Things Never Go As Expected

On Father's Day, Conrad got tools and I got lobster!

6/21/2012:  Our Camden living room is littered with shipments we've received for the boat - a compost toilet (to replace the currently installed, old marine toilet), a gimbaled cook top (because there's no cook top and this kind keeps the pots on it level when the boat isn't, and clamped on so nothing spills), tools (a Father's Day Sale scores an 18 volt drill, circular saw, sawzall, flashlight, battery charger, batteries and a tool bag for $99), marine refrigerator (to go under the steering station seat), marine batteries and battery charger, AC converter, rotary saw, and a marine band radio.  There's a six-gallon hot water heater on order, and three "foot pumps" to help conserve water (if you want water, you have to pump it, not just turn on the spigot).  If it's not here yet, it soon will be....

Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse

 On Saturday, there were lobster boat races in Rockland.  Every harbor has races in the summer between the boats of the lobster fleet moored in its harbor.  I catch a few of the races when I hike out the mile-long Rockland Breakwater across the flat-topped, giant, granite blocks of the breakwater to the historic lighthouse at its end.  It's the first Maine lighthouse I've been inside and I explore the two-story living quarters of the lighthouse keeper, and climb up to the light. 

Rockland Breakwater stretching (from mid-left side of photograph) out into the harbor

Conrad is still struggling with the masts.  The spreader ends were so corroded when the boat was taken out of the water and the masts taken down five years ago, that the ends had to be forcibly removed from the spreader.  (A spreader "spreads" the sail at its top when the top is flat instead of pointed; then you may have a smaller, triangular topsail above that.)  Conrad spends a lot of time researching on our laptop and discovers that the manufacturer of our masts and rigging no longer is in business.  He is able to find out who bought the stock in case we need another spreader, and also finds an entirely different outfit that still makes replacement ends for the spreader we have.  The new ends arrived yesterday and we

Spreader end and bar of soap

hope they will be sufficient, so we don't have to buy a new spreader, which would be even bigger bucks than new ends - $200 for these itty bitty black things, pierced by a U-bolt (a free turning short, U-shaped bolt).

The engine and transmission oil analysis is back.  Good news - no heavy metals in the oil samples, so no rebuilding of the engine or a new engine necessary (whew - that would have likely taken the rest of the summer).  Conrad's current major project is figuring out the best technique to remove the windows without stripping away the thin fiberglass around them.  Our recent Maine rain revealed that some of the windows leak now the boat isn't covered in plastic.  We were hoping to put off replacing windows until the future, but it's obvious that some of them can't wait.  So last week we took a four-hour round trip drive to see samples of marine Plexiglas, and ordered two 4' x 8' smoke gray sheets.  Tuesday we repeated the trip with our trailer to pick up the order, driving through sylvan inland countryside pocketed with small and large lakes, farms and hardwood forests, and crossing over rivers and deep inlets from the sea.

Going to get Plexiglas, we cross the Sheepscot River to Wiscasset, founded in the 1600's, with its classic church steeples.

Once he has some old windows out, Conrad will cut the Plexiglas to fit, and bolt and caulk it to the space where the old windows are.  None of these things are small tasks and our time in Maine is looking like it will be longer than we expected.

The view from our camp site at Lobster Buoy Campground

 We are out of our rental at the end of June but we've found a gorgeous, funky hideaway called the Lobster Buoy Campground to move to.  The aging hippie owner, with a blue bandanna headband tied around her shoulder-length, graying hair, has some summer campers who have been coming for over twenty years to her campground and home at the head of a cove near Owl Harbor.  The 40 camp sites all have views of the cove, and we reserve one starting July 1.  Now that the rain seems to have subsided (well, there were only a few, brief thunder showers this morning), we're hoping for a terrific time there in our tiny tent trailer.

Camden Town

All I could see from where I stood

was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked the other way,

and saw three islands in a bay.

 

Mt. Battie viewed from Camden Harbor



6/15/12:  Who knew that Edna St. Vincent Millay was from Camden, Maine.  At 20, she wrote one of her most famous poems, Renascence.  Its opening lines, at the top of the page, were inspired by the view from the top of Mt. Battie.  (The house where we are staying is at the base of Mt. Battie.)  Born in 1892 in Rockland, where our boat is, she lived with her mother and her two sisters in Camden after her parents divorced.  Although the family was of modest means, her mother exposed the girls to culture and literature.





 

The Whitehall Inn, where Millay first read Renascence in public

Millay first read Renascence in public at a gathering at the Whitehall Inn in Camden, and one of the wealthy guests was so taken with her talent that she offered to pay for "Vincent," as she liked to be called, to go to Vassar.  Millay accepted the offer, graduated from Vassar, became a feminist, a political activist, the author of 15 books, and at the age of 30, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. 

