Saturday 7^th September

A lovely sunny day and a wonderful day out.

Amanda and Mark (Balvenie) came ashore with us to meet up with Karen Wales who had very kindly offered to take us out for a ride in her car for the day and to run us to the grocery store as well.

Karen was wonderful and the day turned out to be very much more than any of us could have expected. We started off with a countryside tour, stopping at a small roadside ‘farmers market’ where Amanda and Sarah bought some produce. We then continued our tour by visiting Beth’s Farm Shop which was exactly that, but on a very large scale. Again Sarah and Amanda did some shopping and we all marvelled at the huge range of extraordinary pumpkins. (See the photos on the website www.rhbell.com )

We were joined for lunch in Damariscotta by Walter who is Karen’s husband. We had a nice meal and whilst discussing plans, I made a throwaway comment about the fact that we were having to sail to Freeport so that Sarah could visit LL Bean. This prompted both Walter and Karen to explain that Freeport is much easier to reach by car from where were, than trying to get closer by boat. They then immediately offered to change the plan for the day and simply drive us there now, totally regardless of the fact that it is over 50 miles. So Karen drove us all the way there and we had a good time exploring some of the outlet shops and in our case, Sarah and I bought quite a few warmer clothes to cope with the plunging temperatures. We then returned via Hannafords to buy a load of groceries and ended up at the dinghy dock where Walter joined us again, bringing our purchases from the morning’s shopping.

Walter and Karen are a really interesting couple:  he is a naval architect and has had an incredibly wide ranging career including designing rigging for Ted Hood and all sorts of exotic racing and cruising yachts. He also worked as a ship designer for the US Navy;  Karen is very unusually a very skilled woodworker and cabinet maker and has worked for years building wooden boats. She also teaches boat building and for a while was editor of Wooden Boat Magazine. She still writes for the magazine.  We were hugely grateful to Karen for sparing us the time and for doing all the driving as well as maintaining something of a travelogue along the way.