Last morning ashore

After two weeks of running around fixing things, buying parts, provisioning, visiting with friends and family, wrapping up my last few work obligations, we are now on the cusp of setting sail. Granted, we are only planning on sailing about three miles this afternoon, but it's a start. 

Our friend Matt Kanwit will meet us at The Goslings for the evening. He will have his kids aboard his Pearson and it will be nice to have a last-minute send off from a fellow sailor. It will also be nice to finally get off the mooring. I think we are growing things on our dinghy bottom because the water in the river is...nutrient rich.

The folks at Brewer's South Freeport Marine could not have been more accommodating, friendly, and just plain wonderful during the past two weeks. We have had the boat launched and hauled at Brewer's for years. We have used their services for some big jobs on Cupcake in the past, and we have always been quite pleased. The facilities are clean and modern and convenient: the shower/lounge/laundry facility is fantastic. All the staff, particularly the dockhands, always seem to be having a great time. Everyone walks around with a smile. The people at Brewer's really care about boats and boaters. If you are on your way up the coast of Maine, Brewer's is worth a stop. 

Yesterday we had Avery, a friend of Simon's, come aboard for a little bit of anchoring information and general cruising background. Avery is a senior in high school and is planning her senior project – a solo sail in Casco Bay and several nights alone on an otherwise uninhabited island.

It is exciting to see a person at the beginning of their love affair with sailing.

Several friends and relatives asked me recently about the genesis of my interest in sailing. When I was a kid, I attended a summer camp on Lake George in the Adirondacks. Every session of camp, I took the sailing skill class. And when my friend Ron and I were in camp together, we would go out on the water in a little O'Day Wigeon every chance we got...pretty much every day after lunch and after dinner.

Most kids chose the Sunfish or the Phantoms because they were faster. What I loved about the Wigeons was that, in addition to providing me time to hang out with Ron, they were real sailboats - with seats, a mainsail, tiller, centerboard, and jib. We spend hours learning how to play the inconstant lake breezes. More importantly, I spent hours dreaming of captaining my own vessel to distant shores. Oh my goodness! I get to start living that dream once again. Starting this afternoon.

In other, more mundane news, I put together a cork board for Moss. We've been saving wine corks all year, intending to use them as stoppers for messages in bottles. But last week I cut a piece of plywood for a base and glued the corks to it so Moss can hang pictures in her room.

There's no big trick to making a cork board, it turns out. Just get some corks, some wood, and some wood glue. Piece of cake.

Speaking of piece of cake, we were given a cupcake last night and I had every intention of eating it for breakfast, but we had to get to shore early so I could change the oil in the car before handing it over to Simon for the next three weeks. Didn't get a chance to eat my cupcake. But I did make the biggest mess of an oil change I have managed in years. Haste makes waste I guess.

All that land-dwellery will be a thing of the past in a couple of hours. First I need to wrap up the last loose ends at the office, wait for Ellen and Moss to finish the last provisioning, and then off we go. 

Cruising Tip of the Day: Sailors don't make plans, we have goals. That's why, when a friend of Ellen's called this morning to find out when we would be on Cape Cod this week, we couldn't say for sure. The goal is to get to the Cape in a couple of days, NYC in two weeks, Norfolk in a month, Hilton Head by the second half of October, and Miami by the first part of November, Bahamas by early December, then head back north again by some time in April or May, bound for Baltimore in time for a wedding in June 2019. But if we start breaking it down day by day, the whole plan quickly unravels.