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        We stayed at Otter Island for two nights.  The days were beautiful, the nights were calm, the scenery was gorgeous.  Dan felt well enough to row ashore and explore a little, coming back with driftwood and planking.  I put together lists of what to pack to bring ashore and what else needed doing.  It was a very restful couple of days.   

Tuesday, June 4, dawned clear and placid calm, and we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and make our way home.  We took our time, arriving in Camden Harbor just after noon.  Our friend Gretchen had offered us the use of her car to help us get stuff home, as we had no vehicle.  After we tied up at the town landing dock, I walked up the street to drop a bag at home and then over to Gretchen’s to pick up her car.  It was a little daunting to drive again, after nearly two years.  I was glad tourist season has only just begun and I didn’t have too much traffic to deal with.  Camden can be very crazy in the summer.  

        Home!  Where we can take baths in the clawfoot tub, do our laundry without worrying about timing or quarters.  Where I don’t have to displace everything on the sofa to dig under the cushions for canned goods.  Where we can spread the yoga mat out and have plenty of space to stretch and not be in each other’s way.  (These little things are enough to make you giddy with pleasure!) We’ve been gone almost two years.  We’ve visited three countries and twenty-four states.  We’ve cruised into or through four of the Great Lakes, about a dozen canals, and transited nearly 200 locks.  I was able to visit cousins and spend time with all of my siblings. We’ve made countless friends and reconnected with friends we haven’t seen in years.  We’ll have memories to last a lifetime.  Now it’s time to figure out what the next adventure might be.

Our Great Loop.  I had to draw in the Canadian portion - the track line reset in Wisconsin because we spent so much time there.

Tommie wasn’t sure about leaving the boat, but she’s ok as long as Dan is there to sprawl over.  

Maine

         We stayed in Mystic until the morning of Weds May 29th.  We left the Seaport Museum on Tuesday morning, but anchored in the river just across from it when we realized we’d missed the bridge opening.  Since it opens only once an hour, that meant losing not just an hour’s worth of tide, but also the chance to get farther than Fisher’s Island (at the mouth of the Mystic River) and the weather wasn’t going to be good for the anchorage there.  So we just stayed by the Museum for one more day.  We took a dinghy ride down to town to walk around and have an ice cream.  Neither of us had been to town before, so it was a nice little visit.

On Weds morning we picked up and left and cruised along the New England shore all day, coming to a stop in Mattapoisett Harbor, Mattapoisett MA.  I think it really dawned on us then just how close we were to Maine and home.  

Thursday (May 30) was a showery kind of day, windy and spitting rain most of the time.  We navigated from below and got through the Cape Cod Canal to the marina in Sandwich, where we holed up for the afternoon and night.  We could see the white caps out on Cape Cod Bay and weren’t interested in getting out there just yet.

Friday was a much nicer day.  We had talked about crossing Cape Cod Bay to Provincetown, but the day was so beautiful, we pushed on to Gloucester instead.  This was the second crossing of this Bay where we had no humpback whale sightings.  We’ve spent a lot of time watching humpbacks cavort here, but the only whale to make an appearance was one little minke.  We hadn’t seen any in the fall of 2022 when we made our way south, either.  

This was also the day I came down with a nasty head cold that I eventually passed on to Dan, and which is keeping us both pretty low key.  We’ve been very, very lucky with our health - apart from a cold Dan had over a year ago, and our only bout of Covid last Thanksgiving, we’ve been very fortunate not to catch anything.  But, we did spend a day with a toddler (Leo) who had a bit of a runny nose, and I did take him into the Children’s Museum in Mystic Seaport Museum where we played with several toys.  That’s a good way to acquire some germs.  I spent much of Friday huddled next to the heater in the salon while Dan managed the helm on the flying bridge. 

Maine! Jewell Island. And lobster pots. 

Saturday June 1 we made it all the way from Gloucester to Maine.  We anchored off Jewell Island in Casco Bay (Portland).  We celebrated with a round of Looper Beer.  We had planned a round of visits on this trip home - our son in Dorchester MA, our son in South Portland, friends in Harpswell - but we notified everyone that we were not going to share our cold and we’d see them another time, waving as we passed by their areas.  Sunday June 2, I felt well enough to join Dan on the flying bridge, while he bundled up in a sleeping bag.  It was a lovely day, if chilly, and we made a good passage all the way to Muscongus Bay, where we moved into the little cove on Otter Island.  This is a spectacularly scenic little anchorage, big enough for maybe two boats if one of them is relatively small, and here we will stay while Dan fights through the worst of the cold.  (He is two days behind me in the illness.)  We’ll probably get home to Camden before the end of this week, but for now we are enjoying the serenity of our surroundings.