Friday, October 1, 2010
Pride of Baltimore II dockside in Boston Harbor

The wind is briskly blowing from the south and the rain that fell in the Mid Atlantic is on its way to New England and Boston. The strategy of rushing out of Rockland and getting to Boston ahead of the low bringing wind and rain worked. Pride arrived to her secure berth at Rowes Wharf at 10 AM yesterday, some 2-4 hours ahead of the strong wind. Getting to Boston this far ahead of time presents the chance to provide some time off to crew. The last time they had any time off was two weeks ago during the Montreal Maritime Festival. There is also opportunity to do maintenance. Something that the crew do at any and every opportunity in order to keep Pride safe and ready to fulfill her long distance voyaging mission.

The Guest Crew that boarded in Montreal are not feeling robbed of any opportunity to sail. The sailing that was accomplished between the Pilot Station at Escumins and Rockland was completely rewarding. Overall the voyage was 1,250 nautical miles assuming no diversion from a direct route. Sailing to Rockland, Maine is only about 80 miles less than it would have been to Boston.  The 140 odd miles between Rockland and Boston only took 21 hours to motor. Added to the 30 motoring hours between Montreal and Escumins that was required with the Pilots makes a total of 51 hours of motoring in a voyage plan scheduled to last as much as 288 hours. This means the motoring represented 18% of the maximum overall voyage time. 10% of the voyage time was unavoidable due to the tight river and the length of the river that required having pilots aboard. So the Rockland to Boston motoring run consumed only 8% of additional voyage time under power. Overall 82% of the voyage time between Montreal and Boston was spent sailing or visiting places along the way, including the opportunity to visit Boston. Of all the nearly two dozen times Pride has voyaged out of the Great Lakes in her 23 years this trip has joined the less than half dozen that have consumed very little fuel and provided good sailing rather than a lot more motoring and a lot less sailing as a result of contrary or non-existent wind for the trip. While Guest Crew got the benefit of a good sailing voyage the crew and the ship are benefited by the opportunity to have personal time off as well extra maintenance time. One cannot expect a better voyage coming from Montreal to Boston at this time of year.

 Signed,
Jan C. Miles, Captain aboard Pride of Baltimore II