June 2009

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This has been a very busy week for me. I have hardly had time to stop and breath!
Last Friday I left home in Comrie in Scotland flew off to Denmark for three days to celebrate my dad's 87th birthday. The first night I stayed with my sister Kirsten, and the next day we went to Hinneryp to visit my brother Hans Chr. and his wife Birna and they had invited the whole family to celebrate my dad's birthday the 21th June with brunsh and singing by great grand children. In the afternoon we all went into 'Den Gamle By'(Museum of old houses), i Aarhus where Hans Chr were singing in Aarhus Studenter Singers. It was a great event, and a lovely courtyard with bandstand where the celebration took place. Dad enjoyed the singers coming down and singing for him especially.
It was a lovely day and we all enjoyed ourselves.
The next day I flew back to Edinburgh and spent the evening with Pernille. We walked out to Crammond Island as the tide was low. The sunset was beautiful, and we had a lovely time.
Tuesday 23th June I flew out to Boston in the US. and joined David in Rockland, ME. We are getting Davids boat, The Aros More, ready for sailing back across the Atlantic. We are enjoying great hospitality from Bev and Bill Cowan and staying in their lovely old house in Rockland. They own a schooner, which they are working on to ready to sail on long term.

The first photo is of Kirsten and me in Kirstens and Finns boat in Vejle, Denmark.
The next three photos are Fars birthday celebration from Denmark.
Pernille, and the sunset are from Scotland.
The last three are from Rockland in Maine, USA.

2009 Sailing season

Since we came home in September 2008 David and I have been busy doing homely things. David has been busy supporting and canvassing for UKIP, in between cutting hedges, grass and climbing hills. I have taken up Golf and have played most days over the winter. I still work a little for Marie Curie Nursing Service. In the Spring we found time to tie the Knot y getting ourselves married.
David flew back o the US two weeks ago and I shall follow in a couple of days.
Last weekend I managed to get my three children together and have a BBQ in the garden, It was a really nice weekend.

Good Buy from the sailing season of 2008!

We are now getting ready to leave Aros More for this year. Our last preparations are taking place and tomorrow we leave Rockland and the boat at 5.00am to catch a bus to Boston and then fly home. It will be all strange to have dry land under our feet. We have have had a wonderful season, seen lovely places, met friendly people and made lots of new friends.
we have taken more photos than you would like to know!
It has been a most memorable Summer and I am sad to say that the season is over!

Red -Right - Return

Red, Right ,Return! Red to starboard when you go to back to a harbour.... on this side of the Atlantic!
We are now heading home to port! as we are into our last two weeks of sailing for this year. Yesterday we booked our home tickets and fly out form Boston on Tuesday 15th September to arrive in Edinburgh on Wednesday 16th September in the afternoon. We shall leave Aros More in Rockland, ME. all wrapped up in plastic for the winter.
We are still having a wonderful time sailing in lovely surroundings and in good weather. This little town of Camden claims to is the world capital of windjammers ( schooners) .
These beautiful old sailing vessels sail around here with tourists and as sailing schools.
On the photo of the motor yacht you can see a helicopter on the aft-deck. We were anchored next to it last night, and the helicopter kept taking off and landing again after a trip round the bay.
We are expecting very high winds for the week end and have been advised to go to a hurricane hole , which is a small bay, Pulpit Harbour, very protected from winds from all directions. we shall sit out the storm there till Sunday night.

From Castine, ME

Since Rockland we have had the most wonderful time sailing around the islands in Maine. Everywhere we find lovely anchorages and good sheltered moorings. David bought a really helpful book called ‘Maine Coast’, so with that and local advice and suggestions from other sailors we have found all these wonderful places.
The day we left Rockland we had a very eerie experience as we were suddenly in thick pea-soup of fog. The radar went on. We were approaching a group of islands, called Fox Islands. After about an hour we heard the sound of a bell buoy, and from the same direction a triangular shape appeared. It happened to be the sail of another yacht going in the same direction as we were sailing. It looked really ghost-like and weird. Fog is a bad problem for coastal sailing on the Maine coast and further east and north.
We have hiked, climbed mountains and picked blueberries, cranberries and fungi such as chantarelles and bulitus in the plenty. We have cooked and eaten lobsters in many ways. How do you feel about eating ‘lobster lasagne‘? It was good. We have met many interesting people and made many new friends.
Last Sunday after a great sail from the very picturesque Long Island we arrived at a beautiful bay with moorings. The sea was dead calm and it was a lovely afternoon. We saw a couple rowing a dinghy in the mooring area, and I asked them if they knew of any free mooring we could hook up to. The lady, who was wearing a big boater of a sunhat, guided us to her own mooring buoy. We got talking and before we knew it, we were invited to her house for cocktails. She, Maggie, directed us to the house and after a short trip in the dinghy we approached a private jetty belonging to an amazing fairytale house with lovely views over the archipelago to the south and west, a beautiful flower garden, gazebos, garden houses, a small golf court and a tennis court. The house, which was very large was built in granite with cedar-shingles on the roof. Maggie’s grandparents had built the house as a family summerhouse at a time when you had servants who had their own quarters in your summerhouse, as well! The house was sitting in 40 acres of its own ground, mainly of woodland.
In the drawing room a roaring fire was light, and Maggie and her friend Steven were welcoming us with drinks. We ended up being invited to dinner as well. The next day we were taken to the local market, and we reciprocated hospitality by giving Maggie and Steven a ‘Haggis Experience’ enjoyed in good Scottish tradition with Whisky and bagpipe music on Aros More. Maggie was very sceptical about the haggis, but she enjoyed it. I told her to come back to Scotland and we shall give her a real Scottish experience!

Lobster capital of the world! Rockland, Maine.

Rockland, Maine.
We spent a couple of days in a small beautiful bay, called Robin Hood Cove. In the mornings we are now having fog and the temperature is decreasing to more normal levels, for us.
We arrived to Rockland yesterday after an interesting sail through the archipelago of the Maine coast. It is very similar to what meets you in Sweden: low skerries and rocky islands with pine trees. The trolls are here, too! Holiday homes of different shapes and sizes are dotted all. Only a very few people stay on the islands all year round. Lobsterfishing is the main employment along the coast. Rockland claims to be the lobster capital of the world. Field after field of lobsterpots are scattered for miles along the coast. You have to watch every inch when motoring in case you should hit one of the thousand buoys.

Isles of Shoal.

Gloucester, New Hampshire, is a 'working harbour with a lot of fishing boats, and also a seaside resort with tourists walking the sea- promenade. A memorial erected for fishermen from this small town lost at sea over the last two centuries contains more than three thousand
names.

The memorial of the young woman and her two little children anxiously looking out to sea is very moving.
We have just left a small group of islands, the Isles of Shoal, which were inhabited by a lot of seagulls and their young. There was also a 'conference center' which one could compare with the Iona community or Findhorn. The birdlife was amazing, though. A 'dig' was taking place on the next door island, Snuttynose Island, and the archiology students were terribly excited as they had just found a coin from the mid 19th century.