Fabulous Fall Sail

It was a glorious, clear fall day and in the 60's. I felt impelled to enjoy on the water as I was certain it was one of the last days of Indian summer here in southern Maine. I set sail on Minstrel, my 13.5' Cape Cod Bullseye from South Freeport harbor with the ambitious goal of reaching the Maine Yacht Center (MYC) www.maineyacht.com in Portland. One of my real estate clients, the owner of http://www.proper-yachts.com/ had his 6 metre sailboat restored by MYC back in 2006. The other sailor is someone who I use to work for in Boston at a company called Ocean Challenge. He had MYC modify his 60 foot French-built ocean racing yacht in preparation for the 2008 round the world race known as the Vendee Globe. You can learn more about this person at his site http://www.sitesalive.com/. So I figured that Minstrel should be in good hands should I decide to have MYC do the work of restoring her woodwork, including some fiberglass work to the hull. I passed by Pound of Tea island at the mouth of South Freeport harbor at 2:00 PM with a freshening westerly breeze of about 13 to 15 knots. I passed Bustins Island around 3:00 PM where I recently sold a wonderful summer cottage and a raw piece of land that had been in my client's family since 1947. I saw the sun set as I was off the coast of Long Island. The view looking back towards Chebeague island was stunning because the setting sun acted like a spotlight illumining the trees which were at their peek fall color. My wife called me on my cell phone wondering when I would be at MYC. I told her I would be there fairly soon, probably in an hour. Just after the call, I had a harbor seal follow me for several miles surfacing several times to make sure I knew that someone else was looking after me. My ETA to the MYC was off enough that I was soon enjoying a moonlit sail with the bay all to myself. As I have no running lights on Minstrel, I had to shine my flashlight into the sails every 5 minutes to alert nearby boats to stay clear. The trip was eventful in that I had an equipment failure near MYC when my port stay broke and the main sheet block system on the traveler let go. Suddenly, sailing was no longer an option! Sputtering and stalling, my aging 2 horsepower Evinrude outboard engine was about to give up the ghost. I almost had to hail the coast guard for a tow only 1/4 mile from MYC so that I wasn't blown into Mackworth island. Fortunately, my outboard engine came back to life after some desperate adjustments to the lean/rich dials on faceplate of the engine. Shaking her head as I climbed into the car, my wife was forgiving and a good sport with my high seas adventure. I only wish she could have enjoyed the moonlit sail.