The Cape Cod Canal has been a bucket list thing for both of us for years, and we were super excited to finally do it. It was a gray, damp and chilly morning, and Chris and I were dressed for full-on winter… we even put on sneakers. But nothing could dampen our spirits as we slipped the lines and made our way back out to the Canal (ok, so maybe the chart plotter deciding to cut out AGAIN got my nose a little out of joint, but we eventually fixed it). If we hadn’t had to make the run so early, I would have had people come down and take pictures, but my often-suppressed inner realist reminded me that no one would be excited enough to want to make the drive at 6am (although my family are all early risers, so maybe I was wrong). I’m sure my niece (12, going on 24) thought we were nuts, but we couldn’t stop saying how cool it was the whole way.
We first passed under the train bridge, and just before we did, we saw a gray seal swimming out of our way. The first bridge is always a little nerve-racking – I don’t care what the published clearance is, it never looks like you’re going to make it. Next came the Bourne Bridge and before we knew it, we’d passed under the Sagamore, passed the power plant and were out in the open ocean on Cape Cod Bay. We had hoped to sail (no wind) and see some whales (no luck), but at least the rain held off until about the last hour of the trip.
We’d reserved a mooring at Safe Harbor Hawthorne Cove in Salem, and the mooring field is so big that they sent the launch out to show us to our mooring. Once we were settled in, we walked over to tour the Salem Witch Museum and then grab dinner at Mercy Tavern. Chris’s brother drove up to have dinner with us, and after Faith and Hannah left, he hung out on the boat with us for a while. It was great to catch up – it’s been a long time since we all got together.
The next morning, we awoke to a heavy fog and what promised to be a gray day but it didn’t stop us from exploring. Our friend Evan who captains the schooner Freedom in St. Augustine in the winter spends summers in Salem, and it turns out that he runs the launch at Safe Harbor in the mornings and one of the local tour boats in the evenings. We caught up on the launch and made loose plans to grab a beer later in the evening.
We got donuts at Ziggy and Sons Donuts (their black raspberry jelly-filled donuts are amazing) and then toured the House of the Seven Gables, which inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book of the same name (I haven’t read it, so I grabbed a copy while we were there). We picked up some chocolates at Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie, and it was hard not to go overboard. I do wish we’d gotten a few more – they were so good! The rest of the day we spent wandering and learning about the historic town and were back on Windara in time to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Later in the evening we met up with Evan and got some good intel on places to check out in Maine.
We’re about to cast off the lines again on our way to Portsmouth, which will leave Maine as the last state on the eastern seaboard that we’ve not sailed to (technically we haven’t been ashore in Delaware, but given the bashings we’ve received in the Delaware Bay, I’m still counting it). It’s pretty crazy to think that by the end of the week, we’ll check that one off our list too. This season, we’ll have sailed both the farthest south and north that we’ve ever been.
