Girls Gone Wild

Location:  New Castle, New Hampshire (Wentworth by the Sea)

We are docked where we started this summer, at Wentworth by the Sea in New Hampshire.  Dave has been in Aberdeen, Scotland for the last few days, so the cats and I have been living it up.  Of course, we have been doing our daily training and safety drills as you can see in these pictures.  Everybody gets to take a turn at being captain for the day, and safety officer is a key position.

Captain Puddy at the helm

 

Safety Officer Doofus

The move down from Maine went well.  We left Maple Juice Cove just as a world cruiser was pulling in to anchor.  The crew and their boat, Belvedere, have traveled through the Northwest Passage and have published several books about their journeys.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to talk to them as they were anchoring up while we were cruising out of the cove, headed for Portland.  So you’re wondering… if we didn’t actually talk to them, how do we know who they were?… for any boat registered with the  United States Coast Guard (USCG), you can search by boat name and learn all kinds of things such as the year the boat was built, who built it, the length, the owner, etc.  Because it is so easy, when we see an interesting boat, we get on the website and see what we can learn.

We traveled west along the coast, south of Boothbay Harbor and then north up the Sheepscot River to Robin Hood Cove.  This is one of the places we went to with Brian and Kathy in their boat when we were in Boothbay mid-August.  The cove is quiet and very picturesque.  The restaurant was closed so we made jambalaya and had supper on the boat.

Lighthouse, Maine Coast

Passage to Robin Hood Cove

 

Wednesday, we cruised to Portland.  The seas were so calm after all of the wind.  We landed in Portland about lunch time and picked up a mooring at Portland Yacht Services, on the eastern edge of the harbor.  It is within walking distance of Old Portland, so we walked into town for a bowl of chowder and a beer, wandered around the waterfront in the rain and then headed back to the boat.  Late Wednesday afternoon, the school kids came out to the marina and launched their sail boats for their sailing lesson.  It was cold and wet, but it was great to see them out there and they seemed to be having a good time.  On Thursday, it was raining again so we walked up to Hamilton Marine and spent some time getting necessary boat stuff and then went to a local coffee shop for lunch and some quality internet time.  Thursday night we had dinner with friends Jim and Ilse at their home in South Portland.  Jim and I worked together in Angola about 12 years ago and spent time together in Setubal Portugal in a Portuguese immersion course.  They had just returned from a hiking trek in Slovenia with a few days at the end in Venice.  They met on a sailing vacation in the Caribbean and are both very active with their local Rotary Club.  Both have a great sense of adventure and some wonderful tales to tell.  If you are wondering what hiking in Slovenia is like, here is a link to Jim and Ilse’s pictures from their trip.

https://www.icloud.com/journal/#2;CAEQARoQk_Qr0E4JlJAIC2qwY06V8w;80BFEADF-F590-4629-B557-8D9648F30A73

We left Portland early Friday morning with plans to make it to Wentworth at slack tide so that it would be easier to come into the dock.  We made good time and ended up slowing down to about 4 knots for the last two hours so that we didn’t get here too early.  It was another very calm day at sea but with some fog and plenty of tuna fishermen out waiting to catch a big fish.  Some small birds were offshore flying near the boat and more than one took the opportunity to stop and rest.  Here is a picture of one on the rail near the pilothouse.



Bird resting on the boat rail near the pilothouse

 

That’s it for the night.  Dave called from Boston and is on the bus headed this way, so Girls Gone Wild is over until next time.

Maple Juice Cove

 Location:  Maple Juice Cove, Maine (1-Oct-12)

Camden Sunrise

We arrived in Maple Juice Cove yesterday afternoon.  It is a small cove on the west side of the George River, just north of Port Clyde.  Very picturesque and a good place to wait out the southwest wind which is blowing 20-25 knots today.  We spent the weekend in Camden, Maine, an artistic town on the west side of Penobscot Bay.  There were a lot of things going on in Camden over the weekend, an independent film festival, an art fair and the fall library book sale.  Of course, we went to the book sale and picked up a few books and also tested out some of the breakfast places.  Our friends from Boothbay Harbor, Brian and Kathy, came up Saturday night and stayed out on the boat with us.  We wandered around town, went to Reny’s (a Maine Department store, hard to describe but they have a little bit of everything), had a beer and a bowl of chowder and then went out to the boat.  We decided to have dinner on board so Brian cooked a gourmet meal of salad and pan-fried cod.  For those of you who are tired of the sunset pictures, here is a sunrise picture looking out over Camden Harbor. 

