Oct. 6/24: Back in August, while crawling around for a while in Lunacy’s engine bay, on top of and behind the engine itself, I somehow injured my elbow. On my left arm, same side as the now mostly healed fractured wrist. I didn’t even notice at first. But after I got home to Portsmouth, my neighbor Steve immediately pointed it out—a huge bulbous bump protruding Popeye-cartoon-style from my elbow.
This turned out to be bursitis, a swollen, inflamed bursa, the fluid-filled sac cushioning my elbow joint. I only wish I had taken a photo of the mighty bump, as it was indeed impressive. Mine, fortunately, was not infected. There was no pain, and all it took was many, many days of wearing a compression sleeve to squash it back down into normalcy. During which time I spent a couple of weeks last month cruising the Maine coast with my dog Baxter.
I remembered this photo of Sir Francis Chichester, from his book Gipsy Moth Circles the World. He also got bursitis in his elbow, right side, on the home stretch crossing the North Atlantic at the end of his famous one-stop solo circumnavigation in 1967. Evidently, he didn’t have a compression sleeve and had to improvise. His injured elbow was also very painful and gave him much trouble as he completed his famous voyage.
I had always wondered what bursitis was, and now I knew. I thought of Sir Francis often while poking around the coast solo on Lunacy.
Solo, except for Baxter, of course.
As I’ve mentioned just recently, Baxter gets nervous on the boat when things get rough. Fortunately, conditions were settled during our cruise out of Portland, first to Orrs and Bailey Islands in Harpswell, to Popham Beach (again!), to Monhegan and then Matinicus, to Rockland, to Tenants Harbor, Round Pond (never been before), to Small Point Harbor, and finally back to Portland. All at a very pleasant pace in light to moderate wind involving little canine anxiety. Also very little motoring. Pretty ideal!
We spent the most time in Rockland, where I visited old friends and was joined for a couple of days by my wife, who drove up from Portsmouth. Another old friend I ran into was this gorgeous vessel, Lynx, a square topsail schooner built at Rockport Marine as an “interpretation” of a historic Baltimore clipper privateer from the War of 1812.
I saw her sailing into Rockland soon after I arrived, recognized her instantly, and a couple of days later saw she had been hauled out at the north end of the harbor for some work. I first met this fine lady in July 2001, the day before she was launched at Rockport Marine, and toured her with the man who commissioned her creation, Woodson “Woody” Woods. He was so proud of her and was looking forward to pitching her into mock battles, a particular passion of his. I wrote up the creation of Lynx for SAIL Magazine and later had an old friend of mine, John Geoghegan, attend a battle as supernumerary and also write an account for SAIL.
Woody, alas, shuffled off his coil in 2020, but Lynx lives on, home-ported in Portsmouth, NH (yay!), based in Portland, as the focal point of an active non-profit Tall Ships program.
I was also surprised when I saw this monster pull into the harbor.
A full-size cruise ship!!! It disgorged hoards passengers by launches directly into tour buses on shore (bound primarily for Camden, I gathered) and many others simply wandered around downtown Rockland looking for things to buy and eat. Later, after I left Rockland, I saw the Queen Mary 2 also paid a visit here last month.
Pardon me for saying so, but this seems a bit out of whack… like a real invasion.
Passenger population of the QM2 = 2,695
Population of Rockland, ME = 6,936
???
Soon after Lunacy’s cruise concluded (population = 2, including the dog), I had to jet off to Tampa, Florida, to serve as an Innovation Judge at the IBEX show. I’d never been to Tampa or IBEX before and had a great time. Hurricane Helene had just seriously ruffled up the upper west coast of Florida, but the show did go on!
You can read all about who won what right here!
