Sailing Vacations
A Maine Windjammer

Good Afternoon! It’s another beautiful day in the New England state of Maine, rain mixed with snow showers. The robins must be thinking twice about arriving back so soon. Speaking of signs of spring returning, yes Ed, the loon showed up yesterday in the harbor, gracefully swimming out beyond the Mary Day along with the winter ducks still lingering about. Canadian geese were spotted on the edge of ice on Lake Megunticook each perched on one leg. My guess is they were questioning the ice out date like the rest of us! (April 25th, no April 19th, …..). We all win in the end when it magically disappears. Another great sign among us was the excitement of Sawyer and Nadie playing on the beach down in the harbor. The ice along the shore of the harbor has melted and the sand has appeared. They were quick to build their long awaited sand castle, the first of many to come for this summer. They were both glad to be down there and to mingle among the crew as we worked aboard. Sawyer is becoming a g

Good morning everyone. The crew spent yesterday sanding spars under the cover. We try to get a few coats of varnish on each fall so that when the cover comes off in the spring the spars are ready to send up (the topmasts) or hang (the gaffs). Even the jibboom comes in for the winter to get a few coats of varnish. The topmasts get scraped up quite a bit from all the raising and lowering while sailing to get under the Deer Isle Bridge. The spars get a big hand rub with 120 grit and a random orbital sander hooked up to a vacuum makes quick work of fairing in the scraped varnish. That all gets primed with thinned varnish, and then get 2 coats of our favorite Epifanes. I spent the first part of yesterday helping get Jen and Annie out the door on their way to the North woods. Jen called from Millinocket to say that all was well and that Katahdin was just beautiful in the peaking foliage. Pictures to follow. The National Weather Service forecast a chance of snow flurries up North on Sa

Good morning everyone. Another busy week awaits us. The weatherman promises a warming trend in the forecast by weeks end but the wintry conditions will persist through the first part of the week. The almanac seems to be right on target for this time period predicting snow, then sunny and cold. I managed to spread some varnish upstairs in the barn on Saturday and I think it looks OK. Painting and varnishing are some of those life skills that one should be careful about displaying anything resembling competency with, like laundry and cooking. I always leave a “holiday” here or there just to make sure. This week we will be finishing the peapods, sanding the covering boards, painting trim around the cabin houses, painting the rail clamp, the bulwarks, the covering boards, the galley sole, miscellaneous varnish above and below decks, and the white tables in the galley. Whew…sounds like a lot of work and it is. Remember the cover comes off in 3 weeks and then we are exposed to the elem

Good morning everyone. We had a beautiful day here yesterday. The sun felt quite warm under the winter cover aboard the schooner, warm enough even to put a little primer paint on a few things. Today’s forecast has temps soaring into the 40s so we will be priming the cabin houses in the mid-day heat for a few hours. I drove down to the marine chandlery in Rockland yesterday and the bay looked so inviting. The peapods were painted yesterday, inside and out. As you can see Jen and the crew did a great job, hardly a brush mark visible. We now just have to paint the off-white trim and the names. We have promised ourselves we will launch the peapods as soon as we get them finished. Kaitlyn has stripped the varnish off the deck box lids and she put a thinned coat of varnish on yesterday to seal those. They are looking good. I love the rich color of the white pine. Have a great day. Be well. Do good.