Underway in the Gulf of Maine, 82 NM S of Portland, ME Date and time: Wednesday, June 21, Noon EST Noon EST position: 42-23.8 N 69-35.5 W Course: 359 deg. M Average speed: 6.6 kts. Distance made good since departure: 663 NM Distance made good noon to noon: 155 NM ETA Portland, ME: 2359, Wednesday, June 21 Conditions: nearly perfect: wind 240 deg. M at 12 kts., seas SW 1-3 ft. overnight and in AM, air temp. 67 deg. F, sea temp. 54 deg. F, barometer 1030.6 and rising With Bluewater moving comfortably inshore along the coast of Massachusetts in easy going, this passage from Bermuda all over but the shouting. Our foggy welcome to U.S. waters yesterday afternoon and evening saw visibility down to 1/8 mile for about six hours as we proceeded in the Great South Channel, dodging unseen dredgers and draggers harvesting scallops in the rain. We carefully picked our way through the fleet of working watermen,fog horn on "auto", listening carefully to the VHF, and watching the radar and Nobeltec screens intently . . . these guys move so slowly they don't consider it a problem until they're about a quarter mile away from another vessel even in zero visibility, but we prefer a wider safety margin. Again, we were very pleased to have our Furuno ARPA and Nobeltec displays-how would we do without them! Judy reminded me that on our last Bermuda-to-the-U.S. passage in our own boat back in 1984, we didn't even have radar. But we did have foggy weather on the approach, and the pucker factor was several degrees higher. KNOWING what's out there helps keep the blood pressure down. Frontal passage late yesterday brought heavy rain--enough, in fact, to wash away the salt of the passage. But the forecast wind never materialized. We enjoyed Judy's easy offshore dinner-quiche and salad-in the pilothouse, and, happily, saw light SWly winds overnight as the seas diminshed to nearly nothing. Under this morning's bright sunshine Judy chamoised the exterior and I scrubbed the diesel soot of the passage from the transom, and once more we have Bluewater looking like she usually does-if not pristine, pretty darned close. This morning we passed by Cape Cod, but not close enough for our cell phones to work. As I write this just after noon, Boston is about 65 miles off our port beam. We're on track to reach Portland in 12 hours, and we've made arrangements via the Iridium phone for a mooring at Portland Yacht Services. In the morning we'll take a slip either there or at DeMillo's Marina to clear customs. For me, using a weather router and waiting for the right passage weather is a no-brainer, and this passage again bears that out. I once more salute Bob Jones at OMNI for his on-target forecasting and astute weather assessments. As I told Bob in a separate e-mail today, we compared his reports to those from three other weather routers at times in connection with our passages from the Virgin Islands and Bermuda and saw nothing that would make us want to change weather routers. To be fair, for the most part the other reports we saw were also quite accurate, but there were some service issues and other routers occasionally missed something important; neither has ever happened to us in many days of service from OMNI. We close this passage on our "new" Nordhavn 47 with about 6,400 NM in her wake and and 970 engine hours during the 10 months since we took delivery. She has served us well so far and we're looking forward to many more comfortable miles! We're also looking forward to our summer in Maine. All's well that ends well, and this passage is on track to end on a high note. I will close the loop with a short wrapup tomorrow. All is well, --Milt, Judy and Schipperke Katy -- Milt Baker Bluewater Nordhavn 47 #32 http://www.bluewaternav.com