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Our Summer Cruise 2018

 

Sunday, August 12

We had been putting off a road trip to Bath for a few days and, with no boat work going on today, we decided today was the day. By 10:00 am, all three of us were off on our pilgrimage to Halcyon Yarn in downtown Bath and anything else that the town had to offer. Our primary purpose was for Judy to check out woolen yarn colors for a couple of rugs she plans on weaving in the Fall. Since this is a very expensive project, she wanted to see firsthand how the many colors being used coordinated with each other. Halcyon Yarn is one of the biggest yarn sources for weavers in the USA and they have an amazing selection of every imaginable yarn and a number of rugs on display woven by the former owner, Hector Jaeger.

Judy Was Here!

One of Hector's Rugs And Detail View in Hand-dyed Wool

Like many places in Maine, getting there is not easy. It's only 60 miles as the crow flies but about 125 miles on the road and well over two and a half hours. To make it worse, the route laid out using the iPhone was very twisty for much of the way; sitting in the back, I was feeling a little nauseous by the time we reached Wiscasset and sat in a traffic jam for 20 minutes.

Bath is a very old town situated on a wide straight section of the Kennebec River with the region first settled in the early 1600s. It was an ideal location for local and international trade with easy ocean access and soon shipbuilding became its forte. Following the War of 1812, Bath and the rest of the country experienced a lengthy period of expansion of international trade and therefore of maritime fleets. Many of those ships were built in Bath. In 1854, at the peak of this boom period, at least nineteen major firms were building ships in Bath.

As shipbuilding flourished, the population of the town in 1830 more than tripled from 1800 to over 3700; in the coming decade another 1400 individuals would be added. Bath weathered the Depression in the 1860s and 70s and successfully made the transition from wooden boats to metal boats and the famous Bath Iron Works was founded in the mid 1880s. From here on, Bath's fortunes were largely tied to shipbuilding with great growth during WW I and the bankruptcy of BIW in 1925. By this time, shipbuilding had all but stopped in Bath. Then in 1927, BIW was resurrected by William S. Newell, who turned it into a producer of various utility vessels and luxury yachts just before the Great Depression. J. P. Morgan’s Corsair IV and the America’s Cup defender, Ranger, were perhaps the most famous of these vessels. Under Newell’s leadership, BIW survived the Depression and again became a major warship producer during and after World War II.

Today, Bath is experiencing a resurgence with much economic development occurring but still manages to retain a small town atmosphere. In 2015, Bath Iron Works signed a contract with US Navy for new destroyers, littoral combat ships and new landing craft. BIW continues to be a major employer and is now building some of the US Navy's latest warships.

USS Michael Monsoor, one of the New Zumwalt Guided Missile Destroyers Leaving for Sea Trials

We were successful in our quest for wool and Judy managed to fill a very large box that is on its way to Portage Michigan. Our visit to Halcyon was also somewhat interesting for Dean and I!

We enjoyed a good lunch at the Elliot (note the one "T") House, an old 1800s structure that survived at least two of the big fires that hit Bath.

 

Time ran away from us, so we only managed a quick wander around the downtown area and a check of the town dock before it was time to leave. Bath has one of the best maritime museum in the US; we will have to make the trip back by water sometime this summer to check it out.

We chose to ignore the iPhone directions and take Route 1 back and, although it passed through Wiscasset, Thomaston, Rockland, Camden, and Belfast we experienced few delays and it was a much better drive.

The sun was dying when we arrived back at Atlantic Boat with some magnificent skies and one of the lowest tides we have seen here due to lack of a moon. Rocks previously unseen were clearly visible tonight. I took way to many photographs tonight and am having trouble deciding which ones to post - you decide which you like best.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, August 13

An uneventful day with Judy swimming laps in Ellsworth while I went to the Blue Hill Library and caught up a little on the blog and the news of the world around us.

Judy has been weaving on her inkle band loom that I made for her a few months ago in preparation for a workshop she attended just before we left for the boat. Inkle weaving is a type of warp-faced weaving where the shed is created by manually raising or lowering the warp yarns, some of which are held in place by fixed heddles. Inkle weaving was referred to in Shakespeare's "Loves Labours Lost". It was brought to the United States in the 1930s, but predates this by many centuries in other countries. The term "Inkle" simply means "ribbon" or "tape" and probably refers to a similarly structured woven good that could have been made on different types of looms, such as a box-loom. Inkle weaving is commonly used for narrow work up to 4 inches wide such as trims, straps and belts.

