Boston to Portsmouth, NH

The usual format for these posts has been one for every two places we've visited. The reason for that is because on the way north, lots of our stops happened to be just convenient places to tuck in on the East Coast for us. We have been trying to keep things limited to daysails for now, until we're back in familiar territory. But here, we got some big fixes out of the way, and the next post will probably be about most of our time in Maine. If you remember, we had some fridge woes when we had pulled into Boston. It's a tough time to get anyone to do anything to a boat besides going for a sail. But unbeknownst to me my mother in law had been calling around behind the scenes to find someone who could look at our Italian-made fridge.

Shiloh next to her boat neighbor, another Schooner at Badger Island

Portsmouth has a yacht club that spans both sides of the Piscataqua river, and consequently the states of New Hampshire and Maine. There are a few guest moorings in Pepperell Cove on the East side, and their interesting fast-launch picks people up to use the clubhouse. We took a ball here for the first night before we had a lead on a fridge repair. The guidance was basically "Be here at this time if you want a fridge." We most definitely did want a fridge, so we arranged to pull up to Badger Island and tie up for an overnight. We got a visit from Tom Rowe, who is one of the rare specialists who lives up to the hype we heard around the dock. Within 15 minutes the problem was diagnosed and he had a repair kit to fix it. If he had charged twice what he had, I'd have been happy to pay it! We met the crew of the 80 foot schooner "Aquila" in front of us on the dock, who were preparing to depart for Belgium. It's rare to see another schooner, so we had a chat and a sundowner.

This time we decided to anchor in Pepperell Cove rather than moor. It's rolly but we were right under Fort McClary which made for interesting scenery. Unfortunately there isn't much else and it's not clear if the dinghy docks are public at all for visitors to make a landing. We took our chances though to check out the fort and grab some stuff at the small shop ashore. It's worth mentioning that this was technically our arrival in Maine, since we were on the east side of the river. We were debating turning back at Boston since it was so late in the season, but we decided to see what all the fuss was about among sailors who visit Maine. There was one more task to get out of the way before we really went north though...

Emily doing the dirty business of lobster.

If you know me, you probably know I don't do shellfish and lobster/crab. I've tried it, but it just wasn't my thing, especially for the price. Nevertheless I promised Emily I would give it another shot in Maine. After all, a Maine lobster is about as good as it gets (or so I'm told.) There's a small lobstershack up Chauncey Creek off of the cove, so we took the dinghy there with a few beers to get one from the source. To be safe I made sure to grab some onion rings and other accessories just in case. Long story short: still not for me. But hey, you gotta try one when you're there, right?

The onion rings were top notch.

See you next time.

-Shiloh Crew