by truck at the Sandringham Yacht Club and we were able to start work putting her back together. We worked from sunrise to sunset and finally got her in the water and the mast stepped on Feb 29. The facilities at the club were excellent and the staff very helpful.
We still had a lot of work to do and we were not ready to sail away until March 12. The frustrating delays enabled us to take advantage of some of Melbourne's cultural events and we enjoyed catching up with some long term friends, the Coulsons from Alice Springs days and the Rose family, involved in Churches of Christ Ministry.

Our sail from Melbourne to Adelaide was one of our best. We left Sandringham early in the morning to arrive at "the rip" at slack water. Port Philip Bay is a huge volume of water with a narrow opening to Bass Strait. This means the outflow and inflow never ever get synchronised with the tides. The resulting disturbed water at the heads known as "The Rip" can result in ugly conditions. We made good time and arrived about 30 minutes before slack water. We decided to take advantage of the 3knot outflow current but were amazed at the disturbed water we experienced so close to the time of slack water. We sailed through the night around Cape Otway arriving at picturesque Port Fairy the next day. Staying in Port Fairy is always a delight. We tied up to the dock in front of Gary the boat builders house in the Moyne River with a constant stream of visitors walking along the dock between the fishing boats, yachts and houses. It is the closest thing to a small English fishing village we have experienced. Many of the dock wanderers stop for a chat and just a few minutes walk from the boat are some of the finest cafes, restaurants and bakeries we have experienced. It was hard to leave but the weather was changing and we needed to get home. Our course was mainly NW and a series of cold fronts sandwiched between high pressure centres meant the forecasts were for winds to be NW at 30 knots ahead of the fronts. Beating into 30knots is not high on our list of delights. One front passed late on Monday afternoon and the next was due on Thursday afternoon. We left at 2300h Monday evening, carefully winding our way out of the Moyne River. Conditions were good with a swell of about 3 metres and winds SW up to 25knots so that once we had passed Portland we were able to free sheets and romp along.

Winds moderated and backed further East the further we went. By Wednesday evening we were in Backstairs Passage and once in the lee of Kangaroo Island and out of the swell the seas flattened out nicely. We rounded Cape Jervis and started heading up the home stretch of Gulf St Vincent just before dark. The winds were light and our boat speed sometimes dropped to 3 knots but we could see no point in hurrying so we took it in turns having a restful sleep and watching with nostalgia as the lights of our home city floated by in the distance. We tied up at the Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron at 0530 Thursday 20, March (Maundy Thursday) and slept for a few hours before travelling by train to our home at Blackwood. Freedom Now seemed quite happy in her new home and we were content to be close to family again. The memories of the places we have been and the many friends we have met will be treasured and recalled for as long as we live. What wonderful things we have been able to achieve. What wonderful experiences we have been able to share. It is a wonderful world! Farewell for now faithful readers.

ANNAPOLIS

A sail up the Delaware Bay,motor through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and sail down the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis was all that we needed to complete our magic cruise of the North Atlantic.
Except for the shipping channels the Delaware is muddy, shallow and uninviting. The run up the bay is easy if the conditions are right but if the wind is against the tide it can be hell, as George Washington discovered in his crossing many years ago, now immortalised in a painting hanging in the National Museum of Art.
To get it right we left Cape May at 0430h and sailed to the entrance of the Delaware. The short cut through the Cape May Canal was not an option for us as the bridge clearances were not adequate for our mast height. We scraped the muddy bottom leaving the marina but once out had no problems navigating our way in the dark.
The run up the Delaware was a dream with the tide and wind running with us all the way. We passed a prominent nuclear power plant and arrived at the entrance to the C&D canal at 1500h (a distance of 80 nautical miles). Motoring through the canal was easy and we were able to anchor in the boat basin at Chesapeake City by 1700h. Without an anchor windlass we took care to get the anchor set right first time. We were anchored in a perfect position. Hurricane Noel was moving up the coast from Florida and forecast to bring strong winds to the whole area for the next few days but
we were well protected and far enough inland to worry too much about it. We listened on our SSB radio to messages of panic from a catamaran heading to Bermuda and caught in the hurricane's full force. The owner pleaded in a trembling voice for our friends on Ketchup 11 to phone his wife and tell her he loved her. He obviously doubted if he would see his wife again. "This is the worst night of my life", he said. We spoke to him ourselves and told him we had survived a similar storm when sailing to New Zealand and that he would survive this one too. "Just keep eating and get as much rest as you can", Bruce encouraged. They did survive and arrived in Bermuda with a lengthy repair list.
Our short 3 day stay in historic Chesapeake City with its well maintained old buildings was made even more delightful by Buddy the Dockmaster who went out of his way to help visiting yachties by driving them to the supermarket or anything else they needed. We were told we had to meet Nick, the local New Zealander who had an accent like ours. Nick was a delightful character who had married a local girl and like many New Zealanders knew a lot about boats. His advice was invaluable.

