Time to Skedaddle...

Time has come to leave the US. Talk about timing, huh? The election results make it both easier and harder. Easier as we feel lucky to be able to escape the aftermath of this historic election, and avoid drowning in the surge of US applications to NZ. Harder because we leave behind friends and family who will deal with the aftermath.  When we visited New Zealand last year, right after the Paris massacre, we got so much sympathy from kiwis. This time, I am not sure if we’ll get sympathy or plain WTF looks.

Bill and I were prepared to travel separately, should the US citizenship process keep me in Denver longer than expected but I received notice to show up for fingerprints the day before Bill’s flight so we are getting outta here together on Armistice Day. Everything fits in two checked bags and two carryons, including camping and hiking gear, which have been properly cleaned to pass the “sediment” inspection upon landing in Auckland. 

We’ll spend the weekend in California to hug our daughter Shelby and son-in-law David goodbye, and pet their newly adopted dog Lucy.  

We’ll be staying in an Airbnb for the first 2 weeks with a mission to locate a more permanent apartment by Dec 1 so we can settle rather earlier than later. 

Bill migrated his phone to Google Fi, the new wireless service from Google, to keep his current number, while I’ll do the usual SIM card swapping, picking up a NZ phone number along the way. 

Let the kiwi blogging start!

Drawing Doors

As life progresses, we might feel like swirling down a funnel with less-and-less room to move about, fewer-and-fewer choices left, freedom lost forever: hard on free spirited souls. Some of the narrowing tumble comes from bodies no longer willing, some from choices previously made, some from minds set in their habits. Yet, the progression of life continues to have points of inflection. Divide by zero. Trajectory undefined. Our rigid, fearful wills usually skip over these discontinuities and continue on more-or-less as before, but if we pay attention we have a chance, at these times, to take a completely different path. Even better, with some effort and a little luck we can create these chances for ourselves by drawing doors.

Imagine sitting in a room. A nice room. Life’s good. Excellent companionship. Great food (especially the free lunches at Google) and drink. No worries. You notice a marker on the table and begin to wonder. Not knowing exactly what the door will look like, you start to draw one upon the wall, improvising. You have no idea how to make it real. No idea what’s on the other side. No idea if you will walk through. You just want the freedom to choose. A choice. An option in life. You keep at it patiently, adding hinges. One morning, as you are sketching some molding detail, you hear a voice on the other side, “Hey mate, if you’d just put a door knob opposite the hinges maybe we can get this thing open.” Accented English. Not really British. Not quite Australian. Oh bloody hell, it’s a Kiwi! What luck!

This post is our story of drawing a door to take us to New Zealand. I think of our friends Theron and Sarah who spent two years drawing their door to Romania, and then two years living there with the Peace Corp. Perhaps our story is comparatively small potatoes, but it’s the big pumpkin to us, particularly because we’ll be continents away from our children and our love child Alizée. As I did with Theron and Sarah, I take the liberty of using real people and real names in our story. They all read (if they so choose) these posts, so they can bloody well speak up and defend themselves if needed.

When we were out sailing talking with tired circumnavigators, New Zealand always stood out as a special place. By-and-large most would just as soon drop the anchor there for the last time and call it good. Like many people, particularly sailors, we began to have a budding fascination with a land we had never seen.

Kiwis understand boats and understand sailing (sheep too, apparently). A goodly part of Alizée came from New Zealand. In particular, a neat piece of kit (I’m working on my kiwi here. ‘kit’ means ‘gear’.), the XB-8000 from Auckland based Vesper Marine sits behind Alizée’s instrument panel. In a nutshell, and at its most basic, this little blue box sends and receives signals from everyone else’s little blue boxes so we don’t bump into each other out there on the high seas or, more likely, play bumper cars in a foggy harbor. Bump sounds a little too symmetrical. Being run over by a freighter is hardly a symmetrical experience. At any rate, these little blue boxes are great things and save lives. Anyone who knows me knows I root for the little guy. Vesper Marine is the little guy taking on the marine electronics giants and winning because Vesper makes a superior product, plain and simple.

Carl. All right ladies, move away.
He's married with a little boy, Cooper.

