“I’m noticing a pattern here.” I said to Dan as we unloaded the dinghy for the trip to our home in Camden. As I’ve mentioned, we touch base every three or four days, and twice since we’ve officially moved onto the boat we’ve spent a night or two at the house as necessity has demanded.
He looked at me with a small smile. “That the weather turns sunny and hot when we’re in town?”
It’s true. Each time we’ve come home - for mail, for errands, for appointments - the sun has dominated and we find ourselves overdressed and somewhat unprepared. We’ve become acclimated to the chilly wind and damp fog. Dan has now successfully installed two radars and is patiently tutoring me in how to read the screens. We’ve yet to have real summer out on the water, but there have been times when the fog lifts and we see the potential of it.
A few days ago we navigated through the Eggemoggin Reach and to Pickering Island and decided to go ashore for a hike. Everything was wet from the fog or the passing drizzle, but we were game. Pickering is privately-owned but is part of some conservancy and is criss-crossed with well-marked trails. We found this to be true until we took a side trail to visit one its many pocket beaches and were unable to get back to the main trail. We tried bushwhacking a little - surely that trail couldn’t be that far - the island just isn’t that big - and then decided to just circumnavigate the island by following the shoreline until we came back to Dow Cove where our dinghy awaited. Well. Gone are the days I can just nimbly hop from rock to rock or scramble easily up and down a slope studded with rotted roots and slick grass. We picked our way carefully through brambles and across jutting shale, me praying silently “don’t slip, don’t fall, don’t turn an ankle…” Ah youth - where did you? Once I climbed like a mountain goat, sure-footed and fearless. We traversed many small beaches, climbed across treacherously slippery or sharp rocks, doing our best to avoid those smelly patches of rotten seaweed that mark the high tide lines, always thinking once we get around this point, we’ll see the boat. Even when we did see the Willie Dawes shrouded in fog, we had to round a few more points to come to the beach were our dinghy sat. We were extremely pleased with our accomplishment once we completed our circumnavigation. We were damp, a little sore from using some muscles that don’t normally get much exercise, but we’d made it around without mishap. And we’d made it back to the boat before the thunderstorms rolled through.
The storms were quite spectacular - lots of thunder and lightening, some heavy rain, and the occasional gust causing rain to make a loud splat against the windshield. We were safe and snug in the Willie Dawes, and about to play a hand of cribbage when we noticed the sunset breaking through the clouds. Such glorious colors, shading from gold to orange to red in the West while the storms had their last hurrah; the sun prevailed and gave us a large, full, double rainbow to claim victory over the passing front.
Dan and I took turns oohing and ahing and then he remarked that it would be good weather tomorrow… the day we needed to return home.
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