Gunkholing

These are our last days on the water, at least for this year. We’re headed south to the Casco Bay area and will be meeting up with friends and family. This has been the best sailing summer ever. I have loved my time on the boat and it’s difficult to see it coming to an end.

So, what makes this summer so much better than last year? The truth is, I’m not completely sure. We have definitely suffered through a great deal more boat “issues” this season – more expensive ones too. And then of course there’s the foggy, rainy, cold weather that just keeps coming back, every other day or so.

Even though we’ve had some bad weather days, we’ve also had a number of magnificently beautiful ones too. Maine is lot like that little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. The weather up here is either very, very good, or absolutely horrid. On the good days, we’ve enjoyed some pretty fantastic sailing. And even a bad day can bring an incredible sight that cannot be seen so expansively on shore - a rainbow.

I’ve been almost entirely free of my previous seasickness worries, which has allowed me to learn more actual sailing and navigating skills this year. I wouldn’t say that I’m a real sailor yet, and I rely pretty heavily on the modern equipment aboard the boat to read the charts along with the wind. But I’ve been slowly and surely taking on more of the sailing responsibilities, and that feels pretty great.

We also have been sailing in some less densely populated areas up here in Maine. Seaside tourist towns certainly have their charms, but I’ve really enjoyed the numerous opportunities for exploring small, uninhabited islands.

The main thing that is different this year might just simply be that both Rick and I have relaxed a bit. The boat was unfamiliar last year, and so many systems seemed to be going wrong. A bigger boat with more sophisticated equipment means more things to go wrong and more repair work that needs to be farmed out when it does – a difficult pill to swallow for a do-it-yourself-er like Rick. I think we both have come to accept that owning a boat is not a static experience, and that the joy derived from sailing will always be offset to some extent by the time, trouble and money that is necessary to keep that boat afloat. Totally worth it in my book. In any case, a happy Rick is just a lot more fun to be around. I’m sure the same is true for a happy Becky.

(Here's a video of Rick happily doing sailorly stuff:  http://youtu.be/54ss1bf5OIA  )

I don’t think I will ever pass under another bridge without remembering Rick’s encounter with that railroad bridge back in June. But I think we are both past that enough to just laugh about

it now. I love the bridge coming in to Southport Island – it pivots every half hour to let the boats pass through.

We’re planning on landing in Falmouth tomorrow for the usual Boothby family gathering. There will be hiking, barbequing and bocce ball playing, and then I will be flying home and leaving Rick to find his own way home on Valkyrie. This is our last night of cruising and we both get a hankering for the fried clams at Holbrooks – a little waterside joint where we enjoyed clams as a little snack last year.

We pull in at what a Mainer would call “wicked” low tide, and I’m sure we are very close to running aground, but we’re both anxious to get away from those beef stew left-overs which we’ve been eating for days, so obviously worth the risk. 

It turns out that Holbrooks has a pretty extensive menu and we order EVERYTHING! Three lobsters, steamed clams, fried clams, sweet potato fries, corn, coleslaw – the works. While we are waiting, we meet a set of sixty or seventy-ish twin sisters, just finishing their meal. A real couple of characters, they are obviously locals and are very interested in our boat. It turns out that they’ve done a bit of sailing in their day and we have quite an exchange of sailing stories. When they learn that we sailed up here from Baltimore, anchoring in small inlets and coves, one of the sisters exclaims excitedly, ”Oh, you’re gunkholers!”

Excuse me? Apparently, “gunkholing” is an actual term for seeking out scenic and isolated coves to anchor in, rather than simply going to the more popular and crowded marinas. The “gunk” refers to the mud that one tends to find in shallow creek beds and coves. Rick says he knows the term, but I’ve never heard him use it. It sounds like something you wouldn’t say in polite company. I wish I’d known about this when I wrote the “Muscongus” post awhile back!

When our food arrives, we pull out our chilled bottle of champagne and plastic wine glasses we brought ashore from the boat (it’s ok, this is a BYOB place). What a feast – the perfect way to spend our last evening cruising (gunkholing)!