Now the opening lines of her Renascence are quoted in every brochure and book you pick up about Camden - you can't visit without knowing she was here!





Main Street in downtown Camden

Friendly Phyllis toured me around the Camden shops

While Conrad has been working on the boat, I've received the many boat-related FedEx parcels delivered to the house, and spent some time wandering around Camden.  The small downtown area is an easy walk from where we are staying, and our land lady, Phyllis, even took me into town one day to see her shop and introduce me to a bunch of the other store owners who are her friends.  She tells me that in July and August it is difficult to walk down Camden's Main Street, above, because of the glut of summer visitors.

 

Camden is known as the town "where the mountains meet the sea."  Although the mountains are granite, they're not mountains by California standards.  They've  been around a lot longer geologically and are worn down to what we Californians think of as hills.  The Megunticook River runs through Camden, and when the area was first settled, a sawmill and gristmill were built in 1759 on the river.  Later there were woolen and paper mills.  And later still, the area became a major producer of the lime shipped around the world for use in mortar and eventually, cement.  Today the river still runs under Main Street and splashes in a wide, shallow waterfall into Camden's harbor.  

The Megunticook River flows under Main Street and into the harbor

But Camden's greatest prosperity came from the sea.  In 1792, the first shipyard opened in Camden and sailing ships were built in the town until 1920.  Along with building ships, Camden provisioned those ships, and in time sea captains from Camden sailed to all corners of the world.


Once a sea captain's home, now a B&B

 Many of the large clapboard homes built by wealthy 19th century sea captains still grace the town, and quite a few today are Bed and Breakfast Inns.

In 1892, Camden's business district burned to the ground, and many of its wooden buildings were replaced by large brick buildings (some of which you can see in the photo of Main Street), including an opera house.

After the Civil War, the railroads and Industrial Revolution gradually ended the shipping industry that once made Maine the most prosperous state in the nation.  A brief renaissance of shipbuilding occurred during WWI and WWII when a number of warships were built in Camden, and, at the same time, the mills along the Megunticook River operated around the clock to fill wartime orders.  


One of Camden's many B&B's

Summer visitors have come to Camden since the late 1800's.  In 1897, an inn, which no longer exists, was built on top of Mt. Battie.  A few years after that, the Whitehall Inn, now a Bed and Breakfast, opened in an old house built by a sea captain.  Today there are over thirty B&B's in this little town of 5,300 residents.

Camden has become a popular living place for artists, writers and retirees, as well as a summertime mecca for tourists, like us.  We're lovin' it!


 

Camden Harbor











At Home in Camden, Maine

Looking from Inside the Main Living Area of the House Out to the Deck

6/7/12: Today I was going to start on the hull, but it is raining again (oh right, we're in Maine).  Conrad just came home for a sandwich because it started raining hard.  He is working on the masts, which are off the boat right now, to make sure everything is there, and that the lights and other stuff work.  (We'd prefer he not have to climb a mast at sea to change a light bulb,)



I'm puttering around our new temporary home, taking photographs, blogging and reading books that Phyllis has lying around for her guests: Stern Men by Elizabeth Yates, a fictional tale about a girl growing up amidst the competition between the lobstermen on two, small, fictional islands 20 miles off the Miane Coast.  The lobstermen sell their catches in Rockland, where our boat is!


Our Living-Dining Room



Porch and Rocking Chair for Reading

The sun comes out briefly and I sit on the porch in a rocking chair reading On Whale Island by Daniel Hays, a true story of his year on a real island north of here, seven miles off of Nova Scotia.  He, his wife, and 11 year-old son lived for 12 months in a 14' x 16' two-story house that he and his father built years before - no electricity, refrigeration, or running water except what the three of them create.  It is so cold there in the winter that parts of the ocean freeze into blocks of ice, and this guy goes off his Prozac in the middle of their stay!  Not my idea of fun, but a very entertaining read.

 


Our Bedroom

 


Dining-Kitchen Area

 

 

 

Phyllis' Garden Shed and Artist's Studio

 

  



The Unveiling

6/6/12: This is the first day it hasn't rained since we got here.  Despite the rain, Conrad has been charging around: seeing the boatyard folks, talking to the sailmaker, visiting the local yacht club, checking out chandleries, going to the local Home Depot, Lowe's and Ace Hardware.  He's found out about a bi-weekly newspaper that advertises used tools and other items he might need, and makes phone calls.  And he brought me home a lobster roll for lunch!  I love lobster but have never had a lobster roll - yummy, lobster salad on a soft roll.  We've spotted a guy who sells fresh fish and lobster out of his van on the side of the highway,.  He's there every day, parked in what looks like an emergency stop lane, but I guess it's OK for him to do that here.  We need to see if Phyllis has a big pot to boil lobster in before we buy any.  Life is so tough here in Maine....


