New England ports cruise ship

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29 de agosto de 2025
New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Boston, MA ... forgot to switch Trips
29 de agosto de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 66 °F
Considering we were flying on the Friday before Labor Day, it was a pleasant flight, even the ATL transfer. Southerners know that even if you die and go to Hell, you still have to go through Atlanta. We lucked into booking this cruise when ACL started offering free airfare, a discount, and a free stay at the Four Seasons Hotel (which was running $1,200-$2,000/night with free American buffet breakfast, brief coach tour and transfer to the ship and luggage tranferred to our cabin.

This trip was booked well in advance of our June-August six week, 1,700 water miles Great Lakes-Inland Rivers segment on Cat O' Mine. After our wreck in Nashville while trailering home, we arranged to have the damaged boat and trailer towed professionally back to Pensacola for repairs. Alhough that cost of $4,500 not covered by the insurance, it would have been more expensive and frustrating trying to manage out of state repairs long distance by shops we did not know or trust. Around here it takes six weeks to get repairs scheduled anyway. So we have a haulout scheduled Sept 15 on our return.
The logistics are complex because the deepest boat gouge may penetrate a sponson, so we can't launch it at a ramp then get it travel lifted onto jack stands. Oh well, it will all work out. Two couples were killed in two other wrecks on I-65 in that same area on that same day, so we feel blessed and are thankful for everyone's prayers.

USAA (47 year member) was very generous in their ACV of the totaled 2019 F250 Lariet, which we replaced with a new 2024 F350 deisel with three miles on it. Since 2026 trucks are coming in daily, we got a $10,000 discount on it, which more than paid for an 8 year/75,000 mile Ford bumper to bumper warranty and prepaid maintanence and a bed cover and running boards. The 20,000 pound conventional towing rating with towing pkg is more than enough, even for a TC255.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Boston Day 2
30 de agosto de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☁️ 66 °F
American Patriot was built 6 weeks ago and carries its maximum load today of 63 couples. You can tell it's a brand new ship. The all-inclusive features include gourmet meals, snacks, beverages and alcoholic drinks. We chose a third level cabin with a nice balcony view. We enjoyed a coach tour of the city along with a visit to the John F Kennedy Museum and library. The gardens and flowers are beautiful. 49 degrees in the morning is cold to us, but locals were in shorts and tees.Leer más
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ViajeroSounds wonderful.
1/9/25ResponderTraducir
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Boston, MA-Portland, ME
31 de agosto de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☁️ 79 °F
A mostly overnight cruise at 15 MPH through millions of lobster trap floats, often within six feet of the ship's path. We enjoyed a coach narrated tour and many famous sites including the most-photographed lighthouse in the US...Portland Head Lighthouse. Interesting that they run the foghorn 24/7 in bright daylight with unlimited visability. very impressive rocky beaches meet mostly pine forests. We walked the town for several miles and enjoyed more gormet meals and after dinner seminars. There's live music (not too loud) from 8:30-9:30 PM. Most of this crowd including us are in bed soon after that (but up at dawn). The parks are gorgeous. This is the only location in the US where you can see five different lighthouses from one spot. It's a complex navigation path into the Portland breakwater and Casco Bay. The Portland Head Lighthouse is the most photographed in the US. Interesting how they run the foghorn 24/7, even on bright days with unlimited visibility.Leer más
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ViajeroBeautiful pictures. Hope you have an amazing trip.
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Bath, ME-Boothbay Harbor, ME
1 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 77 °F
The trend continues of the Gulf of Maine and its’ bays have been plenty calm enough for a trailer boat to cruise through. The Down East Loop involves sailing out the St Lawrence into the Atlantic Ocean around New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and past the Bay of Fundy with its’ 30 foot vertical tides. Boothbay Harbor is so small there is no place strong enough to dock this small ship, so we anchor and can get the 130 PAX to shore in two runs with the 60-person tender. It’s a great walking town. A coach ride to the Botanical Gardens is included. The weather has been great with cool, crisp evenings and mornings with low humidity and highs in the upper 70’s. We’re so impressed with American Cruise Lines that we’re considering their Snake and Columbia River cruise rather than hauling Cat O’ Mine out there and back (free airfare usually included).Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Portland, ME-Bath, ME
1 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ⛅ 77 °F
Portland, ME to Bath, ME

Mostly night time cruise through another million lobstah pots up the Kennebec River to the historic ship-building town (since 1750) of Bath, Maine, docking at the Maine Maritime Museum. We’ll tour that in the morning, and a guided walking tour of Bath in the afternoon. It’s a brisk 49 degrees this morning with a predicted high of about 79. The ship takes up more than the length of the entire Maritime Museum dock, so there are no cruise ships in town. Ship draft is only eight feet, which allows more flexible docking anywhere.

