Riding the Storm Out

The hurricane passed sufficiently far off shore to not create bad weather here. In fact, it’s been sunny and warm. The main problem has been larger-than-usual sea swells, reaching 6 feet (2 meters) offshore of Portland, and up to 9 feet (3 meters) further up the coast.

The Casco Bay is an archipelego of islands stretching northeast of Portland. By sailing inside the islands, we were able to avoid the worst of the swells.

We spent Friday on land visiting Kennebunkport. This town, home to the Bush family compound, is different than midcoast Maine because of the volume of tourists coming up from Boston and elsewhere. In fact, it’s overrun with tourists and has lost much of its charm.

Yesterday, we sailed up to Bailey’s Island, staying behind the protection of the Casco Bay Islands. This island boasts Cook’s Lobster & Ale, a great lobster shack where we enjoyed lunch with live music. We anchored across the bay in Harpswell, a protected anchorage with good holding in “Maine Mud”. Late in the day, the wind started whipping up to 20+ knots, so we sailed back. Usually Fregata likes 20+ knot winds, but the course we plotted had so many zigs and zags that by the time we trimmed the sails for one stretch, we had to make a turn and adjust everything, or take the sails down when headed directly into or away from the wind.

We are staying at a dock in Portland, unlike most of our cruise when we prefer to anchor or tie up to a mooring ball. So when the wind kicked up to nearly 25 knots as we entered the Marina, which has limited manoevering space, and which requires backing in most of the way. The prospect of bringing a 20 ton vessel in definitely caused my stress level to shoot up!

As captain, you learn the importance of internalizing stress so as not to scare your crew or passengers. Imagine being on a plane with a pilot emoting out loud about his or her fear of a tricky landing!

Anyway, Fregata did beautifully. She has significant propwalk (the stern moving to one side or the other other due to water being pushed in the opposite direction by the prop) when in reverse, and we’ve learned how to harness that to our advantage. In fact, when used in concert with the bow thruster, we can even make her slide sideways. Anyway, we backed down the fairway, biasing the windward side so as not to drift into the superyachts docked just across. We backed her into her slip. Fortunately, the berth was empty so we could take it wide, and let the wind push us sideways into the dock, with plenty of fenders to “bounce” off of. A few people were on the dock to catch lines, and Sandy has become a master line thrower.

So in the end, it went smoothly. It’s easier when you have a good vessel and crew!

We took a walk along the Portland waterfront, and finished the day onboard with a grilled swordfish dinner and a couple of rounds of our favorite board game.

Doug & Jane head back home tomorrow.