Problem was the optional companion app for the XB-8000 ran only on the iPhone. At the time I was working for Google in the Android division. iPhone? Really? I figured I could quickly write an Android app to do what I needed if I just had access to the XB-8000 API. I wrote an email to Vesper with an offer; share the API with me and I’ll give you the Android app when I’m done. Perhaps they didn’t believe me or perhaps they doubted my sincerity. Either way, it was crickets. I did something I do well when so moved; I was annoying. Finally, Jeff passed me over to Carl for babysitting and a non-disclosure followed shortly thereafter. I don’t know (yet, I owe Carl some beer over which I hope he will divulge all history on the other side of the door) whether Carl was pumped or annoyed at having yet another project dumped on his already full plate. I, however, was definitely pumped because I could telnet and http to this thing over Wifi. Not only that, I could connect to their test unit and watch the traffic in Auckland harbor while freezing my cheeks off in Boulder. I mean how cool (cold) is that? My inner geek slipped its leash and I felt ten years younger. I mean ‘HELO’! (Everyone that gets that one can have a free beer next time I am in their presence. In a bar. After noon. Jim H., I know you know and I already owe you one, so back off.)

As these things tend to do, the simple project ballooned completely out of proportion to the original intent and the little Android app became a real app, in many ways exceeding the capabilities of the Vesper iPhone app. Vesper sent me hardware. I sent Carl a sweet Nexus phone to wean him off that evil iPhone. Mostly I worked Sunday nights, Vesper time. Cath grumbled, "When are you coming to bed?" In addition to my day job at Google, I was building Alizée, so moonlight coding hours were hard to come by. That was OK though because I wasn’t getting paid for it anyway, though I did received some nice NZ wine and single malt at Christmas. Still, this was getting a wee too close to real.

During a catchup hangout with Carl, I said, offhandedly, “Hey Carl. You should hire me. Like in New Zealand.” I really do need to get more cognition in prior to vocalization. At that time I knew, and Google knew, I wouldn’t be coming back after our summer with Alizée. NZ was just a passing thought. Not really sure where it came from. “Yeah, alright mate.” Typical Carl understatement. Really? Hmmm. Some things, given nudge, develop a momentum all their own from forces yet undiscovered. I started looking at immigration information. Wow, too old to ever be a citizen, but one year left for permanent residency. Last chance. Now or never. Time to start drawing doors post haste.

Of course, I wasn’t alone here. I told Cath these going ons, but not with a great deal of intent because there wasn’t a great deal of intent at the time, largely because it was impossible to imagine that something like this could actually come to pass. I was just innocently (really) sketching doors on a wall without knowing where one might lead. I couldn’t imagine one might turn into a real door. Still, I kept at it and started to fill in form, after form, after form and my browsing history became dominated by all things ‘immigration.govt.nz’.

The French may have invented bureaucracy, but NZ immigration perfected it. Somewhere along the line I learned to handle bureaucracy. It’s all about patience, persistence, and staying emotionally detached. Don’t get mad. Focus on what you need to achieve and just do it, whether or not it makes any sense at all. For NZ you must apply to be invited to apply for residency. The first application (for an invitation to apply) is point based. You get points for things like advanced degrees and youth. At my age, I got 0 points in the youth column. Cath got 1. Still, we’re well educated cookies in high demand fields and scored well if you look at just the bottom line. But, you have to wait for the fortnight lottery drawing and then the actual invitation to apply. After months of work, I received a cordial invitation to apply for residency under the skilled migrant category because we’re so, well, so skilled.

You would think we were halfway there, but, truly, not even close. The first part of the second application was amassing mounds of documentation to prove all the assertions we made in the first application for those precious points. This proved tricky. We said we had graduate degrees, but by NZ rules you don’t have a degree if you don’t have the paper thing: a diploma. Kinda like you don’t exist if you don’t have a birth certificate despite the fact that you’re standing right there. Case Western, where we went to grad school, saves trees and doesn’t issue paper diplomas. And then there’s the issue of Cath’s Frenchiness, which tripled her documentation. Take for example, police records, needed to prove ourselves of ‘good character’. (NZ seems sensitive about good character. I think it’s a historical NZ vs. the Aussie penal colony thing. I might be wrong.) We needed records from the FBI and the French equivalent. AND we need a translation of the French.