The meals are great and just the right serving portions.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
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Bath, ME-Boothbay Harbor, ME
1 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 68 °F
The trend continues of the Gulf of Maine and its’ bays have been plenty calm enough for a trailer boat to cruise through. The Down East Loop involves sailing out the St Lawrence into the Atlantic Ocean around New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and past the Bay of Fundy with its’ 30 foot vertical tides. Boothbay Harbor is so small there is no place strong enough to dock this small ship, so we anchor and can get the 130 PAX to shore in two runs with the 60-person tender. It’s a great walking town. A coach ride to the Botanical Gardens is included. The weather has been great with cool, crisp evenings and mornings with low humidity and highs in the upper 70’s. We’re so impressed with American Cruise Lines that we’re considering their Snake and Columbia River cruise rather than hauling Cat O’ Mine out there and back (free airfare usually included).Leer más
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ViajeroLooks like a fun trip!
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Viajero That is something I’d like to do
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Viajero Squatch
11/9/25Responder
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
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Bar Harbor-Bangor, ME
4 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ 🌬 75 °F
Boothbay Harbor-Bay Harbor, ME

‘Bay Hahbah’ is a great seaside and touristy town with a deep maritime history back before whaling days in the 1700’s. Nice cruise, mostly at night, through some rather complex shortcuts for a ship with an eight foot draft. Another day and night where any trailer boat could live with the light winds and no waves!

We signed up for a land coach tour and water tour that complimented each other nicely in seeing both from different perspectives. The inland freshwater Eagle Lake is dug out of granite by the last glacial ice age about 12,000 years ago. We’re still impressed by the gourmet meals and fine wine (we’ve never had wine out of a bottle rather than a box for this long).Leer más
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Viajero Cool sculpture.
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Bangor-Rockland, ME
5 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ⛅ 82 °F
Bangor-Rockland, ME

A few rough areas enroute that became calm by late morning. We still feel so far that a trailer boat without a schedule would not suffer excess weather delays on this cruise…less so than on the big shallow Sounds like Albemarle and Port Royal, Lake Erie, etc.

Rockland, Maine lands 70% of all the lobsters produced in the US each year. It’s a lobstah town for sure. The nearby towns of Camden and Rockport blend in, the latter noted in the 1860’s for production of lime/limestone, which is very exothermic when hit by water. This was stored in wooden casks and shipped in wooden schooners before modern fire-fighting methods existed.

A coach took us to Camden Hills state park, overlooking Rockland Harbor…however, the fog rolled in and out in early Sept just like it does all of ‘Fogust’ last month. There seems to be hundreds of 19th century renovated Bed & Breakfast inns, all with impressive flower displays and grounds.

I added some photos & video of Cadillac Mountain in the Acadia National Park that wouldn’t fit in that Footprint. Acadia is breathtaking and worth a long visit by boat.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Rockland Maine-Portsmouth, NH
6 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 77 °F
Rockland Maine-Portsmouth, NH

This leg required the longest segment fully exposed in the Atlantic of this cruise. There were 5 foot seas abeam all night, but with stabilizers deployed on the ship and slowing down we slept well. It calmed down cruising up the Piscatauga (say that three times fast) today there are Small Craft Advisories with winds to 30 knots, so not a C-Dory day. This river runs at the national record of up to 13 MPH (the max for the Mississippi is 3-4 MPH at New Orleans).

Once on the River conditions calmed down. There is still some fog, but not as bad as in Rockland, Maine.

Every breakfast menu includes a variation on two Eggs Benedict, today with jumbo lump Blue Crab, yesterday with Lobster. We can share that plate 1 with one serving each. There are fresh local seafood options at every meal, including breakfast. The meals and service (gratuities all included) are outstanding…I guess they should be for the price….

Shore excursions included a self guided tour of the Navy experimental Albacore submarine, the historic downtown shopping district, and a historic collection of restored 1795 homes and businesses called ‘Strawbery Banke’ near the river (all free with your ACL lanyard ID). By evening it was again C-Dory calm on the river and SCA ended.

The more we see of these ports, the more doable it seems on your own C-Dory. We’re still scared of sailing out the mouth of the St Lawrence and hitting the Atlantic Ocean’s waves across fetch all the way from England, and rounding Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the 30 foot tides in the Bay of Fundy. That loop is 2,400 miles long. I need to do more research on that to confirm it’s not trailer boat territory.

