43:55.8N 69:16.1W

Monday 22^nd July

Another very still morning and sadly the wind never bothered to fill in at all so we ended up motoring the 16 miles to Port Clyde.

The trip was far from dull though as we saw porpoises, seals and poor James has been confronted by more lobster buoys than he ever wants to see again. Of course this is just the start of things and he is getting very adept at weaving through the densely packed, but very colourful markers. Eventually you get used to the carpets of these things and learn to take things as they come as it is quite impossible to chart any sort of route through them.

We anchored in a quiet empty cove, behind Blubber Island, close to Port Clyde which is a grand name for a tiny lobster fishing harbour. We were immediately joined by a big gin palace that anchored beside us, but they kept themselves to themselves so we were happy enough!

Our gas system has been playing up and so we decided to replace the pressure regulator as we had a spare on board. Like all such jobs the complications accounted for most of the time taken, but despite a few ‘issues’ we got it all done and I for one was very relieved when the cooker again lit up correctly.

The other excitement today was repairing the vacuum packer which we used to great effect when crossing the Atlantic, but which had failed to work ever since. The makers have sent us all manner of spare parts and I will not bore you with the full story, but because they were only prepared to post spares to our UK address, the whole process of them posting a spare part, us getting it from the UK in some manner 4 months later, only to find it was not the part we needed, has taken from Nov 2011 until today to resolve. But the good news is that the new motherboard that James has just brought out has solved the problem and so we are back in business. The biscuit that we vacuum packed today to test the unit may now remain as some sort of treasured memento.

We heard Dovca (Sid and Rebecca Shaw) on the VHF this afternoon and so we called them up and found that they are very nearby in Tennant’s Harbor, so we may well head there tomorrow if the forecast rain materialises, otherwise we had planned to sail to Rockland.

I forgot to mention that we passed another Najad (Mostly Love) the other day which is unusual up here. It was flying an American flag and they were clearly more enterprising than us as they quickly tracked us down on the internet and emailed us the next day to say ‘hi’.  They sail out of South Freeport which made Sarah’s ears prick up as this is the access point for catching a bus to the LL Bean retail outlet 24/7 store. But this is America and so following a brief exchange of emails these nice people (Doug & Leslie) have kindly offered us the opportunity of a lift there and to the other outlet stores in Freeport!