Distance Travelled: 26.2 nm | Destination: Harmon Harbor

A long time coming, but finally we were ready to leave on our cruise for 2004. We had planned to leave on Friday, but we were fogged in, so we spent the day impatiently at home. The NOAA forecast discussion for Saturday called for improving conditions throughtout the day, so we packed up the last of our gear (mostly perishable food) and headed out. We had to stop off to leave the dog at the dogsitters, then we headed to the boat to be ready when the weather showed signs of improvement.

Tandem Trip

Tim Lackey, on Glissando, was also planning to leave for his cruise on Saturday, so we tentatively planned to head out in tandem, at least to start. By about 1130 we could see signs of clearing to the northwest so we hoisted sail and set out. We had a nice sail across to Chandler's Cove at 5.5 knots of so while Gavin tried to start the motor. Wind seemed to be fairly strong, a bit gusty, and was funneling right through Chandler's. We rolled the jib and motored up into the wind to take a reef as Glissando did the same.

We motored into the wind across to Broad Sound. In what was going to become a disturbing trend, Glissando blew by us like we were standing still once we started motoring. As we crossed Broad Sound we were able to kill the engine for a nice close reach up to Little Mark Island before the wind seemed to ease and then die. I noted with pleasure that during the brief sail we were able to make up much of the lost ground between the boats.

We motored on across a generally calm Casco Bay heading generally toward Cape Small—the northeastern boundary of Casco Bay. As we had left so late, our initial tentative plan had been to head up the New Meadows River and spend our first night at the Basin, however we were making reasonable time, so I hailed Tim on the vhf to confer. We agreed to head on to Harmon Harbor on the Sheepscot River.

Along the way we saw numerous porpoises and caught a glimpse of a whale, which we guessed was probably a finback, but we are no experts, so... At 1500 we passed Cape Small and I put the Casco Bay chart away for a couple of weeks—a psychological sign indicating that we were indeed away on our cruise. We continued on up toward the Sheepscot under grey skies in occasional sprinkles, and watching Glissando grow slowly smaller ahead of us. As we turned up into the river we found ourselves bucking an adverse current.

A Friendly Greeting

When we arrived at the mouth of the harbor we found Tim finishing flaking his sail, and we rounded up to do the same. As the boat slowed we were attacked by the most vicious bunch of mosquitos I've ever seen. And we were still out in the very wide mouth of the river! I was a bit nervous about how the bugs would be when we actually got into the harbor, but I put it out of mind and flaked the sail. We then motored into the harbor which is protected by a large ledge which blocks almost the entire mouth of the harbor.

Once inside we were scoping out the area outside the moorings to decide where to drop the hook when some folks in a nicely restored Lyman motored up and asked Tim if he wanted a mooring. He indicated that that would be nice and asked if there might be one for us as well. The pointed out two other moorings which they also thought were free.

At 1730 we picked up the first mooring indicated which was apparently the Lyman's mooring as the Lyman spent the night tied to the private dock just 20 or 30 yards away from "our" mooring. Tim motored over to the other two moorings, and as he was checking them out someone ran down from the HUGE house that appeared to be associated with the moorings. He was waving his arms and yelling out to Tim: "Hey if you want go ahead and pick up either of these two moorings here."

A Celebration

Once our boat was put away and things seemed quite across the harbor on Glissando, we packed some beers, baby food, and a bottle of wine and rowed over to Glissando. We enjoyed a short bit of relaxation but Gavin was getting tired and cranky, so not 30 minutes later we were packing up to retern to Dasein. "Nice hanging out with you!" Tim quipped. But Gavin needed attention and as it was his first night out we wanted to get him settled early. I said that I would likely be back later and we headed off.

I made dinner and we got Gavin ready for bed. Heather said she was going to go to bed and read, so I rowed back to Glissando for an after-dinner drink. We sat in the cockpit relaxing and enjoying being out on our respective cruises—finally. As darkness descended, the people at the huge house ashore set up a bonfire down on the shoreline and soon we were treated to quite a nice little fireworks display. They were clearly consumer-level fireworks, but they were also clearly the biggest and most showy consumer-level fireworks money could buy. We quite enjoyed our own personal display—in our minds a private celebration of the start of our cruises.

Not long afterwards I headed back to Dasein, as we intended an early departure the next morning and headed to bed around 2200.