DECL Leg 6

The last day of August was also the last day of our nearly two month cruise of Canadian waters. It was a melancholy moment. We looked forward to our return to the US, but we knew we would miss the friendship, beauty, and amazing cruising we enjoyed for nearly two months. We departed St. Andrews, NB, on a foggy afternoon bound just a dozen or so miles to Eastport, ME, to clear customs. Made it through the 'Old Sow," a huge whirlpool that spawns many tiny ones (piglets) as the 25' tides create swirling currents in the St. Croix River just northeast of Eastport.

On arrival, we discovered that US Customs had closed its office at 1600, just 15 minutes before we tried to clear in, so we quarantined ourselves on the floating dock and awaited the reopening the next morning.

First thing on Wednesday, 9/1, it took all of about 15 minutes, including walking to and from, to clear back. Off we went. Timing is everything, and we didn't have it with us. As we slogged down a calm Grand Manan Strait between that island and Campobello, and further down the Maine coast, we were eating 1-2 knot foul current the whole way. We arrived in Lakeman Harbor off Roque Harbor in mid-afternoon and dropped the hook in the most idyllic, protected, and quiet anchorage of the whole trip. Warm weather and the early hour gave us a chance to just hang out on deck, read, and catch some ZZZs.

We left Thursday morning in glorious sunshine, calm winds, and seas that were flat with slow 4' rollers that were soothing and, in a way, a source of comfort. The only downer was when the generator crapped out about an hour out from an overheat condition. The next day, the trashed impeller in the raw water pump surrendered and a new one put in that solved the problem instantly. By 1400 we had arrived at one of our favorite places north of the Bahamas, Northeast Harbor on Mt. Desert Island. We spent the afternoon washing down the boat - the first time we had been at a dock to do so since leaving Halifax, two weeks prior. Got the genset impeller sent over, and repaired to 219, our favorite restaurant in Northeast Harbor.

Friday started the Labor Day Weekend. We fueled up a short distance away (gag, choke), and by lunchtime we were joined by Douglas and Linda who had driven from Manhattan for the duration. Gluttonous lobster, clam, and chowder lunch at the nearby funky Dockside Restaurant (Frankly, scallop, I don't give a clam). Back to the boat we left the dock and did a couple hour tour of Somes Sound and the Cranberry Islands. The wind was up so we returned to NE Harbor and picked up a mooring. As is their wont, gourmets D & L cooked up a fabulous dinner as Andrea and I did simply nothing but savor the evening.

On Saturday, it was still windy, but we got underway and headed up Eggemoggin Reach, rounded up into Penobscot Bay, and made it to Castine by lunchtime. Space was available at Dennett's Wharf, so we tied up, sat on it's dining deck, and repeated the prior day's glut of clams, oysters, chowders, fries, and other bad but good things. Castine is a great town and we enriched the local economy at it's old fashioned bookstore, old fashioned soda fountain, and some other old fashioned enterprises. Finally, we loaded up on live lobsters back at Dennett's - soon to be dinner.

Dennett's Wharf deserves a small sidebar. It claims the longest oyster bar in the world, and the pub atmosphere is genuine. The cathedral ceiling has become an attraction itself. Someone figured out that if you put a thumbtack through the middle of a dollar bill, back it with a 50¢ piece, and wrap the package with the rest of the bill, that you can flip the thing skyward where 9 out of 10 times the tack and bill are nailed to the ceiling and the half buck drops back, ready for another mission. The result is that the beams and ceiling is literally papered with cash. A neat trick, but one with a higher purpose. Two weeks after 9/11, the owners scraped the ceiling clean and delivered over $12,000 to a family of one of the victims. From the looks of things, they've got all that back and more.

Back aboard, we cruised the couple miles to the perfect harbor behind Holbrook I sland just south of Castine where we were crowded by a lone sloop in the distance. Plenty of time to read, nap, or whatever before it was time to gorge ourselves yet again. Another beautiful sunset and a great lobster dinner.

