Sailing Vacations
A Maine Windjammer

Good morning everyone. Well I may not be good about writing blogs regularly these days but at least I am slow. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you folks but my life has been a bit like a runaway train these last few weeks. The train has slowed temporarily. We are out on our annual naturalist/photography cruise this week with JimDugan.com and naturalist Eric Snyder. We sailed out to Seal I on Monday to see the plentiful pelagic birds nesting there; puffins, auks, murres and even what we are fairly certain was a Manx shearwater. Eric and I both did a big double take when we saw that fly by. By some stroke of luck we anchored here at Lunt Harbor, Frenchboro, Long Island yesterday afternoon. We will most definitely get to shore to visit the boulder beaches and remember what it is like to see the bay from the land. If you haven’t made your reservations yet there are still a few empty bunks this summer. We just had a cabin open up for the Great Schooner Race. Yes, that is next week. ...

Good morning everyone. Well just when we thought it couldn’t get any better it has. This week is one of two 6-day naturalist cruises we offer each June and we are off to a great start. We left Camden after breakfast yesterday morning and pushed out of the bay to the southward. I had a hankering to get offshore and after the last 2 days of NW winds I suspected that the ocean swell would be knocked down some. After an hour’s push with the yawl boat, during which we saw a red phalarope, we caught a SSW wind and away we went sailing outside the islands that guard the south end of Vinalhaven. Just after lunch we reached Seal I about 20 miles from Camden and a known nesting spot for Atlantic puffins and razor billed auks. I was a little nervous when just a mile from the island I wasn’t seeing much in the way of pelagic species. And then they came. A gannet soared across the bow and then the alcids began to appear. I don’t think I have seen so many puffins and auks as we did yesterda...