The End of the Adventure

Portland Headlight

Our last twenty-four hours on the boat... I can’t believe our trip is almost over. We have traveled five hundred miles in just under a month. Not a great record by most travel standards and not even an impressive record for sailing, but a real accomplishment for a girl with little to no sailing ability or experience and a very real proclivity towards seasickness.

We are headed for Portland, a two hour trip from Bideford Pool. Rick continues his last minute attempts at furthering my sailing education by making me set the sails. I’m a little better at it today, but I still need help raising the mainsail all the way – it’s a heavy son-of-a-gun.

We see a number of seals on the passage to Portland along with a set of twin lighthouses appropriately called Two Lights.  I decide to enjoy the seals today and forget trying to capture them on my camera. There are also several islands with lasting reminders of WWII. Most of the islands in Casco Bay have remnants of military installations of one sort or another because the U.S. Atlantic Fleet was harbored in Portland during part of the war.  

Inside Portland harbor we pass the enormous, Civil War vintage Fort Gorges.

Rick grew up in the Portland area and these waters are well known to him. We pull in to the harbor and motor over to the Centerboard Yacht Club in South Portland where we will get a mooring and spend the night. This yacht club is across the harbor from the city and affords a lovely view of the skyline.  Rick had a summer job working at this yacht club in his youth, running the launch to and fro across the harbor transporting guests to the Portland town landing and then, later, back to their boats. He loves this place for it’s down-to-earth quality and its members’ dedication to the art of sailing, as opposed to the snobby, “yachty” types who seem more interested in material competition and exclusivity at the Portland Yacht Club just up the road. I’m more interested in a shower than anything else, and one advantage to staying at a yacht club is that you can usually get a hot shower and the use of laundry facilities along with your mooring. This will be my first “real” shower in a month! They have a pool table in the clubhouse, and Rick tries to get a couple of games going with me, but I’m particularly hopeless. Even with a two-to-one shot handicap he easily cleans up.

We take the launch in to Portland and wander about town a bit before dinner. I have been to Portland a number of times in years past, and a big attraction has always been “Boothby Square”. Rick has proudly shown me the stone fountain displaying his family name, furthering the notion that his family was once a very prominent part of the social scene in Portland. This time however, he laughingly admits that this sculpture was never a memorial for anyone in his known family and he’s amazed that I have fallen for this deception for so many years! He assumed that I would know it was all a joke by the exaggerated manner in which he and his family always refer to this square. I’ve been duped!

We have dinner at a wonderful seafood restaurant called Street & Co. where we order raw oysters and my first lobster of the summer. After a quick shared desert of pecan pie, we race back to the dock to catch the last launch of the night back to our boat.

The next morning, we take our time packing up to leave. It will be a short two-hour sail to the Falmouth Town Landing where Rick’s father will be waiting for us. He will be taking us in his car (a CAR!) to his house in Yarmouth where we will spend the night. Then I will be flying back to Baltimore tomorrow, leaving Rick and Tortue in Maine. It will only be a temporary separation, because I will be picking up my son Dewey and driving back up to spend two weeks with family and friends in Bath. But our days together, alone on the boat will be over. Rick will be sailing back solo, probably doing some of those way off-shore adventures that he loves, and enjoying his man-cave once again.

When I first began this trip I thought I knew what kind of experiences would be in store – some whale sightings, some storms, some sunburn and probably some seasickness. I didn’t know that I would become so at home on the water, or that my perception of the sky from so many days of complete 360 degree views would be forever changed. This month-long voyage has indeed been a luxury; not of course in the sense of the stereotypical yachting fantasy shared by many Americans of the fifty-foot pleasure cruiser boarded by bikini-clad women and men wearing blue blazers and sipping gin and tonics. No, this was definitely a grittier, more primitive experience than most people would voluntarily endure. But it was also a grand exercise in adventure that could only be experienced with a large block of available time, indeed the kind of time that is unavailable to most people. I feel extremely lucky to have had this opportunity.

We can’t resist a quick trip over to Portland once more for breakfast at one of Rick’s favorite’s (and mine too), “Becky’s Diner”. 

Then we begin our last little sail to Falmouth. Rick has me set the sails one last time and this time I figure out how to use the winch handle properly and raise the main all by myself. I have to take a picture of the sails – the sight is no different than I’ve been seeing during this entire journey, but today it just seems better somehow!

We pull into the harbor at Falmouth and anchor at the end of a giant field of moorings. We unload all of my things, along with a month’s worth of laundry belonging to the both of us. The dinghy is completely loaded because Rick wants to take only one trip, and we get soaked with the spray as Rick steers us through the chop on the long ride to the dock. I think it is probably appropriate that when we finally make it to dry land for good we bring some of the water with us.

We have arrived.