Splash
“We’re clear” – words I haven’t spoken in about nine months. As the mooring line slipped clear of our bow, a weight slipped clear of my soul. We motored out the channel and past the scattered lobster traps, then rolled out the jib for a lazy sail to Castine. There was patchy fog – sometimes quite thick – and it was Jack’s first sail for the season. Since we were only going a few miles, there was no reason to push. As we entered the anchorage we were enveloped in pea soup fog, but standing on the bow preparing to drop anchor, I couldn’t have been happier. Once the anchor was down, we relaxed in the cockpit and were greeted by a pair of passing harbor porpoises.
We chose this anchorage because it was well protected – I had to work on Friday, and the forecast called for gusty winds into the mid-30s – and it definitely delivered. Fortunately it was later in the day, and everyone in the anchorage had set well. We saw one gust that was well into the 40s, but the rest of the winds were mid-30s and below, and the little passing rain showers left a faint rainbow in their wake. We enjoyed a nice dinner of bread, cheese and beach plum jelly in the cockpit and were treated to a beautiful solstice sunset.
As we hauled anchor the next morning, I was able to test out the newly-repaired salt water washdown – you have NO idea how amazing it is to not have to bring aboard a nasty, stinky, mud-covered chain! We raised the sails (first time raising our new main!) – or tried to anyway – as we left Castine, but we still had to work out the kinks. The halyard was lead so that it was through the lazyjacks, and then we realized one of our reefing lines was too short, preventing the sail from going all the way up. Once we got all that dealt with, there really wasn’t much wind anymore, so we ended up motoring for a while. But when the breeze filled in, we rolled out the jib and shut off the engine. In 5-10kts of breeze, we were able to sail as fast as 7.5kts on the upper range of the wind, and at the lower end, we were still doing just about true wind speed.
We sailed past beautiful islands and a stunning little lighthouse on a cliff, as we rode over the long, gentle ocean swell. Eventually we ran out of wind entirely, but by that point we were only about an hour out from our next anchorage, Seal Bay.
