A weather window finally opened for us and we checked out with customs first thing on May 28. They are quite strict, and ask you to leave within an hour of checking out – doesn’t give you long to stow your dinghy and get ready! We raised our anchor one final time and headed out through the cut. The weather was damp and foggy, and in fact towards the end of the day another boat suddenly loomed out of the fog, passing quite close to us. They weren’t showing up on AIS, so we had no idea they were there.

The next day was clear and windless. We motored at low speed to conserve fuel. Aside from one tanker that passed ahead of us, we saw no other signs of life. As there were only two of us on board we were glad of easy conditions so that we could get plenty of sleep and be rested for tougher conditions we knew were ahead.

The third day dawned clear with a good sailing breeze, so we unfurled the jib. We caught a helpful eddy on the south side of the Gulf Stream which gave us speeds over the ground of up to 10 knots. The wind built from the East, and eventually the current swung round to come from the west, directly opposing the wind: we had about 4 hours of huge, chaotic seas from all directions. The boat was handling it well but we were concerned about how much worse things would get, since we didn’t know how much longer we’d be in the Gulf Stream. Just before sunset we saw a change in the clouds and wondered whether that was the edge. Over the course of 10 minutes, the temperature plummeted, the seas became more settled and we stopped going sideways at 4 knots. We had sailed over the North Wall of the Gulf Stream, glad to be out before it got dark. It remained quite windy, and I had a nasty shock during my off-watch when a wave broke into the cockpit and dumped several gallons of cold water through a hatch, onto the bunk where I was sleeping!

By dawn on the fourth day it was definitely chilly and we were digging out warm layers. The wind died again so we were back to motoring. We saw plenty of dolphin, several sunfish, and as we approached George’s Bank we started to see quite a few fishing boats. Later in the night we felt a huge thud as we hit something. The boat slowed down but then came back up to speed, seemingly with no damage, and no water was coming in. We don’t know what we hit – it didn’t feel as solid as a container or a whale but it was bigger than a lobster buoy. Maybe a sunfish?

Our final day at sea started off rather foggy. We knew Cape Cod was only 20 miles away but we couldn’t see land until the fog burnt off several hours later. The wind returned and we were able to sail again for a while, passing the dunes on the outside of the Cape and looking out for the Monument in Provincetown while we watched for whales. Crossing Massachusetts Bay we were back into familiar territory. We reached Marblehead Harbor around 4, picked up our mooring and got the OK from Customs and Immigration. We are home!

This trip has been an amazing adventure for us. We’ve talked of doing something like this for about 30 years, and of course we were particularly inspired by my parents’ experiences on Capriccio, cruising the Caribbean and then circumnavigating. We’ve learnt a lot about our boat, how we work together as a team, and the ways in which we like to get to know each new place we visit. 5,606 nautical miles passed under Persephone’s keel in the 250 days we lived on her, and we visited 14 different countries. Each one was very different and we loved them all. Don’t ask us to try to name our favorite place: I don’t think I could even come up with a top ten! We can’t wait until we can do it all again, or maybe even go further!