Definitely of good character.

I did the first translations of birth certificate, police records, ... I thought they were pretty good myself. Rejected. The translations must be on letterhead from an official translator recognized by NZ. Translations are a racket it turns out. Then we had the whopper. NZ is also big on ‘of good health’ as well. They insisted on a full medical, with chest x-rays, all by a NZ approved medical facility. You can imagine the price gouging going on there. I can’t even bear to write the number. This was, however, a turning point in the process. The door became real. “Hey honey, we have back-to-back appointments for chest x-rays tomorrow.” “Ah, what?” “You remember, for the New Zealand thing.” “Oh yeah, OK.” “Wait, what?” It was becoming tangible and unsettling. We avoided talking about whether we would open the door, much less walk through it. I focused on making the door real and let it go at that, too uncomfortable to go further.

Hey, now we're demi-kiwis!

We launched Alizée in June and were in the throws of the Wooden Boat Festival when the news arrived: we had been granted residency in New Zealand. Wahoo! Kiwi on the other side of the door, “Hey guys, when are you coming?” Still, we vowed to stay away from the topic and keep our minds on the summer cruising up to and around Maine. Pondering the future, particularly out loud, was too risky and a betrayal of our time with Alizée. We needed our passports to traverse Canada, but would send them to NZ immigration for the residency stamps when we returned to Colorado in September. Just one more step along the path, scary thoughts held safely at bay.

Back in Colorado, what are we doing? Are we walking through this door or not. Perhaps more than Cath, who had already moved continents once, I find the prospect equally exciting and scary. It’s always a bit of a reentry to come home after months out sailing. So many people (and this is just Boulder), so many cars moving about, such a hurry. This time it is different, or perhaps it only seems different because we needed it to be so, but it feels less like home. The entitled kids, the wealth, the first world politics. Is this Colorado or California? It’s becoming hard to tell the difference. For us, trying to live an increasingly modest existence seems hard to do here. Besides, we owe it to all those who would die for the chance. We take a ‘no fear’ vow and start preparing for the plunge.

This door is real. This door is open. We will walk through it. At least we will once we have our lives down to two suitcases each. Aside from my tools, which aren’t going right away, we don’t own that much and we hope to own even less. Living on a boat will teach you how little you need. Each possession we sell, give away, or otherwise dispossess gains us an increment in freedom, an increment in modesty. The end result is like a cleansing deep breath. It feels good. We feel freer. We don’t know how this journey will turn out. Somehow it doesn’t appear important. We’ve heard both good and bad stories. Don’t ask what we’ll do next summer with Alizée or whether we’ll sail her to NZ. Don’t ask when and how we’ll next see our families. We have no idea. Those questions are matters of future doors not yet drawn upon the wall.

Reentry Update: What Now?

We have been slowly readjusting to Colorado, savoring the gorgeous fall weather, reconnecting with friends and deliberately not rushing back into the work life. The planner in the family (yours truly) has been plan-less for once. A bit unnerving yet totally liberating.

We posted all the photos we took over the summer, then we asked ourselves the question many have asked us: what now?

When you live on a boat for months, you realize how little you actually need. So every time we come back from a sailing adventure, we have the urge to clean and declutter. After our 2007 sailing trip, we even had a case of Tom Hanks's wife in Apollo 13 "I can't deal with cleaning, let's sell the house", and went as far as selling the darn thing. Not this time! While on Alizée, I read The Happiness Project, a fun read, highly recommended for women (for its great tips on relationships). The author enjoys decluttering her life and even the lives of others. I was looking forward putting her decluttering techniques to the test: first what you want to get rid of, then what you are keeping but really don't need, like 4 pairs of black pants, and that pretty sweatshirt I never wore - maybe it was not pretty after all. We have done more cleaning the past 2 weeks than in the past 9 years we lived in the house. As a working mother, I read once "the kids won't remember how clean the house was. They'll remember how unavailable you were because you were always cleaning". That was the day I stopped cleaning the house.

