[password]seabird14
[position] 41 28.8 N 071 19.6 W
[speed] anchor down
[weather] 4kts E, cc 80% 1012mb 71F 79%rh
[status] Day 5 Anchor down at 0830 local, Brenton Cove, Newport RI. 650nm. Arrived in the USA! Yesterday right after our noon update, Sophia came down from her scope of the horizon with the notice "we have FOG!". Not really surprising, as of course the New England waters are infamous for it, but believe it or not, this is the first fog we have ever encountered while sailing Kailani. This includes sailing her from Turkey across the Med , across and up to SF, then around the world and up here to the east coast of the US. Our radar, like most of Kailani's electronics, is vintage 1989. OLD. In addition, upon our last inspection while repairing the hole in the fabric radar cover, we noted a new crack in the housing. We have no idea how much rain might have seeped into all of its radar emitting electronics. In fact the only time we have turned this radar on to aid in navigation was in 2015 in Indonesia due to their seasonal practice of palm oil field burning, which causes debilitating visibility and air quality with rancid smoke. While it "worked" then, it never really did so in a manner to effectively pick out the hazards there, like the little old man we almost ran over, sitting in his wooden dugout canoe holding simply a bic lighter for his running light when we neared. So, this is a long way of saying, it was with a bit of trepidation and a lot of hope that we fired up our c. 1989 Raytheon radar, wishing mostly that it actually worked, and more importantly that if it malfunctioned that we would not start a fire, or something worse. Anyway, to our delight and amazement, it worked. We quickly went through the motions of "dialing down the clutter" etc on our giant cathode ray tube screen down below, and boom, we could see all the upcoming fish buoys! Good, but yikes, they were seemingly everywhere, and we could not see them visually as the fog was to the deck. Next was a lesson for Sophia about sea clutter (Jen reaching back to her days of designing guidance systems on radar guided missiles, noting of course that this actually was a time period a few years AFTER the date of our radar) so that Sophia could help tune the radar to separate hazards like buoys from returns like rain clouds and waves, and be our key assistant during our helm watches. Let's just say the next 19 hours of our motorsail into Newport was exhausting. The radar transmit had to happen every 5 mins, and Jen and Harley took turns running up on deck to maneuver as needed around pots, fishing vessels, buoys, etc. And it was COLD. But arrive we did, and exhausted we are. Unable to raise the harbor master we sought out an anchorage and dropped the hook (technically not really approved protocol). Harley completed our immigration and customs clearance into the USA online (cool!) and the delightfully friendly harbor master Steve just dropped by to give us the skinny on local knowledge we need e.g. where we can dinghy in etc. So here we sit, watching geese and kids in sailing dinghies cruise around, every manner of boat out and about, and the nearest channel buoy's brass bell clanging away as it rocks in the waves. A very busy harbor. We have to put the boat to bed now, so it is definitely a second POT of coffee day. To be followed by food, beer, champagne and some sleep (not necessarily in that order!).
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