The last post was sent from the Southwest Harbor library where we spent the day catching up on e-mails and other electronica type stuff, plus laundry and some re-provisioning. We picked up a mooring in the harbor and spent a few days there.Southwest Harbor borders Acadia National Park.There is a free bus service that will drive you around the island and drop you off at various campgrounds, picnic areas, hiking areas, etc. so we rode the bus to Echo Lake and then hiked back to town.We saw a few deer on the walk down the hill.

Acadia Deer

Southwest Harbor has some very pretty gardens and the trees are just starting to change color.



SW Harbor Autumn

SW Harbor Flower Garden



 

 

Watching from the boat, we saw a lot of other activity in the harbor.  A landing craft was continuously coming into port and loading catering trucks and other vehicles and transporting them out to Cranberry Island.  When we went alongside to get water, the harbormaster told us that a very expensive wedding was being prepared on the island, with caterers, etc. all coming from New York City.  Apparently one of the daughters of the dad sponsoring this wedding had gotten married out there a couple of years ago and that wedding cost over a million dollars so dad was doing it again for the next daughter.  Quite a production and interesting to see.  We also watched two whale watching vessels from the Boston area come up to get hauled out at the Hinckley Yard.  One of these was the same vessel that was out whale watching when Heather took the video of the humpback whales close of our boat.  You can see the vessel waiting in the harbor while the other one is up on the lift.

Whale Watching Boat in the travel lift

Boston Whale Watching Boat in SW Harbor

We have been doing a lot of hiking/walking lately and not just to the Napa Auto Parts Store and Home Depot.  Between Roque Island and SW Harbor, we stopped in Sorrento and walked around town before moving to Flanders Bay to anchor up for the night.  In SW Harbor, we did the Acadia hike.  From there we moved and anchored near Holbrook Island, across the river from Castine and hiked around town.  Dave used to live in Castine when his kids were little, so we walked by the old homestead, wandered thru the Maine Maritime Academy Campus and ate mussels down at the waterfront.  Here is a picture of the house they lived in. 


Castine Home

From Castine, we went to Warren Island State Park, where we packed our lunch and hiked around the island.  They had free visitor moorings and nobody was around except us and one sail boat so we spent the night there and then moved to Winter Harbor on the east side Vinalhaven Island the next morning.  The Fox Island Thoroughfare runs between Northhaven and Vinalhaven Islands.  This is a picture of the lighthouse on the east side of the thoroughfare.



Fox Island Thoroughfare Lighthose

 

We anchored in Winter Harbor and took the dinghy exploring.  Tidal ranges here are 10 feet in most areas, which means you can access places using the dinghy at high tide that are inaccessible by boat at low water.  We went over to Seal Bay, landed the dinghy and hiked around in the woods, then went out the north side of Seal Bay and back down into Winter Harbor. 


B with the dinghy in Winter Harbor

The wind really picked up during the night, so the next morning we moved to Pulpit Harbor on Northhaven Island.  You can see the wind shear by the cloud formations in this picture.  It also looks like there is a "weather window" in the cloud formation.



Clouds, Winter Harbor

 

We stayed in Pulpit Harbor about a month ago.  This time there were a lot fewer boats anchored up although a windjammer (schooner) did come in an anchor next to us.  On Tuesday afternoon, we took the dinghy ashore to walk the ½ mile to the grocery store.  We followed our iphone google map instructions to get to the store and ended up walking a 7-mile loop without finding it.  We tried again the next day, and sure enough, following the directions provided in the cruising guide, we found the store right where they said it would be.  We bought a six-pack of beer and some chips, and wandered back to the boat for a well-deserved happy hour.



Schooner, Pulpit Harbor

On Thursday, we moved across the bay from Pulpit Harbor to Camden and spent Thursday afternoon and Friday re-provisioning and doing chores (laundry) and minor maintenance so that we could relax and enjoy Saturday.  Tomorrow we are headed to Robin Hood Cove and then on to Portland, Maine.