44:16.9N 68:18.6W

Sunday 4^th August

Glorious morning with a gentle breeze and clear blue skies. We got away around 1050 hours and made our way to Rich’s Head, Long Island where we anchored in a beautiful empty bay with a very impressive stone beach at its head.  As soon as the anchor was set, we launched the dinghy and all set off ashore to support Sarah in her never ending quest for ‘perfect’ stones. In due course we headed back to Serafina, Sarah clutching a few rocks and James had collected a smart lobster pot buoy that had been washed ashore to take home.

We had lunch and then again enjoyed an exhilarating sail out into the Atlantic and then past Little Duck and Big Duck Islands on our way back to Northeast Harbor. We worked our way through the entire range of sail options as once again Chris was determined to achieve the day’s fastest speed, (we turned the speed log off at one stage to spare ourselves from hearing the speed increases being called out in .10 knot increments!)

Knots were learnt and skills acquired during the day and it was with considerable reluctance and sadness that we made the final approach to Northeast Harbor. We were informed though that all of the buoys were taken and so we headed off across Soames Sound to anchor close to where we had been on Wednesday night.

We had no sooner dropped the anchor and were settling into drinks and nibbles, when we were approached by a launch containing what appeared to be 6 very stern looking gentlemen. We assumed we were doing something wrong, but we were delighted to be ‘welcomed’ to Southwest harbor and offered the complimentary use of a private buoy belonging to the driver (whose name we failed to obtain, but thank you so much sir if you are reading this), which we readily accepted.

Mexican train was played again in the evening when by dint of some sort of statistical fluke, I won for probably the first time in living memory.