Southwest Maine Coast - Part 2

Hurricane Henri came and went without much drama. In Quahog bay we didn't see more than 20 knots on the anchor and all we got was the outer rain bands of the storm. About 20 other boats had sought refuge in the two main anchorages of the bay and we had a quiet if soggy run of it. You get a little stir crazy though as all the docks around the bay are private, so there is only one way to make a landing with the dinghy and it's a solid 30 minute trek on Dingus. Dingus is our probably-undersized tender, clocking in at a bit over 7 feet and with a whopping 2.5 horsepower, the upside is he's light enough to carry around and he can plane at 10 knots with one small crewman aboard. Emily got to experience the joy of what I call the Irish Jet-Ski when she used the quiet time to go for a rip.

We had been trying to meet some friends from Boston on the way up the coast, and finally it panned out that we could pick them up in Portland, ME. Portland Yacht Club was what we had been looking for since leaving Rhode Island. To me, if there isn't a working clubhouse with a bar or some other place to meet people, it's just a glorified marina. Harlem Yacht Club is our home club and its title "The Friendliest Club on City Island" is not without merit. PYC seemed to have an active race scene and that usually means there's an active party scene afterwards. One of the past commodores invited us to hang out and have dinner when he noticed us at the (really good) restaurant. We closed down the bar that evening with them and the current commodore and got some good intel on Maine cruising while we waited for our friends to arrive.

For quite a few years now we've visited a small lake cabin in Maine almost every year thanks to our visitors, so we hoped we could show them Maine from the saltwater side. The wish list was pretty simple: quiet, and time on the water. Because Chebeague had the most to do and the best beaches in the area, we brought them back around to enjoy a place where we could guarantee a minimum of a good time. It was anchored in Big Chebeague's cove that we finally got to use the newer (and much smaller) party raft. The original was on the left and it was a huge hit, but imagine trying to stow it...

The original party raft

We also made a stop back at Dolphin Marina and had a walk around after failing to find a spot to drop the hook in Jewell Island. We beat back to Portland to drop off our friends and get ready to run south, when we heard about the next hurricane coming up the coast: Ida. We're conservative (read: paranoid) sailors, we've been warned over and over about the dangers of rushing to get somewhere at the cost of good wind or weather. We could've tried to beat the storm and make Portsmouth or Boston, but both were lined up for a direct hit, so it was back to Snow Island for almost another week. We ran into neighboring Brunswick by tying up to the nearby marina's dinghy dock and grabbing a cab, just to avoid complete cabin fever.

Once again Ida was a nothingburger, but who knows what it could've been if we'd risked jumping south. It was finally time to bid goodbye to our adopted home of Harpswell and Quahog Bay. We caught a lucky weather window and ran as quickly as we could back to Portsmouth, NH. Things were getting chilly in Maine, and the last days of summer were upon us. It was more than time to turn south.

-Shiloh Crew