>When I left Mystic on July 1st to head to Portland with almost the entire summer of sailing ahead of us it seemed like the summer would never end.  With some two months in front of us to explore the Maine coast, it was hard to even think about heading home, ever.  The longest that we had previously been aboard with Pandora in a single stretch was just over a month and two.  Well, that seemed to me in early July like it would be FOREVER.

So, you think that two months is a long time?  Enter live aboards…   Through the SSCA, over the last few years, we have met so many couples that live on their boats or at least spend 4-6 months a year aboard cruising, two months doesn’t seem like a lot of time.  It’s interesting that when we move aboard for an extended period your perspective adjusts to a much different frame of reference.  You are not in as much of a hurry to move to another anchorage, simple tasks take longer and you aren’t in as much of a rush as when it’s just a weekend or a week or two.

Someone said to me this summer that “the most dangerous piece of equipment on your boat is the clock”.   That’s actually true as most of the uncomfortable times we have had aboard are because we felt pressed to go somewhere to keep a schedule when we should be in port waiting for a weather window.

Returning from Maine this year is a good case in point.  With Hurricane Irene pushing up the coast, beyond making sure that we would be safe, I spent a lot of time thinking about taking Pandora back to Mystic.  My friend Roger, who was supposed to help me bring Pandora back was stuck on the West Coast due to weather delays and I JUST HAD TO GET BACK around Labor Day.  The weather window was going to open and close in just three short days and my crew couldn’t make it in time.

That meant a day long scramble to get the boat ready, get Brenda ashore and home and to find someone to help move Pandora.  It all worked out but the stress was absurd.    The point is that having a schedule makes boating a total pain.   After this trip I said to Brenda, “this is the last time I am using crew to move Pandora with a tight deadline”.    The proper way to handle a delivery like this is to continue to cruise and wait till the weather is just right and make a break for it.

My cruising friends almost never sail in less than perfect conditions and yet cover great distances.  It’s all about having a flexible schedule.  Something to strive for.  I guess that I will just have to work on that.

Enough ranting on that point for now.  Better to reflect on what we saw and enjoyed during our two months aboard.  Perhaps a bit of a somewhat random tour of what we saw along the way.

And there were endless scenic anchorages to choose from.  We have been going to Maine for 15 years and never tire of the scenery.

There are plenty of mega homes in Maine but some of the best are diminutive.

Brenda knitted 4 sweaters and read 7 or so books.  Lots of time to stop and smell the roses.  In this case, Betsy Wyeth of the famous artist family was also knitting in front of her island home.  How many knitters can say “I knitted with Betsy Wyeth”.  Well, actually Brenda can’t say that exactly.  But she can say “I knitted while watching Betsy watch me knit while watching…”.    Well, something like that did happen and I have the photo to prove it.

There isn’t any shortage of big yachts in Maine.  This one even sports it’s own private cannon to salute the sunset.  Some of our cruiser friends blow on a conch shell, perhaps a somewhat more gentile way to celebrate the end of a day.

Some just seem to be sailing off into the sunset.

And some are really roughing it like these kids in one of the Outward Bound adventure boats.  Not my idea of  cruising.  I do need my shower most days.

Of course, there’s an endless number of lighthouses to love like this one in Port Clyde.

But, none is prettier than the Owl’s Head light. Perhaps my favorite.

The passenger schooners that take out groups for a day sail are a sight to behold indeed.   Here they await their next trip.

So many quaint villages and towns to choose from like Belfast with wonderful old buildings carefully maintained.

Some views can’t be believed and a great place to curl up with a trashy novel.

And, always plenty of  magnificent yachts to wonder about how they afford such luxury.  It’s particularly nice when money and taste are combined.

But taste doesn’t have to always be about money.  Brenda has a great way with flowers and there are always flowers on board Pandora.  Her hand woven table cloth, flowers and her knitting.  Now that’s good taste.

