All Hands On Deck   Adventures on land and at sea

Maine has a strange kind of time-warp going on. It seems like forever since we brought the boat up here with my dad and sailed to Acadia with Doug. The weeks go by slowly but days pass in a flash.
Pirat is happily anchored in front of the house. Lee has been going down his massive list of projects: reconfiguring rope clutches, installing an engine temperature sensor, and removing the hot water heater and pressurized water faucets to name a few. I’ve been banging my head against various walls, including the wall of my post-thesis thesis publication that will never be.
We found a boatyard to haul the boat for new bottom paint and so we can remove the transmission and send it to Florida for repairs (yes, Florida has the most cost-effective transmission repair option we’ve found). The boatyard is here: Bittersweet Landing, around the corner from Bremen. We probably won’t have Pirat hauled till next week, though, since hurricane Earl is coming through tonight. Why not haul the boat before the hurricane like everyone else? Having watched the storms progress closely for the past week, we figure Pirat is safer in our trusted anchorage where we can keep and eye on her than in a boatyard we don’t know well. We are anchored so far up in Muscongus bay that we have a significant amount of shelter from seas and wind. The wind is only forecast to reach 30 knots or so anyway. Lee and I will hunker down and spend the night on the boat tonight (we’ve been sleeping in the house…gasp!). Lee and I are both kind of excited to experience our first hurricane effects on the boat. Lee and his family were on Block Island when hurricane Bob came through in the 90’s so they’ve seen boats washed ashore and all that drama. This shouldn’t be nearly as severe as that storm was but you never really know till it shows up. Maybe we’ll drive out to Pemequid Point to check out the ocean tomorrow morning. I’ll try to take some pictures of the action!

Hurricanes aside, we are gearing up to head south this fall. As usual, the plan has changed. We’re going to sail south in hops along the coast instead of going totally offshore. Severe enough wind and weather has somehow evaded us enough to leave Pirat and crew untested in the kinds of conditions we’d likely face in a Gulf stream-crossing passage. We plan to make some longer passages along the coast, upping the ante from 24-hour sails to multiple days and nights. This way we can skip over areas we’re not interested in (New York/New Jersey, Chesapeake bay) and have time to stop and see people along the way! I know a few friends I’ll want to visit for sure but anyone else who might be in the Southern U.S. this fall or just wants to come visit and go for a sail while we’re still in the country should get in touch!