Better weather

 7/24- Rockland ME

  We hung around Rockland for a while as usual. There was more bad weather predicted so we just decided to hang and wait for it to pass. We did spend a day blueberry picking up on Beech Hill and then we walked out on the breakwater to see the inside of the lighthouse. They did open it but the woman who opens the door to the lighthouse never showed. 

    The big storm was pretty much a bust here though I guess other places had it rough. About the only real effect was a night of rolling and bouncing. There was no wind but the wind was strong out at sea and it drove an uncomfortable swell in to the harbor. 

   We finally dropped the mooring lines and headed down past Owls Head and Mussel Ridge. The wind was primarily out of the west and it shot us along even through the narrow passages. We hit over 8 knots at times and hovered around 7 knots a good part of the time. Once we cleared the last buoy and were on open ocean the wind piped up and we struggled a bit getting the boat under control. Of course the wind had to come exactly from where we wanted to go. 

    We managed to get the sails down and we turned the corner into Long Cove. As we were motoring up to the Nutmeg mooring I see the boat in front of us tying up to it. When he looked up and saw the boat name and the name on the mooring he dropped the lines and went to anchor. It was his tough luck that I showed up on the one day he thought he had a mooring. At least he still had his motor on and wasn’t napping when we pulled up. 

   We made a call to Mike and Lisa Shaw and arranged to have dinner with them in town. So we motored over in the dinghy which was a good test for the battery. We had a good time chatting with them at the Quarry before taking the long dinghy ride back to the boat. 

    The next day dawned bright and windless. We waited around until noon and then headed out. We sailed in an ever increasing SW wind out past Two Bush and around the Mussel Ridge islands. It was a great sail and we gibed once and sailed right into Rockland. 

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