One of my favorite places to sail to is Rockport Massachsetts, located out at the tip of Cape Ann, Glouster. The little tourist area, is out on Bear Skin Neck, a great place to visit by either car or boat. 

 When the wind is blowing from the west, Sandy Bay can be a  calm anchorage with the only waves made by passing lobster boats leaving their wakes.

 There is a small harbor through the jetty to the South of Sandy Bay, and when the weather is blowing from the east, Sandy Bay can have some nice size swells, so you may want to call the harbor master and see if there is room for you there.

 The harbor masters in Rockport do a great job of controlling the anchorage in Sandy Bay, while still being very friendly as well as accommodating. 

 I like to anchor off of the beach, as close to shore as possible in order to use the land to break the wind as well as to stay away from the lobster traps.

 The first thing that I like to point out is the cannon ball in the church steeple. Bear Skin neck was attacked by the British during the war of 1812.  There may be more evidence of that than I know, because I like to go ashore and catch a meal at Ellens Resteraunt, or Flavs Red Skiff then walk along Bear Skin Neck, check out the shops and maybe stop for a coffee, and some pastry, or an ice cream.

Rockport can be quite crowded on the weekends so I prefer week day visits if going by car, there is always plenty of room for boats even on the weekends, and there is a lot less stress there than out at the  Isle of Shoals. 

 Rockport is a great choice of a destination for Captain Ed's Sailing and we try to go out there a few time each summer.

 Living on the boats will give me a chance to take care of some nit picking problems, while making both boats more livable.

 Since weather is the biggest obstacle of my business I thought that I would talk about how I look at it, to give you some insight what summer weather looks like from my perspective.

 First we keep it as safe as we can and still be able to get out on the ocean when we can. If we are looking at just lousy weather no one wants to go out in that especially me. If we are looking at posable thunder storms we take a look and see what area they are talking about. For isolated storms I will show you how to sail around them, we could, and have been hit by them, as they are part of sailing, and summer, they usually last around 20 minutes or so. We turn the boat so that the storm hits the rear starboard quarter and the wind usually blows us out of the storm.

There are three weather sights on the computer that I use, that has kept us safe so far.

Wunder Ground Weather, Maine Harbors, and Passages Weather. 

Wunder Ground Weather, and Maine Harbors, both give a nice local picture of the weather, including the direction of the weather, including radar. I like Maine Harbors while I am north of Long Island Sound. I use Wonder Ground Weather all along the coast. Passages Weather gives an in depth look at the wind and the waves showing the heights and directions of each. You can get much information from this sight, it was a great help during our resent trip to the USVI this past fall. I spend a good part of each day monitoring each of these sights during the summer especially Maine Harbors where I also get my tide information.

Here are the links to those sites

Maine Harbors http://www.maineharbors.com/

Passages Weather http://passageweather.com/

Wunder Ground Weather http://www.wunderground.com/