I left Lunenburg at around 0900 local time on Saturday, September 19. Compared to the passage from Norway to Lunenburg, the passage onward to the US from Lunenburg was pretty sublime. I actually had a sunny day of sailing with favorable winds. There were also periods of calm when I’d motor to keep making tangible progress.

The thing that primarily occupied my planning was the forecast wind storm, or Nor’easter, as east coast people call it. It was forecast to reach maximum strength the weekend of September 26, but before that winds and waves of considerable strength were forecast for my route from Lunenburg to Cape May in Delaware. Cape May is at the mouth of the Delaware River and the point where I would leave the ocean and proceed upriver to the Chesapeake-Delaware (CD) canal that connects the river to the north end of Chesapeake Bay. Once through the canal, its straightfoward to proceed south down the bay to Annapolis.

Not being able to make it to Cape May in one passage, I began looking for marinas in New England where I could wait out the  Nor’easter. I considered marinas in Portland, Maine, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but decided it would be most efficent if I went further south so my route to Cape May after the storm passed would be shorter. Not having any personal knowledge of any of these places, I had to rely on various websites in my search. I finally settled on the Sandwich Marina in Sandwich, Massachusetts. It’s a small marina located at the east end of the Cape Cod Canal, a canal which cuts across from Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay, thus avoiding going all the way around the ocean side of Cape Cod, and also avoiding the Nantucket Shoals. Knowing boat shelter would be in high demand for the storm, I felt lucky to book a slip here through the Dockwa website for September 22-28.

As I’ve often done, I substantially slowed the boat approaching Cape Cod so I would cross Cape Cape Bay and arrive at the marina in daylight. The forecast said the winds at the marina would be about 12 kts. Wrong again.

Crossing the bay south I expected the winds to diminish from 20-25 kts to 12 kts but they didn’t, instead staying the same strength; I noticed one gust at 28 kts. I now faced the prospect of having to drive my boat into a slip in a small marina with a 20+ kts crosswind. Phywave has a lot of freeboard (exposed hull above the waterline) and a large dodger giving it significant so-called “windage” which makes it more prone to be pushed sideways by the wind compared to boats with a more streamlined profile. 

As I usually do, I called ahead to the marina with the VHF radio and asked that dockhands meet me to take my docklines because I’m sailing solo. Given the winds, and my relative inexperience with docking under such conditions, I was really concerned about making it into the slip. The situation was further aggravated because my bow thrusters were not working, something I discovered when coming into Lunenburg. The motor runs but I was getting no sideways propulsion, probably indicating the prop blades were gone. I had last used them leaving Hammerfest and they worked fine there so apparently the bow thrusters prop blades were another casualty of the passage to Lunenburg, like the battens and masthead antenna.

I resorted to the only technique I knew – make the turn into the slip going fast with a lot of power on, like I intend to smash the boat right through the dock. Once in the slip go to maximum reverse power to stop the boat before it actually does crash into the dock. It worked out better than I expected, but once in the slip getting it secured with the help of the dockhands took some work because the crosswind was pushing Phywave away from the finger dock where it was supposed to be tied. We finally got it done but I’ll probably double up on the dock lines and add snubbers before the maximum winds hit this weekend.

Sandwich Marina is in a good location with a couple of fine restaurants on either side which I’ve already visited. There is a shopping plaza a 10 minute walk away with more restaurants and a typical mega American grocery store with everything you could possibly want, quite a contrast to the small, but adequate, grocery stores I see in most foreign locales like Hammerfest and Lunenburg.

Clearing Customs and Immigration when arriving in the US in a private pleasure boat from a foreign port has never been easier. The CPB ROAM app is designed to let you arrive pretty much anywhere, not just at a designated Port of Entry and show up in person at a Customs facility . After securing Phywave at Sandwich Marina, I got on the app and filled in the details about my boat, my arrival location, and me personally as the ship’s master and only person aboard. I hit the button to submit the info to a CPB officer for review. Thirty minutes later I got a message that my entry into the US was approved. I used the same app when I arrived in Fort Lauderdale in 2025; it was just as easy then.  

