We had a leisurely banana pancake breakfast on board that Emily helped me make, then we brought the boat over to the dock to top off water and fuel. It’s amazing how much easier docking is with extra sets of hands – especially Emily who’s turning out to be a perfect shipmate. We said goodbye to the Keats and headed north again. James had called the night before and not only told us they were sailing for the weekend (we thought they would be hiking instead), but that they were heading to Dolphin Marina in Harpswell. We called Lawrence (Viviane had just arrived for a long weekend and they were heading back from Rockland), and they decided to join us. We all managed to get moorings, lucky for us on the last busy holiday weekend of the summer. After cocktails onboard Kalyra, we all went in for a hearty dinner at the restaurant.

The next morning, without fail, the launch came out just after 8:00, bearing coffee and their famous blueberry muffins…….yum.

James and Jenny were heading back to Portland that afternoon, but we followed Lawrence and Viviane further up in Harpswell, dropping anchor in a secluded anchorage. We had drinks onboard Tanqueray and got caught up with Viviane before retiring for the night.

Lawrence and Viviane left early the next morning, as she had a flight to catch. We opted to listen to the OCC SSB net and then Chris Parker’s forecast before leaving. Unfortunately that meant leaving at dead low tide. And running aground. In lots of mud and sea grass. In a spot where the charts said we still had some water to clear at low tide and our depth sounder was three feet off. We tried swinging Trip out the boom to heel the boat and give us a little clearance, but we had no luck whatsoever. So we settled in for about an hour, enjoyed the view, and left when the waters came up and we had clearance under the keel.

We were now looking for a weather window to leave Portland and head south. Of course, Hurricane Dorian was now making its way over from the Bahamas and up the US east coast. All our sailing friends were much further south and were racing to hole up for the storm, but being further north we had a little time to play with. On Thursday there would be a 36-hour window of good northerly winds to play with and we decided to take it. We moved down to Cliff Island and anchored there for two nights waiting for the southerly wind to swing north.