Boothbay Harbor

We are here in Boothbay Harbor for the very busy Labor Day weekend.  The campground is bursting, folks are enjoying one of the last hurrahs for the season here in New England.  Most schools up here start right after Labor Day, so this really is the last chance to enjoy the end of summer before the grind begins and old Frosty starts nipping.

Boothbay Harbor is a beautiful example of Maine coast living and boating.  It is picturesque, small town living with a booming boating community, so what to do?  Go for a sail on a schooner!  We lucked out and happened on an absolutely perfect day for sailing, clear blue skies, 75 degrees, and a nice steady wind of about 10 mph.  And only 15 people on a boat that can take up to 28.  All good!

Boothbay Harbor

Perfect day

Another view

We took our sail on a 65' schooner that is an exact sister ship to the  Appledore schooners that Herb and Doris Smith sailed around the world twice with their 3 children.  They wrote several books on their adventure.  So we joined Captain Bill and his first mate, Jerry for a two hour tour........sound familiar, but I digress.

Eastwind

We left the dock, raised the sails, I even helped, and had a lovely sail.  We beat out of the harbor nicely making way, heeled over comfortably at about 6 knots.  

Idyllic

A view of the schooner rig

Conferring with the Captain

Our intrepid crew

A very famous helmsman!

Karen finally finds some phone service

We admired the passing boats and real estate and just enjoyed our day.

A classic wooden ketch, yeah we beat him!

Nice place on a rocky headland

So we got into a discussion with the captain about sailboats.  I had to dredge up a lot of memories, and although we owned a sailboat for more than 10 years, we sold it in 1995, a couple years back :-)  He asked what kind we had, and I told him we had a old Alberg 35, one of the earliest fiberglass boats that was yawl rigged and built in 1963.  Both he and the mate were familiar with the boat as it was a true classic.  Well, unbelievably, just after we had discussed this, what do we see coming right by us, an absolutely pristine Alberg 35!!

Alberg 35

So with that we headed back in and capped our day with some homemade ice cream, PERFECT!