Sailing Vacations
A Maine Windjammer

Good morning everyone! You’ll never guess...0 degrees. We are gonna have braggin’ rights here pretty quckly if this keeps us and according to the weather folks we are in for a stretch of cold Arctic air. Our fire department was called out late last night for a minor fender bender (car vs tree on an icy road) and the cold temperature just doesn’t seem to matter when you have some reason to be out. Now heat on the other hand...I can’t do heat. I wilt in the humidity. How you folks from warm climates do it, I will never know. So I guess it just comes down to what you are used. Which makes me think, not that I do that alot but..... I received a phone call from a local teacher yesterday afternoon asking if I might be willing to talk to her alternative high school class about what I do for a living. Just talk about how you got in to the business and how you learned about boats and sailing, she says. Well I grew up around boats as a wee little urchin. I spent the first years of my l...

Good morning everybody. 0 degrees in the door yard, again. -10 with the wind chill but who’s counting. Am I sounding like a broken record yet. Remember, the cold is my friend. As I tell non-believers from other parts of our beautiful country, stick a banana out on the sidewalk on a hot summer day and it just won’t last long. Stick a banana out in our door yard this week and the skin may turn brown but it won’t go bad inside. Of course it will be hard as a rock too. So think of us up here, turning brown perhaps, but we are still good on the inside. On the last days of this cruising memoir we find ourselves anchored off Castine, July 15, 2005: Friday morning the wind came NW behind the front while we are walking ashore in the nearby town of Castine. This historic community dating back to before the Revolution is also the home to a great stand of Elm trees that never caught the wrath of Dutch Elm disease. We drifted off the anchor and up the bay in a dying northerly breeze. ...

Good Morning everyone. 0 degrees out in the dooryard. Yahoo! The cold is my friend. For one, the cold of winter makes the heat of the summer sailing all that much sweeter. And the skating is great. The kids and I played hockey on our home made skating rink yesterday. Sawyer’s Zamboni efforts with the garden hose paid off big! Today we are back in to the office, the kids are off to school, I am on call on the ambulance, and we are in for clear sunny skies. These are the days I dread the office and just want to play outside. But I remember July 14, 2005. Another beautiful day windjamming on Penobscot Bay: Thursday morning the fog broke in the Eggemoggin Reach as it often does. We visited the Wooden Boat School ashore before getting under way. We had a wonderful sail down the Reach passing under the Deer Isle Bridge; a tricky feat when the schooner is 100’ tall and the bridge is only 85’. How do we do it, you ask? The taller windjammer in the Maine Windjammer fleet have perma...

Good morning all. We have a heat wave hitting us right about now. A balmy 8 degrees above and the overcast sky is carrying with it the promise of a little new snow today. There is a very light snow falling in the door yard as I write. There is no wind to speak of. Sunday mornings are a lazy time. Sawyer is building with his magnets while Courtney is putting on a play with her paper dolls. As soon as I am done with this I will make us all pancakes drizzled all over with our own homemade maple syrup. Yesterday I stacked wood in the shop as promised and Sawyer and I skimmed coated the ice skating rink in the afternoon. He makes his own Zamboni out of a garden hose and a sled. He and I also took a walk in the woods “hunting” squirrels. They have nothing to fear, believe you me. Jen spent the day stitching doll clothes for an upcoming auction. her doll creations are quite amazing. Meanwhile, back in time, it is July 13, 2005, sailing the Maine coast: “Wednesday a lite southerly w...

Good Morning everybody! Clear blue skies here today and the thermometer is reading 8 below. The breeze died down so the wind chill isn’t nearly as vigorous as it was yesterday (15-20 below in the wind!) We spent yesterday morning with the accountant. Jen has been working furiously to get our year end books closed out. I spent the afternoon in the office catching up on correspondence and answering the phone while Jen attended a school meeting and picked up the kids and went shopping for office supplies and food while we were in town. Today we need to get firewood in to the house, a chore that warms us once a week as we make a big stack in the shop attached to the mud room. I have to fix the wood stove in the barn. So where were we….Oh yes, our July 11th 2005 cruise. So Monday was exciting. Here is Tuesday July 12, 2005. “Tuesday morning was sunny and calm so we went ashore at Stonington where we enjoyed the Granite Quarrying Museum and some of the neat little shops. Stoningt...

