July 10 -- The Goslings to Sebasco Harbor

I cleaned the boat from about 7 to 1 with a break for breakfast and several others to set waypoints for Lene. She helmed the boat ninety percent of the way. This was unusual, but explicable because she would rather helm than vacuum. Our course was a big curve: southerly, then east and finally northerly. The wind helped us on the first part, and we flew the Genoa, on a close port reach. The easterly portion was dead into the wind and the northerly (with favorable tide) was too short to bother unfurling sails again. The current was strongly against us most of the way, especially in the narrow spots heading south and south east. We made the fifteen miles in a bit under four hours, arriving on our mooring about five minutes before our guests, Kyle and Mark, arrived by car from a small town near Burlington VT. Immaculate timing.

Kyle is in real estate there and Mark is a writer. Lene met them in New York and they have sailed with us out of City Island and been to dinner parties at our land base in the city. About three years ago they moved to VT, got married, and we have not seen them since.

After they got settled in we lunched in the cockpit though it was foggy, damp and dreary all day in this small cozy harbor of the Sebasco Harbor Resort.(Mooring here for $40 per night is a bargain compared to room rates from $179 to about three times that much.)

Visibility was adequate but we and our guests decided to just chill out on the mooring for the afternoon rather than do any more sailing.

After lunch I enlisted Kyle to ride up the mast in the bosun’s chair to the first spreader to reinsert the line used to hoist the club burgee through the small block attached to the underside of that spreader. (Too busy hoisting him to take a picture, sorry.) That line had chafed through near its end and the burgee had fluttered down onto the deck. All fixed.

Before dinner we went ashore in the old wooden fishing boat that serves as a launch here to look at the resort. It has a variety of cabins and larger structures that serve as guest rooms, a large, warm, salt water swimming pool set on a point of land protected by a seawall, a nine hole golf course, a convention center (a large group from around the world who work for Phillips Electronics was having a meeting), a small fitness center with showers (which we used), a croquet set on the lawn, a kayaking school and two restaurants, set one above the other at the waterside in a yellow building. (Note how low tide is.)

We had dinner in the lower restaurant; lower in elevation and pricing. Returning to ILENE, we played cards before bedtime.