The Flussmaus Unveiled

Today the boat yard removes the cover from our boat and I get to see what she looks like unveiled.  The boat is white fiberglass and I will be painting the hull blue with a black stripe between the white and the blue.  We climb up a 12-foot ladder Conrad bought to get aboard - it will be a lot easier once she's in the water, Conrad assures me.

Conrad in our stateroom.  Head (bathroom) unseen to left; forward stateroom behind him.

The inside of the boat is filled with light, unusual for a sailboat (in my limited experience), but the Flussmaus has an upper cabin with windows all around it, and a skylight.  All that light filters into our "stateroom" (seems like an odd thing to call a tiny room that is all bed) that is a step down from the upper cabin.  The triangular-shaped, forward stateroom (bed) in the bow of the boat, which you can see behind Conrad in the photo, has a skylight.  The cabins are small, but, hey, we lived in a campervan in Australia for four and a half months.  This is way bigger!  The cushions and curtains are still in decent shape and are a jaunty multi-colored stripe that you can see behind Conrad in the photo.

There's not much woodwork on the exterior of the boat: the "bump bar" that runs around the outside needs sanding and varnishing, as does the bench-seating in the cockpit, but that's all.  The interior is another matter.  The woodwork in the galley all needs to be sanded, and then painted or varnished; the rest of the interior wood isn't too bad, although we should redo it eventually. 

 

Me Sitting at the Table; Galley to Immediate Right, Steering Station in Right Foreground

Will I ever be able to do this?

The hull painting and the woodwork will be my tasks, while Conrad works on the engine and modifies it from raw water (salt water) cooling to closed water (fresh water) cooling so he can install a system to heat water and heat the cabins.  But, first we have to send samples of the engine oil and the transmission oil out for analysis.  They test to see if any heavy metals are in the oils, and if so, what kind/s.  Conrad will be able to tell what's wrong and where the problem is by which metals are present in the samples - none, we hope.  He's ordered a compost toilet, which looks way easier for us landlubbers to use than a marine toilet, and is adding an additional water tank where the holding tank for the marine toilet currently is.

He needs to hook up the radar and see if it works.  He's bought an auxiliary antenna and plans to buy a dedicated GPS system, since our laptop has not been reliable enough to use for that purpose.  (Even I can understand that it wouldn't be great to have to shut down and reboot the computer in the middle of heavy seas or a storm!).  He is also going to rig the boat for single handling, which means he can sail it by himself if need-be.



Arrival at Rockland, Maine

6/2/12: We are up and on our way early.  It is a short drive to Rockland and to the boatyard where our motorsailer is stored.  The boat is out of the water with its masts down, and still "shrink-wrapped" for winter.  This is the first time I have seen the boat, other than in a photograph.  Conrad flew here a year ago to check it out before we bought it, and see if the boat was really as great a deal as we hoped.  To me, seeing it at last, and out of the water, the boat looks enormous: set up on tall saw-horses, all wrapped in white plastic-like material, with its keel exposed.  It seems a bit surreal, and very exciting, that this is actually our boat!

Although the gate to the boat storage yard is open, no one is in the office or the yard.  It's a rainy, windy Saturday and not a great time for anyone to be out working on a boat.  But me?  I'm dancing in the rain!


Me and Our "Shrink-Wrapped" Boat; the Masts are in the Foreground



Now we need to find somewhere to live while we work on the boat.  Since we left Grand Teton National Park over a week ago, it has been raining or threatening to rain every night, and we have stayed in a series of motels.  But, we don't want to pay motel rates while we are getting the boat ready for our sail to New York. 

I'm the delegated spouse to go to the Visitors Center in Rockland and poke around for information on the area and living accomodations.   I acquire a list of vacation rentals from the center, and start calling the ones that look small, hoping someone might want to rent to us at a bargain price since it is not really the tourist season here yet.  I leave voice mail messages at what sound like property rental services, but on one call I reach a real woman on her cell phone while she is shopping.  I'm thinking that this is a rental agent but no, it is the property owner.  We very quickly strike it lucky!  After she has time to think about it for a bit, she invites us to meet her at her home.  (She likes my "bubbly" voice.)  She has a charming old cottage and a four year-old home on the same piece of property in Camden, within a few miles of our boat, and we end up with the house for half the price of the cottage through the end of June.  "Phyllis" says she has never done a rental this spontaneously but she feels good about us.  She has been talking to flakey people all week, saying "no" to all of them, and is worn out.  She likes and trusts us (it's that bubbly voice).  July and August are busy and her property is booked for then, but she is happy to make a deal with us for June.  Everyone's happy!

