Saturday Chores 11 July 2015

Saturday is a busy day on the “Ruth”.  Mike does three trips—a pirate cruise, a scenic tour and a sunset cruise that finishes at 8:30 pm.  Because Mike is so busy, we don’t have sailing trips on “Cotinga” scheduled for Saturday.  When I first saw the schedule, I pictured myself lying around eating bon-bons and painting my toenails.  The reality is slightly different.

Saturday has become laundry day.  It’s something of a mad rush to get showered, get the dirty clothes and towels into the washing and get everything washed, dried and folded before 12:30 pm. At that time, the pirate cruise should be wrapping up.  Mike has an hour to get lunch and be ready to go out again.  Yesterday, during his “scenic” trip, I cooked chili for dinner—always good to have something to re-heat after the sunset trip. 

Luckily we had a booking for our four-hour sail on Sunday.  That did mean that we wouldn’t be getting the grocery shopping done on Sunday afternoon, so in the interval between scenic and sunset cruises, we had to make a trip to the Shaw’s in Bath.  Our two objectives were food for the week (including some quick dinners for the ‘sunset’ evenings) and lunches for our ‘Lunch’ trips.  We are still trying to refine the menu and procedures so that we get some sailing done, have time for lunch and can get back to the dock in time for the next trip.  It’s a work in progress.  We did discover that soup and sandwich takes way too long.  Now that the weather has warmed up a bit, soup doesn’t seem that appealing anyway.

What else has been happening?  Thursday we took out a family group—two adults, brothers-in-law and four offspring ranging from college to middle school age.  Interestingly, they really wanted to participate in the sailing.  We were hoping to be able to get out to Sequin Island.  At the dock the wind seemed strong, so we were optimistic.  By the time we got near the entrance to Small Point Harbor the wind had pretty much petered out.  We ghosted around various islands to the west and managed to do an interesting loop with a bit of help from the engine.  Friday we took out six people, a party of four and another couple.  The couple was staying at the resort.  The others were a pair of “Mainer’s by choice” who live in a cottage close by and their guests.  It was a lovely sail overall.  We left the dock in a strong north wind which faded to nothing part way down to Small Point.  When the wind filled in, it was from the south.  That makes planning interesting.  

The sunset sail that followed was terrific.  We started out with some strong southerly wind that died away during the trip to allow a flat-water view of the setting sun.  The three passengers were staying at the Rock Garden Inn adjacent to Sebasco Harbor resort.  I’m pretty sure that Dev, who took the helm for much of the trip, had a good time.  Hopefully they all enjoyed the sail, we certainly did