Sailing Vacations
A Maine Windjammer

A bell from Santa's sleigh ring truest in the heart of a child. Have a great day. Be well. Do Good.

Good morning everyone. I was coming up the drive way the other day when I saw this pattern in the snow. I instantly thought of white sand beaches and ripples sculpted by the waves. Have you ever seen this? It is incredible that nature can create such beauty, asymmetrical though it may be. Each ripple influences the shape on the next down stream ripple by changing the way the water (or wind in this case) moves across the surface, The fact that I am thinking about sandy beaches might make you think I have a one track mind. Maybe I do. But I am reminded of a few island picnic spots we visit that do have beautiful sand beaches and how nice it is to be with everyone on a hot summer day enjoying good food and swimming. Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Many of you have by now seen my lobster bake photo in the Mary Day 2010 calendar. Pretty wild, huh? And I've gotten a couple of "HOW did you do that?" questions. So I might as well answer all at once. I wish I could tell you it's my idea, completely original, etc. Not so much. I found this technique on the internet. Here's a good roundup of how it's done: http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/create-your-own-panorama-planets/ Fairly simple: 1. Make a panoramic series. In this case, I stood on a rock with a good 360-degree view, with the schooner, the lobster bake and the beginning of sunset. I then took about a dozen pictures, turning a few degrees each time and making sure I overlapped enough. (I hesitate to publicly name a private island but I'll tell you it's near Bucks Harbor. If you know the area, you can likely figure it out.) 2. Turn the series into a panorama I use Photoshop's "autostitch" function to automatically (if slowly) cr...

Good morning everyone. It is a whopping 10 degrees out this morning here at the global headquarters for Schooner Mary Day. I recently talked with a young lady from Austin, TX and she told me they have had snow and cooler temps there as well. I for one am glad to see the snow arrive although it settled upon the earth that had nary a few inches of frost in the dirt. The plow on my truck pushes more than just snow even with my best attempts to keep it a few inches off the ground. This photo by Meg Maiden shows the scene here last Wednesday. It was just wild with storm warnings in the Bay. The No'easter blew with a will and what that wind didn't get the No'wester behind it did. Katie and I were aboard on Tuesday making sure all was right. Even though we were safe on shore with heavy mooring lines holding the schooner secure we still braced ourselves for electric lines to be knocked out, oil lamps filled and drawn buckets of water. All passed without incident and we are bac...

Good morning everyone. Four inches of snow on Saturday ushered in the holiday season Currier and Ives fashion. We spent the day scrambling to get everything covered or off the ground before the snowfall. Lately we’ve taken several trees down around the yard trying to get some more sunshine to the house so we have been chipping branches and stacking wood like crazy. I have also generated a number of logs for the sawmill in the process. But this being a day of “rest” we decided to take a walk in the woods and get our Christmas tree and enjoy a big family dinner. The late day sun cast golden light on the treetops and the winds which had blown so hard at the height of the storm eased to just a whisper. Woodpeckers were calling deep in the woods. The kids dragged the tree most of the way to the house. Dad did jump in on the last uphill. After pruning and adding a few branches to what was the top of a thirty foot fir the tree now stands trimmed and lit filling the house with the scen...

Good morning everyone. Well here is just a sampling of the girls one day efforts and a follow up to yesterday's blog. The big one is from Acadia, the white Peking. The greenish shells come from Hershey and Chicago. All the others come from the chickens. Katie and I are building them a new coop today. Yesterday we had 19 eggs... one per bird. As Ed's comment pointed out yesterday Jen feeds these birds like no others. A daily diet of layer pellets, watermelon, spinach, cracked corn, cucumber, and strawberries confirms our family motto: Quisquam dignitas effectus est dignitas effectus ut redundo! And you thought those high school latin classes would never come in handy. Not sure how that will influence the cholesterol level but visitors have commented on healthy out birds look. Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Good morning everyone. Well it has been warmer than usual this last month. Finally the cold weather is beginning to set in. The docks were taken out down at the harbor yesterday. Winter is not far off. Katie and I are working here at the house these days. And we have some new employees that have finally begun producing some noticeable results. We can't keep up with them actually. Meet the girls... The chickens (all 16 of them) really don't mind being picked up. The ducks on the other hand get a little bit antsy.The chicken on the left is a barred rock. The chicken in the middle is a buff orpington. The black chicken is an astralop. At this point all of them are in full production and we get at least a dozen eggs a day, usually more. The idea is that this summer we should be able to supplement the 22 dozen schooner eggs we use each week with our farm fresh eggs. If you have never tasted a duck egg they taste just like chicken... eggs that is. The duck egg white is m...