As we drove back from Maine, as the fog lifted, something became very clear: our kids are fully emancipated with their own job, place, bank account, credit card, cell phone plan, and even their own sweetheart. Our responsibility to raise responsible young adults has come to an end and we are now entering the third chapter of our lives: post-kids and pre-grandkids. With that realization, we vowed to make the best of that time. A recent event is helping pick a direction....

Over the summer, we received notification that we had been granted New Zealand residency. Bill had made it a goal to get NZ residency before turning 56, the age after which we could never be more than tourists in New Zealand, restricted to 3 month stays. Every circumnavigating sailor we met picked NZ as the place they wished they could have stayed longer, and that was enough for him to set that challenge for himself. I have to say it was a bit amusing to see him go through the application process, until I had to go along with him for a medical appointment. Ugh. I got lumped into the process when the NZ government saw the mate had a long-standing wife and they rightfully assumed I would be unlikely to stay behind. "Don't mess with the wrath of Cath" as Bill would say!

Who in their wildest dream could turn down the opportunity to go experience the land of hobbits and kiwis? We kept looking for a reason why we should not do this, then we stopped looking and started planning. We have learned a ton the past two weeks about requirements to rent a house in Boulder, US naturalization for the frog in the house (yours truly is still a French citizen), NZ housing options and quirkiness (rent looks cheap until you learn they are quoted by the week!), and how to dispose of all kinds of stuff. Anyone in need to recycle old lightbulbs and batteries? contact me!

We are marching through the steps to get outta here in November. I never liked history in school so having to learn about the US constitution was a deterrent all those years. But, after 30 years on a permanent resident green card, I finally applied for the US citizenship so I don't run the risk of having US entry denied would we find ourselves staying abroad longer than 6 months. We decluttered, cleaned (the whole 9 years worth of cleaning) and put our house for rent. Probably the hardest part is finding a nurturing home for our aging cat. The Humane Society says that Boulder residents favor adopting senior cats but so far no luck. Know of anyone who could fall for our 17 yr old sweetie? My agilist friends will appreciate that we are using a Trello board to track our relocation progress and not get overwhelmed by the litany of details - medical insurance, cells plans, cars, housing, medical checkups, etc... Oh and I gotta find a job when I get there so we have enough MULA to travel in the dream land.

After living a quarter of a century in France, then a quarter of a century in America, it seems fitting to move to a third continent. I just hope I don't bring bad karma to NZ. France was great when I was there and it went to pot over the years. The US was great 30 years ago when I got here. This year's presidential election would be enough to make me relocate anywhere, so timing feels about right to leave. Auckland, here we come!

Reflections on Maine

After Alizée was hauled out, we went to visit the Brooklin Boat Yard (BBY), the mecca for wooden boat building, for a private tour of their operations. Amazing work, specializing in modern wood construction, a specific kind of cold molded construction combined with key carbon fiber components. Bill never passes a chance to inventory the tools the pros use. One worker was using a router and plywood template to cut a partial bulkhead, just like we did for Alizée. Of course we weren't cutting 3/4" solid carbon fiber plate! Nonetheless he (ab)used our favorite ole bare bones Porter Cable Router - the router that never dies. Across the shop I picked up the familiar whine of the 3 1/3" Makita power plane, another tool found in virtually every boat shop. We discussed the hit-or-miss quality of the Chinese importer Grizzly: great thickness planer, not so much the joiner.

Lifting keel box on the
91 footer

They have two very classy projects in process, a 90' and a 60'. BBY was started by Joel White, E.B. White's son: the E.B. White, an avid sailor, who wrote Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and the Elements of Style. When Joel passed, his son Steve took over the yard and also co-owns the Belfast Front Street Shipyard where Alizée is spending the winter. Bob Stephens, who went sailing with us to evaluate Alizée's temperament, took over the lead designer role at BBY until branching out on his own in Belfast. His wife works at the Wooden Boat School just down the street from the BBY. The Brooklin Boat Yard, Rockport Marine, and the Front Street Shipyard have overlapping ownership and cooperative projects: all with the undercurrent of wooden boats, whether traditional or contemporary. For example, the Spirit of Bermuda was built by Rockport Marine and was hauled by Front Street Shipyard (shortly before Alizée) for maintenance and inspection work. Wooden boats are a small world within a small world up here.

