Rock, Flag, and Eagle!

The two days in South Freeport seemed to fly by, which may end up presenting itself as a general trend throughout this trip. Last year we wanted to visit Monhegan Island, but it just never worked out, so we took this opportunity to do so. You can only moor at Monhegan due to old cables and such in the harbor, and you cannot reserve a mooring in advance, so we had a backup plan in case it didn’t work out. As luck would have it, if you could call it luck, the weather was nothing like the forecast projected. Smarter people, or those not on a timeline, probably stayed home that day, so this island off the coast that had been battered by wind and waves all day had ample guest moorings available to us. We raised the harbor master on the radio as we entered the harbor, which felt like it was getting the same size waves as the open water, just stacked closer together, and he directed us to take the most protected ball in the corner of the harbor. It was definitely protected, but it was also buried in the back of the little harbor, behind plenty of other boats and lobster pots, and wedged into a corner of rocky cliff. We took our time getting back there, and we think put on decent show for the folks on the pier 300 yards away who were waiting for the evening ferry back to Port Clyde. It was getting late (late being a relative term, everything on the island closes by 19:00 if not sooner), so we hurried to get the boys settled and went ashore to explore and get a good meal. It rained on us but we were prepared enough. We only had time for a couple stops really, so we prioritized the brewery (obviously) and a pizza joint. By the time we were ready to head back, the harbor had calmed to a glass finish and we knew we could look forward to a peaceful night. We got help launching the dinghy from a group of four lunatics from Chicago who were actually swimming in the 56 degree water when we got to the beach. They asked if we wanted to join, and we told them there wasn’t enough beer on the island to get me in that water.

The next morning we got an early start to Vinalhaven, with sights set on an anchorage in Fox Isle Thoroughfare. Once again we were greeted with conditions that did not match the forecast (maybe another emerging trend). We put our second reefs in the main and genoa as the wind was giving us gusts >25 knots. Never unsafe, but another day where our autopilot of questionable integrity just couldn’t keep up with the sea state, so it was more practice hand steering. In reality, this is not a problem. It takes skill that we need to be working on to keep a boat moving in a straight line, so we should really be prioritizing that right now anyways. I was just happy that today we were using our right arms, vs. the day before using only the left. Now we’ll be sore balancedly, or sorely balanced maybe. Fox Isle Thoroughfare cuts right between North Haven and Vinalhaven. It has an absolutely gorgeous little village just as you enter the waterway. We passed it headed for an anchorage called “Seal Cove”, which was tucked away far enough that the water was as smooth as you’d expect on a small lake. This would be only our second time ever anchoring, so we took our time finding what we thought was the right spot. On one of the apps we use, there is a social component where people drop ‘pins’ of where they’ve anchored and give some guidance/commentary to help you recreate their anchorage, so we had that to go off of. The anchor set first try, and just as we sat down to congratulate ourselves on a job well done, we get the text from a friend who was following along, “Is it crowded there?” We were excited to share that not at all, there was only one other boat on the total opposite side of the cove; we essentially had it all to ourselves. “Then why did you pick that spot? You look really close to the rocks.” The short answer was because that’s where the pin was. Never mind that there was ample space with the same depth and bottom conditions where we would have been further from the rocks. So after some back and forth, rechecking our position and the tide, we decided to shorten scope by 30’ but not move. It was getting dark, and we did not want to chance having trouble getting the anchor set again without visibility. We set a geofence alarm with plenty of buffer and continued on with the evening. Ariel made an amazing minestrone and salad, but we kept he wine in the cabinet, lest we had to jump into action if anything went awry with our anchoring overnight. I woke up at about 03:00 and went to check on a noise which turned out to be nothing (sailboats make a ton of noise even while sitting still), and was blown away at how clear the sky had become. I don’t think I’d ever seen so many stars. I grabbed the binoculars and spent a good half hour star gazing. I got to see Uranus for the first time, and found Adhara, the namesake of one of our friend’s sailboats – Adhara is more or less the “hips” of the Canis Major constellation. At the morning’s low tide, when we could actually see, we were definitely closer to the rocks than we should have been, but we did have the margin we thought we’d have. Big lesson learned, but then again that’s what this is all about. The anchor came up with the anticipated level of effort (we don’t have a windlass and we oversized our anchor and chain to allow some buffer for poor technique), and we were out of Seal Cove bound for Camden.

The wind was perfect to sail out of the thoroughfare and into West Penobscot Bay. We caught a great photo of a bald eagle perched across from an American Flag. Once we got into the bay, however, the wind was blowing directly at Camden from behind our backs. While it may sound counterintuitive, this is really one of the least comfortable angles to the wind for sailing. Without the pressure on the sails that comes from sailing at an angle to it, it is hard to keep them full of wind, and subsequently quiet, when the wind is just sort of pushing the boat along. We used a technique called wing-on-wing, where we position the sails on opposite sides of the boat. This eliminates the “blanketing” effect that the mainsail has on the headsail, or blocking it from receiving wind, when sailing dead downwind. In doing this, we placed the boom on the ‘wrong’ side of the boat. To safely do this, it requires a “preventer line” to keep it there, so that it does not violently swing across the cockpit if the wind direction suddenly changes. After some time dialing in the technique (once again steering by hand all day), we were moving along at about 50-70% of wind speed, which is about what we’d expect. We arrived in Camden without issue and settled on our mooring to ride out a little bit of a storm that is headed this way, but excited to keep the boat in one place for the next three nights.

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