More Maine Gushing

My pal Jess was kind enough to invite me to help open up her folks' cabin on Deer Isle, Maine on a recent weekend. Deer Isle is like the peninsula-next-door: all the charm and gentle beauty of the more tourist oriented Mt. Desert Isle immediately to the east, without the sports bars and T-shirt shops. The whole island seems to have somehow stayed under the radar of the madding crowds, and preserved the sea-oriented life that brought folks there in the first place. The items on the 'impulse' shelf at the Stonington convenience store attest to the town's ongoing mollusk orientation:

But do not grow weary. This is not another post where I go on and on about the relative merits of different ways to consume lobster. I have moved on to clams:


And yes, you absolutely enjoy fried things more fully when accompanied by other fried things. So shush. It was one of those great weekends focused around the very best aspects of travel, which I have learned from my sister: looking at things, walking around, and putting things in your mouth.

We also had a bona fide bonfire, crafted in the traditional Maine fashion (with chainsaw and blowtorch, DUH):

Ready About!

This is my dad's new sail. Congratulations on the new sail, Dad! He is very proud of it and delighted with how much better it "points."

My dad, his partner Ann, and I spent Memorial Day weekend breaking in Dad's boat, the Huckleberry, for the 2009 season. My dad is not a person ordinarily described as polite-to-a-fault, but evidently he did not have the heart to discourage me from the idea of spending Memorial Day weekend sailing when I proposed it way back in mid-February. Memorial Day, apparently, is not really the sailing season yet on Lake Michigan! Although this caused considerable discomfort (cold) to the elder generation of sailors, I thought it conferred several advantages:
1. nearly no one else on the pier, thus minimizing Dad's opportunities to yell things at people on other boats (you can take the boy out of Sheboygan's South Side, but you can't take the South Side of Sheboygan out of the boy)
2. no mosquitoes or other insect pests
3. unusual enjoyment of mid-sail coffee, and
4. expanded sailing-wear options (see below).

Saturday, the day we had the whole weekend ahead of us and all Green Bay our oyster, it was drizzly and cold, and we actually started taking on alarming amounts of water just after arriving in the busiest part of the channel. We spent some nail-biting minutes addressing the latter problem, and then after becoming rather soggy and cold (but not before enjoying the coffee pictured above!) opted to return to Sturgeon Bay for the evening. The best part of this for me, ever the slave to yachting fashion, was the necessity of donning the sailorman giant shiny black Popeye gloves in order to have adequate helm control for conditions.


See how much more fashion forward and toasty warm than without?


Sunday, of course, was sunny and warm, and even a little windy, so we had a nice little sail and admired the big boats.

And then it was back to the humdrum world of toilets that flush at the touch of a button and engines that start without going through four inscrutable steps.