Where does the time go?!? Hard for us to believe that it’s been a month since our last blog entry. We’ve covered so much ground and have really enjoyed our opportunity to explore New England — returning to some of our favorite places and discovering new ones. When we left off on our last blog entry we were just leaving Cuttyhunk, MA and were on our way to Marion, MA, following an itinerary designed to get us to Maine by August 1. We are proud to announce that we indeed made it to Maine by the first (which, incidentally, was our 39th wedding anniversary and the one year anniversary of moving on the boat) and it is every bit as magnificent (and challenging – more on that below) as we had heard over the years. We’ve had so many wonderful experiences over the last month that it is impossible to summarize it all (we should have written more frequent blog entries just help us remember them!) so instead we will paste our itinerary covering the last month below and will then describe some of the main (no pun intended) highlights.
Here is the itinerary:
— July 15: Marion, MA
— July 16 thru July 19: Provincetown, Cape Cod
— July 19 thru July 22: Boston, Waterboat Marina
— July 23: Salem, MA
— July 24 thru July 26: Gloucester, MA
— July 27 & July 28: Newburyport, MA
— July 29 & 30: Kittery, Maine
— July 31 thru August 1: Falmouth, Maine
— August 2: Robinhood Cove, Maine
— August 3 & 4: Rockport, Maine
— August 5: Rockland, Maine
— August 6: Stonington, Maine
— August 7 & 8: Northeast Harbor, Maine (Acadia!)
— August 9 thru 11: Bar Harbor, Maine (more Acadia!)
— August 12 & 13: Isle Au Haute, Maine (and even more Acadia!)
— August 14 & 15: Belfast, Maine
— August 16: Rockland, Maine
Where to start?????
We made new friends: We’ve continued to meet so many really special people. For example, in Boston we met fellow Hylas owners. They are full time liveaboards in the Boston area. Being based there, Maine is their cruising playground and upon hearing that our plan was to get up to Maine they were so thrilled to share with us their favorite spots and the hidden gems. Importantly, they graciously lent us their copy of The Maine Coast, the Bible for cruising Maine. We also met a couple who were registered to participate in the WorldARC rally leaving in January 2022. (As a reminder, we were also registered to participate in that rally but that trip was cancelled by the organizers due to COVID so we are now scheduled to depart for our circumnavigation in January 2023.) We knew they lived in Maine so we let them know we were in the area. Next thing we knew we were invited to dinner at their beautiful home above the rocky coast. They served us an incredible meal (even catering to Jill’s whole food plant-based diet), shared information about the places they enjoy and virtually introduced us to another couple who frequently sail up and down the coast of Maine. Within days we went from having a very loose Maine itinerary to a very detailed itinerary that had us eagerly anticipating every stop. Just after having dinner with that couple we met another Hylas sailboat couple when we both picked up a mooring in Rockport Harbor. They are retirees from Virginia who are cruising New England for the summer. We hit it off immediately and they became almost a buddy boat. We had several dinners together in various ports and enjoyed very extended cocktail hours on each other’s boats. By the end of our time together they had invited us to stay with them (and take full advantage of their washer/dryer) in Virginia when we head that way in October to begin our passage from Chesapeake Bay to Antigua. While experiencing Maine’s scenic coastline, rife with peninsulas, coves, and islands, has been such an incredible treat for us, the people we have met along the way really helped to shape our trip and enriched our journey immeasurably.
And we haven’t even covered the people that we only met in passing but who left us with a lasting impression. Like the launch driver who spent many years camping out of his Mini Cooper on his way to Florida where he’d get on his sailboat and sail to the Bahamas for the winter as a liveaboard. He supported himself by playing poker at the casinos he passed while driving down from Maine to Florida and was proud that he ended each year with the same bank balance that he started the year with. Or the bus driver of one the courtesy buses in Bar Harbor that take you to the Acadia hiking trails who is a lobsterman when he is not driving the bus and answered all of our questions about how the buoy system works in Maine. Fun facts: (1) No, you can’t pass down your license from generation to generation; (2) the maximum number of lobster buoys a single person can operate is 800 — the typical lobsterman (or woman) with 800 buoys checks 1/3 of them each day; and (3) there can be up to 10 – 12 lobsters in each trap (but if you leave a trap for too long you will have only one lobster left (a female) as they resort to cannibalism in captivity). And last but not least, Jonathan the Painter! Jonathan was a young architect when his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. To cheer his father up and stay positive himself he started drawing and painting pictures when visiting his dad in the hospital. Ultimately, his dad succumbed to that horrible disease but Jonathan kept painting which had become his therapy and he displayed much of his artwork in his office. When prospective clients visited his office they would often say that for a variety of reasons they were not going to proceed with a project but they’d love to buy some of his artwork. He eventually decided to chuck the architecture practice and become a full time painter. When you ask Jonathan what kind of painter he is, he responds “a happy painter.” Now he brings joy to others by serving as the “Artist in Residence at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Boston Medical Center Cancer Center, bringing [his] easel, paints, canvases, and positive energy to interact with patients, families, volunteers, nurses and doctors in a meaningful and unexpected way. Through out the day [he] create a series of colorful paintings and participate in hands on demonstrations for people of all ages, from all over the world, facing the daily challenges of a cancer diagnosis.”
