The Autumn Ritual Begins

Well, according to the meterologists among us, summer is over and fall has begun. We have returned to Virginia and have also begun the annual ritual of bottom painting and waxing of the hull. Additionally, we need to replace the upper bearing for the rudder stock, but that will be covered in another blog.

We enjoyed a great summer visiting Sam, Jeremy and the three grandsons. We also saw Sandra's sister Paula and brother Scott and family while up in NE. We were pretty busy with the grandsons, but did get out for a couple of hikes in the White Mountains. In August we rented a cabin for a week on a lake in central Maine. This trip from New Hampshire required us to stop in Freeport for a visit to L.L. Bean. We always look forward to this stop whether we get to Maine by boat or by car.

Looking down through  Crawford Notch

View from our cabin on Ebden Pond

After the week on a lake, we headed to the coast for a week of camping at Acadia National Park. We hadn't been back there in twenty years. A few things had changed, but the beauty and dramatic coastline remains unchanged.  While we've never taken the boat up there, we did a bit of investigation to determine good  harbors to sail in to.  For those who haven't been to Acadia recently, there is now a free bus service that covers most of the Park.  We could pick it up from several harbors and have great access to much of the Park.

The entrance to Somes Sound.

We could watch scenes like this for hours.

Classic Maine coast scene

But all that is behind us now as we change focus back to the preparations for our fall pilgrimage south. As I write this, we are staying with Jenn and Greg while we get the boat ready for relaunching in a few days. We'll manage to keep busy restocking the boat and preparing for the travel during the next few weeks. Since our boat insurance doesn't allow us south of Cape Hattaras prior to November 1^st, we won't leave until late in October. Aside from the fact that we intend to get to the Keys by early December, the rest of our plans are still tentative. We have a number of options for stopovers, but we'll address those as we get closer to the time. We like to keep plans fluid to take advantage of opportunities that may arise.

Certainly more to come, but that's all for now.

Carpe Diem

Captain Bob