Update 7/29/08 - Sailing in Maine

Fox Islands Thoroughfare

Hello to all!

This is my third attempt to write this -and is the third state I’ve tried to write it in! Hopefully I’ll get something done this time!

As I write this, we are anchored in a beautiful cove located between McGlathery Island and Round Island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. We are on a sailing trip on Trader although the wind hasn’t cooperated and we’ve done a lot of motoring.

Brown's Head Light - Fox Island Thoroughfare

Windjammer - Penobscot Bay 

This trip was supposed to start last Wednesday but the weather was not good and we wound up putting the start off until Friday. We got a somewhat late start and when the fog set in very thick we decided to stop at Cliff Island rather than go on. It was a whole big 9 miles but at least it got us going! After that we had a good trip mostly under power up to Round Pond where we picked up the guest mooring and visited Paul & Mimi Aldrich. Paul is Jean’s cousin and we had traveled with them for quite a ways going up through the ICW in the spring of 2007. We had a good visit with them, going for a swim in the pool and enjoying a nice BBQ supper.

The next day there was a sailing breeze although it was a little slow at times. We sailed across Muscongus Bay, through Port Clyde and then up through Muscle Ridge Channel (with a big assist from the tide) to Rockland. In Rockland we were able to use Barb & Stew Hart’s mooring . We mostly worked on the boat the next day and had a nice dinner with our friend Peter Van Alstine that evening. We left Rockland this morning and again mostly motored over to McGlatherty.

Anchorage at McGlatherty and Round Islands

Since my last update in late June, we’ve actually done quite a bit of traveling. We spent 2 days visiting with family on Cape Cod , spent a day playing tourist in Newport, RI, and then joined our friends Larry and Cathy on their new (to them) Cambria 44 sailboat “Katahdin” for a cruise on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. It was planned as a shakedown cruise and it was. We enjoyed seeing Narragansett Bay. There were a lot more anchorages than we expected and we were able to take in 4 or 5 fireworks shows from various towns, three of them from the same anchorage. We also toured the Hereshoff Museum in Bristol Rhode Island.

Cliff walk in Newport, RI

Monday the 5th turned out to be a real travel adventure even though everything pretty much was on schedule. We left the boat at 0600 and Kathy dropped us at the Providence train station about 6:30. Less than 10 minutes later we were on the train moving toward Boston. We thought great, maybe we could get an earlier plane to Atlanta and then an earlier one to Hilton Head. We got to the airport before 8:30 but were disappointed to find that 2 of the Atlanta flights were canceled and we would have to stick with ours - at 12:10. During our wait I made the first attempt at this update. That flight was fine and we made our connection in Atlanta on time - and then the next flight to Hilton Head was delayed. The result was that we got to Hilton Head about an hour late. Half an hour later we arrived on Sun Cat and were pleased to find her in good shape. We made up for the long trip with a couple of Margarita’s and a nice Mexican dinner.

The next week was filled with walking, biking and trips to the beach and pool. The marina is part of a resort and dockage there includes the use of all resort amenities and the “dune buggy”. The dune buggy is a van service that will take you anywhere in the resort including al of the above plus the two malls. It was great fun to call and ask for a ride for 2 to “the pig” - otherwise known as the Piggly Wiggly Supermarket. We thoroughly enjoyed the Tuesday night fireworks show and the pleasant ambiance of Hilton Head. We also had two very strong thunderstorms go through while we were there. I made a brief attempt at writing an update as well. The time went all too quickly and before we knew it we were on a plane back to New England.

Bill’s birthday is in mid July so we celebrated it by having Bill and Stephanie on the boat for a weekend trip to Cliff Island where we were joined by Stephen on Nette and Larry and Cathy on Moondance. The weather wasn’t perfect but we had a good walk on Cliff and an enjoyable weekend.

The next week was spent mostly working on the house. Our tenants had left and so we were busy cleaning, putting our things back out and doing minor repairs. I did sneak away for a Wednesday night race (called early because of a thunderstorm) and I also had a nice visit to my office where I had lunch with Marc, Rich, Dave and “G”.

After a week of working on the house we were ready for another trip so here we are, off again enjoying the Maine summer and the beautiful Maine Coast!

The pictures on this post include a sample of the scenery on the Fox Island Thoroughfare, a Maine windjammer and the anchorage at McGlatherty Island as well as the Cliff Walk in Newport, RI Enjoy!


Steve and; Jean
S/V Trader