July 7 | Est 17 Nautical Miles

As usual, we stayed away from the boat over the fourth of July weekend. Falmouth becomes an incredible mob-scene and we usually have other things to do anyway. But since the holiday was past and we had a lovely day forecast...

Calm start

I planned to take my friend Sean out for a sail that afternoon, but I had a few minor things to take care of first, so I told him to meet me at the boat at noon. I arrived around1000 to get a few things taken care of, including reinstalling the jib which had gone back to the loft for minor adjustments to the work they had done over the winter, and installing my new tiller. When I arrived it was glassy calm, but a gentle breeze picked up out of the southeast as I was working.

Soon enough, noon arrived and I went ashore to pick up Sean. We headed out to the boat to wait to see what would happen with the breeze. We chatted for a bit and presently the breeze seemed serious enough to warrent at least an attempt at a sail. In fact, looking out I saw a Pearson Ariel moving gently along under sail.

We dropped the mooring and headed out, sailing past Sturdivant on a course toward Upper Basket Ledge. The wind seemed to be steadily building and soon was blowing a nice 12 or so knots. We had a great ride down past the ledge and then hardened up toward Chebeague Island. We passed close ahead of a sexy black hulled schooner, and then tacked to head back toward Portland.

As we started up toward Portland some 6 or so miles distant the wind began to veer around to a more southwesterly direction. Of course. We continued to sheet in until we were hard on the wind. But our course seemed like it would carry us all the way to the city and the wind wasn't too strong so we didn't mind. As we approached the mouth of the Fore River, the wind seemed to be building. This isn't unusal, as the wind often funnels through that area in is regularly 5 or even 10 knots stronger than elsewhere.

We rode up into the river a bit before tacking and then easing off for a nice beam to broad reach back to Falmouth. Just after we tacked I snapped a picture of the Casablanca, a local party boat. Casablanca offers dinner cruises in the evening, but I'm not sure what sort of group she was catering to on this day.

Once off the wind a bit we had a wonderful ride back to Falmouth. Sean worked hard on his tan and I enjoyed the perfect weather. As we continued the wind started to ease a bit and as we neared the mooring field it petered out almost completely. Perfect timing!

As I hadn't charged the batteries recently we decided to drop the sails outside and take a little motor tour around the anchorage to put some juice back in the batteries. We visited Glissando and Lucky Bear, but no one was home at either boat.

Eventually we returned to the mooring and relaxed for a bit before packing up the boat and heading in. As I was walking up the hill from the town landing to where I was parked I happened to turn around and I realized that I hadn't taken any pictures of the harbor from that spot. So I did. The picture shows only a fraction—perhaps a quarter—of the boats that comprise the mooring field at Falmouth Harbor.