Sunday found

some of the crew afflicted by the night before; a slow start on a

beautiful morning. Freshly baked-on-board Blueberry Coffeecake by Chef Linda finally cured all that ailed us. Off we went on an easy jaunt to Merchant's Row, Douglas doing the navigating, piloting, and lobster pot dodging the whole way. We found the beautiful anchorage in the protection of McGlathery, Round, and Wreck Islands,

already refuge to half a dozen other cruisers. We dinked ashore for a brief

hike which turned into a two hour circumnavigation of McGlathery on the boulder beach that comprises its shoreline. Almost needed Douglas' GPS to find our way home. Then, you guessed it, yet another gourmet dinner, a mixed grill that was no smoke and mirrors although it threatened to be.

Labor Day was the third perfect day in a row despite threatening forecasts of stormy times in the next few days thanks to Hurricane Frances. It was no deterrence in Maine, though. As we readied to leave, a nearby sailboat departed and hailed us as it passed. It was Gary Jobson, ESPN's Sailing Guru, who recognized our Annapolis Yacht Club burgee and wanted to say hi to a fellow member.

Off we

went to Long Island (go figure, it is nearly perfectly round) where we picked

up a mooring and dinked ashore. It is the quintessential Maine lobstering village. Compact, small, and radiating a sense of hard work and fair play. We hiked across to some beaver ponds and after getting lost and refound on a couple of trails, we made our way back to town. We headed back

Northeast Harbor in the late afternoon where we grabbed a mooring, reflected on the fun and adventure of the weekend, to say nothing of the fine food that we continued to stuff into ourselves.

Tuesday morning, departing Douglas and Linda were quickly replaced by Jim and Nancy who were vacationing from Charlottesville, VA. With weather forecast to go down the tubes shortly, we took advantage of their car, drove the short distance to Acadia National Park, and hiked the "Bubble." Why we picked the nearly vertical route we don't know, but all survived. Having reached the summit, and after a short rest, Jim tried to finish the job the glacier didn't of moving the "Bubble" down into the valley 800' below. He didn't, either.

We had a great lunch in Bar Harbor before returning to the boat. The weather then turned sour, and there was no letup in sight, so Jim and Nancy decided to try to beat it back toward Virginia and into fair skies. The crew of Celebrate had no such option and found a couple days on the mooring waiting for the wind and rain to pass was relaxing, productive (the Chamber of Commerce offered high speed Internet access for $5/day), and a nice break from the days of pushing behind us and the days we saw that lay ahead.

Saturday the eleventh gave us fair weather and we took the opportunity to take off, heading in a couple days for Portland, ME. We found a neat anchorage behind Witch Island up John's Bay behind Christmas Cove. Sunday, 9/12 we had an easy cruise the rest of the way to Portland. It did not take long to clean things up and welcome our friends Peter and Karen aboard for some socializing, and then a short walk to have some dinner. It was good to see them again, and we promised to connect this winter in the Bahamas. On Monday, we rented a car and drove to Boston where, after seemingly circumnavigating most of the city a couple of times on its completely random "Big Dig," we found Andrea's Uncle Ken and Aunt Dorothy who were passing through on a cruise ship. We now understand why Charlie on the MTA never returned. Since we had a car, we were luckily able to get to LLBean in Freeport. Nice slacks, Chuck.

Hurricane Ivan got our attention, and knowing we might have to burn a couple days dodging his wake, we set out on Tuesday, 9/14, on an aggressive schedule and arrived to moor in Gloucester, MA that night. A delightful dinner ashore with our friends Nick and

Nichole and their 2yo son, John. The next morning we continued our socializing when we met Ken and Barb for breakfast. We'll catch them in tropic waters this winter, too. A pinhole leak in a fresh water line running to one of the heads had the ship's engineer (Chuck) dinking into a marine store to get stuff to plug it up until a proper fix could be made in Annapolis. That done, we left without really inhaling the atmosphere and ambience that Gloucester can offer. We made it to Scituate, MA, that evening and found a very comfortable mooring.

Thursday,

9/16, we got going early to catch a fair tide through the Cape Cod Canal. A ton of fog on the way and for a couple hours it was IFR. Happily, visibility lifted as we reached the canal and we surfed through it in 45 minutes. Speed is limited to 10mph and we hit that easily at what is normally idle speed. At our normal cruise rpms we would have added 4 knots! By 1630 we were moored in Cuttyhunk where we dinked ashore and enjoyed hiking all over this quaint and quiet island at the mouth of Buzzards Bay.