She also collected her share of treasures on walks in the woods.

Sometimes we were running between the raindrops.   Perhaps I should say “sailing”.

Some views are best enjoyed from afar like this lookout high above Camden.

Some views are much more up close and simple.

Some are dramatic.

Some views, or should I say trails, are well groomed and well worn trails like this one around Bubble Pond on Mt. Desert. 

There is no denying the importance of the Maine State Ferry System to make everything possible on the many islands. 

We had our share of fog in early August.  Sometimes it was so thick you couldn’t see 100′.

Plenty of beautiful backdrops for Brenda to knit by. 

A lazy day of sailing makes you want to take a nap.  It’s always nice to have a hammock strung and ready for action, or should I say “inaction”?

This schooner captain hot-dogging it in Pulpit Harbor was an impressive display of seamanship or perhaps I should say “hotdogging” in a crowded anchorage. 

Of course, you can’t forget to eat.  And, eat we did and often. 

What did we do this summer?  We had a great time with lots of wonderful experiences and more than a few great sunrises.  

Now with the summer drawing to a close there’s always next year and the Annapolis Boat show to look forward to.

Yes, we enjoyed being afloat in Maine on Pandora very much.  What a great summer.  Bummer that it’s almost over.  Here we are and it’s Labor Day weekend and you can almost hear the iron gate of summer slamming shut. 

>It’s Friday morning and as I write this we are passing Cuttyhunk Island, the southern most in the Elizabeth Islands Chain.  We left Rockland on Thursday morning at 05:00 under power and a light NE wind for the Cape Cod Canal.  The winds remained fair the entire way so it was a very easy run.  We probably have sailed nearly the entire way except that we wanted to keep our speed up as close to 7kts as we could.  While some of our sailing time was in the 6kt range, we were able to turn off the engine for a little bit more than 1/3 of the time.   The rest of the time we motor sailed.  With the winds on the stern quarter it was a very pleasant run and while the seas were a bit bumpy, we were steadied by the wind in the sails.

We did two hour watches beginning at 20:00.  For my watch from 02:00 to 04:00 I was treated to a moonless sky which meant that I was able to see the water sparkle with the jellyfish and other animals in the water that give off light when disturbed.  As we sped along the bow wave sparkled like millions of little green stars in the water around the boat.

We did see two whales off in the distance that I spied because of their nearly 20′ high steaming spout as the took breaths.  As they were perhaps a mile away, it’s wasn’t hard to imagine how easy it would have been to hunt these creatures in the age of sail.  

We entered the Cape Cod Canal at 04:00 on Friday making the 155 mile run from Rockand at an average speed of just under 7kts.   The canal is well lit with range markers and lights along both banks for the entire 10mile length but I missed it as I was down below asleep while my friend Keith took her through.  While I have been through the canal perhaps 20 times, I have never gone through in the dark.  Perhaps I will be awake next time as it is a very different experience.

Today is a glorious day with bright sun and clouds.  The wind continues to be fresh from the NE so we are booking right along at better than 7kts.  It continues to be amazing to me that Pandora can make those sorts of speeds with no more than 10kts apparent.  And, the motion is very nice.

I should note that I am sitting at the cockpit table writing this and the view is really nice.

>It’s early on Thursday morning and we headed out of Rockland ME at 05:30.  Next landfall will be the Cape Cod Canal over 200 miles away following an overnight passage.  My original plan was to leave over the weekend but with Irene the NE and E winds that generally follow a hurricane were favorable for a passage from Thursday through late Friday.   If I were to wait until Saturday we would have had to motor into a stiff prevailing SW wind, right on the nose.

Switching by a few days doesn’t seem like much of a problem except that my friend Roger, and fellow SAGA 43 owner who was going to crew with me on this run,  was stuck out west after his Monday (Irene Monday) flight was canceled.  By the time he was able to resolve travel issues he wouldn’t have been able to get to Rockland until Saturday, just to late for the passage to Mystic with the wind forecast.