Make new friends, but keep the old! While it is always nice to meet new people (and we hit the jackpot this summer — see above), we cherish our close friends and made sure to incorporate rendezvous into our summer plans. We met with several different friends in Provincetown (on Cape Cod) and had friends from our Manhasset, New York days spend a night with us in Boston. We also included a Connecticut couple in our sail from Boston to Salem and then on to Gloucester. That excursion included a historic walking tour of Salem led by a self-identified modern day witch. Most recently, another Connecticut friend joined us for the last two thirds of our visit to Acadia National Park. So three separate groups of overnight guests and several “on shore” meet ups over the last month. (We indeed packed a lot into these last 4 – 5 weeks!) We love giving our friends a taste of the full S/V Che Figata experience — that includes Jill’s many vegan specialties (such as avocado toast with the works and whole grain pasta with white miso cashew cream and caramelized Baby Bella mushrooms) as well as her killer G&Ts, sailing from one port to the next (when the wind cooperates), taking long walks and hikes and listening to Frank Sinatra under the stars at night. Not everyone is ready to become a full time liveaboard by the end of their stay (though we think we have at least one convert!) but they all have a greater appreciation for why we adopted a sailing life.
Maine lived up to the hype in every sense imaginable. Everything you hear about Maine — it’s ALL true! The craggy Maine coastline is among the most magnificent and dramatic we have ever seen. With all of its peninsulas and coves, the Maine coastline is actually longer than the California coastline. True fact — Google it! You’ve all seen the pictures. We can now attest that they do justice to this gorgeous piece of the Earth. We can also attest to that fact that Maine is replete with lobster buoys. Even when you think that you are far enough off the coast that surely there can’t be any lobster buoys you run into one. Of course, while navigating around lobster buoys can be exhausting it can also be fun. (At least one of us thinks so — we will keep you guessing on that one.) It almost becomes like a video game where you have to plan your moves three steps in advance so you successfully dodge not only the immediate buoy but the one that is just beyond that immediate buoy and the one just beyond that one. And to make things even more difficult, sometimes a single lobster trap will have two buoys attached by a line that runs just under the surface of the water. As you motor between buoys you have to decide whether they are individual buoys or “buddy” buoys connected by a line. If you make the wrong decision and cut between two attached you will snag a buoy, making the owner very unhappy and creating a tangled mess on your prop. But just like running with scissors is great fun until someone gets hurt, dodging lobster buoys can be great fun until the proverbial Maine fog rolls in — and it does. It is hard enough to see the lobster buoys on a clear day so just imagine the challenge of spotting them when you add pea soup think fog into the mix. At those moments one of us is at the helm and the other is standing up forward looking over the dodger. Jill is particularly good at spotting buoys early — unfortunately, in her excitement to call out navigational instructions she sometimes confuses starboard and port. She quickly corrects herself, warning Zack that he should actually adjust his course a few degrees to his “other” port. (Okay, it happens.)
We have had such a terrific time in Maine so it is hard to single out any one experience. We shared in our last blog entry that Cuttyhunk, MA is one of our favorite places to anchor. We’ve discovered many places in Maine that are very similar — not filled with t-shirt shops and other tourist attractions. Just real working harbors tucked away in a small, peaceful, cove. We have also enjoyed the marine life. Seals, dolphins and porpoises are plentiful and we never get tired of watching them whether we are underway or on anchor in a harbor. That said, Acadia National Park is truly special. We were fortunate to spend a full week in the park, visiting three different locations: Northeast Harbor, Bar Harbor and Isle Au Haut. Each location gave us access to different trails in the park and we took full advantage of what the park has to offer. Our typical hike was 8 – 10 miles when you include the walk to the trail head. Acadia National Park is unusual in that it boasts a lengthy carriage road system (thank you Rockefeller) that now provides park visitors with accessible and safe paths for hiking and biking. While some of our hikes included portions on a carriage road, we deliberately chose narrow walking trails that took us into the wilderness, over rocky paths, up mountains and across many brooks and bogs. In addition to giving us a great workout and some tremendous views (on fogless days), getting off the carriage roads meant that we ran into very few people which allowed us to enjoy the natural sounds within the park — whether it was a trickle of water, the chirping of tree frogs or the singing of birds. Though every hike was different (we planned it that way), our favorite was the 10+ mile hike we took on Isle Au Haut. It wasn’t our most difficult or strenuous hike — though there were certainly challenging portions — but we loved the biodiversity supported by the ubiquitous bogs. We had never seen so many different species of mushrooms (just a fraction, of course, of the 14,000 species we later learned exist), some stunning with bright colors (yellow, red and orange) and delicate feathering around the caps. And we are still trying to learn more about the orange fungus that we saw under the water in the bogs. It covered other underwater plants completely creating thick but soft and flexible stalks that swayed with the slight current of the water making them resemble staghorn coral but with rounded, silky appearing, branches. (Anyone have any idea what that was????)
And just when you think it can’t get any better you are treated to a spectacular light show courtesy of the Perseid meteor shower. Though I wish we could say we planned this (we did not), our stay off Isle Au Haut coincided with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. We got doubly lucky in that the nights when the meteor shower reached its peak were not only clear of cloud cover but the little sliver of a moon that was in the sky set early so there was absolutely no light pollution. We sat on the forward deck of our boat (cocktail in hand) looking up at the sky and seeing one “falling star” after another. One was so intense that even when you could no longer see the falling movement, a bright and shimmering line of light remained in the sky for a few moments like a jet stream. We couldn’t imagine better evening entertainment. Life just doesn’t get better than that!
As we type this we are now headed back West with the goal of reaching our marina in Connecticut by about September 6. There are items on our boat “punch list” that need to be completed before our passage to Antigua and we have a family wedding to attend. Most likely, our next blog entry will be after we arrive safely back in Westbrook, CT. Until then . . . .
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