Moore Better World: Good Times Had By All

Bradbury Mountain Summit

Greetings from Freeport, ME! In short, we've had a simply wonderful week sailing from Blue Hill to Freeport the past six days with our family and friend, Heretic. We picked a great weather window last week (9/22-9/28) to sail south since this week is forecasted to be windy and rainy.

We've had a variety of weather conditions, including 30+ gusts of wind, becalmed metallic waters, warm and cold nights, beautiful anchorages, and lovely downwind sails covering roughly 90 NM (give or take) to Freeport.

As we made our way through Casco Bay on Sat, Sept 27, our final push into Freeport, we chose to anchor in Mackerel Cove on Bailey Island. In the midst of our sail, a beautiful Monarch butterfly landed aboard Aletheia and I gasped with delight. It's migration season for these beauties, and as far as we're concerned, we're fluttering south too! Heretic caught up to us that afternoon after being postponed a day in Port Clyde working on their engine. Heretic skated passed us into Mackerel Cove to prep their anchor. At the same, serendipitous time, a lovely, well dressed gentleman, shouted through a megaphone on dock, "Incoming sailboat, would you like a mooring ball?!"

Heretic: "We would love a mooring ball! We have a second boat coming in. Can we use the same mooring?"

Gentleman: "It has strong holding. That will be fine."

Dock neighbor: "Geez, I better put more beer in the cooler!"

As Aletheia sailed into the cove to raft up, we had already been invited to a cocktail hour at the gentleman's brightly colored summer cottage. What a charming and generous couple and what a great way to meet new people. As the lovely gentleman later said "Inviting sailors from the mooring ball is like fishing, you never know what you're going to catch!"

Score! This was a blessing for two reasons. 1) the ground was mostly rocky, not a great holding and nearly 50 ft deep. That's a lot of rode (chain+rope=rode) to let out of the anchor locker! 2) I've been craving social interaction so this was super timing for me being able to expose my extroverted self and meet new people!

Hopefully, our new friends enjoyed the day's catch! We had a lovely evening meeting interesting people, enjoying good food and drink, and being able to introduce our story. People were very enthralled, and although I don't like to talk about myself, it was great to have an exciting and unfolding story to share. Friendly neighbors and family seamlessly joined the party as nearly 15 of us sat seaside, enjoying the pink sunset against chilled white wine and scotch and sodas.

There is something about how things seem to fall into place when you least expect it. For us, it was this moment when we were given the opportunity to celebrate our accomplishment of sailing down the coast of Maine alongside an inspiring and loving couple, meeting generous strangers, spirit in hand, and being able to stop and acknowledge life in this beautiful, minuscule section of the world.

After 6 days with no shower, we've finally cleaned ourselves up, sitting comfortably on land, coming up with our week's projects. Wyatt is grateful to be off leash roaming on grass and we're grateful for a big, soft bed, dinners around the table, laundry service and gracious hosts! Here are some picture from the week: