43:50.6N 69:36.9W

Sunday 21^st July

Lazy start to the day and we did not head off from the peaceful anchorage until around 1030 hours. We motored into the very light breeze and wound our way around the maze of islands that so characterise the coastline of Maine, threading our way through the maze of lobster pot buoys. This was James’ first experience of this phenomenon and we did warn him that it gets a lot worse as we head further ‘down east’.

We emerged from the islands out into the open sea and were soon sailing properly although the wind was still, light, variable but mostly directly in our faces!  We had to beat our way gently up the coast, tacking out to sea to give ourselves room to clear the odd headlands and although we did manage to get up to 6.5 knots at one stage, James had to suffer for the first time this week, the ignominy of failing to reach 8+ knots under sail.

We saw seals and a lone sunfish and even tried dragging a lure for a while to pass the time, but without any hint of success.

At 1800 hours we made our way back inshore, weaving through more islands and worked our way up to Linekin Bay (Boothbay Harbor) and found ourselves a nice quiet spot to anchor. We were joined later by an American yacht that spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to anchor (using a tiny anchor and just line – no chain). He did come past after countless unsuccessful efforts and discussed his lack of success with us and we commiserated but felt it was not very polite to point out what we felt might be the error of his ways at this stage. He then unearthed a different anchor from within the boat and added a very short bit of chain to this and after two more attempts he finally succeeded. We by now had lit our Cobb BBQ and were enjoying dinner.

Only slight setback were the huge mosquitos who appeared to be the size of small birds! No more jokes about the size of the mozzies in Alaska, these critters were big enough thank you.

Very quiet and still night.