John Morrison and I drove the rental car back to Rockland, where we stopped at a supermarket and provisioned for the trip back to the Chesapeake. It was Saturday evening, and when we had the stuff stowed aboard, we went out for dinner.
Sunday morning, Robin slipped her mooring line and returned to Penobscot Bay, motoring into a moderate headwind. Our destination was Boothbay Harbor.
The route took us south to the mouth of the bay and then west along the coast. Once we'd made that turn, the wind came off the port bow and in time, we were sailing with no engine.
From time to time, we would see a megayacht ketch closer to shore. It had tucked behind some islands south of Rockland when we chose to go out on the bay. It appeared to be huge.
We were taking a direct, offshore route, but there were islands inshore, the first of them Burnt and Allen Islands. John and I had visited these islands on our first trip from Maine, when we helped Tom Gilmore bring his 46-foot cutter home to New Jersey.
The mega-ketch squeezed behind the islands and we lost sight of it for a while, but it reappeared on the other side, still paralleling our course.
The charts and the chart plotter told us of several rocks that we must avoid, but in time we were sailing a straight line on a beam reach.
After the two weeks Monica and I had spent cruising, I was feeling much better about sailing. And because John and I had no mandatory schedule for our return trip, this first day at least was relaxing.
Neither of us had entered Boothbay before and when we turned a corner to do that, the layout was confusing. We called ahead (using the cruising guide as a reference)and reserved a mooring, having learned there was not much of an anchorage. The wind was fresh. So we lowered the sails rather than taking the more heroic path of sailing up to the mooring. We called ahead (using the cruising guide as a reference) and reserved a mooring. The guide said there was not much of an anchorage.
Ashore, we got showers, paid for the mooring and then walked into town for dinner, passing a large Catholic church with a heavenly sky for a backdrop. I capped off the evening at the local ice cream store, where I found my favorite flavor -- orange pineapple.