Weatherwise, the trip turned out to be a carbon copy of one John Morrison and I made a year earlier, when we left from Boothbay Harbor and stopped in York to visit my college friends, The Old Mike, The Old Flag and The Old Hol. The sun was out and shining brightly in a cloudless sky and the ocean was oily flat.
And just like the year before, the wind finally arrived when we were about five miles north of Cape Neddick Lighthouse on the north side of York Beach. Some say it is the most photographed lighthouse in the world.
By the time we passed the lighthouse, we had a good breeze, enough to motorsail by the cliffs where Buzzy and Carol have their camper. But the sails came down quickly so that we could enter York Harbor. The path into the harbor is bordered by hidden ledges, and there is a spot where you have to make a sudden turn to starboard, crossing a current that seems determined to drive you on a point of land no more than 150 feet away.
We took a town mooring -- there is no room to anchor in York Harbor -- and got showers in the nearby marina. Showers posed a greater risk to life, if not limb, than the navigation into the harbor. There was standing water in the pan of the shower, water that only drained by spilling over the top of the pan, grungy water that one suspected harbored as yet undiscovered life forms. Tom's PhD Candidate daughter, Rosaleen, who is preparing for a disertation in marine biology, could break new ground in that shower.
Buzzy and Carol picked us up after our showers and took us back to their camper, parked on the top of that cliff with a spectacular view of the ocean and the rocks below and Carol fed us a wonderful dinner while we exchanged stories in the cool evening air.
We slept aboard Robin, but in the morning we went to breakfast with Carol and Buzzy at a place on the beach before we caught the last of the ebbing current out of York Harbor.
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