Things Fall Apart        18^th August 2012

We were lucky enough to have another thunderstorm last night and awoke to showers and grey skies.  Listening to the forecast, we heard that Saturday would have NW winds (5-10 kts) with showers while Sunday would have stronger NE winds (10-15 kts, gusting to 20) .  Portland our destination was 40 miles away to the NE making Sunday look very difficult.  We decided that although we might get rained on today, we should go for it.  So off we went having heard that the Isle of Shoals tower was reporting 10kts of wind from the NW.  After motoring for about 45 minutes to run the refrigeration, we slowed the engine with a view to sailing.  Up went the mainsail.  Then we unfurled the genoa and found ourselves smartly moving along at about 1 kt.  So much for the forecast of NW winds at 5-10!  The vision of 40 hours to make it to Portland was too much for us.  Back to motoring.

Many texts from Natasha have revealed that my car (commonly known as Jane) is in a terminal state of health.  Over the last 700 miles from Kansas to Colorado, Tasha had to introduce a mere twelve (12) quarts of oil.  Reports of much black smoke issuing forth from the tailpipe confirm the gloomy prognosis for Jane.  Perhaps more distressing is that now Tasha and the two friends who agreed to go with her are in Denver with no simple way to complete their trip.  They had planned stops at various National Parks including a couple of days at Yosemite.  It’s all causing plenty distress, confusion and uncertainty for Tasha.  Mom also feels some guilt for having sent Tash off in such an old car.  In my defense it is (or should that be was) a Toyota Corolla with only 110K miles.  We thought there was plenty of life left in the old girl….

Not all of the day was doom and gloom though.  A phone call to the marina in Portland revealed a dearth of moorings.  This induced another revision to the plan and we diverted to a place called Wood Island harbor near Biddeford Pool, Maine.

The guidebook warns that anchorage can be found here if you pay close attention to the depth and the tidal range (to avoid going aground as the tide falls).  Imagine how cool, calm and collected I could be after a wind-up like that.  We anchored in about 13 ft of water, two and a half hours after high tide.  Two hours later, depending on where the wind would swing us, the depth sounder was showing 8 or 9 feet. At this point, with 90 minutes left to go until low tide and a possible grounding, we did what anyone would—left the boat to go into town to a grocery store!  That did stop me from further fretting over spring tides and the rate of drop over the 6 hour interval…  The Biddeford Pool Yacht Club where we tied up is a nice little facility where we could get a shower in the morning!  Nice surprise.  Even better was the grocery store.  This doubled as a café where we felt compelled to eat.  A meal of lobster tacos (Mike)/fish tacos (Gloria) was consumed at a picnic table overlooking the mooring field and anchorage as the tide fell.  The light was fantastic and the fish and lobster were very fresh and delicious.  We even remembered to get the bread and milk that were the real reason for visiting this shop.  At little walk around the waterfront and a few photo stops completed our trip to land.

Gloria

 Gannet off coast of Maine

Loon in Biddeford Pool

Biddeford Pool