Northwest Harbor 44°17.8N, 68°17.04W

We took a floating slip ($25 – ha!) in Northwest Harbor overnight so we could hose the salt off the boat, refill our water tanks and load up with food, and be secure from a severe thunderstorm warning (which gave us lots of rain, and a good lightning show overnight, but no problems). From here we will head east to Roque Island, leaving the last marina behind.
While working on the boat we met a young family cruising, they’re tied up next to us. The husband got me fired up to replace my anchor and running lights with LEDs. Mine draw 2 amps per hour each, his one tenth of an amp each. I’ll do anything to be able to run the engine less. He also gave me the electronic navigation charts to Canada, the Bay of Fundy and Nova Scotia!

Later we met a tremendous guy called Keith Hutchinson, a psychologist in a kayak. He stopped to chat, and have a g & t with us, and we talked for over an hour: he in his kayak, me on deck and Max energetically gesticulating in the dinghy. Keith has lived in Maine since his twenties, abandoning the trajectory of his Harvard training for the beauty and values of Maine. He had just retired from his practice – thus has more time on his hands for boating - but keeps his teaching job at the University of Maine. Among many interesting yarns, it emerged that both he and Max had an interest in geodesic domes (!). Max had built a small one from bamboo as an, er, greenhouse, and Keith as a real house. In a hilarious example of Maine humour, Keith told us that he had mentioned to his neighbor that he was building a round house, and the neighbor said that he’d like to see that. A few days later, the neighbor showed up in his pickup truck. He got out, and walked slowly around the house a couple of times, and then looked at Keith and said, ‘I could do with a house like this’. Keith asked why, and they guy said, ‘with a house like that, my wife could never back me into a corner again!’. After delivering this line, which Keith reckons he’d been working on for some time, and had showed up specifically to deliver, he drove away without another word.

A local sign: ‘Lobsters fresh or boiled alive’.

Kady rang from London this morning to say that her sister CoCo had a baby overnight – Isabelle!