Log of Sunday, June 15, 2008

Sunday, June 15. Overcast cool & damper than last few days. Wind variable around SE. A bit gusty.

Awoke in Pulpit; the morning was a bit raw and bleak. We were headed back to Rockland to put Betsy and Mary ashore and to meet up with Paul, who was joining up for the delivery portion of our adventure. We did what we could to enjoy the morning, since once we were headed back we would be engaged with the mechanics of the changeover.

Tom & Mary had dinghy tour of harbor after leisurely breakfast.

11:00 Underway after washing endless mud off anchor rode heading for Rockland crew change. Motoring, light wind. Spotty rain.

I don't know if it is our cleanliness or the Pulpit Harbor mud which has improved, but we have been spending a lot of time getting the anchor clean and put away on our recent visits.

16:20 Steady rain most of the afternoon. Paul arrived around 13:30, Mary and Betsy left shortly afterward. The boat re-provisioned, we left for False Whitehead, motoring. Overcast, but rain stopped around 15:00. Maybe to Tenants Harbor.

Paul Cillo had driven over from his home in Vermont to meet us (Mary was going to take his car to Mass. for him), we again used the big, well maintained, town landing with its sizable parking lot for our changeover. Betsy ran up to the grocery store, we got some more ice, watered and generally set things to rights for the next leg.

The day continued to be wet and gusty, with only moderate visibility and a forecast of more of the same. Our schedule called for us to be in Boothbay first thing Tuesday morning to pick Ryck up, which suggested a fairly full travel day ahead on Monday. We would be much better off on the morrow if we made some progress in the right direction before settling in for the night. As a result, I really wanted to get off the dock and out to the other end of the Muscle Ridges if possible. The note in the log about perhaps getting to Tenants Harbor was mostly wishful thinking, but reflected my anxiety about the chance of the morning being socked in.

Long days in June allow for making good progress, but if the weather is wet and foggy, the visibility only scales up for a bit in the middle of the day and so pressing on becomes difficult and anxious work. We don't have Radar, but I am quite confident about traveling safely with careful navigation and a good lookout in even quite foggy weather. But it often requires taking longer routes and traveling slowly, and it is tiring. And getting too ambitious toward nightfall can lead to trouble--the prospect of dark and thick 'o fog is absolutely no fun at all.

In the event, we got to the anchorage we often use behind Sprucehead I. and it was obviously time to stop, what with the late hour and the visibility decreasing.

1845 - Anchor down in False Whitehead. Rum all 'round & the prospect of (chicken) Fusion in the immediate future.

We are accumulating a list of places, many of them quite lovely, which are close to the routes we travel to use as fair weather overnight stops. False Whitehead Harbor is one of these. We have yet to go ashore there, since we are always eager to be on our way. But it does look as thought it would be a lovely spot for a ramble if we were more patient.

The timing was pretty good, the rain returned soon after the hook was down. The rum was a welcome restorative, but the chicken fusion turned out to be a disappointment. Turns out there is a limit to how many ingredients can be left out of a recipe without compromising the results. In this case, a chicken and asparagus stir fry without either chicken or asparagus or even soy is rather flat.

Set the alarm for 0600 and turned in, hoping for the best on the weather.