Like many places we visited on the way, from Lie Nielsen Tools to Shawn & Tenney oars, the BBY looks like a small operation yet employs 60 people. They prefer Maine natives over graduates from renown nautical schools like the Webb Institute on Long Island, NY, because the graduates don't fare well in the Maine winter :) I believe the phrase "cold and lonely" was used. Talking with locals at the airbnbs where we stayed, we learned that Maine winter is actually a special time for them. While we think of harsh Maine winters, locals cherish that time as their social time. They even have an annual Winterfest in Stonington to celebrate the season in January. Brrrr.....

Stonington harbor

We spent three land days visiting Deer Isle, the peninsula connected to the mainland via the impressive Eggemoggin suspension bridge, spanning the Eggemoggin Reach. Always a thrill, we have sailed under her several times while enjoying The Reach. Around the corner from the Eggemoggin Reach is Stonington: lobster capital of the lobster region.

Barred Island Trail (low tide only)

From our reading, lobstermen are not exactly welcoming of cruisers, such as us, in the area, so we stayed away while aboard Alizée. Now cleverly disguised in our truck (ALL lobstermen drive trucks, though I suppose the Colorado plates were a give away), we wanted to visit Stonington and see just who has those lime green buoys with the white tops: we like him because we always see the bloody things. Stonington also happens to be a kayaker's dream land with many small and interesting islands close by. We did not get to kayak this time around but definitely adding it to next year's todo list.

Old Settlement granite quarry

Deer Isle also has several preserves maintained by the Maine Heritage Trust, which works with owners and businesses to create nice hiking trails. One of those trails, in the Barred Island Preserve, lets you to walk on water, so to speak, traversing to the island at low tide. Another one in the Old Settlement Quarry Preserve, goes through an old granite quarry. Granite quarrying, along with lobstering, was a big part of the Deer Isle revenue stream. John F. Kennedy's grave at the Arlington National Cemetery was made from Deer Isle granite, as are many US monuments.

We could see the season ending, making it a bit more palatable to return home. Several places had already closed for the season and we got stuck eating at the one-and-only restaurant that stays open year around. We would not recommend it and will keep its name hidden to not cause more damage. Many businesses close after Labor Day, often because their seasonal employees return to school. While there are few places to eat left open, we saw several of them closing for good after this season.

The Bow House

With one of our airbnb hosts, we caught the last big schooner event of the season: the Schooner Sail In at the Wooden Boat School. Quite something to see all these beautiful schooners, many of whom we've sailed or anchor next to, gathered together in the harbor for live music and steamed mussels. Especially touching was the recitation of E.B. White's prose about sailing and the sea, while his last boat sat visible on her mooring in the harbor. (If you read that piece, you'll recognize many of the places we have talked about in our blog.)

Our last night on Deer Isle was at a home-built cabin with a nautical flair - the Bow House airbnb, recommended by our friend Barry. It was cool to see another dreamer build something so quaint and sharing it with others.

Thick morning fog

As we started our trek back to Boulder, we had absolutely no cell service the entire way from Deer Isle to the Canadian border (maybe ATT does not recognize Northern Maine, or DownEast as they call it?) and the morning fog on land was a nice wink to the few foggy days we had on Alizée.

After 37 hours of driving, stopping in Montreal, Lansing, and Omaha, we are back in Colorado, where everything feels bigger, noisier and busier. If there is one word that sums up Maine for us, it is "peaceful" and "quiet", ok that's 2 words. People don't speak loudly, restaurants don't have loud music, the only loud thing is lobster boats! Take a listen. We have cherished our time in Maine and can't wait to be back next summer when Alizée wakes up from her hibernation. Our heads are spinning from the re-entry right now. More later on what comes next for the valiant crew of the good sailing vessel Alizée :)

Bonne Nuit Alizée

Alizée in her winter home

Do sailboats dream when they sleep for the winter? Do they remember the patter of feet on their decks, the feel of a breeze, the damp of the fog? I hope so. It would only be fair that we have given Alizée something for the summer she has given us. She is all nestled into her spot next to a Valiant 40 for company during the long winter ahead. We are continuing for a few days more in Maine to a place or two that we missed, for one reason or another, by boat.

