Shakedown cruise

This was supposed to be published on June 29, but ultimately wasn’t… 5G was not living up to its expectations…

Where is the shelter?

The guys at the office told us that they will bring us the dodger and the bimini, which all sounded nice so that we didn’t have to run back and forth. We swapped the new foresail for the old one, prepared more trash to be taken out and since our sun & rain shelter were still not onboard we set out to the office to pick them up ourselves. At the end of the pier we see two guys who happily inform us that they are brining the dodger. Wait a minute, our dodger is not black! And where is the bimini?

The guys started to go back to the orders that they did on my behalf and finally found the dodger neatly rolled into a huge carton tube. The replaced windows look great, but once we installed it, we discovered a scratch on one of them. Ugh. At least we have wind cover in the cockpit! The bimini is nowhere to be found, but by then we were ready to go and the first sail has to go without the cover from the sun and potential rain tomorrow.

Back in the element

The southwesterly wind was in our face as we motored out of the harbour, so we didn’t raise the mainsail for a while in order not to waste time tacking back and forth. After all it was already 5 and we wanted to spend the night at anchor some 17 miles away. Once we pointed the bow east, the wind was on our side and Salty Ginger accelerated to 7-7.5 knots. What a treat from king Neptune!

In the past couple of weeks I was a bit anxious: I haven’t been on the water in 2 years, maybe I forgot how to sail and how Salty Ginger works. My doubts went away pretty quickly once we set the sail and once the we changed our course to be more easterly, I brought up the spinnaker while Sasha was doing the traditional Maine slalom around the lobster traps. The slalom with the spinnaker set was a bit harder to do especially since the wind calmed down a bit and was almost dead behind us. The waves would tilt the boat and the spinnaker would lose its shape only to flap back into a fully inflated state.

At some point we even flew the sails wing-on-wing. That setup is tricky with any set of sails and with the waves rolling the boat it was not something we could do for a long time. We jibed the spinnaker, but then ended up dowsing it and motored the last 3 miles to drop anchor north of the Malaga island preserve, one of islands cared for by MITA (Maine Island Trail association). A few seals looked at us from a speck of rocks, but otherwise we were completely on our own in the cove.

More electrical issues

Once it got dark I turned on the anchor light and to my genuine surprise, it turned on the light that flooded the deck. Maybe the lights got swapped? Not quite: between the anchor light (at the top of the mast), the steaming light (mid-mast) and deck light (1/3 up the mast), two switches turn on the deck light and one doesn’t work. Oops. Unfortunately the 9V battery in the voltmeter died, so that’s something that will need to be worked out in the Maine Yacht Center. After all they are the ones who didn’t connect them right after reinstalling the mast.

After dinner Sasha was surprised to find out that the light in his cabin that worked fine the night didn’t turn on. Luckily the small side light worked fine.

Today’s plan

During the breakfast in the cockpit we saw a lobster fisherman working in the cove. It's not that we don't have food for lunch, but lobster sounded much more enticing than salami sandwiches. The guy was happy to sell us 3 crustaceans for twenty bucks (we wanted 2, but he didn't have change), so we will have surf for lunch, turf for dinner.

We'll test the dinghy and walk a bit before sailing and tucking onto a different cove closer to Portland in case we have a very wet and stormy morning tomorrow.