44:09.2N 68:53.0W

Monday 12^th Aug

Rather like buses, dentists come along in droves it seems. I snapped a tooth off the other day and knowing that we were headed for Camden at the end of the week, I asked friends who live there to recommend a dentist. This went well and I have an appointment for Wednesday, but in an email today I mentioned this to Al & Maggie who had kindly offered us the use of their buoy in Pulpit Harbor and it turns out that Al is a retired dentist from the area and he helpfully also made recommendations (and names of at least one to avoid….). They also said that if we arrived here in Pulpit and found someone else on the buoy, we were to ask if they were dentists and if they looked blank, we could chuck them off!  Then as we sailed down here, we heard the yacht Heather on the radio and remembered that Jim is a retired US Navy dentist.

We started the day with a run ashore to sample the much vaunted American breakfasts made at Bah’s bakery only to discover that they have changed the name and the menu! They kindly recommended ‘The Castine Variety’ which is an old style diner with the advice that, “She’s kinda crazy, but the food’s good!”  We have seen crazier folks but the scrambled eggs and bacon on toast was excellent as were the endlessly proffered coffee refills. James and I headed off to the Town Green to take some photos whilst Sarah wandered off to do some shopping.

Castine is one the very few places anywhere now where beautiful, fully mature elm trees still grow unaffected by the Dutch Elm beetles that ravaged so many millions elsewhere in the world. Along with the immaculately preserved and restored houses it was hard not to think of the town as just one large film set. We clicked away with the cameras and we were only sorry that we had not done this the previous evening when the light had been so much better and in one case, the queue of concrete trucks had not blocked the view of an outstanding old meeting house and church. We did enjoy being shown a house dated around 1800 which had been moved 30 yards forward whilst they dug huge new foundations in preparation for moving the house back again to its original spot!

We met up with Sarah who had had a very much less interesting hour as there are only three shops and none of them contained anything much! Certainly groceries are very thin on the ground and this might explain why there are so few yachts here.

We returned to Serafina and brought her into the town quay to fill up with water. The harbourmaster’s two assistants were a couple of disinterested lads on holiday probably and their main contribution to this exercise was to twice get us to undo all our lines in order to move a foot forward to make the quay look neater! They failed to help unravel or coil away the very heavy hose and were happy to watch until Sarah had struggled with this, before re-appearing on the jetty in time for a hoped for tip. Well, actually they were just out of time as it happens….

We then enjoyed a fantastic sail south to Pulpit Harbor on the western side of North Haven Island. It was a headwind all the way of course, but as we were in no hurry, we tacked the whole way there in winds that varied between 12 and 20 knots across the deck.

On arrival we quickly found Al’s buoy and picked up the pennant (pick up line) and made ourselves fast. Then as we started to put gear away, Scott rowed alongside to say hello. We had sort of met Scott a year ago at an OCC event and he had simply seen our OCC flag and come across to say hello. He is a ‘roving vice-commodore’ for the OCC which is a role we are a little unsure about, but he came aboard and we had a long chat about all manner of things and places (Scott is a very experienced circumnavigator) before he realised that he was late for a dinner invitation on another boat.

A glorious evening followed which was a fitting end to a delightful day.