We needed advice at that stage as we had started to feel very homesick and the thought of being away from our family and friends for another two or three years had become a blot on our enthusiasm. We were finding the long passages and the loss of sleep on overnight sailing was getting more difficult and we had not been successful in finding someone willing to crew for us on our next big leg to the Caribbean. We made a bold but very difficult decision. We would ship the boat back to Australia and take the family on short sailing trips in our dotage. Had we realised the difficulties that would entail we might have decided otherwise.

On Sunday November 4, we retrieved our anchor by hand at 0430h and sailed under near perfect conditions to Annapolis, arriving at Clements Creek community marina at 1500h. Our very good friends the Melchners had arranged a marina berth there for us to use and it was great to be greeted as we berthed by John who took our lines. Annapolis was like a second home. The help and support we received from our yachting friends there will never be forgotten. We were feted, dined, taken for medical treatment and housed in wonderful style. Thanks John, Carol, Hank, Fran, Sandy, Lyn, Bob, Matthew and Sheila for all you did for us.

We had mixed feelings. We had just completed a near perfect cruise of the north Atlantic following John Melchner's excellent recommendations but we were abandoning our dream of sailing through the Panama and across the Pacific Ocean to Australia. The thought of being reunited with our grandchildren earlier than originally planned weighed heavily in the balance as we tried to integrate our thoughts and feelings.

Autumn was well advanced and we still had much to do.

NEWPORT, BLOCK ISLAND, CAPE MAY

We had just 24 hours before bad weather with strong southerlies stopped us sailing south so we departed Cuttyhunk for Block Island. The winds were 15-20 knots but easing. Block Island was an easy day sail away and we dropped anchor in the Great Salt Pond, New Harbor at 1500h. We had originally intended to sail down Long Island Sound and visit New York City but decided instead to catch the first weather window to sail direct from Block Island to Cape May. The weather was against us for the next couple of days and when we were offered a free mooring we decided to leave the boat at the strategic take off point at Block Island and take the ferry across to the mainland to visit Newport the home of the America's Cup for many years and to visit the Herreshoff Museum at Bristol RI. To lovers of great sailing boats the name Herreshoff is uttered in hushed tones of awe and respect. The museum houses a number of boats designed and built by the Herreshoffs and many of their plans and design tools. It is still a source of amazement that Nat Herreshoff could design America's cup winning boats by whittling a half hull shape in a block of wood until it looked and felt right and have the boat trounce a Thomas Lipton funded boat designed and tested by the most scientific methods then available.
The America's Cup Hall of Fame was a bonus.
Newport is a great place for sailors and Australian yachties are held in high regard and fondly remembered after the many America's Cup challenges and finally victory!! One of its special places is the Seamen's Church Institute housed in an old building near the waterfront. It provides every service a visiting yachtie could ask for: A cafe serving good cheap food, showers, laundry, computer and wi-fi access, library, mail collection and a chapel.
We also visited the International School of Wooden Boat Restoration and observed first hand the wonderful skills their students are able to develop. Bruce wanted to enroll. A night of luxury in a motel and bus rides through Providence to Point Judith and Ferry to Block Island completed our side trip. The weather forecasts for the next few days were not good and we began to question our decision to bypass New York. Block Islanders were good to us though and we attended the Baptist Church on Sunday and were invited to the home of a local family who had sailed to Australia and flown home for a while.
It was not until the following Wednesday October 24, that the weather looked right to sail south. The forecast was for winds W to NE to a maximum of 20 knots. The forecasters got it wrong. We estimated the trip to Cape May (203 nautical miles) would take us about 35 hours so braced ourselves for two days and one night at sea. By nightfall the winds were up to 30 knots and by Thursday morning we had gusts to 35 knots and breaking seas. It was fast but not comfortable sailing. It was rough enough for us to radio the Cape May Coast Guard to enquire about the conditions at the breakwater entrance. We decided to enter and had a rough entry with large breaking waves on our beam until we were well inside the breakwater. Trying to anchor in 35 knots is not easy and we got it wrong. We were too close to the main chanel and in the process we seized our anchor windlass so we couldn't use it to reset our anchor. We stayed the night and the next day when the wind had eased a little we were able to use a line and chain hook to inch the anchor chain up by using the main sheet winch. Rather than anchor again we decided to go into the Canyon Club Resort Marina but nearly fainted when they told us their charges were $125 a night.
We needed to get our windlass out of the boat and send it to an expert in Florida for repairs so we really had no choice. On Saturday morning, with the work completed and the weather, miserably cold, wet and windy, we took a taxi into the main shopping area of Cape May for a southern style breakfast of coffee, eggs, bacon and grits. The cafe proprietor was extremely helpful and suggested we might be interested in the bird show that was being held in the Convention Hall.

We went and discovered the hall full of bird watchers, binoculars, scopes, book sellers and a display of live raptors mostly birds that had been injured and nursed back to health by the owner of a bird sanctuary a nationally renowned ornithologist. Tethered and standing on their individual perches were magnificent looking eagles, falcons, hawks, and owls. The owner of the sanctuary was present and had scheduled a series of lectures. We made sure we were well positioned for the first of these. We could never have guessed at the saga that was about to unfold as one by one the birds were taken from their perches clipped to the lecturers gauntlet and paraded around for the audience to see at close quarters. A small falcon was let go to fly around the hall and quickly returned to the gauntlet bribed by a morsel of meat. "These birds of prey always attack the necks of their prey, so watch your necks" the lecturer cajoled. Towards the end of the lecture he asked how many would like to see an Arctic Falcon in free flight outdoors. Outside it was raining and blowing a gale but the majority wanted to see it. So outside we went. The falcon was released, soared into the sky and then plummeted into the centre of a flock of pigeons grabbing a pigeon in its talons and neatly cutting its jugular with its beak. It then flew out of sight with its kill. The lecturer and his assistants set off to track it down using a radio direction finder. Bruce decided to go back into the hall out of the rain but Bonnie tagged along with the lecturer and a couple of others to see where it had gone. When they finally tracked the falcon down they discovered it had flown into the main shopping mall dragged its prey into a shoe store and started to dismember it's pigeon lunch. Women were running out of the store screaming and the police had been called. The police arrived, the lecturer recovered the falcon clipping its tether to his gauntlet and removed the dead pigeon. The police refused to let him leave the store and return to the hall as they seemed to think that with a dead pigeon and screaming women some horrendous crime must have been committed. In spite of his request to return to finish his lecture, he was detained in the store until the animal control officer could be summoned. Cruelty to animals was one possible charge suggested. Half an hour later a rather frazzled lecturer with Bonnie, falcon and dead pigeon in tow returned to the hall but he was in no mood to continue his lecture and outdoor flights were ruled out for the rest of the day. It was rumoured that the police officers involved spent the rest of the day searching the statute books determined to find some charge to justify their efforts. Only in America?

We wandered back through the town cold and wet and on the way spied a billboard in front of the Cape May Baptist Church that said "Thanksgiving Celebration today. Public welcome." Any excuse to get out of the cold, so we entered. For the next couple of hours we enjoyed a good old fashioned social event with home made chilli con carne, corn bread, hot dogs, hot cider and some fun activites, bobbing for apples, eating buns on string, potato peeling contest (won by Bonnie) and a cake walk. What is a cake walk? When the music stops you stand on the nearest number and if it is drawn you win a cake. Bruce won a huge cake covered with chocolate icing that fed us for the next three days. By the end of the social we had made some good friends and arrangements had been made for a ride back to the boat, and a ride to church next morning. We also dined with our new found friends on Sunday evening before planning to move on.

CAPE COD CANAL

The Cape Cod Canal provides a wonderful short cut provided you get the tide right. The northern entrance was only 50 miles from Salem and the weather was perfect. Under full main and headsail we sailed on a broad reach at 7knots arriving at the entrance with the tide flowing with us at about 4 knots. We had planned to spend the night at the marina but after refuelling we decided we had just enough daylight to transit the canal. Motoring at 6 knots through the water we travelled at 10 knots over the ground. In less than an hour we had done our transit of the canal and picked up a mooring at Onset for the night.
The next day with westerly winds of 10-15 knots and clear skies we had an easy sail down Buzzards Bay to Cuttyhunk Island, negotiated the narrow entrance and picked up a mooring in the dredged pond. The moorings were very close together and had a stiff penant and mooring ring sticking up about 6 feet out of the water. Threading a line through the ring was tricky and even though we pulled ourselves up on a short tether we still fouled the mooring behind when we swung on the breeze. As it was the end of the season there were few boats in the harbor and we were disappointed when a young man appeared alongside in a dinghy and asked us for $40 (the nightly mooring fee). He assured us it was the last day the charge would apply and we could stay from then on for nothing. It was tempting but we needed to press on. Cuttyhunk is a delightful little island full of holiday homes, shacks and a small permanent population of mainland dropouts. Electric golf carts provide the main form of transport and when we expressed a desire to do some coastal walking an elderly female resident invited us to jump on board her golf buggy and drove us down the narrow roads and tracks to a convenient sarting point.
It was now mid October and the nights were getting cold. We pulled out our down filled sleeping bags and decided to keep moving south with the ever increasing flocks of Canada geese.

SALEM AND BOSTON

About the only things we knew about Salem before we sailed in were it's sad history of witch trials immortalised in Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible" and its importance as a shipping centre in early American trade. It is a delightful spot which has escaped the total detruction of early houses and mass redevelopments of many cities. We arrived just before Halloween and the witches were out in full force. We walked past many little stores offering Tarot readings, seances and fortune telling but manged to escape unscathed and unread. We toured a few historic houses, and visited a couple of museums but the event which remains indellibly etched in our minds was a dramatic recreation of the arrest and preliminary hearing of Bridget Bishop in 1692. We saw her arrested in the street and dragged screaming into the old town hall where we the audience were presented the testimonies of witchcraft that were actually levelled against her and invited to decide whether she should be committed for trial. Apart from a character that rivalled Shakeseare's Shrew we were unimpressed with the evidence presented against her. It lacked logic, reeked of superstitious inuendo and would hopefully be laughed at in any modern court. At the end of the testimonies the audience was asked by show of hands to indicate whether she should be committed to trial. A very slender majority decided she should not be sent to trial. The audience sat in silence as the actress playing the role of Bridget stepped forward and thanked us for not sending her to trial and then proceeded to explain that in 1692 the decision was different, she was tried, found guilty and was the first of 19 people hung for witchcraft in Salem. How far have we really progressed? Witch hunts are still with us! There are still many who want to declare others guilty until they are proven innocent. Enough preaching!

The weather continued in a foul mood so with our boat safely on a mooring we travelled by train into Boston. Bruce kept walking around reciting,

"Here's to good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the Cod,
Where the Cabots speak only to the Cabots
And the Lodges speak only to God."

We experienced no such implied snobbery and saw no sign of the Cabot and Lodge families. We were fortunate to have as a walking tour guide a professor of American History who did his best to remove the facts of the American Revolution from the myths and mysty eyed idealism that so often surround them in American popular beliefs. He drew a very interesting parallel between the American Revolution and Vietnam and suggested we still need to learn the lessons of our history.

We only had one day in Boston and spent the afternoon on the water with a tour of the harbour and the oldest ship still on the active list of the American Fleet. "The Constituion" was built in 1750s and is lovingly maintained as a working museum of that era, a truly magnificent vessel

MOUNT DESERT ISLAND, MAINE

The Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island is a jewel in the crown of America's National Parks. After departing Bar Harbor for a mooring at North East Harbor, we spent four glorious days walking around the Park. Free buses leave the harbor every 30 minutes from early morning until dusk.
The park has an extensive network of cycling and walking trails. 45 miles of rustic carriage roads lace the park. John D Rockefeller Jr. wanted to travel on motor-free byways by horse and carriage into the heart of the island and these carriage roads constructed with stone bridges and compacted broken stone surface between 1913 and 1940 were his gift to the park and its visitors. The irony of course is the fact that his ability to fund these carriageways free from motor vehicles came from wealth derived from the Standard Oil Company established by his father.
As we walked along these magnificent carriageways we were grateful for his bequest and kept imagining how beautiful they would be for cross country skiing after a heavy snowfall.
It was now the first week in October, the days were shortening, the weather chilly overnight and we learned that after Columbus Day (Monday October 8) the bus service would end and the park would virtually close down. We needed to sail south as soon as possible but this was a treasure we could not leave just yet.
We had to climb a mountain first. With two days to "shut down" we set off on a memorable walk and climb. We started with an easy stride along the carriageway skirting Bubble Pond surrounded by the brilliant gold and reds of autumn leaves and climbed a steep rocky track to the top of Pemetic Mountain (1,234 feet). The fogs had gone and the clear views of rugged coasts, mountains and lakes were stunning. We lunched at the top and reluctantly descended the other side of the mountain and caught the free bus back to our boat.
Sunday morning was bleak and overcast so as is our custom we set off for the nearest church. We had noticed a sign at the local library that the Society of Friends meeting was held there every Sunday so off we went for our first experience of Quaker worship. We arrived a few minutes late and were ushered into a room where a group of about 20 people were sitting in a circle in total silence. We took our seats in the circle and sat in silence for an hour. Afterwards we were assured that the meetings are not always like that. Sometimes several people speak as they receive enlightenment. We concluded that while an hour of silent prayer was quite OK and a pleasant change from clanging guitars and thumping drums, it is not something we seek as a regular worship diet. Perhaps just a little music and liturgy next time.

