LORD’S PRAYER LOG, Part 299:

Monday, August 18, 2003

Moored Sawyers Island, Boothbay, Maine

1150 Lord’s Prayer is underway, headed for Burnt Island with Bob, Dawn, Mark, David, Jennine, and Brittany aboard – along with Chris and me, of course. Our trip through the Townsend Gut is unimpeded, as the Southport Bridge is back in operation.

1245 At the North side of Burnt Island, we find a courtesy mooring with a 2-hour limit and there’s a float where we can land the dinghy. It’s nice to have the mooring available here, as this particular area is a designated cable area and anchoring within close proximity to the float is therefore prohibited. We ferry ashore in the dinghy with lunch supplies and have a picnic on the island. Afterward we hike around the island; this doesn’t take very long, as it is rather a small island. We get a fine view of Booth Bay and Boothbay Harbor from our elevated position on the island.

1440 We’re underway again for a short sail around the east side of Mouse Island, back through the Gut and then to Sawyers. The weather today is pure perfect. It is the kind of day and the kind of sail that we will probably all remember with relish for the rest of our days.

1550 We return alongside the float at Sawyers.

1800 Chris and I join my old squadron mate Ken Russell and his wife Tudy and we all go over to Dick and Eve Turner’s place on Ocean Point for dinner. Dick, like Ken and I is a former Naval Aviator. We all flew A-4 Skyhawks at one time or another from the decks of various aircraft carriers and we loved doing it. We have a grand evening together re-living our pasts. And we have great fun reminiscing about old friends and aviator adventures from a time when we were just a bit younger and seemingly indestructible.

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Moored Sawyers Island, Boothbay, Maine

            Chris and I make final preparations for getting underway, as we will be shoving off tomorrow morning for home in Maryland. We stock up on some fresh produce, some bread and milk. We do a last load of laundry. We put some stabilizer into the gas tank of the Mustang, top the tank with fuel, then put Mitzy into her mini storage facility to keep her out of the weather over the winter; finally we disconnect the positive terminal on the battery, so that it won’t lose its charge between now and the next time we pull her out.

            We deflate, roll up, and bag the dinghy; then we load it onto the foredeck and tie it down for our offshore trip home.

            We have lunch with Dave, Jennine, & Brittany and then Dave and I spend a good bit of time running around looking for packing material for Dave’s 12.5’ crew oar so that he can take It home to California on the plane with him. In the end Dave buys some string and tape and we get a huge roll of bubble wrap from the local kayak outfit. It turns out that new kayaks are shipped in these huge pieces of bubble wrap and the kayak outfit is happy to sell it to us for a mere $5.00 – that is probably the deal of the century! Anyway, we take the bubble wrap back to Sawyers, where Dave and Mark wrap the oar up real nice with a piece of cardboard as additional protection for the blade. Then we secure the oar to the roof of Dave’s rental car for the trip to the Portland Airport tomorrow.

            In the evening Bob & Dawn invite us all to join them at the yacht club for dinner. As is customary at the Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club and at many other clubs too, a cannon is fired at sunset and all present stand facing our nation’s flag as it is slowly lowered for the day.  This ceremony adds something special to the end of our day! After eating dinner we go into the club’s sail loft, where the record of previous years’ sailing races is placarded on the overhead. Here we find Dave’s name, from the days when he raced as a youngster here in the Boothbay Harbor one-design class. While we enjoy a cup of after-dinner coffee in the sail loft, Bob shows us a short clip that he downloaded today from the Internet, of David’s crew race at Henley in July. Afterward, when we all say goodnight, it is also adieu, since each of us is heading in different directions in the morning – Bob & Dawn to work, Mark preparing for a new job, Dave, Jennine, & Brittany to the airport in Portland to return home to California, and Chris and I getting underway to head for home first thing in the morning.

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Moored Sawyers Island, Boothbay, Maine

0548 Sunrise.

0549 Lord’s Prayer is underway. We’re starting for our home in Maryland today. The first leg of our journey will take us across the Gulf of Maine to the Cape Cod Canal and then on to Red Brook Harbor in Cataumet on the Cape. We expect to arrive there sometime tomorrow, as the planned leg is 143 nm in length. The entire voyage to reach home generally takes us about 6 days. That, of course will be affected by the nature of the winds during the trip. In any case, for the next 30 to 36 hours, it currently looks like we’ll probably be motoring into a light headwind. What we’ll see after that is still a bit early to guesstimate. At present the wind is calm and the sky is overcast with a just few small breaks.

