Cape Race... nah, just kidding

...or How To Sail More Than Forty Nautical Miles and Still End Up Where You Started. So we left at 7:15, excited about the prospect of a westerly wind and a close reach to Cape Race. No such luck. Rather, it was 25 knots on the nose, eight-foot seas and a very rough ride. Until the motor broke -- again -- just a few miles from rounding the cape. The choice was to spend the next ten hours beating into the wind to get around Cape Race -- which I couldn't see for fog -- or to turn and run for four hours back to Port Kirwan for repairs. For safety's sake, there was only one choice. It's getting pretty depressing -- the weather isn't supposed to be like that at this time of year, but, as Gerald O'Neill, a fisherman here and, with his wife, Carol Ann, is one of the nicest people you'd ever care to meet, told me today after catching my lines: "There's nothing normal about this year." So I have to get the motor fixed -- I think it may be an air intake problem -- and then try again. That's all I can do.

A.