On Columbus day we sailed south to Deer Island where we had been invited to pick up a guest mooring owned by Phil and Linda, local Maine residents we first met in Baddeck. We had ordered a new refrigeration unit and had it delivered to their home. It was an easy day sail with a bit of tricky navigation through narrow but well marked channels winding between convoluted islands. We still had to wind our way through a minefield of lobster traps but the day was clear and sunny so it wasn't anywhere near as much fun as in the dense fog. Phil delivered our refrigeration unit to our boat and we spent a day installing it and visiting them in their magnificent two story home just ashore from the mooring. Their help was invaluable and with their assistance we were able to get our empy gas bottle filled just in time to leave on Wednesday October 10. The weather forcast for the next 24 hours was good with gentle to moderate NE winds but deteriorating after that. We felt we needed to move south quickly so sailed overnight to Salem, Massachusetts. We arrived just before the foul weather hit.

BAY OF FUNDY

The Bay of Fundy has the biggest tides in the world with one tidal station recording rises and falls of over 16metres. This means strong currents for the whole of the bay and around the southern foot of Nova Scotia. Timing is everything. To get it right we left Shelburne at 0430 and had a wonderful sail around the bottom of Nova Scotia and then set course for Bar Harbor, Maine. The weather forecast was good with light winds and patches of fog. Because of the strong tidal currents we simply set a compass course and ignored our cross track error and rumb line. The plot of our course was fascinating as it is the first time our track formed a perfect sine curve as we went up with the flood and down with the ebb. We motored for a while but were making such good time we estimated we would arrive in Bar Harbor berfore dawn the next day so we killed the motor and were content to sail at 3 knots with very little breeze.

By early morning we started the motor again and motored the rest of the way. By 0600h we were in dense fog which thickened further as we approached the coast of Maine. The forecast patches of fog became a dense blanket covering a large area. The visibility was reduced to little more than the length of our boat. Then the nightmare really began when we encountered a mine field of lobster traps with lines and floats just waiting to wrap themselves tight around the propellors of unsuspecting yachts. Bonnie was on the helm and the visibility was so bad she could not see the trap floats in time to alter course to miss them. Bruce stood in the bow pulpit to gain an extra 12metres of visibility and pointed furiously in the direction he wanted Bonnie to head. We still had a number of near misses. Because of the high tides most of the traps have lines with two floats with a span line between them. The traps were so thick that at times it was difficult to find a path through them. At one stage Bruce saw two floats a reasonable distance apart and signalled for Bonnie to go between them only to spy the span line just below the surface as the bow passed over it. The screams and violent gestures provoked the quickest response ever performed at the helm as Bonnie slammed the motor into reverse but our momentum carried us over the line before we began to move astern. The back of our keel caught the line and dragged the trap with it. We were getting dangerously close to traps behind us when the line and its floats finally popped out from under the boat and we were able to proceed. A few minutes later we heard an announcement over the VHF radio that the fast Catamaran Ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth was leaving Bar Harbor. We could hear the roar of her motors quite distinctly but could see nothing but fog. Our minds conjured pictures of a huge catamaran roaring out of the fog on top of us. We jumped on the radio to tell them our position and were reassured that they had picked us up on their radar and that we were about 3 miles from them.

Bar Harbor is protected on one side by a breakwater with a narrow gap between its inner end and the sharply rising land of Mt Desert Island. Believing we were good at pinpoint navigation we set a waypoint at this narrow gap with steep land on the port side and a beacon marking the end of the breakwater on the starboard side. We sailed a precise course until our arrival alarm sounded to indicate that we were almost at the waypoint. We could see no land, no light or beacon and no sign of the breakwater which at low water is just below the surface. Lobster traps were everywhere. Bruce said "I don't like this. Let's get to hell out of here." We headed out towards where the chart indicated the main wide entrance to the harbor should be still with no sight of land and more lobster traps. Bruce spoke to the harbor master on the VHF radio and was told there was a cruise ship at anchor in the entrance to the harbor and that if we sailed past her stern and then headed in we would find the dock. Bruce directed Bonnie on a perfect course but forgot to tell her about the cruise ship. Suddenly it appeared through the fog towering over us and about 30metres off our beam. "Shit! Look what's coming" was the horrified high pitched scream from the helm. "Just relax, its at anchor" came the calming reply. We wound our way past the stern of the cruise ship and through an area of moored fishing boats and finally a misty view of the dock appeared. We were very glad to tie up and clear in with US border protection.