Our plans to head for Block Island were changed Friday morning when it became clear that Ivan planned to ruin a lot of people's next few days, so we headed off to Mystic, CT. We bypassed a planned visit to Portsmouth, RI, to see our Selene friends there because it was the weekend of the Newport Boat Show and everyone was up to their ears in that madness.

Mystic became our home for three nights, two of them wet and windy as forecast. The YMCA

nearby gave us a place to work off some of the last few week's bad behavior. Roger drove down Saturday and visited for the night. The newlywed is thriving. Marcie had dorm duty at her school and couldn't join. They might join us in the tropics this winter, too! Weather broke (so did the rest room door - ask Andrea) later Sunday in time for the town's 350th birthday celebration parade. An All-American scene with every civic group, interest group, municipal department, scout troop, school band, and random others having as good a time marching as the crowds had watching.

By Monday morning, 9/20, we set out to head down Long Island sound a bit. To our delight, it was flat calm, and since Hurricane Jeanne was beginning to make her move we decided to invest a few extra hours and do the whole nine yards. It meant we missed a chance to visit Pat in Northport, but the thought of being caught by the storm in a few days drove us to make the go-for-it decision. We arrived in Manhasset Bay on the north shore of Long Island about 15 miles from Manhattan. The town water taxi got us ashore and immediately we knew Port Washington was a neat place. Happy hour at Louie's found us gulping a dozen raw oysters for $3.

We knew ahead of time that Tuesday would be ugly traveling for two reasons: The East River was scheduled to close from 8am to 5pm because it passes the United Nations where President W was scheduled to speak that day. A brief window of opening was scheduled around 1130, but at that time the infamous currents around Hell Gate would be throwing 4-5 knots of water at us and we questioned if we could get through before the window (or jail cell door) slammed shut. So, the alarm was set for 0515 and at 0545 in the dark we took off. In no time we caught the favorable tide and slid by Kings Point, LaGuardia, Riker's Island, and through Hell Gate (14kts). We rounded Manhattan's battery, passed Lady Liberty, and cleared the Verazanno Bridge by 0900. We had planned to anchor behind Sandy Hook and take off down the Jersey coast the next morning. As the day before, it was a perfect morning for cruising and what the heck, let's try. So we headed out to sea and pointed south. Eight smooth-cruise hours later we were snug at Kammerman's Marina in Atlantic City! We clicked over the 8.000 mile mark on our boat-to-date odometer and put in a total of 111 miles that day.

Cape May was our easy destination 9/22 and we anchored just off the Coast Guard Station for two days.

Plenty of dink access to the shore, perfect weather, and a good chance to relax. We continued to keep our eye on the storms a thousand miles to our south, though. It was a perfect couple of days, but we had to move on and did early on the morning of the 25th. Delaware Bay has never been a favorite. We could not avoid the tide's own schedule so it was a slow slog to the C&D Canal. We lost at least a knot the whole way. The canal wasn't any better, but as the day was ending we poked our way into Veazy Cove off the Bohemia River and were on the Chesapeake side of things.

Saturday we got going mid-morning. The weather was great, but the water was not. There had been a major release of the Conowingo dam a day before. Every tree branch, picnic t

able, log, stump, telephone pole, railroad tie, and junked Volkswagen

that had been delivered to it by the Susquehanna River all summer was emancipated to create the ultimate slalom course for boaters in the Chesapeake. Fortunately, we only had to play dodgem a couple hours and snaked our way into Fairlee Creek. Shortly, Thad and Beth arrived on Murmaid, and we rafted for the night. Dink tours of the creek, drink tours of Jellyfish Joel's tiki bar, and the oft repeated stories of Phi Gamma Delta times at Lehigh filled all the time we had.

Sunday, 9/27 would see us "close the loop." The familiar waters of the Chesapeake, passing Rock Hall, the Bay Bridge, and approaching Annapolis sent mixed feelings. I wished it weren't so seemingly anticlimatic, but it was. We love Annapolis, and it could not be better than to be able to be the guests of Bill and Sandy at their dock on Spa Creek. So we arrived ready to recharge, replenish, renew friendships, attend to things - and we will.

What a great odyssey It will take some time to reflect on what a great life adventure it has been. When we can get our act together on this, we'll try to share it.. Do it if you can.