Cath insists on a step-by-step run down of Alizée's haul out, for those interested in the process. I will say, the yard (Front Street Shipyard) has been absolutely top notch and professional. They handle everything from picnic boats to sea going tugs, including some of the massive schooners sailing these parts and beyond. I will oblige my darling wife, but if you know the drill, you can skip to the next post :)

and the mast

Off loading the boom ...

Before hauling out, we strip the rig (sails, boom, mast) from the boat. There's a special dock, the rigging pen, with a well padded crane. Our lead rigger is Kyle. Together Kyle, Cath, and I strip and fold sail on the dock. As Cath heads off for that one last load of laundry, a few more riggers show up and we off load the boom in short order.

After rigging a sling to the mast and some tag lines, we pull six pins and lift up the mast. The tide was ebbing fast while we were working, so the crane had to lower the mast every few minutes as the boat went lower with the tide, to keep the boat from hanging from the mast and crane!

The spar shed

Though we can store the boom and mast on the trailer, the yard prefers to keep them in the spar shed next to the rigging pen. Since it was for their convenience, they comped the charge. Yea! We like these guys. Other professional "features" we have not seen at other yards include padded bags they slip over the turnbuckles and furler hardware to avoid scratches. The equipment itself was top notch, quite a few grades above the yard in Mystic where we launched. It was also fun to talk to Kyle about the strategies for pulling those huge raked schooner masts weighing thousands of pounds (hint, you can't pull them straight up).

Hauling out

Power washing off the slime

Once freed of her rig, Alizée had to be moved to the travel lift bay for hauling. No owner driving allowed, so I went along more for the ride. Turns out the appointed captain has a sister at Naropa in Boulder. Go figure.

With no way off the boat, we just ride up on Alizée and chat about the very expensive Gunboat catamaran in the yard. Seems these boats have a real problem with waterlogged hulls (balsa cored) and being one of the few boat yards with a travel lift wide enough to lift them out of the water Front Street has a side business repairing Gunboats.

Once out of the water, there are a few quick items to take care of, primarily flushing the engine with antifreeze and washing off a season of slime from the bottom. I walk around with the service manager looking for items in need of a fix, such as a hairline crack in the keel to hull fairing and the notch in the keel fairing from a lobster pot warp sawing across the keel. The latter led to a horror story of a lobster pot warp cutting into a steel keel like ours, flooding it. Nightmare repair.

Alizée spent the night on display for everyone walking down the Belfast harbor walk, which runs right through the ship yard next to the travel lift bays. In this era of hyper safety, it is amazing to see these huge travel lifts sometimes carrying boats weighing hundreds of tons roll across a public walkway. Only the watchfulness of the operator and the common sense of the walkers not to put toes under an eight foot tire carrying an ocean tug, ensure the safety of the proceedings. In return the shipyard is tightly integrated, in a good way, with the community and the public can view the hauling of some of the worlds most incredible boats, like Alizée :) Good for all and great fun.

Hitching up, or trying to ...

Bright and early (7:30AM) we have an appointment with the service manager for a few last minute things before moving Alizée into her offsite storage. They have a Freightliner to move her the few miles to storage, but there's a hitch, literally, in the giddy-up. Alizée's trailer is low slung, I mean just inches above the road way, to get her low enough for bridge clearance. The Freightliner can't get low enough to hitch up. Hmmm. Fortunately, the Freightliner and our RAM pickup (which we used to haul Alizée) have the same receiver size so we use the hitch from our pickup. Could be lower, but good enough for a short distance.

Alizée on parade!

A little worried about ground clearance for the hill climb out the north exit of the yard, they take Alizée around south and up Main Street in Belfast, followed by a chase truck to watch for power cables, branches, and such. I suspect the boom crutch snatched at a few because there were some twigs and leaves in the cockpit when we went to say goodbye in her shed! Alizée has the street to herself with a sidewalk of onlookers. A parade all to herself! I think she may have blushed, modest girl that she is.

