A very fine lobster stew ...... Tuesday 21st August

We started the day with a tour of Great Island Boat Yard. Jeff Rice, the broker who helped us find "Cotinga", introduced us to the yard, and the people there could not have been more friendly. Graham Wright showed us round this morning, and the facilities are impressive, and the setting in a cove at the northern end of Quahog bay is beautiful. After the tour we jumped on our bikes and headed north to stock up on supplies at the supermarket in Cooks Corner, just east of Brunswick. Our bikes are great. They are 7 speed, made of salt resistant metals, fold down to about the size of a small suitcase and fit into cloth carrying cases. (You could fit four of them into the size of suitcase my sister travels with!). We keep them in a large locker in the cockpit and ferry them to shore in the dinghy. It literally only takes a couple of minutes to set them up. Anyway the ~6 mile ride to the supermarket went fine, but the return was hard work with the added weight of all the groceries. Fortunately, about half way back we reached the "Gurnet Trading Company" that sells excellent seafood. So we stopped for lunch and ate some very fine lobster stew and seafood chowder. We had eaten here a few months ago on a day trip to the coast. The business is run out of a quaint wooden shack next to the road and you sit outside and eat the food on paper plates or styrofoam bowls. We got chatting to some interesting people and the food was great! Does cycling 12 miles offset the calories of a large and very fine lobster stew? We will add this to the list of other key questions that we have been pondering ...such as, how many lobster pots are there off the coast of Maine? 

Once back at the Great Island Boat yard we took them up on their offer to use the facilities and had a wonderful shower. We do have two bathrooms (heads) on the boat, one with a separate shower stall, but fresh water is a precious commodity. Our tanks hold 120 gallons - and we try to use it sparingly, so we typically shower with a pump-up garden sprayer that uses much less water. It's a real treat to get a decent shower ashore. we got back aboard at about 4pm and spent the rest of the afternoon making repairs to some of the cupboard latches that no longer fitted well. Tomorrow, if the weather forecast looks good, we plan to go to Seguin Island, a tiny outcrop of land with lighthouse a few miles off the coast. 

Mike