2019 SUMMER CRUISING: More Fooling Around on Lunacy

Sept.  24/2019: I haven’t kept you all up to date re my doings aboard Lunacy since the end of the Deth Cruz so I thought I’d share some glimpses of what’s been going on. A lot of it has been Maintenance and Modifications, which we’ll discuss later. Right now we’ll focus on more fun stuff.

Not long after the Deth Cruz in July I headed down the Maine coast again, on my own to start, with two weeks in hand to play with. Plan A was to get as far Down East as fast as possible, so I blitzed out of Portland, spent a night at Seguin (not much sleep, due to my bowsprit banging on the tall steel mooring buoy I picked up) and pulled into Matinicus (redux) the following day. Here I was weather- and fog-bound for two days and my blitz east ground to a halt. This, plus ever-changing meeting-up-with-the-wife logistics, led to the evolution of Plan B, which was to just fool around for a while in the vicinity of Penobscot Bay.

Bottom line: I spent a week alone on the boat, enjoying the wind and water and getting some deep work done on the next book, then a week with Clare going where the wind would take us.

There followed a spate of M&M work, then just last week I spent three days on the boat sailing around Casco Bay with my old buddies Tim Murphy and Brian Harris, plus a new buddy Lesley Davison. Tim, an old roommate and co-worker from my days at Cruising World, last year entered into a boat partnership with Lesley and they hoped to start shaking down their new-to-them Passport 40 Billy Pilgrim this summer. Unfortunately, these plans were derailed when Tim was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Our mini-cruise was scheduled as a pre-surgery consolation outing for Tim. (Don’t worry, he’ll survive, but unfortunately sans bladder.)

As for Brian, he and Tim go way back to their teen years, and I’ve known Brian ever since Tim and I sailed his Vineyard Vixen 29 Ave Marina out of Brian’s old yard Rumery’s in Saco, Maine, back in the late ‘90s. Brian now is general manager at Maine Yacht Center, where Lunacy is based when in Portland.

As the cliché goes: a fine time was had by all.

Seen sailing twixt Seguin and Matinicus: a sunfish. Until this summer I had in all my life seen just one sunfish in the Gulf of Maine, about four years ago. This summer I saw about 50 of the suckers! They are suddenly everywhere. The fins are distinctive and wobble around a lot, but still there was a small scare at Popham Beach this summer when a sunfish was mistaken for a great white shark

Fog at Matinicus. Very conducive to the composing of literature. Had some fun too! The same evening I snapped this shot a local family invited me to a big lobster feed on shore. An honor and a privilege for sure

During the very windy, but less foggy day at Matinicus I took a long stroll on shore and explored the local airport

The International Air Terminal. Same make shed I noticed as the Emergency Room I spotted on my previous visit

Unsavory clouds encountered sailing away from Matinicus

Meeting up with my old partner-in-crime Ben Ellison on his boat Gizmo in Pulpit Harbor at North Haven

Sleek houseboat spotted in Perry Creek at Vinalhaven

Clare admires the moon rising over Perry Creek after a long hike ashore

Seen in Rockland Harbor: a very cool recently custom-built (in aluminum, no less) staysail schooner named Naviamo. Note the rig here mimics the rig on the famous Starling Burgess-designed schooner Nina, with a foremast so short the triatic stay between the masts is in line with the forestay. I don’t know about you, but I think this looks beautiful. (WaveTrain riders with long memories will recall that Nina went missing west of New Zealand in 2013)

Cobweb found aboard in the early morning at Jewell Island (I think this looks beautiful too!)

Also seen at Jewell: a rare wild pink pool swan

Lesley (left) and Tim aboard Lunacy

Your hapless narrator

Time to try out my new hookah rig!!!

Brian assists as I prepare to make bubbles around the boat at the Basin, up the New Meadows River

Lesley, Tim, Brian at Jewell Island (redux), where we stopped for lunch and a hike on the way back to Portland

Administrative note: Since switching the site to WordPress I’ve noticed there are no dates on individual posts anymore. There are dates for each post when they are listed in groups on landing pages, but the dates disappear when you open any given post. There’s probably some way to fix this, but meanwhile I’ve decided to lead each post with a dateline.

More random note: for those who followed the link on Tim’s Vineyard Vixen. She is still for sale! For contact info follow the link again.