Adventure

 7/12- Falmouth ME

  Today I went on an adventure. I discovered yesterday that you can take a bus into downtown Portland. So today I walked the 1 1/2 miles to Walmart where I got on the bus. The bus took me into Portland for a dollar. There I walked a bit and went to the farmers market and walked around downtown.

   I do have to say I am not particularly impressed with Portland. Everything seems very dirty and there is trash everywhere. I had to wade through trash just to sit at the bus stop in the downtown. When I searched on things to do in town almost everywhere I looked it all came back to bars and restaurants. There are plenty of those. 

    Here we go again…

    I had retired to the cockpit as the sun was waging a more or less winning battle with the fog. The girl was coming back down the dock after showering and presumably getting some coffee in her. If it hadn’t been for the striped purple hair I might not have recognized her. Now that I could see her she was older than I thought, probably in her mid to late twenties. Her hair was straight and made it just past her ears. She looked thin but hard in a strong kind of way. She returned my towel and sat across from me in the cockpit. 

    “I’m guessing you are wondering about me” she started. “ My name is Jessica and I started this journey in Minnesota somewhere. I traveled by bus to Denver and then I hitchhiked to Dallas. I’ve been on a sort of Jack Kerouac Melvin Pirsig kind of adventure. In Dallas I managed to hop a freight train which brought me here. The cops chased me off the train last night and I ran in here to get away. Yours was the first boat I saw with a light on. I swear I’m not on drugs and I’m not running away from anything at least not anything specific. “

    “Wow! That was quite the tale. What did you think you would try sailing as the next mode of transportation. “ I gaped. 

    “I don’t know”, she mumbled. “Maybe I could sail with someone and they could show me a bit” 

All for tonight

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sailing

 5/20- Boby Owl Cove, Broad Creek, Choptank River    We finally got to go sailing today. We put up the main sail and cruised out of the Wye River where I ran out the stay sail. When we made the turn to head for the Eastern Bay the wind was on the nose. We short tacked a few times before putting the motor back on to bump us around the point. Once there all three sails were up and we romped down the bay until the wind collapsed.      We had a choice here, we could continue sailing slowly and go outside of Poplar Island or turn the motor on and take the short way. We chose the motor as the wind was dying. Poplar Island is being extended with spoils from dredging operations. This inside track is a bit winding but near the southern end it gets very shallow. You have to follow a winding cut that is unmarked.     After we squeaked through there it was just a long couple of hour haul to the anchorage. This is another sweet anchorage which is kind of ...
Read more

Leaks

 5/14/2025- Rock Hall MD   Well it poured last night. It was the kind of rain that made me glad I was on a boat. It was a good way to test for leaks. Boats are always springing leaks usually right where you least want them.     Boat leaks are also notoriously hard to track down. I have a porthole that leaks and despite having sealed the outside with a whole tube of caulking it still leaks. Water will come from pretty far away to spill out in the worst places. It gets under the headliner and travels down the length of the boat. I swear it leaches uphill even. I have even gone so far as to dye the water to see if I could figure out where it was coming from.     Well this porthole of mine that has the notorious leak was in perfect form this morning. As the rain crashed down outside the leak magnified and dropped a deluge right on my face. It was almost like taking a quick morning shower. I decided to just get up when it filled my mouth up with water....
Read more

City Island

 6/7- City Island NY    We slept off the effects of barely sleeping the last two days and awoke fairly refreshed. We did a bunch of boat chores before heading into shore.      We watched as the yacht club was launching a couple of boats. They have a railway that they use with an engine that is almost 100 years old. It is all run by volunteers at the yacht club and launching is included in your dues. It’s a pretty sweet deal.      We walked down the main street which is pretty much the only street. They must have blown the budget on dead end signs because every side street was a dead end at the water. There was a street fair going on so we walked around before doing some provisioning at the local market. On our return to the boat it started to pour and we got soaked. I guess we should have taken the launch.      We then visited with our new friends on their Cape Dory 31 and the they came over to our boat. It was fun talking to a...
Read more