This weekend, we sailed a few different legs around Casco Bay. Before I get into that, I’d like to brag a little bit about the cost of living on our boat. We spent about $56 on propane, and about $350 on electricity last winter heating our boat. This means out utility bill for the whole winter was $400 – not bad for 6 months of living. Go us!
cruise ship
On Friday after work, I single-handed Seabird to Peaks Island. There was barely any wind so I motored and used the jib for stability. It was pretty uneventful but the wind did sort of funnel into the little channel between Peaks and House, so just for fun, I turned the motor off and headed up wind in the channel a bit. Then I did a quick 360, rolled in the sails, and tied up to the dock. Apparently the “emergency” side of the dock has changed to the outside of the public float on Peaks Island. Normally, the inside is reserved for emergency vehicles, leaving the outer edge for people to tie up to, which is much easier for sailboats. After we docked and realized this, we backed Seabird out and into the other slip. It doesn’t sound cool, but it was actually kinda tricky to do a reverse-U-turn in a fat-ass sailboat. It actually worked out really well once we were settled in, because when we went to leave the next morning we could just motor straight out!
looking back again
The next day, when we headed out, we were actually able to sail all the way to House Island before the wind died. Then we motor sailed around Fort Gorges, up the channel, and all the way to Handy Boat. We docked at the northern most dock and spent the night there. We had lunch and tried to get Adam and Meghan’s new boat’s A4 running. Their weak battery was unable to spin the engine fast enough for long enough, so it would not start. We decided to give up our trickle charger so that others may have battery power. While that was cooking, Sophi got to cookin’ (white sauce with gnocchi). After a scrumptious meal of white sauce and gnocchi, I invited the ‘boys’ from the Concordia 40’ over, Kurt and Bill, to swap sailing stories. We learned that they were sailing that boat to Portsmouth to haul out for the winter and had a lot of experience sailing together in Maine and in the Caribbean. The weather was calling for favorable winds for them, good luck, boys!
see, we did sail
We slept well on what seemed like a rickety dock in little water, but we had no issues, so life goes on . In the morning, we had great coffee and a great breakfast with our crazy animals on deck. Bella especially liked the parade ground with a flag in the middle at Handy Boat. It’s amazing how well a 50’ patch of grass can really help get the crazies out. Bella found a baseball and made us throw it until our arms fell off. She was a blur of orange and reflective stripes, chasing that thing on a mission. When Adam and Meghan arrived from Cape Elizabeth we got to work again on their A4. Heeding the advice from Bill the night before, who apparently had a gas contraption in one of his boats, we fed the carburetor one teaspoon of fuel then kicked the starter. It exploded into action, but only for a few seconds. Well, if one tablespoon did that, what would two tablespoons do? Two shots of fuel almost had the thing started. I thinkw e’re on to something, here! One more go of direct injection got that A4 just a’whippin’, and she was loud! Of course, all the doors were open and the choke was wide open also. We even tested the transmission by popping it into forward and reverse when we got it running well, and the folding prop opened up (and turned the right way)! Yeah, buddy!
Franky loves dodgers
After the engine issues, Sophi and I dressed in our Sunday best in order to fight the wind all the way home. After three days of northerly wind, it finally switched when we were as far north as we were going to go. It was a typical gray, cloudy, windy, almost-raining New England day. I dressed in long underwear, head to toe, extra shirt, pants, and my rain pants – plus a fleece vest and my float coat. Complete with balaclava and hat, and of course, eye protection. Sophi was a wuss and only wore her float coat. It felt like the wind was blowing 20kts from our dock, and as we motored through the “log field,” (aka mooring field) at Handy the wind was whipping right at us so much so that we figured we would need at least one reef and maybe an inch of headsail. Once we got around Clapboard Island, it seemed like there was no wind and we had just been getting a funneling effect between the two landmasses. Disappointed, we shook out our first reef and unfurled our headsail while trying to avoid the day-marker. The more I steered away from the day-marker, the closer I got! If we didn’t have a motor we probably would have been all up on it.
nice float coat
I think I finally figured out how this boat sails: it needs 15 kts to go into the wind. So after our fight with the day-marker, we were plopping along happily at 2.5 – 3kts into the wind. We did several tacks between the mainland and the Diamond Islands, and much to my surprise, there was quite a fleet of boats out there in the harbor. We saw our friend Chris Keene on Soulmate, who doesn’t need 15kts to sail upwind, and we saw our friend Graham from Hamilton’s, who flew past us in a 16’ sailboat then did a 180 and threw up a spinnaker. A few hours ticked by and we slowly gained ground on the cruise ship. We did one last tack out towards Fort Gorges because it was just so nice to be out on the water. We were hoping we would do one last tack right to Dimillo’s and end our day, but, the Portland tugboat made us beam reach for a few minutes and ruined it. So we motored to our new slip, B7, our old winter slip.
this one was all by himself
All in all it was a great sailing weekend even though the sailing wasn’t that great. The sun wasn’t really out, the wind really wasn’t there, but being on the boat on the water with someone you love made up for it.
Portland sailing club
Congratulations to the newest liveaboards in Portland, ME, who have just started the process of moving onto their dinette-model Catalina 27’, Moya. They currently reside somewhere in the vicinity of Chandler’s Wharf, slip 50, so go say hello, and give them some extra snubbers!
....still at the helm