With only one day to find a replacement crew, I made a slew of calls to friends with the hope of finding someone who could drop everything and make the run up to Rockland with one day’s notice.  To ask someone to take off two days from their life at the beginning of a holiday weekend was a tall order.

However, my friend Keith, again, another SAGA owner, was willing to come up from CT and is on board with me now.  I should note that Keith had mouth surgery on Tuesday and still was willing to help bring Pandora home.

It’s interesting that after making this run for 15 years now, I decided to have just one person join me instead of the usual 2-3 that I have more typically used in the past. My view has changed now that we have spent time with many couples that we have met in the last few years that sail long distances with just the two of them aboard.   I guess that if they can sail around the world with two on board, I should be able to make a 1.5 day run with two as well.

One last look at the hills of Penobscot Bay and Rockland.  If we are able to head south next fall, it may be a while until we have this view again.

>It’s Monday morning, the sun is out and we are still safe and sound having made it through Irene without a scratch.  Sunday was a very long day with not much to do except wait for the inevitable arrival of the winds which steadily increased out of the east, as predicted, and by 2:00 it was beginning to build.   In the early hours the intensity of the winds increased steadily with each gust a bit stronger than the last.  As we were here in Pulpit and in very protected waters, we were spared the brunt but as the wind rolled in over the island hills and into the harbor, you could really feel the power of the wind.

Over the many years that we have been sailing, I have prepared boats for storms, including one that lead to a total loss with the destruction of my boat Artemis many years ago. As a result of these many experiences I have come to appreciate the destructive power of wind and water first hand.  However, I have always left my boat after doing what I could to secure things against loss only to return the next day to see what had happened, if anything.

Yesterday was different as we did everything that we could think of to prepare and after that was done we remained aboard.   I have to say that in spite of being on a boat through some really interesting conditions in the past, there’s nothing quite like 16 hours of heavy winds to keep you tense.

The strongest conditions began around dusk and continued until around 2AM with stead winds in the high 20s and gusts near 40kts.   Actually, I am sure that the winds were stronger than our instruments read as the winds were often peaking at deck level in a way that didn’t match what the wind instruments were reading.  I guess that this was because the gusts were coming down off of the land and being compressed against the water surface.  While we were shielded from some of the worst wind by the surrounding hills, the winds were plenty strong, that’s for sure.  When the wind was most intense, the boat was swinging back and forth through the wind and heeling over in the gusts.  Items that weren’t secured on the counter slid into the sink and it was impossible to have a glass on the table without holding on to keep it from ending up on the floor.  In spite of being raised to keep my arms off of the table when I ate, this was one time when a well placed arm or hand kept dinner in front of me was an absolute necessity.   Even though we were using dishes with rubber bottoms, the silverware would shoot off of the plate so you couldn’t put them down for even a second.  Not quite the same as keeping my arms around a piece of birthday cake to protect the frosting from being snagged by someone.  Yes, that’s you I am talking about Mom!

I had put chafing gear on the nylon rode that held my storm anchor to keep it from being worn through as the boat swung back and forth and fortunately, everything held and there wasn’t any chafe at all.  However, as the  boat slewed around and the storm anchor took the full weight of the boat it was just amazing how tight the line became as the boat surged one way and then another.    On top of all this the sounds of the wind going through the rigging as rose and fell with each gust.

Brenda, who in the past would have never been able to keep her lunch down with so much movement, did great and happily seemed to do fine in spite of the conditions that felt rougher than if we were sailing on a windy day.   I guess that the years of sailing and the last two months in particular, have helped as she now handles motion like a champ.

