Isn't she lovely?

Our neighbor got a new digital camera and took some great pictures of Cupcake playing in the bay last week. Here’s another one.

There’s been lots of discussion lately about retirement and the next cruising vessel. Our buddies from Piper were camping at Wolfes Neck Farm Campground last weekend so we got a big dose of cruiser time with them. Went out on the Mako for picnic and swimming. Met up with Jim, Sherry, and Eliot at Little French Island.

The talk has revolved around finding a TRAWLER for live aboard/snowbird action. ICW=>Florida Keys=>Cuba=>Turks&Caicos=>Bahamas=>New England. Doesn’t sound like a bad way to spend the winter, does it?

Summer check-in

Back in May we found the newest Cupcake: a Doughdish. Doughdish is a Herreshoff 12 1/2 with a fiberglass hull and deck instead of wood.

The boat is incredibly engaging to sail. She is safe, stable, entertaining. And as you can see, absolutely gorgeous.

Niece Zoë and cousin Rebecca are visiting for a few days. Yesterday we went for a marvelous sail on the bay.

Art gallery

Today I thought it would be nice to take a break from catching up with the Mako refresh and instead check out the shop. More specifically, a look at the artwork out here. During lockdown in the early days of the pandemic Simon was living at home. He had planned to spend at least a semester in Maine while working on Sara Gideon’s senate campaign. But shortly after he got home the pandemic hit and he ended up staying for all of 2020.

One of the ways we passed the time was to go out to the barn in the evening and work on restoring his Dyer dinghy. As events transpired, the division of labor soon evolved so that I focused on the restoration with periodic help from Simon while he was consumed with drawing on every surface of the barn.

We created a loose narrative about two civilizations on opposite walls of the barn. They had not yet made contact with each other but were deep into the exploratory phase by mid-summer.

Now every time Simon returns home to visit he comes out to the barn to add to the artwork. Sometimes I take his fabulous work for granted, but more often I look up from whatever I am doing on whatever boat is in the spa and I realize how fortunate I am to be surrounded by such excellent artwork.

So today’s posting is a sampling of the magic that goes on in that most happy of my happy places.

We’ve got LEGO heroes watching over us.

We’ve got LEGO bug-men climbing electrical conduit.

Plenty of transportation images.

Raccoon? Fox? Wolverine? Who knows.

Giant squid attacking a mahogany-shell sailboat. Oh boy.

This is Ellen’s work and it used to be the figurehead on a backyard play structure/pirateship we built when Simon was just a wee salt.

In addition to hosting a study of teapots, the door sports a reminder to cover one eye before leaving the barn on dark evenings. It’s a trick we learned from pirate lore: the purpose of the eyepatch pirates wore was so they could flip it up and have low-light vision in that eye when they dashed belowdecks during a battle. We try to remember to cover an eye during clean up at the end of the night so the perilous walk back to the house is easier with some night vision.

This image recalls the riddle of the person who needed to move a fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain across a river. The person only has a boat big enough to carry himself and one other item (fox, chicken, grain). If the grain is left with the chicken, the chicken will eat it. If the chicken is left with the fox, the fox will eat it. How does the person get across with all three without anything getting eaten?

Painting!

After finishing the console I set to work cleaning up the interior…what a mess things were under that console!) The month of November was spent sanding, filling, sanding, filling, sanding, sanding, sanding,

Finally I got the inside of the hull to a condition where I felt it was good enough. I need to remember that this boat is not a showpiece, it is a pickup truck for the water. In fact, earlier this week I recognized the fundamental tension and conflict I feel with boats and boat care. I love them so very much, but treat them so very poorly. Even a coddled boat is left marinating in saltwater all summer, exposed to sun and rain and bird poop. Of course, if the boat is going to be used, it is going to get some abuse. Perhaps the only good thing about winter is the time it affords me to remedy the indignities the boats endure during the rest of the year.