If you get a notice that I’ve planted a new footprint, realize it can take 24 hours to get the pics and (esp) video uploaded to complete it…the ship wifi bandwidth constricts after dinner.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Portsmith, NH-Gloucester, MA
7 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☁️ 68 °F
Portsmith, NH-Gloucester, MA

This overnight segment took advantage of the tidal flow to the famed fishing port of Glocester (‘Gloss-tah’), where ‘The Perfect Storm’ movie was filmed. It was foggy, rainy and cold (60 degrees, water 58 degrees). We toured the Maritime Museum and historic sites, including the Fisherman’s Memorial. Over 10,000 fishermen have been lost over the years, mainly in the sailing days, which started in 1650, although even today it’s the most dangerous profession worldwide.

Groton Seafoods is here, although after the Cod and then the Haddock ran out, all fast food (and frozen) fish (Pollock) is shipped from Alaska and processed here before being trucked to Capt D’s and McDonalds’ all over the country. Sorry all the pictures look so dreary. Still, sea states are calm enough for trailer boats to sneak up the rivers if the Gulf of Maine is snotty…and it isn’t today.

The Maritime Museum is interesting with lots of historical info. For the most part, the rivers and inner Gulf of Maine were comfy for trailer boats. Dorys were used on the 1650 schooners because they could be stacked on deck readily (since they have no keels) for taking out fishing gear.

The Captain held an informative Bridge tour today. There are three 800HP Cummins diesel propulsion engines which drive hydraulic pumps which spin three 360 degree keel-protected pods, each with counter-rotating props. They consume 100g/hour at cruise on a 250ft long ship! Our 26ft TC255 with twin new F150s consumes 14g/hour at cruise and 31g/hour over that in comparison! He says there are over three million registered crab pots in New England to dodge! We have figured out how to identify the head and tail of a color-coded string of six-12 pots. It’s no more challenging in daylight than maneuvering in a field of blue crab floats.

The 30,000g blackwater tank has a purification system that produces drinking water quality output (when outside 3m and not in a no d/c zone), all system parameters are monitored remotely by the internet at HQ. I’m impressed!Leer más
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ViajeroInteresting. The septic systems in Virginia are like that as we found out when visiting Ken and Sharon. James
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Gloucester-Provincetown MA
8 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☁️ 66 °F
The route to Provincetown was not good for a trailer boat this day…the video is with the 24 foot stabilizers deployed on each side. It was calm in the harbor, as usual. Lots of tourism, mid 1800’s bed & breakfast inns, historic buildings and places. The Pilgrims landed here first on the Mayflower but later moved to Plymouth since there was no fresh water source and the sand was poor for crops.

Sandy dunes on Cape Cod National Seashore wrap around the harbor. There is a monument for the signing of their new government and many other historic sites.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Provencetown & Cape Cod
8 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 64 °F
Added another Footprint because of the 20 pics/print limit. Mostly views of Cape Cod. The Pilgrims on the Mayflower landed here first after being blown North off course by winter storms (aiming for the Hudson River). After exploring around for a month, they found Plymouth, which had better soil for planting and a freshwater spring.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Provincetown-Plymouth MA
9 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☁️ 73 °F
Plymouth Rock is pretty disappointing, and based on the Mayflowers’ 12 foot draft and harbor depth in 1680 this was not likely either the site nor the rock. We liked having a lot of walking on our own. Lots of history that we had forgotten or never learned. Conditions on the Mayflower must have been unbelievably awful.

The weather has been beautiful. Hurricane Erin a few weeks ago really mucked up the last run of this cruise. It’s a very unusual business model that a cruise line company designs and builds it’s own vessels and owns and operates the coaches that provide shore excursions. But it must be working since it’s massively expanding and building new ships all year! Plymouth is a lot less crowded with tourism and tourist shops than Provincetown. It still seems odd how every NE harbor seems to be all mooring balls and no docks.

We’re observing how trailer boats with a weather window could negotiate all these hidey-hole islands and rivers to make a New England cruise, or maybe even down the St Lawrence and Canadian Maritimes (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick) to get here! We’ll research making that a variation on our upcoming repeat of the Triangle Loop into Canada. We only need to complete 400 miles (C&D to NY to Albany) to complete our Loop started in 2017.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Plymouth-Newport, RI
10 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ⛅ 73 °F
We had a beautiful cruise starting at sunset. Bow thrusters and 360 degree pods x three allowed the ship to push off the dock and do a 360 in its own length (250 feet) no problem. We’ve seen hundreds of historic forts, but Ft Adams at Newport is by far the largest, most complex and with myriad defense systems. No wonder it never saw action.

