Conference unifix::sailing

    Gene,
    	At the risk of oversimplifying the situation...has your wife tried
    Scopolomine (Sp?) patches?  
    
    Paul

    Having been in the same situation (different location), I would advise
    to leave your best friend at home.
    
    Mine and I went out wanting to spend some quiet, unharried time
    together, and regretted it afterward.  If one of you is miserable, you
    both will be.
    
    In addition to the points you made (loss of time, wind at head, slow
    boat, etc.), you will be responsible for someone else's boat and thus
    have an immediate diversion.   If you do go to port once, you may plan on
    several trips (with no transport to offload better half to destination
    via other means).  You could conceivably be caught the whole time
    heading back/forth to port.
    
    Add likely fog along shore.
    
    Add boat not your own (unknowns?).
    
    This could end up being exactly the opposite of the kind of time you
    are both seeking.
    
    My wife and I made a pact that we would never expect a business sail
    (which yours appears to be since definitive destination) to be any-
    thing else.  We have agreed that she goes only on the leisure trips,
    and despite missing the sharing, it has worked well.
    
    Good luck. 

re .0:

Actually, I think that the rhumbline takes you a bit further from shore, 
maybe 20 to 25 miles. The prevailing winds are SW, and a SW wind makes 
the trip a beat (the magnetic course from Monhegan to Cape Ann is about
240 if I recall correctly). I have made the entire trip under power (no
wind at all) and the entire trip in 20 to 30 kt SW winds. More usually, 
the wind is light in the morning, nice SW going W late in the day, and 
back to light late at night. You may well have periods of calm and 
periods of 20 to 30 kt winds on the same trip as well as the odd fog 
bank. If the wind goes west, the coast will be directly upwind. And
there are few good harbors south of Portland. There are also generally a 
number of commercial and sport fishing vessels to dodge. 

I would be reluctant to sail a 25' boat down the rhumbline. Instead I'd 
stay within a few (maybe five) miles of the coast. The seas will be less 
bad and shelter much closer. It can get pretty bumpy for a small boat 20 
miles out. The navigational hazards are greater close in, of course, and 
you will have to sail further. I would also have an inflatable dinghy or 
liferaft along. It can get very cold at night, even in summer. Take more 
warm clothes than you think you'll need and you'll be just warm enough. 

Bottom line -- have Amy meet you in Marblehead with a cold beer or a 
steaming cup of cocoa depending on when you arrive.

    Hi Gene!  After our brisk little jaunt around Narragansett last summer
    and Amy's reluctance to go below for whatever reason, I would also
    suggest having her forego the trip.  It is not always easy to simply
    head in for shelter.  If conditions are bad enough, you may not want
    to risk being close to shore anyway.  Have a good trip in any event! 
    Sounds like it could be an experience. 
    
    Brian

    We did the delivery this past weekend over Saturday and Sunday.  The trip 
turned out to be shorter than expected.  Before the owners ran out of 
vacation time they made it as far south as Portland/falmouth Foreside.  So 
we had only about 80 miles to sail rather than 100.

The owner, my wife, and I arrived at Handy's boat yard Friday night with 
intention of staying overnight on the boat and getting a crack of dawn 
start.  When we arrived it was so foggy we could hardly locate the boat on 
its mooring.  In the AM visibility improved to about 100 yards but no wind. 
On went the Loran as we motored from buoy to buoy out the Hussey channel.  
Once outside the channel the rain started as did the confused 3 - 5 foot 
swells.  To make life even more fun, the water was checkered with clumps of 
kelp.  The autopilot we were using couldn't handle the swells and seemed to 
have a magnetic attraction for the clumps of weed.  After we fouled our 
prop twice, we reverted to manual steering.  At least that gave us 
something to do besides stand there and get soaked.  I had thrown my sea 
boots in the car at the last moment.  They felt pretty good after my 
topsiders got saturated.

Not much other traffic of any sort.  A tug boat and barge coming out of 
Portland and one large sailboat going North and that was it.  With the seas 
we could only make 3.4 knots with the one lunger doing about 3200 rpm.  The 
sensation was like sitting on a washing machine while taking a cold shower 
blindfolded.  In the hope of the weather's improving, we kept listening to 
the NOAA forecast on the VHF.  No change till Sunday except that the wind 
would diminish overnight.  How do you get less than 0 knots of wind?  We 
did put up the main to reduce the rolling.  That happened and the full 
batten main did it without the usual slatting.  At least one thing was 
working as advertised.

Lunch tasted great and was uneventful except for a majority of the crew 
losing theirs.  Doing an all nighter with one's head in the hopper didn't 
appeal those confronted with the choice.  At about 4:30 a consensus was 
reached to head for the nearest harbor which turned out to be non other than 
Kennebunkport.  This is one of the easier navigational exercises.  Head 
west until you see the all the Coast Guard patrol boats and Secret Service 
cigarette boats buzzing around.  Then through the breakwater and up the 
Kennebunk river to the marinas.  There is quite a bit of current in the 
river.  People on the shore were walking faster than we could motor with 
our throttle wide open.

Dinner in town revived our spirits.  But beware, Kennebunkport can be 
dangerous.  Leave your wallet on the boat.  Otherwise the the plastic inside 
keeps jumping out and leaving its impression all over the place.  Sure were 
a lot of mega-power cruisers at the marina.  Hard to see how they got there 
given how narrow and shallow the river is.

After a quiet night on the boat, Sunday dawned with a hint of blue sky 
showing through the ground fog.  Looked like the type that would burn off 
which it later did.  We heard the same forecast for SE winds and looked 
forward to some real sailing.  We motored out in same fog and swells as 
before except that there was no rain.  After several hours the fog burned 
off but still no wind.  At about noon we got a hint of seabreeze (1 -2  
knots) but that was it.  Later, more breeze, about 5 - 7 knots but right on 
the nose from the South.  Visibility improved but we motored all the way to 
M'hd.  Put about 22 hours on the motor by the end of the trip.

I know why cruisers all hanker after bigger boats.  More waterline and more 
HP means less time in the commute.  Not an exciting day.  With the 
autopilot on, I amused myself checking the lat lon coordinates in book of 
published loran waypoints.  I didn't find any that matched the charts to the 
fractional minutes.  Also read some of the Maine Cruising Guide, the big 
glossy $40 one.  Very good book.  Told us more than we wanted to know about 
Kennebunkport.  

As we left the marina at Kennebunkport, a Coast Guard patrol boat came in 
for re-fueling.  One helmsman, three NCO types and three deckhands.  Never 
saw so many people take so long to dock a small boat.  This was mostly due 
to the NCO's having some fun at the expense of the recruits.  While amusing 
to watch I was reminded of what they were there for when I saw the machine 
gun mounted in plain sight next to the wheel house.

- gene 
                                                         

    RE: wind less than 0 knots can't blow.  It just sucks.  :-)