Unfortunately, it appears you can’t use CPB ROAM when arriving in the US by private aircraft. The last time I flew my plane into the US from another country (Canada) was in 2019. I had to fly to a particular airport and make an appointment by phone with a Customs guy to meet me there. Apparently, that process is still necessary. I don’t see an obvious reason CPB ROAM couldn’t be used for aircraft arrivals, allowing you to basically fly in to any airport, not just a designated Customs airport, and use CPB ROAM to report that arrival.

After a brutal, non-stop 30 day passage from Hammerfest, Norway, the floating dock alongside Zwicker’s Wharf in Lunenburg was one of the most welcome sights I’ve ever experienced. Sailing westward across the far North Atlantic is definitely an upstream battle, trying to effectively leverage the winds of a conga line of low pressure systems moving west to east against me. There was a lot of upwind sailing, made all the more difficult because I lost two upper battens in my mainsail. With the sail reefed in the high winds so only the upper portion is in action, the bagged out sail without battens made for pathetic upwind performance. Upwind sailing was further aggravated by wind forecasts that had the wind direction wrong by 20 or 30 degrees. It’s hard to devise a workable upwind strategy with wind angles so wrong.

The forecast wind speeds and seas were similarly wrong: 20-25 kts in the forecast were, in reality, sustained 30-35 kts.  Two meter waves turned out to be 3 to 4 meter waves with short periods, rolling or slamming into the boat every 5 or 6 seconds, many crashing right over the entire deck giving the boat a saltwater bath. In the past I’ve described such conditions as “rough”. When I reluctantly went up the companionway into the cockpit to adjust sails, and looked out at the surging, windblown seas and felt the howling wind as they twisted and tilted the boat, especially in the pitch black of night, only one word came to mind to describe it: violent. It was like walking out the front door of your house into a full blown street riot.

Of the 30 days, I can count on one hand the number I would describe as having some pleasant sailing. Even the weather was dismal, almost always a solid overcast with very rare sunbreaks.  I remember one afternoon, though, when it was actually pleasant enough to sit in the cockpit with my daily finger of Chivas watching a pod of dolphins swim alongside for awhile. Surprising, because I was more than 500 nm from any land. Normally, you only see dolphins in coastal waters so I thought “where are these guys going?”  They had unusual colors – mainly brown with a muted white stripe on their sides. I should have gotten sea bird and marine wildlife books for the boat long ago so I had some idea what I was looking at. Normally, I’m an astute observer. I can almost always tell when the dinosaurs in a movie are fake.

In addition to the lost mainsail battens, sometime in the last few days before arriving in Lunenburg the VHF radio antenna at the top of my mast blew away. I don’t need to use the VHF marine radio much, but that antenna is also used for the AIS system. The AIS system broadcasts my boat’s position, course, and speed, among other information, so other boats know where I am and where I’m going. Similarly, other boats  broadcast the same information so I know what they’re doing. The AIS receiver automatically takes this information and calculates how close ships may come to others, and whether there is a risk of a collision. I regard it as a mission-critical system, especially in busy waterways. With the antenna gone the system was inop and I was blind to nearby ships. I had to get a replacement antenna installed before leaving Lunenburg. Unfortunately, the 3 1/2 days I spent there were largely occupied with buying a replacement antenna and finding a rigger to climb the mast to install it. Even though Lunenburg is mainly a tourist town, in fact, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I was surprised to find a marine electronics shop that could order anything, like an antenna and fittings, and have them arrive the next day. There was also a rigger in town; I thought I’d have to go to Halifax an hour away to find a rigger. 

I got the replacement antenna installed pretty efficiently given where I was, but it meant I had little time in explore and enjoy Nova Scotia. I certainly made the most of the variety of restaurants within a short walk of my boat. Scallops are a thing here: scallop PoBoy’s, scallops wrapped in bacon, grilled scallops on risotto, etc. A very welcome break from my boat food, I ate it all.

My destination is Annapolis, MD, still about 700 nm away with a  seriously bad looking weather system, perhaps a tropical depression moving north, in the long term forecast standing in my way. I may have to make the remaining passage to Annapolis a multi-hop process as I deal with that looming weather system.

Torn batten sleave and broken end cap