Coastal Cruising: Bay Breeze & Aquavit

  Prepping for the next cruise. Bay Breeze on the hard AQUAVIT in storage AQUAVIT is hauled and tucked away in heated storage at Journey's End Marina in Rockland, Maine. We’re pleased to be establishing a relationship with Journey's End Marina, a large professional operation. Then, in the spring, Journey's End will launch and take AQUAVIT to our seasonal slip at Safe Harbor Marina. Then, we'll resume cruising coastal Maine. Now, we’re anxious to get on with our next cruising plans. In a couple months, we'll cruise in Bay Breeze along Florida's coast. Recently, we visited Bay Breeze on jack stands in storage at Sailors Wharf in St. Petersburg to check on the service schedule before they launch. Bay Breeze will be washed and waxed, and, with electronic upgrades and washed sails, be ready to cruise again.  One of the Ensigns we saw in Maine Until we take off again, we’ll be working on Calypso, our Pearson Ensign. While in Maine we noticed several Ensigns moored alo...

A spectacular sunset from our dock at the Safe Harbor Marina in Rockland   Down East to Mount Desert Island   When the weather window opens you go through it. Such was the case for leaving Rockland to take a short cruise over to Mount Desert Island and poke around a bit in Acadia National Park.    It’s a mere 35 miles from Rockland to Southwest Harbor as the crow flies, but the navigable route is more like 50. A good bit of it is stressful through fields of lobster buoys. We broke up the trip by staying at Isle au Haut. There is a narrow channel at Isle au Haut that is called a “thorofare”. These cracks in the rock islands provide shortcuts between the larger water bodies and provide safe sheltered places to anchor.   We picked up a free guest mooring ball to spend a quiet night off Flake Island across from a private club.  Only 92 folks are full time residents of Isle au Haut and their livelihood is tied to the sea and summer vacation homes.  Hal...

St. Croix River, Calais, Maine      Back to Maine - Safe Harbor Marina, Rockland AQUAVIT is often blocked in by visiting mega yachts.  Foreign flagged to evade US taxes? Good to see the cats. Lady Marmalade happy to see us .   We took a break from our Maine adventure to return to Tallahassee; we missed the heat and humidity – HA! After a week or so at home, we left Tropical Storm Fred in our wake to head north back to Maine. We had no damage from the storm even though its landfall was 150 miles to the west of us. It was a minimal tropical storm, unlike Hurricane Michael that came ashore in the same area in 2018 and did so much damage to Mexico Beach.   We hurried north to Rockland because another tropical storm was headed to the northeast U.S. Henri was projected to glance off of the Maine coast as a tropical depression. Instead, Tropical Storm Henri came ashore on the Connecticut coast and hung around raining on Massachusetts for a few days. We had tied up...