Last sail

Wispy morning fog in the
Isle Au Haut thorofare

We left IAH (Isle Au Haut, not Dullus airport) Wednesday to begin our journey back to Belfast for the weekend. No sooner had we made it into Penobscot Bay when the fog rolled back in. Again. It has been foggier than we have seen so far even though the fog should be thinning out in September.

Excitement in the fog: porpoises!

We are getting used to fog, fact of life sailing up here like the lobster pots, but enjoyed arriving at Winter Harbor where it opened up to sun and warmth enough to jump in one last time (67F water temperature) - well I chickened out but the captain enjoyed scrubbing Alizée's waterline in the balmy water. We were the only boat in this beautiful harbor with just the seals for company - crazy sauce.

Our next leg to Pulpit Harbor, a favorite, on North Haven was the foggiest yet. We entered the Fox Islands Thorofare with 1/10 mile visibility. By the time we reached the village of North Haven, it looked like a wall of fog. Fog thicker than fog. The fog within the fog. Since there was no scenery to enjoy beyond the chartplotter, we eaves dropped on the working VHF (radio) channel schooners use. Their captains were a riot to listen to. "We are sooo fog sick around here" and "The fog is so thick we have the guests wearing bells so we don't loose them".  Nothing for it but to drop the hook and have lunch! By the time the dishes were done, it lifted just enough to continue on; luckily with only few lobster pots to dodge and even some porpoises waving cheering us on. Porpoises are not as playful as dolphins, so they don't come close to our bow to swim along but we like them, and the puppy-face harbor seals just as much.

In the right light, fog can be pretty

Only lobster boats were working in that pea soup, bless their hearts. We made it to Pulpit Harbor where we must have been the only boat anchored, all others were on private moorings: clearly indicating the pleasure boats season is coming to an end. Friday morning the sun finally came back after the morning fog gave us some awesome harbor scenes.

Sun and wind for our last sail

Friday was special as it was our last day sailing for the season. To kick off, we met Alison Langley, a local marine photographer (no Shelby not Alison Langley your classmate!) in the morning at Pulpit. Alison did a photoshoot for an upcoming (we hope) Wooden Boat Magazine article featuring our girl Alizée. This was the third and last step of the process involving us. First we were interviewed several weeks back by Bob Stephens, a well respected boat designer from Stephens Waring Boat Design. Then Bob sailed Alizée we us to check her temperament.  Last the photoshoot which benefited from both sunny weather (no fog!) and enough wind to show her off barreling upwind at seven knots.

For a keepsake and to share the experience with landlubber friends, we took a short video of her last sail, in west Penobscot bay just off Camden, of the season, along with schooner Victory Chimes.

Now in Belfast, we are getting Alizée ready for her haulout Monday. Remove sails, shuttle clothes and stuff to the car, finish food, laundry mania, clean, clean and clean more.... Sadly we still have yet to find my July birthday gift that Bill hid so well!

While lately most nights have been as warm as when we arrived in July, tomorrow night should be 47F, brrrr, so we are coming to terms with taking Alizée out of the water for her winter storage (at the Front Street shipyard in Belfast) and to the idea of heading back to Colorado. We are definitely not keen on the idea of driving a rough riding truck 37 hours back home. Double ugh.

Isle au Haut, Acadia Outback

Many months, even years, ago, one island, Isle au Haut, one harbor, Duck Harbor, called to us. On many of our Penobscot tours we've been close, but lacked that extra day or two needed to keep heading out. Now down to just the two of us and down to our last precious days this Summer, we are bound (not destine - the difference is subtle) for Isle au Haut.

Tropical storm Hermine is still no direct threat, but giving us grief. Rather than the prevailing southwest winds of Summer, we have a gusty northeast breeze. Our first leg is a modest hop from Belfast to Northwest Harbor on Deer Isle, which has excellent protection from the northeast. In the morning, the wind still blows from the northeast and the swells from Hermine are building. Small craft and high surf advisories are issued by officialdom. We have many options for the next leg, plan A Duck Harbor, plan B the town of Isle au Haut, plan C Seal Bay on Vinalhaven.