We explored downtown (a ACL coach gave us a lift), had a nice walk checking out the waterfront megayachts, and signed up for a ACL cruise of the Inside Passage of British Columbia (no stops due to the Jones Act) and the Inside Passage of Alaska to Glacier Bay next Sept (got a 15% discount).

The winds have picked up tonight with whitecaps in the inner harbor. We would not be comfy on a mooring ball here in these conditions, but they’ve been very rare so far on this cruise. We feel like we have a good grasp on how bad the conditions are (not nearly as bad as we thought) and that we CAN DO THIS in our own boat! On to Planning!

I’m amazed how a 250 ft ship with 2,400 HP burns only 100g/hour, when our 25 foot (!) trailer boat burns 13-30 g/hour with state of the art 2024 outboards!Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Newport-Martha's Vineyard, MA
11 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 79 °F
Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket islands off Massachusetts are both popular tourist visiting sites about 30 water miles apart. The Nantucket port can’t accommodate the 250 foot American Patriot, so it docks in Martha’s Vineyard and provides tickets on the 30 MPH Fast Ferry cat to Nantucket on the first day. The second day allows us to explore Martha’s Vineyard.

The water conditions in the Gulf of Maine overall are manageable by a trailer boat using our usual system of reserving every third or fourth day as a ‘weather/option’ day. We are planning to keep open the option of turning our second Triangle Loop in Canada into a Down East Loop by continuing down the St Lawrence River into the Atlantic and around Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to Maine, rather than turning south at Sorel towards Lake Champlain. That option can be easily aborted if it’s too rough or (at 2,400 miles) too long.

The weather has been beautiful, with cool, crisp mornings and evenings and sunny low humidity days in the low 70’s while it’s still in the 90’s at home.Leer más
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Nantucket, MA
11 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 79 °F
Nantucket is a famous NE vacation and tourism destination. I hope these pictures give a bit of a flavor of the place. More importantly, we’ve decided to explore the NE coast from Maine to NY in Cat O’ Mine, and you can do so too. Whether or not we do so via the Down East Loop (past the Canadian Maritimes) is still open and the decision is reversible before exiting the St Lawrence into the Atlantic.

Tonight the ship returns to Boston through the Cape Cod Canal, which I’d like to see in daylight but oh, well.Leer más
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ViajeroLooks like a wonderful trip!
13/9/25ResponderTraducir
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New England ports cruise ship Viajero
Return to Boston
12 de septiembre de 2025, Estados Unidos ⋅ 🌙 70 °F
The ship made another night passage to Boston to take advantage of the tides. We passed through the Cape Cod canal at midnight, otherwise I would have loved to see that. Full breakfast was at 06:30 rather than 07:30 and everyone disembarked by 0745. The crew was very busy doing ‘turnaround’ with the next set of guests being bused in at 11:30 for lunch.

Delta has been calling for military (AD and retired–me) and vets (Eileen) before Zone 1 first-class passengers–that’s new. It took us only 90 minutes to empty everything off the boat before taking it over to Pelicans Perch marina tomorrow to start the fiberglass repairs (mostly cosmetic) after being lifted off the trailer onto jacks. I hope to get some pics tomorrow. Then I’ll take the trailer in for repairs. We do miss the super-luxe F250 Lariat, but the new more spartan F350 does everything we need (and 20,000 pound conventional towing rating) with 1,049 foot-pounds of torque. I have to be careful at stoplights not to press the gas pedal much to avoid spinning the rear tires, but I’ll get used to it.

Our most important goal of this small cruise ship exploration of the ports of New England was to decide, based on eyeballs on the water at and between each port, if we and the boat could accomplish the Downeast Loop, and we’re delighted to think that we can indeed. We can finish our Great Loop from the top of the Chesapeake around NJ and up the Hudson to Albany…only 450 miles. Then we can fly the Gold Looper flag, though we have to buy it. Then continue up the Chambly locks to Lake Champlain to Sorel and cruise down the St Lawrence and around the Canadian Maritimes back to Bar Harbor, Maine and Acadia National Park, then again bounce down the New England ports back to NY. This will total about 1,800 water miles (which we just did on the Great Lakes & Inland Rivers adventure over six weeks, no big deal) rather than the traditional 2,400 miles via Lake Ontario to Kingston, ON.

The Winter get-away will be six weeks at the Pink Shell marina in Ft Myers Beach prior to the Hontoon Hoot in March. We pay $31/night including power, massive buffet breakfast, free laundry, bikes, kayaks, three heated pools etc etc. PM me if interested in staying over 30 days. For us it’s cheaper than staying at home, and a lot warmer.

Safe travels!Leer más
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