And to top  it off, Phyllis will be living next door in the cottage and is a hoot!  She's an artist, has a shop in Camden, takes care of a 99 year-old woman several hours a day, and a 60 year-old woman with multiple sclerorsis three hours a day.  Phyllis is our age and a dynamo; unending energy, upbeat, talkative, happy, generous, funny....  I could go on and on.  I write a check and we agree we'll move in tomorrow. 

Our Last Night in a Motel

We spend our last homeless night at the Claddaugh Motel, recommended by Diane at the Visitors Center - and it turns out to be the nicest place we've stayed so far.  Our Irish hosts have created a cozy, welcoming retreat.  It is pouring nonstop outside, and we are so happy NOT to be in a tent.  Instead, we are all tucked up in a room upholstered everywhere with rose-covered fabric, and trimmed with red-painted molding and ceiling beams.

6/3/12: Phyllis calls at 7 a.m. saying, "Would you like to come over and take a hot shower?"  She thought we were camping and was worried about us when it rained all night.  Everyone needs a land lady like Phyllis!  We move in, unpacking our Tupperware-like boxes of clothes (4), food (1), and assorted other sundries (4), from our tiny tent trailer.  Phyllis thinks it is all a riot and can't believe how little we have with us.  She's already planning to take us to her son's four-star restaurant for lunch next Sunday.  It continues to pour and pour, and the wind blows and blows - it's a Nor'easterner - now I truly understand what that term means.  And, we have a wonderful home to cuddle up in while we wait it out!

 

69 Mountain Street, Camden, Maine - Our Temporary Home Away From Home.  Mt. Battie in the background.

Erie Canal to the Atlantic Ocean

6/1/12: We're back at the Erie Canal Administration Offices in the morning where we talk to two women, and Conrad gets some questions answered.  It will cost a wopping $34.00 for us to get a ten-day permit to go through the entire Erie Canal system, and we find out that there is a boat yard on the Hudson River right before we will enter the canal where we can get our masts taken down.  We won't be sailing on the canal because there are some low bridges along its way.

Now we're driving along sylvan country roads and find ourselves in Hoosick Falls, where Grandma Moses was “discovered” at 80 and became famous for her primitive-style paintings of the area.  You know just what the countryside we are traveling through looks like; just think of Grandma Moses' paintings!  We are in the Berkshires, in Revolutionary War territory, and on our way to Manchester, Vermont.  We pass the site of the 1777 Battle of Bennington, and cross into Vermont and the Green Mountains.  There are seas of green trees covering the hills as far as we can see.  At lunchtime, we find a pub in Manchester – it reminds me of the pubs in England where my friend Anne Carlton took me on my visits to see her, and it has great food.

We drive on and on, through quaint New England villages and towns, and into New Hampshire, the “live free or die” state.  Now we are passing through old mill towns where the mill ponds are still there next to abandoned factories, and then we're back onto a highway cutting through granite.

Oh my God, at last we are crossing the Maine state line and heading for the Atlantic Ocean!  We arrive at Cape Elizabeth, and drive to the shore, right below a New England lighthouse. 


Lighthouse at Cape Elizabeth

We are at the edge of the Atlantic. We've made it from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and it's only an hour or two to Rockland, Maine where our boat is!  Today it is getting late, but tomorrow we'll be at our destination.

There it is - the Atlantic Ocean!

Lockport and Lock 32

5/31/12: We find the Erie Canal and there's a tour boat motoring along it – this is so cool!   We'll be just like that boat within the next two months.  We are trying to follow the canal in the Tracker and have to keep crossing bridges and going back and forth, from one side of the canal to the other in order to find roads that parallel the water. The old tow path, used by mules to pull the barges, still runs along the canal; today it is a walking and biking path, with an occasional wooden picnic table. We spot a tall-necked, Canada Goose in the canal with a string of adolescent goslings paddling in a line behind her

Our route takes us away from the canal and then back to it, and we pass apple orchards and wooden barns built on top of stone-walled, first-floor root cellars.  When we are in towns, on the curbs we see big garbage cans on wheels - many are bright pink with breast cancer awareness ribbons painted on their sides, something we have only seen in New York.  Now we are back along the canal and come to a turning basin where the barges used to turn around, and we cross the canal on a one-lane bridge.

At Rochester, Conrad finds the spot where the Genese River and the Erie Canal intersect, and we take a stroll through a park and along the water.  There is a dredge on the river dredging a navigation channel.  

Dredge on Genese River

The old tow path we are walking on goes over its own bridge, which was a way for the mules pulling the barges along the canal to cross over the Genese River.  

 Old Erie Canal Tow Path on Bridge Over Genese River

Now we are off to find an actual  lock and see how it works

Back on the road, Conrad heads for the town of Lockport, the location of Lock 32 on the canal.  It's just dumb luck; we arrive right as a boat is headed for the lock.

 

Boat Approaching Lock 32

We climb a viewing platform with a bird's eye view of Lock 32. There are giant gates in the water at each end of the lock, along with big  

Erie Canal, Lock 32: Lockkeeper's Hut at Upper Left, Gates to Upstream Canal to Right of Hut, Navy Blue Boxes with Yellow Trim at Top Right & Left Contain Machinery to Open Sluices That Let Water into the Lock, Bollard at Mid-Right, Ladder Rail at Mid-Left.

bollards for barges and larger boats to run lines around, machinery to open the sluices that let water into and out of the lock, a hut for the lockkeeper, ladders down the inside walls of the lock, and cables running from the top to the bottom of the lock walls.







Boat Enters Lock from Downstream





Downstream Lock Gates Closing







Water Bubbling Up from Ports on Lock Bottom 



Deck Hand Holding Boat Against Lock Wall

 

Upstream Lock Gates Opening




Boat Leaving Dock Headed Upstream



The lockkeeper comes out of his hut, looking like a tiny, toy man against the massive lock setting, and opens the downstream lock gates. The boat in the canal is on the same level as the water in the lock, and maneuvers through the gates into the lock.  It's a very small boat in a very big lock; we can't even see the boat once it is hugged against the lock wall below us – some of those old barges must have been hecka' huge to fill the entire lock!

The downstream lock gates close slowly against the water; the upstream ones are already closed.  The lockkeeper opens the hidden sluice gates, and the lock begins to fill with water, gravity-fed from the upstream canal level, flowing in through ports in the bottom of the lock, and bubbling at the surface.  As the water rises, we can see the boat floating up with the water.  It is tethered by a rope that a deck hand on the boat has looped from the boat and around a cable that is permanently attached at the top and bottom of the lock wall. Conrad asks the deck hand whether all the locks have cables to loop onto (no, some have lines secured only at the top of the wall), whether all the locks are bottom fed (yes), and other canal questions. 

The water level rises quickly and the boat floats higher and higher until the water in the lock is at same level as the upstream part of the canal. Then the lockkeeper opens the upstream gates, and the boat glides out of the lock.  The boat looked so little in the lock, and our boat is even smaller, but I still can't wait until we get to do that in the Flussmaus!  

Lock 32 from the Viewing Platform



There is some history of the locks on display panels, describing how the Erie Canal mirrored the history of the industrialization of our country.  When the first part of the canal opened in 1825, it was considered the engineering marvel of the 19th century.  It spurred the first great westward movement of American settlers, and made New York City the preeminent commercial city in the United States.  By the 1960's, with the growing competition from railroads and highways and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, commercial traffic on the canal declined dramatically.  Today it is primarily used for recreation and by tourists like us.

Our next stop is one of the Finger Lakes, Lake Cayuga, to see if there are yacht clubs where we can anchor,  and boatworks for possible winter storage of the boat.  Lake Cayuga is one of the smaller Finger Lakes and we only see one yacht club (the Red Jacket Yacht Club) and one boat yard.  It is a lovely, largish lake, where it looks like many people have second homes and others come to camp or stay in motels or rentals for family vacations.  Still, there is nothing unusual that draws us to Lake Cayuga, and we decide that unless our research reveals sights and accomodations more enticing than what we see, we will probably skip the Finger Lakes and head straight for the Great Lakes.

Back on our way through central New York, there are more farms, more apple orchards, thickly wooded hills, and very steep roads up those hills to challenge our little Tracker.  We arrive at the town of Cazenovia (established in the 1700's) on Cazenovia Lake - very swank with mansions and other, merely very large, houses; there are high-end stores, such as a “The Pate Shop,” in town - quite a ritzy spot.

We are in the Hudson River Valley!  And, it is on to Latham (near Albany) to see where the Erie Canal begins from the Hudson River.  We drive over two, one-lane bridges to get to the canal administration offices and to the very first lock of the Erie Canal.  The lock is in the town of Waterford, named for the colonial ford that was across the river there.  It is late and things are closed, but we'll be back in the morning.