April 2024 to September 2025.  What Happened?

 

After a 17 Month hiatus from this Blog, I am instructed to memorialize not what happened between those months, but instead what is happening now.

 

Summer 2024 was spent at Fore Points Marina in downtown Portland, Maine.  Walking distance to hundreds of great restaurants.  And we visited a good Thirty of them over the long Summer we spent there.  Then back to Baltimore and on the hard for the Winter with Spring bottom painting and Rudder work needed.

 

Back to Fore Points for July and August 2025.  Less restaurant visits but Hattie & Jack came aboard for four weeks.  That kept us all busy.  A week at Sebasco Harbor Resort and The Basin. Taking advantage of the Resort pool, bikes, restaurant, hiking, basketball court, bowling and outdoor chess board.  At the Basin, and many times thereafter as friends visited from New Orleans, the 68 degree water was greeted by glee as the kids jumped and adults shamed into jumping from the boat or the rope swing off the boom.

 

But now, we are headed back to Baltimore.  Tess headed there by car and will then fly to New Orleans for a week or so.  I have a motley crew of friends (Paul & Irwin) and family (Denis) aboard for the trek.

The Crew.

 

September 1 we were off the fuel dock by 0820 and headed to the Isles of Shoals for a first day shake down.  Light wind at our backs and calm seas made for an easy start as everyone (hopefully) eased into and learned their roles.  We are doing a 24/7 Watch schedule in anticipation of doing an overnight or two.  That means the 0600 Watch is four hours, followed by Watches of 4, 3, 3, 3, 2 and 2 hours.  This gives an ocean passage Crew each an eight hour respite every three days.  It won’t be needed here, but it gives me the ability to have a three person Watch and leave me to attend to other tasks, much like a “Waister” of old. Assigned to clear the bilge, garbage, cooking and cleaning.  Lest they forget I am the Captain, I interrupt their conversations as often as I can to call out their mistakes.  It may be a long trip (for me at least).

 

Arrived Isles of Shoals at 1620 and picked up a Kittery Point Yacht Club mooring.  In celebration I hoisted our KPYC pennant for perhaps the third time in 21 years.  Crew relaxed with a nice Venezuelan Rum previously provided by the Bauers.  Thank you.  It’s gone now.

We were treated to an amazing spectacle as a Balloon was raised on the island and floated off toward shore.  We later learned that it landed in the back yard of Aunt Paula's house in Hampton.

Going up....

Morning broke for most of us just before 0600 and we were off the mooring by 0630.

Dawn at the Isles of Shoals...

Those that missed the 0600 wake up call.  But the bacon got him up about 0800.
  

No wind and glassy seas as we headed toward Cape Ann.  

We did have a whale sighting just South of the Isles of Shoals.  We had a good view and saw tail and flippers and head.  You can see it here if you squint.

That black dot is a whale's head.  Believe me!

Bypassing Gloucester with a hope of reaching Plymouth.  That gives us a good start for a favorable Cape Cod Canal transit into Buzzard’s Bay on Wednesday.  

Waiting for wind?

 

What the Crew lacks in adventure (so far) they are making up with Gusto anticipating their next meal.  That means back to work for me.