Remembering cruises past…

It’s Sunday and a week since my last post. Actually, some who follow me may think that I have not been posting at all as I recently realized that my e-mail notification feature on the site hasn’t been working for a few months.   I contacted WordPress and they can fix it, but for a fee, of course.  I hate to pay to fix something that I didn’t mess up myself, but will probably relent in a few days.  Oh well. such are the complexities of modern “publishing”.  I can only hope that there’s still someone watching what I put up. (Maureen, are you there?  Say something, please!) Fingers crossed.

Last summer we visited Sag Harbor NY aboard “new” Pandora and fell in love again with that charming town in the Hamptons.  We had not been there for many years as we had been deterred by the hellishly expensive moorings.   Can you say $2/ft?  Crazy.

However, all is not lost as we belong to Essex Yacht Club and they maintain two moorings in Sag Harbor so we now have a more reasonable way to visit the harbor and did for a few days last fall. Main Street is very charming in this once whaling port on the eastern end of Long Island.  We love to treat ourselves to a meal at the American Hotel.  While we were there we also went to an opening at the Grenning Gallery and fell in love with some of the work on display.   However, as we are just so practical, most of the time, we decided that buying a painting wasn’t in the “picture” right then.  However, this spring, as we approached our 40th anniversary, we wanted to treat ourselves to a piece to celebrate all those years and contacted the gallery again.

As luck would have it, Laura Grenning, the gallery owner, had organized a group of artists from Russia to visit and paint in both Maine and near Sag Harbor a few months earlier and a piece by Olga Karpacheva,  (And doesn’t her name just roll off of my Yankee tongue?) caught our eye.  The piece is of Allen Cove, just outside of Stonington Me, a spot that I immediately recognized as one we had visited many times over the years.  It’s pretty large at 24″x 32″ and we just had to have it.It brings back so many memories of cruises to Maine and as we have cruised Maine together a dozen time now, there are plenty of memories.

Brenda actually found this photo of Olga painting our piece?  This proves, once and for all, that you can find ANYTHING on the Internet.  And, this is a shot of the artist, Olga in her studio.  I guess she must be the one on the left.Aside from the odd trip to Maine and The Hamptons in her spare time, she makes her living restoring fine art in Russia and has done some work on some major pieces in the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery in Russia,among others.  That spot, seems to be the scene, or at least of a similar place, that she is posing in front of in the photo of her above.  And, speaking of Maine, there’s perhaps no image more quintessential of summer in Maine than this shot of a family out sailing on a classic Friendship Sloop with this little girl on the rail trailing her feet in the water.We do miss Maine and actually enjoy this area for cruising more than any other that we have visited over the years.

This photo, shot back in 2011 only a short distance from where Olga painted “our” picture is of a view from downtown Stonington.  We stopped at a dock at Billings Diesel, just outside of town with “old” Pandora back in 2011, one year before I retired and walked right past the very scene that Olga captured last summer. This view of the lobster fleet is a pretty typical view. Now, each time we look at the piece hanging over the fireplace in our den, we will think of those many summers cruising in Maine.

Time to get ready to make more memories.  Perhaps it’s time to visit Russia?  Hmm…

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