Anyway, the painting went well and looked great until it didn’t. I’ve got roller marks, bubbles, drips, orange peel (which is when the paint texture looks like…orange peel). But if I turn off half the lights in the barn it looks fantastic. Even in full sun it will look significantly better than it did last season. One of my big goals was to remove all the old hooks and hardware so the boat is simple and has fewer things on it to break or catch lines.

Like the console, this job involved filling over 100 screw holes in the boat. in the 30+ years this boat has been used, it’s had a lot of different seats, covers, snaps, and equipment installed. My friend Matthew always opines that “sailors sure do like drilling holes in their boats.” I’ve also heard some old salts claim one should only have an odd number of holes in the hull of the boat. This statement makes no sense to me, but in any event the Mako has zero holes in its hull.

It may be dull, but I’ve included a series showing the progression of the repair to the stern. The area had been smashed somehow by the previous owner and the fiberglas was delaminating. I cut it all open (that was scary stuff) and built it back up with a core of hardwood and then lots of fiberglas cloth and fairing compound. I think it came out pretty well.

Console work

If it seems like there’s a flurry of activity –you know, two posts in two days–it’s only because I’m getting caught up with the work I did over the winter.

Anyway, after filling and fairing and sanding the little screw holes and the larger cutouts on the console it was finally ready for primer and paint.

The patching was a satisfying first step in moving the project forward. In the moment I naively thought all I would be addressing this winter was the console. There was a little bit of mission creep.

As is often the case, the closer you get to the paint job, the worse it looks. So keep back!

I couldn’t help myself so I installed the GPS about as soon as I could. In retrospect I should have waited. I also should have filled the entire steering wheel hole and the throttle hole and started fresh. Perhaps I will learn these lessons for the next boat.

The next new thing

This weekend we all went to visit my parents to celebrate Mom’s 80th birthday. All the grandchildren (and a host of other luminaries) were there. A great time was had by all. But this blog is not about birthday brunches, no matter how delicious the food. (Special shout-out to Zachary for cooking up the most delicious egg sandwich I have ever eaten.)

The Mako, which Moss christened Gnat, is settled into her winter quarters.

No, this blog is about boats. So why mention the birthday party? Because my wonderful Aunt Flora reminded me that she and her Nyack Knitters are the biggest fans of this website and have missed the scintillating content of years past.

Fret not Knitters, there’s another boat in town! Cupcake left our fleet last year when we sold her to a woman who sailed off to Virginia where she is living aboard. So we filled that hole in our hearts with a 17’ Mako center console motorboat. The boat was in good enough shape to use last summer, but definitely needed some sprucing up over the winter. And spruce her up I did.

Starboard side. You can see the icky goo that held the swim ladder on the starboard rear quarter. You can also see the trusty shop vac that went to the great sawdust pile in the sky this winter after more than a decade of use and abuse.

So this part of the blog will focus on the excitement involved in taking a rough around the edges motorboat and making it into something we are proud to be seen in.

The outboard is a Mercury 115 two-stroke. Two-stroke engines require the addition of oil (you can see the green tank). With the dinghy outboards we mixed oil with the gas, with this big guy we add oil to a separate tank. Some day I would love to convert the boat to electric but that’s years in the future.

Fortunately for everyone, the Mako and trailer fit into the barn perfectly. When Ellen found out I backed the boat/trailer in on my own she told me she was more proud of me than she has ever been. She is tough to impress, and to be perfectly frank, it was a pretty tricky bit of driving.

The first thing I did when the boat was in the barn was to strip off all her old, busted, sun-damaged equipment. The philosophy behind this refresh of the boat is that she will have everything she needs and nothing she doesn’t. We decided there was no need for a VHF radio and antenna since we have perfectly good handheld radios, no need for fishing rod holders since we don’t fish. We moved some cleats to better locations, fussed with the anchor setup (of course), and generally tidied the boat right up.