OK...Good Morning...It is some wicked cold out there. 8 below zero. I would tell you about the squeaking snow under foot but the sound actually froze before it could reach my ears.. This is the cold we live for and I love it. I can hear the trees snapping and the popping sound of the deck posts being heaved by the frosty ground. Sawyer and I went aboard the schooner yesterday afternoon while Courtney was in dance class and had to row our way through the skim ice just forming at the head of the harbor. I was looking through some pictures last night and came across this write-up of one of our windjammer cruises in 2005. I will share this cruise in installments. I remember this one because of the 2 thunderstorms that passed down the bay on the afternoon of the first day. It was a strange weather phenomenon because the heat was actually being pushed back against the land from an off shore front causing the storms to form on the immediate coast instead of over land. Passengers were q...

A chilly morning once again as cold weather returns. 2 degrees above and the familiar squeaking snow was under foot as I walked out to empty the ash bucket in the early morning darkness. The stars are just amazing, yes, diamond like. The almanac predicts a series of storms moving in from the southwest these next few days but I don’t see it in this morning’s heavens. Kaitlyn finished the schooner firewood yesterday. Yeah!. She has been working diligently after school each day to get that pile off the ground before the almanac is actually correct. Thank you Kaitlyn. Jen and I spent yesterday in the office pounding away at the keyboards trying to get our year end chores done. I am glad the year end only comes once a year. Today is our crazy day of the week. Winter schooner life is about family time. Jen will be back in the office for the day. I have to get aboard the schooner this morning. For better or worse we have clustered several after school activities in to one afternoon...

Happy Birthday Mary Day! 45 years ago this week the first coasting schooner was launched here in Maine since 1938. Well wishers filled the Harvey Gamage boat yard on a snowy January day to see this graceful schooner slide into the waters of the Damariscotta River. Capt Havilah Hawkins her designer and captain for her first 20+ years must have been filled with immense satisfaction to see how beautiful she was floating there, right on her lines. Built in 6 months she was a combination of traditional lines and some innovative thinking on the part of Capt Hawkins. Mary Day was also the first passenger carrying commercial schooner launched in the 20th century specifically to be a windjammer. Mary Day herself christened the schooner and continues to wish us well each season from her home here in Camden. Both schooner and person continue to inspire us with their grace and beauty. Have a great day!

New snow fell last night, about 1 1/2 inches on top of the boiler plate ice in the door yard. Yesterday Kaitlyn just about finished splitting the schooner wood and Paul sanded windows in the shop. I spent my day showing Paul around the global headquarters, rust busting deck lanterns, answering phone calls and e-mails, went on 3 ambulance calls, and meeting with our dear friend and former crew member Brad about building a new centerboard for the schooner. Brad has become one of this area’s trusted shipwrights. He spent the better part of a bitter winter during our 99/00 rebuild staring at and rebuilding our transom shoulder to shoulder with an older shipwright who learned his trade the same way. Brad has that rare combination of honesty, talent, self-belief, and grit. He doesn’t talk, he just does. And he has that rarest of skills, the ability to share his talents without making me, or anyone else, feel like a complete moron (which I may be by many accounts). But at least he g...

Good Morning! 2 degrees above out there in the door yard. I just got in from starting to heat the shop. I love to hear the snow squeak under foot as I walk on these cold mornings. I had to hike up to the crew cabin to find something and the woods were black yet at this early hour but first light should be here by the time I finish typing. Hunt and peck, hunt and peck, typist I am not. We usually get up at 0530 just to find a quiet hour before we get the kids up. This morning feels especially busy as we start in earnest getting spring fit-out under way. Kaitlyn, a special young woman who attends a local high school, began working yesterday. She is some tough and spent the afternoon splitting firewood in a biting wind. She and I were on a run on the ambulance yesterday morning. In addition to being a high senior she has just finished her EMT license exams and anxiously awaits confirmation of her success. Paul starts today. Paul has been around wooden boats for a while. He b...