0733 We hoist the mainsail; the wind has come up, approximately SW 6-8 kts, with just enough west in it to carry the main. We’re motorsailing but our heading is too close to the wind to carry the jib.

0843 The wind veers just a bit and strengthens to 12 kts; it is enough of a change in direction that we are able to haul out the jib and keep it full. Marvelous!

0900 We secure the engine.

0918 The wind dies; we restart the engine.

0948 A little songbird comes aboard to take a rest in our cockpit. Land is still in sight but it’s 9 nm to the north. We hope that the little birdie will find its way safely back to shore at some point. Meanwhile we let it flit about pretty much wherever it wants. But when it flies into the cabin and lands on a bunk cushion right in front of Onyx, that causes quite a stir! Onyx chases the bird out of the cabin and we have to stop him and then keep a careful eye on him for fear that he might get so excited that he chases the bird over the boat’s rail and winds up in the drink. Onyx is the only boat-cat we know at this point that hasn’t fallen overboard at one time or another and we would like to try to help him retain this particular status.

1009 After trying to keep one eye on the bird and the other on the cat for a while I give up the effort and put the companionway screens in so that we’re able to isolate the two critters from one another. If the presence of the bird has done one thing, it appears to have taken Onyx’s mind off the noise of the engine, as he has come out of the forward cabin and he seems right now to be unusually vigilant, compared to his usual sleepy behavior when the boat’s underway.

1530 A large fishing vessel passes across our bow, port to starboard, likely headed in for the day. It is the third boat that has passed by this afternoon. Chris adds: Tweedy-bird is still with us. I’ve been killing flies and giving them to him. I actually saw him catch a couple as well. And now, there’s a bowl of water in the cockpit for him. Looks like he’s going to relocate to Cape Cod!

1651 A large tanker crosses to port hull-up on the horizon – apparently outbound from Boston.

1920 After we have a light dinner – a garden salad and a glass of soda – we chop up a small amount of bread from a fresh loaf for our little birdie passenger and scatter the crumbs onto the cockpit floor. The birdie dives right into it wolfing the crumbs down like it hasn’t eaten in quite a spell. Afterward it perches on the water bowl and sips a bit of water.

1935 Sunset. The sky is about 40% clear of clouds and visibility is unlimited. The wind is on the nose SSW 10-12 kts. We’re making about 4.5 kts motoring with the mainsail up and flattened in.

1945 At 27 nm ENE of Cape Ann we have a strong digital cellular signal on our Verizon Wireless phone, which is connected to the charger and to an un-boosted external truck-antenna that’s mounted on the stern-bridge; we place several calls. This is the furthest out from shore we’ve ever completed a digital phone call. We’re using a Motorola T-720 phone, which seems to perform considerably better (both with and without the use of the external antenna) than the Motorola 120C that we were using at the beginning of the summer (before its antenna connector fitting broke off from the circuit board, thereby incapacitating the phone altogether).

2330 We put the engine at idle and coax Onyx to use his litter box for the first time since getting underway. Yea! Afterward he returns to the forward bunk and when he does, we push the engine back up to the 2500-rpm cruise power setting. There’s no sign of our little birdie passenger in the cockpit at the moment.

2347 Position: 42 35.814 N 70 10.029 W, or about 20 nm east of Cape Ann. There are lights from two vessels in view on the horizon – one forward and the other aft of the port beam. The planet Mars shines brilliantly in the sky over the port bow. Reportedly, due to its proximity to earth, Mars is as large and as bright as it will be during the lifetime of anyone living today.

            We anticipate arrival at Red Brook Harbor sometime tomorrow. At this point it is a bit too early to accurately estimate our ETA, as we cannot yet be sure whether we’ll reach the Cape Cod Canal in the morning before the current goes foul. If we do, we’ll arrive Red Brook Harbor around mid-day. If we fail to get to the Canal early enough to ride the fair tide through in the morning, we’ll most likely drop the anchor in Cape Cod Bay and wait for the turn of the tide in the afternoon; in which case, our arrival at Red Brook Harbor will be delayed until the early evening.