The guy we bought the boat from in Boothbay Harbor told me the boat had been rewired by “the best electrician in Boothbay.” I worry about the electrical safety of BBH residents because the boat was an electrical nightmare. Switches didn’t work, bilge pump was incorrectly wired and wouldn’t turn on, navigation lights wouldn’t turn off, so they drained the battery. Generally a mess.

This is all the junk I removed from the boat…flag pole holder, trolling motor mount, broken speakers, compass, rod holders, broken radio, etc.

That’s enough typing for now. I’ll upload some pictures to whet your appetite.

This is the bare console. You can see the spaghetti-mess of old wiring inside, and all the hacked up holes the previous owners added to the mix.

The starboard rear corner was smashed, this is the start of my repair.

I got the console off the boat and started filling the holes. This piece alone had about 100 screw holes to be filled.

Progress.

New adventures

Cupcake sold last weekend. Moss and I delivered her to her new owner on Monday. Moss drove most of the way from our mooring to the Harraseeket River where Cupcake will be staying until the end of hurricane season. I trimmed the sail while Moss took the helm for a very pleasant broad reach to the river, and Moss commented, “this is magical.” And Cupcake is magical. We enjoyed a decade of adventure aboard that big girl and are very pleased she will be having more adventures with her new owner who will be a full-time live aboard. There are plans in the works to head to Florida this fall and we are a little jealous.

Next steps for us? We’re looking for a sweet daysailer with a gaff rig. So something like this:

But no huge rush. We’ve got the little 17’ Mako for bombing around, we’ve got the fleet of Dyers (Cupcake Cup is this weekend), so it’s not like we are without boatiness.

Home again

We stayed at Damariscove Island for two nights because as predicted, Thursday was a rainy rainy rainy day. So we stayed aboard and got lots of reading done. The only one of us who really minded the quiet inside day was poor Friday who was itching to roam around on deck. But the rain kept her in the cockpit and the mosquitos kept the rest of us safely behind the screens.

Saw this excellent typo at the Damariscove dock.

Friday we were up at dawn to catch the tide for a boost on our ride home. What little wind we had was on the nose, so it was a long motorboat ride back to Freeport.

Cupcake at Damariscove Island.

We got an interesting email earlier in the week from someone who had seen our online advertisement putting Cupcake up for sale. She seemed very interested so we agreed to meet her at the Freeport Town Dock on Saturday.

Island explorers.

That schedule meant we had to get the boat cleared of our gear and cleaned in half a day. It took a lot of effort, many trips to and from the beach, but we got the job done and Cupcake was looking pretty good when we arrived at the dock on Saturday.

Damariscove Island warning sign.

The buyer was considering another Pearson 36-2 in New Jersey but liked Cupcake more (who wouldn’t?) and we reached an agreement. So as soon as the funds are transferred, Cupcake will have a new owner. It could happen before the weekend.

We are pleased that Cupcake found someone who is interested in living aboard full time because that is what the boat is fitted out to do. It also looks like Cupcake will be headed south again. We know she is a great boat for that role and has many more years of adventure left in her.

Watch this space for the next boat(s) and adventures.

Long day

We awoke to thick fog in the anchorage at Long Cove, so we went back to sleep. (I had a poor night’s sleep anyway because I had a dream that Ellen and Moss were supposed to meet me for dinner and a movie but instead decided to have dinner with our rabbi without telling me. I was halfway through the film before I realized they weren’t sitting with me. Also my seat at the theater had an obstructed view and I got a stiff neck. Ugh.)

When the fog cleared we set out from Vinalhaven on the first big leg of our way back home.

Well the day ended up being a longer one than anticipated. At first we thought we would just scoot across West Penobscot Bay and enjoy a night at Dix Island. But when we checked last night, the weather for tomorrow made us think it would be rainy and nasty, not great for that anchorage. So we rerouted to Harbor Island in Muscongus Bay. It’s a lovely spot and is safe and protected.

