At home in Maine

We are sitting on a mooring just fifty yards from a tiny island, with a single solitary house. Shrouded in fog, the island is only just visible as a shadowy shape in the milky mist. Apart from this pale shape and a couple of the ubiquitous lobster bot buoys, we are alone in this world.

Earlier, Max and I gathered fresh mussels from the island shore and we had them for dinner. We have come down river from Thomaston where we were watching ospreys taking fish from the river, a harbor seal cruising around, and great blue herons standing, stauesque, looking for their dinner.

Maine scenery and wildlife is truely magnificent, and we are really enjoying it here. Yet above all the fabulous surroundings, the thing that we like the most is the people.

On Peakes Island, we met people who offered us a mooring, water, hospitality, whatever we needed. In Christmas Cove, we went ashore for a beer and Issie made friends with the people two tables down, who turned out to be sailors too. Off to collect their yacht from Camden over the next couple of days, they offered us use of their car to go inshore to a bigger grocery store. We had a great trip, and just left the keys in the car afterwards, as they asked.

In Thomaston, we are standing on the waterfront taking a picture of our boat when a voice asks if she is ours. We are soon invited into the home of a wonderful couple who have cruised the Atlantic in their own boat, and he is still regularly cruising and racing - just leaving for Bermuda this week. We are treated to food, gifts and use of their laundry facilities!

Today, we drop anchor but find it set badly so we lift and prepare to reset when a small powerboat zips alongside. Just take that mooring if you like, the owner's away and he won't mind. So we do, and later the guy in the powerboat returns and invites us for a beer. It's nearing the kids' dinner time so we turn it around and he comes aboar Ty Dewi for a beer with us. He lives here but has a lot of sailing in his background, and has just helped bring a seventy foot yacht up from the Caribbean. So many people around here are sailors and we are instantly recognisable as long term crusiers so doors are opened and conversations easily begun. It's a wonderful thing.

As we head more north east, further from Portland and city life, Maine gets a little more wild and empty, people are even more friendly and the cruising is just better and better. We could stay here a while, and just might.