 

Wayne continued work on the boat with more sanding and another fill coat of gelcoat/cabosil.

 

Tuesday, August 14

Early Morning - Fog Again

Another day of Library and shopping in Blue Hill while Wayne sanded the coat he applied yesterday. By lunchtime, he had applied the final gelcoat layer and all that remained was a final sand before applying the first coat of bottom paint. While all this was going on, Steve Stone from Off Center Harbor was filming and he interviewed me about our acquaintance with the rock and the experience of following the repair. Once again STB will show up on the internet! In this case, I would rather not. Word spreads quickly enough when you hit a rock in a place as small as Brooklin and I have had total strangers come up to me and say "Hear you hit a rock" or some other variation. We were probably in the Blue Hill Weekly Packet newspaper but I forgot to check at the Library.

The highlight of the day was home-cooked pizzas from Chef Dean and the last of our Key Lime Pie.

 

Late Afternoon Fog Again - Same Photo but It Looked just the Same

Wednesday, August 15

The fog still hung heavily over Herrick Bay this morning, if anything worse than the photo above but sun is predicted for a short while this afternoon. While Judy went swimming in Ellsworth, I did a few jobs on the boat while Wayne put the final coat of bottom paint on STB and stripped the poly covering off. Wayne has done an excellent job overall and the repair is virtually undetectable. I have got a good lesson in fiberglass repair; not that I ever want to use it!

 

DONE!!

Launch is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon around 2:30 pm as high tide approaches. Between now and then we have to de-camp from the apartment and load it back on STB. It's surprising how much we have brought to the apartment in dribs and drabs as the need occurred.

I managed to get a week of the blog done and uploaded while we had fairly good internet at the yard's old office. Their guest wi-fi has a very limited range, like 50 feet, before one is down to one of four bars when downloading and especially uploading become an exercise in extreme patience.

In most places we have traveled, we can usually use our cellphone personal hotspot to link our computer to the internet but AT&T, in their wisdom, has decided that Brooklin and anything close to Herrick Bay does not deserve to be able to use a cellphone. Trying to make a cellphone at the apartment is an exercise in futility many times with perfect reception from of call's recipient but close to zero from our end. Numerous calls were terminated at the critical moment. I have felt like the guy in the Verizon or Sprint advertisement ... "Can you hear me now, can you hear me know, can you hear me now" as I moved in slow motion, an inch at a time, trying to get a better signal out. Talking with Cy Hannon, the owner of Atlantic Boat about the service revealed that Brooklin does now have a fiber optic line but the telephone company wanted $27,000 to bring it to Atlantic Boat which will never happen! Oddly, the signal on the boat is significantly better - it must be those darned trees that Maine is famous for sucking up the radio waves.

Around 4:30, the fog started to roll in again from the north end of the Bay with just a trace peeking over the trees sending tentacles down to the shoreline. Once it had latched on to the water, it began its slow creep south until most of the moored boats were obscured and just dull patches in the fog. This was one of weaker fogs lacking the usual vigor as it could to sustain itself. The north shore cleared and sun reappeared while the fog slithered out to Swan's Island to torment them.

While we are not experts by any means on Maine fog having only spent 2+ seasons here, it seems that this year has been abnormally foggy. Locals we have talked with all claim that June and July are the fog months and August is sunny and warm; but not this year.

Fog can be considered a cloud at ground level. The processes forming it, however, are usually different from those that form clouds. Like clouds, fog is made up of condensed water droplets which are the result of the air being cooled to the point (actually, the dew point where it can no longer hold all of the water vapor it contains). For clouds, that cooling is almost always the result of rising of air, which cools from expansion. But for fog, which occurs next to the ground, there are usually other reasons for this cooling. For instance, rain can cool and moisten the air near the surface until fog forms and we have had our share of rain this year!

Or, as is more often the case, infrared cooling of a cloud-free, humid air mass at night can lead to fog formation - this is called "radiation fog". Radiation fog is most common in the fall, (which comes early here) when nights get longer, air masses begin to cool, and land and water surfaces that have warmed up during the summer are still evaporating a lot of water into the atmosphere. Finally, what we run in to most on the boat is a warm moist air mass blowing over the cooler sea surface that causes "advection fog". Regardless of how the fog is formed, we would welcome a break!

