All is not well with poor Wolfhound.

We left Cape May all clean and tidy with new engine oil and a full load of fuel. Sailing the final leg to New York city, 118 miles north. We sailed all night and when we arrived at the entrance to the Hudson River we went to start the engine ready for the trip through the city. No luck... after 5 hours of Steven changing fuel filters and bleeding the system while I tried to keep the boat sailing safely amongst all the shipping traffic in little or no wind. We discovered that although the computer said the problem was fuel it was actually water in the oil. BAD NEWS! We were so close to NY and we had to abandon the plan and sail for a further 24 hours along the south coast of Long Island to a place were we believed we could get some help. Greenport, New York State was where we ended up. Anchored off the harbour there. After 4 days there and many phone calls later we finally found a John Deere workshop in New Bedford, Massachusetts. So off we sailed again for another 24 hours north east and anchored off the hurricane wall at the entrance to this very commercial port. We arrived here on Wednesday morning and dropped anchor waiting for the JD people to send a tug out of the harbour to bring us in.

At this stage (Saturday night) we still don't really know what the problem is as it could be 1 of 3 things and the mechanics haven't been able to start the job yet. HOWEVER, the up side of the situation is that we have come to a place that would never have been on our wish list and it is so interesting and we have met absolutely wonderful people who are helping us get things sorted out. Our first encounter was with Charlie and his tug Jaguar who came out to tow us in. His deck hand was his brother Bob who along with most of the Mitchell family run the engineering works R A Mitchell. Bob and Charlie have taken us under their wing and made us feel so welcome. Charlie is a genius with his tug and managed to get Wolfhound into a marina berth from the most impossible angle. He then had us over to his home for dinner that night and today Steven and I went with him to do a big towing job on a massive barge carrying 5,000 tons of sand.

We are actually moored in Fairhaven across the harbour from New Bedford and this is the place where one of our heroes, the first single handed sailor, Joshua Slocum, rebuilt his yacht Spray and left from here for his voyage in 1898. New Bedford has the largest fishing fleet in the USA and there are hundreds and hundreds of trawlers here. It was also the major whaling city and there is a fantastic museum here. We visited it yesterday but only got around about half of it so if we are here for a few more days we will go back.