With the winds so strong and a fear that something would happen while we slept, we decided to keep anchor watch until the intensity of the storm began to lessen.  I went to bed at 9:30 and left Brenda to keep watch and got up at 11:30 to relieve her.  Every so often a car came down to the beach only to sit there for a while and leave after scanning the harbor with a big search light.  I think that it was the harbor master who had stopped by on Saturday night to tell each of us that he was going to be monitoring things as the storm came through and would lend a hand as needed.  Fortunately, no help was needed and by a bit after 2:00 it seemed to me that things were stable enough and the wind beginning to moderate enough so that we could call it a night and get some sleep.  Me, I slept like a bowling ball.  You know, you throw a bowling ball onto a bed, it rolls to the middle and there is sits.  My sleep was sort of like that.

Well, it’s morning, we are all safe and sound and I am relieved that it’s all over and as near as I can tell, all of the boats in the harbor made it through without a scratch.   We will probably have to stay here in Pulpit one more night as we wait for the wind to get back to normal as it’s still plenty windy and for the seas out in the bay to subside.  On Tuesday we will make our way back to Rockland so that Brenda can head back to New Jersey and whatever awaits us at home.

For me, the big question is who will be crew for me as my friend Roger who was planning to help me bring Pandora back to Mystic later this week is stuck in Denver and won’t be home until Thursday or Friday due to canceled flights. I am not sure what I want to do about the return trip.   To quote Scarlet O’hara, “I won’t think about that today, I’ll think about that tomorrow”.

As no blog is complete without a few photos, here are some shots of the harbor this morning all sunny and bright.   Yesterday you certainly couldn’t see all the way to the Camden Hills across the bay.

>It’s Sunday morning and we, like just about everyone on the East Coast continue to think about Irene.   We are anchored in Pulpit Harbor on North Haven, not far from Rockland to ride out the storm which is expected to reach us later today.  We chose Pulpit because there is good holding for the anchor, make that two anchors, and is protected from all directions so we can avoid any waves that make staying securely anchored more difficult.  Wind is bad enough but wind and waves are where it can get really interesting.

The harbor isn’t that big and it has a good variety of boats that have chosen to be here as well.  Late yesterday a large motor yacht arrived, took a tour around the harbor and left realizing that there wasn’t enough room for them.   I wouldn’t say that the harbor is at capacity but it’s plenty full and as boats arrived there was some jockeying for position to be sure that everyone had proper swinging room for wind shifts.

All day yesterday owners were preparing their boats, as we were with Pandora, by removing gear that might come loose in the winds expected to peak at over 55kts.  We removed both head sails to reduce windage and the risk that they might come loose and tear themselves apart in the wind.  That was a fun task as folding up a 600 square foot genoa on the forward deck was quite a handful for me and Brenda as the foredeck is only a fraction of the length needed to do a proper job.  We also set out a second anchor, an anchor that I purchased for just this purpose when we got Pandora.  Happily, this is the first time that I have had to use it.

Our main anchor is a 65lb Bruce with 200′ of stainless chain which is plenty big and heavy, and that combined with the Fortress storm anchor made of high strength aluminum and designed for use on boats up to 65′ verses our 43′, should hold well.  The Bruce is set to the south and the Fortress to the east, where the strongest winds are expected.  The initial winds are expected to be from the east with the direction shifting to the south as Irene passes to inland.   It’s Sunday morning and the wind is beginning to build and is probably blowing a modest 18 kts.

One of the problems with this storm is that she is very slow moving so that means that the winds will be with us for a lot longer than would normally be the case from a storm of this type.  Irene is also a very large hurricane with big winds covering a 100 mile range.

We hope that we are well prepared and hope to have no problems.  We will certainly know more on that score by this time on Monday.   Actually, we are a lot more concerned about our home in New Jersey as that’s where the really big winds and rain are now.  We have always had a problem with water in the basement and if our two sump pumps fail due to a loss of power, that’s going to leave a big mess.  Brenda should be home by Wednesday or Thursday to survey the damage.  Let’s hope for the best.

On Friday morning, when we were still in Perry Creek, I was up quite early and took this shot of the sunrise in the fog.  It was very ethereal.