July 13 -- Isles of Shoals to Falmouth Forside, 61 Miles

7:30 to 4:15; a long day -- it would have longer but for Wimbledon, which caused us to motor to get "there" faster. We sailed the first hour at a beautiful 6.5 knots on a broad starboard reach. We were part of a moving triangle of three boats, each a mile from the other, that were more or less keeping up with each other. We never knew their names. But then the wind got lighter and we were only making four knots. Lene had subscribed to a service that permits her to watch tennis on her iPad. But when she tuned it said: "Sorry, this service is not available outside of the US." We were seven miles from the coast and did not close it until the entrance to Casco Bay.

So the Admiral ordered the Captain to motor. Lene was an avid and expert tennis player until I ran into her 21 years ago and, with the aid of the sea, seduced her into a life afloat instead of tennis. But her atavistic tennis tendencies arise for the Grand Slam events. I can't complain about a few hours of  motoring, as compared to slow sailing; I'm very glad that she accompanies me. We were also able to sail without engine the last hour -- so peaceful. And it was fun going around the various islands in Casco Bay to reach the Portland YC at Falmouth Foreside.

Good news: I joined the 20th, or even the 21st century today! Yes, I created and followed a "route" on the new Raymarine MFD. Until now I plotted out each passage on a paper chart, from point A, to B, etc.,  to the destination. Then I drew lines from each point to the next with a ruler, measured the length of each line (segment) with dividers to determine its length in nautical mles, added those lengths together, and came up with the passage mileage, e.g., 61 miles today.  But on the MFD (and the old chart plotter had some sort of capacity to do this too but I did not use it) I place points (red dots, called "waypoints") on the electronic chart by touching its screen at each place, in turn, where we turn to get to the destination without running into shallow water. The MFD draws lines (with arrows showing the direction) between each pair of dots, and creates a table showing the length of each line and the cumulative total. It also knows our speed and shows our ETA  at each point and adds them to tell us the ETA for the destination. Of course our speed changes with the wind speed and direction and our angle to it but it gives me an answer to Lene's question: "When are we getting there?" I'm still clumsy with my screen touches, because other types of touches do other things on the MFD, but I will get better. And the machine has an even more advanced feature which I am declining to use. It is called Auto Route or something like that. It knows our boat's draft and where we are, and if you tell it where you want to go, it picks out the waypoints automatically, as the GPS in your car tells you  where to turn to get to a given address. This would take all the work, er fun, out of navigation.
Also, underway, up to now I navigated on a one-waypoint-at-a-time basis, placing the next one once ILENE reached or was close to the one in effect then. This meant some fumbling of thought in picking out the next one on the fly. Now all of them are picked out in advance with lines connecting the dots. And we do not have to follow the route. We can tack back and forth across it and also, even when not tacking, we have placed the waypoints safely off the buoys in question but sometimes we see that we can cut a few shortcuts on the wrong side of the buoy. This will make sailing much easier.

We had planned to take a mooring at Portland Yacht Services. We have stayed every past visit to Portland. It is so convenient to everywhere in that fun city. But they are undergoing "major renovations" and have no moorings available right now. I fear that they may be making the place into another Provincetown. That may, sadly be the way that the world is turning. So instead we took a mooring at the Portland YC at Falmouth Forside, about four miles up on the west side of Casco Bay. We have stayed there before. $37 for a mooring, a bargain for the services provided including big white fluffy towels in the modern clean shower house.
There we hailed Tom and Tina on "Goody Two Shoes" who had come in the day before and were on an adjacent guest mooring. We did the water, garbage, shower and dinner thing. The Club overlooks a huge mooring field for 300 boats from high on a bluff over the Bay providing a great view. A long wide  boardwalk slopes down over the rocks to the floating dock. A tiny portion of the moored boats is shown below.

They have a quirky alcohol policy. As told to me: some members objected to the cost of a liquor license so they did not get one. But members bring in their own bottles and the Club employs a bartender to mix it into drinks for them. Not a problem for us because Lene does not drink at all and I very little. But later the bar tenderess came over and said they had some "leftovers" and would I like a free Dark and Stormy. Yes, delicious. Maybe it was the items we selected, but dinner was a bit of a dissapoinment as to the food, though service and ambience were great.
Another quiet night.