Moore Better World: Becoming Familiar

Marshall Point Lighthouse - Port Clyde, ME

Happy 9th Anniversary to my sissy Lyndsi & brother-in-law Keith - may you have many more years of beautiful sunsets together!

Happy 1st Anniversary to John & Leanne - we love you guys too much!

L'Shana Tova to all our family and friends. May this new year bring you adventures of your own to strengthen your confidence, explore your limits, calm your mind and broaden your heart. STOP and take time to watch sunsets, stargaze, count each blessing and be present with yourself. Notice the people that continue to surround you, love you, and make you who you are and who you have yet to become. Happy New Year!

What a way to celebrate the Jewish New Year with an adventure of our own! We actually left Blue Hill, ME (9/22) after selling the remaining piece from our land life puzzle. Wow - what a feeling! Parting with our 2004 Honda Civic (bought on Craigslist back in 2009) brought nervous butterflies to both our bellies. The final tie was cut and we declared ourselves official cruisers since we now rely on our BoatWorks dinghy and feet to provision and explore new places. We celebrated the occasion with a bottle of red wine so that helped!

We're currently in Port Clyde, ME - a lovely little fishing town and tourism hotspot. We're taking a well deserved break today to explore, visit the Marshall Point Lighthouse and exercise our restricted bodies. We've been sailing the past three days, buddy boating with Heretic, the first boat Nate sailed on back in 2006-07. We've had a lovely time sailing through green waters, passing through beautiful islands, and anchoring in some of the most quaint locations known to the sailing community.

We've experienced a couple afternoons of stronger than expected winds, in which case, dictates where we end up anchoring for the day. Having a plan of where you'd like to sail is always a good idea, but not always the place you end up! With these strong winds, we end up changing course or tucking in early to the nearest wind protected harbor. We've been grateful to have detailed charts, daily weather forecasts and Windfinder.com, a weather service app that provides weather, tide, wind direction and wave height. Although accurate, weather reports and predictions don't always dictate what Mother Nature chooses.

Excited to sail after arriving in Blue Hill, we dropped the mooring ball at KYC and made our way from Blue Hill to Buckle Harbor (9/22). We had strong, stiff winds b/w 15-25 knots with gusts of 30+ (weather forecast was for 10-15kts so this made for an exciting sail!), which led us into the beautiful and protected, Buckle Harbor, for the night. Amazing thing about protected harbors - you can hear the wind moving through the trees, and see the white caps crashing into the water, yet our boats were peaceful at anchor. Such a fine place to be!

We left the following morning from Buckle Harbor with the intention of anchoring in VinalHaven, a beautiful island in the center of Penobscot Bay. Throughout the afternoon, the winds picked up considerably with gusts up to 25+ kts. On one of our tacks, we plunked the port rail (and my shoes) into the water which heeled the boat about 25 degrees, the farthest we've heeled Aletheia yet. The reason this happened is because we had too much sail up and wind pushing the sails over. To right the boat all we needed to do was ease the sails out and she magically righted herself to a comfortable position. Of the reading I've done on sailing, most women do not like heeling. I don't mind it much, but there is a fine line between just enough and too much! It's quite remarkable to be able to tip 14,000 lbs by way of wind pressure. At this point the winds were too strong to continue our sail and gratefully, we following Heretic into a tiny harbor, Laundry Cove on Isle au Haut (9/23). We hosted a dinner party for 4 and enjoyed chicken curry, salad and a complementary fire in The Hobbit. The following morning brought us out of Isle au Haut on a wonderful downwind ride towards Port Clyde, ME (9/24). We covered nearly 31NM with sunny skies and 5-10kts, a very different sail then the two prior days experiences.

All of our anchor locations have been peaceful with breathtaking views, arriving just in time to watch the sun set and prepare warm meals. Along our daily sails, we've been taking photos of Heretic and at the end of each day, rafting our boats each night. This means we tie our boats together with dock lines and fenders along side to prevent the boats from hitting one another when the sudden boat wake rolls by. Nate has done an amazing and professional job of steering Aletheia right up to Heretic's port side to raft up. It's a great way to climb across eachother's vessel for dinner and drinks!

This week has been thoroughly enjoyable with 3 days of sailing in different types of weather and surrounded at the end of the day with warm company having dinner & drinks with Dana & Gigi, who have been nothing but effortlessly generous and parent-like, making sure we have what we need (including full bellies).

Like the wind as it shifts, each day gives us a new experience, challenge, enjoyment and level of patience that we need to accept. We remind ourselves daily for our gratitude aboard Aletheia and for this adventure we have chosen, learning more patience when the winds becalms us and accepting support when the winds are too strong.

We hope to have a Google map up on the site soon to track our sailing route. Lastly, here are some pictures from this past week!