But as we were trucking along today (motorsailing at 6+ knots with a boost from the tide really helps Cupcake cover ground) we thought it might be better to be in a harbor where we could walk around if Thursday is going to be a no-travel rain-day. Headed to New Harbor. We had been to New Harbor years ago on our first Cupcake, a 27’ Pearson Renegade. But over the intervening years the harbor seems to have shrunk. When we pulled in this afternoon with this Cupcake, nearly 10’ longer, the harbor looked tiny and crowded. Absolutely no room to anchor. We had a surreal encounter with a scuba diver in a drysuit who was bobbing in the little harbor, he told us there was only one free mooring, right next to a dock. Even if that mooring was available, we weren’t sure there was swing room for the big girl.

So we aborted that plan and went to plan C which was to push on to Damariscove Island. Damariscove has long been a favorite stop of ours. It’s remote, lonely, beautiful, and has pretty cool history. It was a fishing outpost for the cod fishery in the 1600s, had full-time residents as recently as the 1930s, and boasts the largest poison ivy patch we have ever seen.

It’s a super duper tight harbor. When we picked up the mooring (also no room to anchor here) we had to shorten the pennant so we wouldn’t hit the wharf with our stern. I’m not even exaggerating.

In any event, today’s trip was long but not particularly tedious. Moss asked if we could teleport, would we. Ellen and I both said “no” because even a dull day at sea is a great day. The engine ran like a Swiss watch, and now we’ve got lots of hot water for showers this evening.

Damariscove Harbor and the abandoned Coast Guard station.

Friday and the wharf.

Can you have too many cute-cat-on-a-boat pictures? No you can’t.

Catch up

After bailing on our plan to sail to Roque Island we sailed to Burnt Coat Harbor on Swan’s Island for a few days. Ellen decided she wants to move to Swan’s and she has a pretty good point. The anchorages are gorgeous and protected, the boats are beautiful, and the island offers excellent walking and diversions.

Derelict boat on Swan’s Island.

When we had the hook set, we dinghied across the harbor to check out the quarry and go for a swim. The water was fresh and a great temperature. Nice to swim and not hustle right back out because it is so cold. The views from the top of the quarry were spectacular.

Next to the town dock there’s a company with the perplexing name Underwater Taxi. They had self-serve clams and lobsters so we picked up a bag of clams that Ellen cooked that evening. On our way back across the harbor to Cupcake we were treated to two windjammers coming in for the night. We scooted right up close and got to watch them come up into the wind, drop anchor, and strike their sails. Spectacular.

Two days in Swan’s and we headed across East Penobscot Bay to Vinalhaven where we anchored in Perry Creek after first checking out the town landing just across the Fox Islands Thoroughfare at North Haven. At Perry Creek we tied up to a mooring. (When we came in to the harbor a high-strung woman on a Saber shouted at us “THERE’S NO ROOM TO ANCHOR! PICK UP A MOORING!” My goodness.)

Met a nice gentleman on an American Tug, enjoyed listening to his marvelous Scottish accent as he sang the praises of his sturdy vessel.

Two days at Perry Creek gave us time to get ice cream in North Haven, do laundry, and walk to the grocery store for provisions. Mr. Flowerpot with her excellent 15 hp outboard was perfectly suited for zooming the mile or so from Perry Creek to town. So many good looking boats to check out up here.

North Haven

The past two nights were passed anchored at Seal Bay. There were plenty of neat boats to look at there: a boat with a super name: Lord Nelson Victory Tug, caught our eye and has us thinking about our post-Cupcake options.

At Seal Bay we explored the many little islands and inlets, watched a seat hunt for pogies, and met a nice young couple (wow that makes me sound old) from Sweden.

This morning we headed out of Seal Bay, through the Thoroughfare, and around to the west side of Vinalhaven where we are now hooked up for the night in Long Cove. There’s a reversing falls here and as soon as the boat was settled, Ellen and I went hunting there for mussels for dinner.

The day has offered up a mix of wind and grey skies and rain, but now it is sunny and warm so all is forgiven.

Friday update: when I last reported on the cat I understated how excellent she is aboard. Friendly, adventurous, clever, stalwart. She is fine crew.