9-9-05
Upon arising I went out and checked the position of the boat in the small. It hadn’t moved at all during the night. Brint cooked a great breakfast of sausage, eggs and fried English muffins. The morning was cooler than yesterday but not cold. We pulled the anchor and headed out of the harbor. Shortly we raised the sails and motor sailed around the southern tip of the island and headed up North toward Mt. Desert that we could see 25 miles in the distance. I used the motor as well as the sails as the house batteries needed charging and we were almost too close hauled. I put a reef in the main and reduced the jib as the wind was approaching 20 kts. It wasn’t sailing well at that tack so I reduced the jib more and removed the reef from the main. This helped but motor sailing we should have been doing better. It then hit me that I might have junk on the prop as we had gone through several patches of seaweed. To remove the stuff I slow the motor, put it in reverse and then gun it. You could just see the seaweed floating away from our stern. After this maneuver our speed increased and we continued on under the blue sky with jewels of light bouncing off the waves . On our way into Southwest Harbor we took a short detour into the bay between the Cranberry Islands. It was nice but nothing spectacular. We turned around and headed for Southwest harbor and a dock for the night. I called ahead asking for dockage and fuel. The dockage was available but as I only needed about 10 gallons of diesel they couldn’t help. It seems that their diesel comes from a truck on the shore and the hose is so long that they have to provide at least 25 gallons to make the system work. They recommended Beal’s lobster pond just past the coast guard station as an alternative. A call to them on VHF channel 88 finally got a response and a come on in salutation. Their dock was very low so we had to lower the bumpers to protect the side of the Windchaser. This place is a working lobster station and not fancy with little protection between you and the dock so the bumpers were essential. We docked without trouble and got our 12.5 gallons of diesel fuel. After a careful exit from a tight spot we headed to the Main marina and a slip. A dock had was there to help us land which went very well in a tight slip if I do say so myself. There was another 35 ft sailboat in the slip on the other side who had six big bumpers out on the side next to me. I told the owner I wasn’t that dangerous and he congratulated me on my skill at docking. He had his boat at this marina all season and said that there had been some pretty bad boat handlers in my current position so he had become rather careful. It turned out that Pete was an telecommunication and management consultant who lived in Dallas, had a think tank in Washington and kept his J34 racing sloop in Boothbay for the summer. We had a great talk about boats and telecommunication. Brint and I walked a short way into town to re-provision. As we reached the grocery in Southwest harbor the owners were just leaving so we had to provision the next morning. Walking down the street that had many restaurants we encountered a fish that was very good. I had crab in a cheese sauce with two additional cheeses added. It was rather good. After dinner we went back to the boat for a little wine.
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