Wow didn’t that wind whistle yesterday. Sawyer and I made our Saturday Camden run to the dump, the library (yes, we paid our fine for that overdue book), and rowed out to the schooner just to check the lines for chafe and see that the cover was intact. Right there at the head of Camden those gusty NW winds buffet the schooner right about amidships. There is no swell but that wind....take the butter right off a biscuit. I spent the afternoon hours splitting wood in the North facing wood yard. Brrrr... So today is a day of rest (not really with the wood pile still waiting but I like the concept). I was inspired by Mary’s doughnut recipe to try my own hand at it. Mary Barney is famous up and down the coast for her baking. Used to be when she lived out on Monhegan Island she would make doughnuts for the fisher men and women on trap day, the first day of their fishing season. She worked 25 summers at the Trailing Ewe and made doughnuts everyday. That’s alot of doughnuts. I work wi...

We use a great deal of wood around this place. We heat our house with wood. The barn too. And the cabin for the crew when they arrive in spring. We boil our sap with wood. We have a wood fired sauna. That’s 7 cords in an average year just here at the global headquarters. The schooner uses wood too. The heating system is wood fired. And then there is “Diamond.” That’s the 100 year old Glenwood K cook stove that eats 4.5 cords a summer while Mary, the cook, turns out some of the best food going. I have a few pounds of testimonial. But that is a whole story in itself. The cook stove also heats all the domestic hot water for cleaning and showers. So this past week we have been processing wood. A Zen affair really, with a modern day hydraulic twist. I can see Thoreau spinning in his grave. If you haven’t read “Henry Hikes to Fitchburg” you really should. We have read it to our kids but that doesn’t stop us from using modern technology in the course of making these traditional sa...

Good Snowy Morning to you all. Ok....let’s dream! So this is supposed to be about windjammers and sailing vacations and one family’s “Mom and Pop” odyssey creating windjammer sailing vacations. This time of year is the “creating”. The actual sailing won’t start until Memorial Day Weekend, which may feel a million light years away for you in the snow bank but feels just around the corner for us. This time of year we dream about being out on the bay, setting white canvas sails that fill with the breeze and draw us silently along, passing hundreds of spruce studded bold granite islands, viewing seals and porpoise and eagles (24 in one trip!). Guests take a turn at the wheel, or just snuggle up on deck in the warm afternoon sun reading a favorite book. We sail “down east” to places you just can’t reach by car, away from Route One, away from the hustle and bustle of main street, and put the worries of the world miles behind us before we anchor in a small harbor to get ashore for a wal...

0630-55 degrees inside, 12 degrees below zero outside. We were up early awakened more by the chill in the house than a full nights sleep. The wood stove was on it last embers, enough to start the fire again but even the handle on the stove top kettle was cold to the touch. Heating with wood has its moments. The bay is white with sea smoke, a result of warm ocean water (relatively speaking) releasing heat to the chilly Arctic air. It is a magical event to see the vapor being blown up off the bay with only the peaks of the distant islands visible. Today we’ll be in the office, hugging the woodstove, thrashing through the all the year end paper work requirements that comes with running a small business. I guess it comes in handy at a frigid time like this but there are cords of firewood in the door yard waiting to be split and stacked before the pile gets buried in the forecasted snowfall coming tomorrow. No lack of job securty here. Stay warm out there folks!

The deep freeze is finally here this morning. We took the opportunity of yesterday's warm temps to get on to the boat, knock the snow off the cover, and give her a warm pat on the hull. The ice will set up fast over the next few days. The waterfall outlet of the Megunticook River pours freshwater in to Camden harbor so the top few feet freeze faster due to the lower salinity. The ice doesn't seem to bother the boat, at least not in the last 45 years. The hay bails in the foreground of the accompanying photograph stop (or at least slow down) the kids sledding in the park.

OK Folks, So there are some great blogs out there. There is no real reason to read this one unless of course you are interested in what it means to be living the dream. We have this amazing schooner here in Maine and offer sailing vacations all summer long. We meet great people from all over the country and sail through some of the most amazing scenery on the planet. We really are living the dream in so many ways. But have you ever wondered "What do they do all winter long?" What does it take to make your dreams come true, operate your own business, go sailing everyday. Well there is that and so much more. Our hope is to share with you a little bit about our lives operating a Maine Windjammer. Feel free to ask questions and we will do our best to answer them and share our year round schooner odyssey.

The schooner Mary Day is all wrapped up for the winter, along with all the other Camden windjammers.