We head down Penobscot bay splitting the difference between Isle au Haut and Vinalhaven to keep our options open. The swells are clearly building as the morning wears on. As much as I have dreamed of Duck Harbor, we have heard conflicting reports about how far in a boat of our size can tuck out of the ocean swells and I'm nervous knowing that the anchorage is tight for a 40' boat and the swells likely bouncing back and forth at the entrance and down the harbor some distance. Duck Harbor is out. Rats.

The anchorage off the town of Isle au Haut is tiny with no room to anchor and just a few moorings for transients (boats passing through). Normally, it is also open to the prevailing southwestern winds, but ideal for the northeasterlies we have today and tonight. If there's no room, we still have day light to bail to Vinalhaven (forget sailing at night with the lobster pots).

Perfectly on queue, the weather is becoming cooler and the cold fronts more frequent. I tell Cath not to let me out of the cabin today without my flannel lined pants. Thin blooded, the last few sails have chilled me to the bone while sailing in shorts and a fleece top. We used to jump in the water at each anchorage. We don't do that anymore. Places that haven't shut down are reducing hours. Though still a few weeks off, Fall is effectively here and Winter is coming.

We commit to at least having a look at Isle au Haut. The entire coastline here is basically submerged granite mountains. Underwater lurks unseen peaks that may show themselves only at low tide or perhaps lurk just below where the only clue is how the waves curl as they pass over the tops. We play it safe and don't cut any corners even if the charts seem to indicate we could. From another life as a pilot, a flight instructor told me that if you insist on killing yourself in an airplane, at least do it in a novel fashion rather than scud running or looping a 172. Translated to sailing, if you're going to sink a boat, don't do it by cutting inside a marker.

Luck (and the late season) is with us and there's a mooring available at Isle au Haut. Wahoo! We made it to Isle au Haut! Wahoo again! With some 50 year round residents, there's really only one thing happening here: lobster. The boats around us are lobster boats, some looking sweet, others a bit in the rough.

Rural Maine's devotion to the honor system has a pleasant quaintness to it. On the roads, we see unmanned stacks of firewood, even produce stands, where you take what you like and leave payment in a can or jar. Thus, it is not terribly surprising to find that the transient moorings here have a Coke bottle in which you leave payment for using the mooring for the night.

Isle au Haut is unique in more ways than we could possibly enumerate. One could imagine the interesting politics in a town of 50 or so dominated by the lobster trade. If you're curious, read The Lobster Chronicles, as Cath is doing now.

The author of The Lobster Chronicles, Linda Greenlaw, whom you might recall as the female swordfishing captain from The Perfect Storm, and a large branch of her family tree, hail from Isle au Haut. She keeps a lobster boat, the Mattie Belle, here, a stone's throw from our mooring.

Unfortunately for us, the other well known fixture of the town, The Maine Lobster Lady, has closed down for the season, just a few days ago. Double rats. All these lobster boats and no where for us to get lobster, or any eats at all for that matter.

In addition to a small, essentials (like milk, ice cream, and beer) only grocery, there is what must be the smallest US Mail Post Office, complete with a wood burning stove to keep all those letters toasty during the hard winters here.

A small locally owned ferry runs the six mile between Stonington on Deer Isle (read the mainland, reachable by car) and Isle au Haut. Mail aside, the ferry brings in the morning, and removes in the afternoon, day trippers. Would you really make a day trip to Isle au Haut to just buy bourbon in a can at the grocery?

Ah hah. That's the little secret. Sixty percent of Isle au Haut is part of the Acadia National Park. Probably because of the politics involved in the acquisition of the land, THIS part of Acadia is not allowed to be advertised. If you don't ask about it, you won't know about it! Aside from the limited space on the ferry, the only way to get here is by boat or kayak. The ferry can carry perhaps 60 people, but in our limited sampling we see only six or so arriving each day. We've also seen five kayakers. And then there's us and another boat. Let's see - that makes 15 people in the park today. Not too crowded.

We hit the trailhead this morning and hike the 4 miles through spruce trees and along rocky beaches down to Duck Harbor. A little late, by foot rather than by sail, but we made, at last, Duck Harbor. Then we only had to hike the 4 miles back :)