After Boston, we continued north toward Portsmouth where our early morning cruising is directly into the rising sun, which makes it quite difficult to see and therefore dodge the lobster pots that get denser and denser as we head deeper into Maine. The good news is that we have not seen any fog yet – quite different than our last time here! (Maine is Foggy). We set up on anchor just outside a mooring field since David had been told we were too big to go on any of their moorings. The hold wasn’t great and needed to be reset before we found purchase, but we needed to join our work meetings, so we called it good. At around lunch time, David checked the weather and realized some wind was predicted for overnight, so I called the harbor master and told him we are 50′ (we normally say we are 52′; our boat model is officially a 48′, but the swimstep with the dinghy adds the extra length). He told me we would be able to go on their strongest mooring, 7000lbs of concrete! We moved the 100 yards and felt much better.
After work, Russ and Jax picked us up in their dingy and we headed in to Portsmouth for the evening. We hit some strong currents as we were entering the town harbor and the dinghy got swamped. I had managed to jump to my feet, but David was still sitting down and he got drenched.
In town we had dinner at a brewery while David’s butt dried out and then did a pirate-themed escape room.
The weather did indeed turn and we stayed for another day of rain and wind with evenings on the boat.
For the weekend we headed to Portland where we docked on the t-head just in front of InQuest.
On Saturday, we all took a scooter ride into town where we visited the farmer’s market, had brunch and played Hanabi in a brewery for the afternoon. Sadly we neglected to take photos of any of these activities!
On Saturday evening, Mark and Robin joined us in Portland to visit for the week. They arrived in the evening (after flying in to Boston and taking the Amtrak to Portland) just in time for dinner at a nearby brewery. Though we wanted to spend Sunday visiting in Portland with them, a bunch of wind was predicted starting on Monday for the next few days. Getting to Boothbay and Bar Harbor was a priority for Robin, who grew up visiting these places in the summers and wanted to return, so instead we set sail and made our way east directly to Boothbay to set up on a mooring there for a few days while we rode out the wind.