Thursday, August 16

Rained quite heavily last night with lightning and thunder breaking up our sleep but the skies cleared early and it felt very fresh out with much of the humidity and heat chased away by the storm - no fog this morning. As we had been a little lazy last night, we had to hustle to make numerous runs from the apartment to the boat and get things stashed away before our launch.

We just had time for Judy to visit the weekly Farmers' Market in Brooklin to stock up on salad items and some fruit before Wayne arrived with the trailer a little earlier than planned to haul STB out to the water.

 

and down the ramp in to the water.

 

 

 

 

 

We took the opportunity of the freshwater on the new dock to give STB a thorough wash down with soapy water, a good rinse, and a drying with soft clothes to get rid of the salt that had sat and hardened for the past three weeks. He was very appreciative and happy to be clean and back in the water again as we headed for Mooring Ball No. 1, our home for the next couple of days.

One Clean Boat!

To celebrate, we went out with Dean for dinner at the Deepwater Brewing Company in Blue Hill after finding "no room at the inn" at the Boatyard Grill. None of us had eaten here before and the meals were very good and not too expensive for a more touristy place.

By the time we returned dusk has fallen and we were treated to a great sunset over the calm waters.

Tonight we enjoyed watching Rachel on MSNBC and catching up on some of her news; not much of it was good!

Friday, August 17

I was awoken early by a lobster boat roaring by us at about 6:15 just as Judy was making the coffee. He passed by about 5' away causing a huge wake that almost threw me out of bed as the boat rolled 45 degrees. Cups set up for the coffee went flying spilling sugar everywhere and other things not fastened down scattered. He went back through the mooring field the same way. Almost all of the lobster boat drivers are quite considerate giving moored boats room and often proceeding slowly: but there is always one who thinks it's fun to blast by.

While Judy went swimming, I did some work on re-setting up the autopilot going through the Dockside Setup in preparation for doing the Sea Trial Setup to get the re-located compass calibrated. We need calm water for that and it was anything but that with a good wind and chop on Herrick Bay. Our weather station is still giving us a problem with wind speed showing accurately for an hour or so but then climbing slowly to a crazy value as if we were in a hurricane. I went through an extensive troubleshooting routine with no success; more work to do. Frustration abounds!

At least the fog stayed away today with clear blue skies and a good breeze, ideal for the sailors.

A Fine Example of One of the Wooden Sailboats That Are Common Around Here

Saturday, August 18

The weather was forecast to be very unsettled today with rain moving in by 8:00 am originally. It was a moving target though and the storm clouds kept breaking up over Penobscot Bay although the sky was very gloomy, a flat dark grey, until around noon we decided it was okay to do the Sea Trial Setup. This involves running the boat in a circle of a specific size with a time limit and then repeating the evolution (or revolution) until the autopilot is tired of doing it and gives you a success message; we were lucky and it worked first time. We had a number of other maneuvers to perform and the autopilot gave us the happy message - DONE. The real test will be when we get out in open water but, fingers crossed, we should be good.

We did see some wildlife this morning - Sammy the seal found us early in the morning (probably missed us while we were in the boat hospital). Several dolphins or porpoises were seen playing around the boats near us. Must member dolphins have hooked dorsal fins while porpoises have triangular fins. The most interesting was a cormorant near our stern that appeared with a fish about a foot long that it had speared with its beak. It spent a good ten minutes working away to get it in the right position to take it headfirst down in one slow gulp; now that's indigestion in the making!

 

 

Feeling hungry after this, we went into Blue Hill on the spur of the moment with Dean to try the Boatyard Grill again for lunch. It was a busy place but we found a table okay and had a very good meal but rather expensive for pub-type food.

Today we both felt it was time to get out of Dodge after almost three weeks here. Charlotte is due to fly back from Chicago on Tuesday but their plans are quite fluid as to what they will end up doing. Dean is comfortable just sitting for a while longer so we spent an hour or so going over potential places nearby to go to trying to look ahead at the weather forecasts which predict some heavy winds Wednesday. Could not make a decision but will see what the morning and probable changed forecasts bring