Frantic Friday

Frantic Friday    ...    Fri July 3^rd – Sat July 4th

Friday turned out to be a very busy day indeed.  Mike did two tours on the Ruth in the morning.  His second Ruth trip finished at 2 pm.  The first Cotinga sail of the day was scheduled for 2pm.  We had the guests (a group of four people) come out on the launch to save time.  Mike arrived by launch shortly after the guests with the news that two more people were expecting to join us.  This turned out to be a man and his six-year old son. 

We got underway for what was meant to be a four-hour sail. As this was our first sailing after the “rock” episode, I was more than a tad nervous about the route, the sea state and the degree of heeling.  After traveling in a southwesterly direction to White Bull Island, we turned westward on a more sedate beam reach.  Threading our way through various island and ledges we saw plenty of breaking water.  A short run along the eastern side of Bailey Island revealed the stone bridge between Orrs and Bailey Islands.  Then we headed eastward and entered the mouth of the New Meadows River.  We sailed up past Cundy’s Harbor and saw seals on the Cedar Ledges nearby.  Tacking around to head back down the river, we were making many tacks but little progress to windward.  With the assistance of the ‘Iron Jib’ we were able to exit the river with only modest amounts of spray coming into the cockpit.  We arrived back on the dock almost on time. 

That was a good thing as the sunset sail was due to start at 6:30 pm.  Off we went again this time with six adults—a party of four and another couple.  We put up the sails, tucking a reef into the main and moved along smartly to the west.  Once near Orr’s Island we turned back eastward as the sun started to slide toward the horizon.  We finished the trip by ducking into West Point and then turning north for Sebasco. We dropped out guests at the dock and headed out to the mooring, leaving the dinghy behind on the dock.  This was somewhat dismaying but we soon became much more concerned about the mosquitos (aka ‘the Maine state bird’).  We hastily put away the mooring lines, stashed the fenders, covered the sail and retreated into the cabin to cook dinner.  It was already after boater’s midnight!

Saturday was a busy day for Mike with three trips on the Ruth.  I did laundry.  In the laundry room, I met Robin who was telling me about her trip to Sebasco from Falmouth, Mass.  They had many problems with their engine overheating and so had arrived here with no power, picking up their mooring under sail.  Robin and her husband Paul invited us over for drinks (soft in our case) on Saturday evening.  It was great to chat to them and to see their lovely boat, ‘Bald Eagle’.  We talked some about their plans for getting their boat to Great Island Boat yard.  We offered to help them.  Mike will tell more about that adventure in another post. We left Robin and Paul at about 6pm and Mike headed out to prepare for his final “Sunset” trip on the Ruth. After he returned at about 8.45pm we cooked shrimp and grits, substituting couscous for grits as we have none of the latter, and settled down to watch “Silence of the lambs” on the computer. Any night we have a sunset cruise is a late night.