York to Gloucester, ball

Out of Maine! We are officially headed back south.

First, let me tell you about last night. The currents in York were astounding, very comparable to Bath. Being on the ball there wasn't comforting. Russ ran a couple of lines through the ball itself, not trusting the pendant, but it didn't make me sleep any better. When the tide came in, which was in full flood about 4 am, inQuest twisted and danced so hard the lines screamed and we yanked on the ball. That jarred us awake a couple of times. As a result, we were up by 5, ready to go.

Tide coming in is scary strong.

Getting out was easy since by then the tide had slacked. We plotted a course to Gloucester (pronounced "glou-ster", not sure why it has so many letters but, English. Go figure.). Our Navionics gave us a course through the Isles of Shoals, which we thought was absurd. But we'd just gone through a bunch of islands in Maine so, hey. That's exactly what we did.

About 30 minutes later I was playing with my phone and couldn't make it turn a picture. I handed it to Russ, who was driving at the time. I kept watch while he fiddled with it. We were passing a prop trap when I realized it wasn't a float but a flipper. I peered further to see a large, round body. Sea turtle? Then I realized... it was a whale. 

I pointed, I shouted, Russ stopped the vessel and we tried to really see what was going on. I even tried to take pics, but nothing came out. We never saw a spout, but the creature seemed upright, with it's head occasionally bobbing out of the water. The only thing I can say with certainty is it was much smaller than the humpbacks we saw in Bar Harbor. Russ called it in (since we're told repeatedly to report whales when you see them). They asked us a bunch of questions we just couldn't answer, like is it in distress. I mean, it wasn't frantic or thrashing, it made no sound, but it let us pass without 40 feet of it and didn't move. We felt like we should have done more, or known more, but we moved on. From that point on I was paranoid -- every piece of flotsam or bubbles or vegetation I was wondering, "What is that?"

Bella Gatto stopped by just minutes after
we got moored. They went through the canal!
I'm kinda jealous -- I wanted to try it too.

We got into Gloucester before noon. There are a number of mooring fields here so finding the one we were assigned was a challenge. Russ read reviews that this was a very bumpy place. I'm here to tell ya, it is. We're 500 feet from the "no wake" buoy into the marina, and no boater seems to bother to slow before that. In fact, the worst we took was from a fast, grey vessel with massive engines kickin' off a 6 foot wake that knocked over chairs and shifted furniture. It was, of course, the Coast Guard.

They ought to be ashamed of themselves...

Lovely lighthouses.