Southbound on the coast of Maine, after a stopover in Portland, I cleared Casco Bay, swept past Portland Head Light and Cape Elizabeth, then crossed Saco Bay and landed at the mouth of the Saco River. This was years ago. There's a cool little place there, tucked at the southern terminus of Old Orchard Beach, called Camp Ellis. The town maintains a set of free moorings beside the breakwater that transient sailors like me can use.
I spent a night on the moorings, rising and falling with the tides. At high water, the arching length of Old Orchard Beach was visible overtop the breakwater. At low tide, I was in a river, wedged between a sand spit and the breakwater.
A small pier on the north side of the river had a ramp up to Camp Ellis, which seemed to be not much more than a cluster of beach houses. Upriver, trees; downriver, ocean and Wood Island and the Biddeford Pool peninsula.
At low tide, the sand beach grows and the river shrinks and the breakwater looms above you. But then at high tide, you're ten feet higher, and you can see the streets and small town and the long stretch of Old Orchard beach leading all way to Prout's Neck.
This was a different Maine than the one I'm used to--here was beach country, not rock and fog and fir trees. Part of me wanted to linger, and check out Old Orchard Beach, but I'm not even sure I could actually connect the dots from Camp Ellis. Lots of high end private properties.
And somewhere out at sea, a low pressure system was barreling down on me, and I didn't want to be stuck there when the 40 knot winds and big seas came in. The river mouth would become a violent spot when the winds and tides and river currents went against each other. The nasty standing waves and chaotic currents would have a boat tossing and bucking.
Which is to say: slamming back and forth, sleeplessness and the fear of the mooring breaking, lines chafing, being blown aground. If something did happen, you wouldn't be able to maneuver; the boat's engine couldn't compete with the winds and currents.
Not good so I decided to run upriver for shelter. The Saco is a narrow, winding waterway, and a bit freaky for a guy who'd never had his sailboat so close to dry land before; after being on the ocean, piloting a sailboat inland is counterintuitive.
The river threads past the University of New England's Biddeford campus, which made me slow and daydream about the life of an English professor--my alternate trajectory, and where I'd kind of always thought I'd end up... Would I rather be grading papers in an office or hiding from storms up a river in a sailboat? Steady income or my normal boom and bust clam digging lifestyle? Formalized benefits or the benefit of being outside and working for oneself? Security vs... what? Insecurity?
My friend Donna says that the only security in this world is a good garden and a full root cellar.
I never was the institution sort, though at times I've seriously wondered about the events and decisions that led me away from universities and into the mudflats. After I defended my thesis for my MFA in Boise, my thesis committee took me aside to voice their concerns about my "disdain for academia." If I didn't get past that, they said, I'd never get a good job as a professor.
True enough. I walked out the door and found a job on a concrete crew in Montana where I worked alongside an eighth grader with a mustache who could bend sticks of rebar into figure eights with his bare hands. As they say, you can't be a self-saboteur without some good old self-sabotage now and then.
All of that said, I'd probably take a professorship over a concrete workers job.
A few miles upriver, in a wide, calm river pool, I found another couple of town-owned guest moorings. A salty-looking little sailboat hung on one, and I took the other. Over the next couple of days, while the storm raged out at sea, we stayed snug, barely a ripple on the water as the pines on the shoreline rocked and swayed in the gusts.
I think the guy on the other boat's name was Richard. I borrowed a tool or two from him; for what, I don't recall. He was headed home after a summer of cruising in Maine--back up the Hudson River--and once we left the Saco, he checked in on me from time to time to see where I was and where I was headed.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was out there doing what countless guys wanted to do: I was sailing south, just my boat and me, with no time-frame and no specific goal in mine. Maybe as far as the Bahamas, maybe only to Martha's Vineyard and back; I really had no idea. Richard was the first of a series of sailors who became curious about my trajectory, which is a funny thing about being a single-handed sailor--you spark the curiosity of other boaters. As I continued south, more often than not I'd come into an anchorage, drop the hook, and find myself invited to one boat or another for cocktails and food. People were curious about how and why someone would go-it alone.
Admittedly, I was a bit curious as well. Why sail alone? It wasn't like I was born and raised on the high seas. I was a self-taught sailor, learning as I went. I'd go out in the ocean, try things, figure out what worked or didn't, then at my next stop I'd find the boat that looked like the most well-travelled, and I'd ask questions until the people couldn't take it anymore. I learned a ton that way. Having no ego about it is the critical factor (and still is in any endeavor)--I'd listen to, and ask questions of, anyone. Even if I knew more than they did, I'd listen on the off chance I'd pick up some new information. Then I'd go out and sail. I'll never forget how astonished I was to realize how many faux sailors are out there--guys on docks with nice boats who make outlandish claims about their accomplishments on the salt. Many of them truly are lifelong sailors, but they just rarely went out and put the sails up. These guys are the first to offer advice.
But to answer the question about sailing solo... it was simple. I was solo and, for some reason, really wanted to sail. And not just around the harbor. I wanted to cruise.
Years later, I thought back to that guy Richard on the mooring up there on the Saco River. He'd been so proud of his salty little Bristol Channel Cutter... but I'd never heard of that boat before. Nor had I heard of the famous Lynn and Larry Pardy, whom he told me about. His boat was a replica of theirs. A 25' cutter designed by Lyle Hess. None of that meant a thing to me, though she was a beautiful boat with immaculate woodwork that Richard, a retired carpenter, had painstakingly redone. It was almost the same boat as Polaris Jack.
I wish I still had his number.
Once the weather cleared, I took the ebb tide back down the Saco River, out of the woods and onto the ocean. Richard and his wife decided to wait another day or two for the seas to calm.
I grabbed a mooring at Camp Ellis. This time, I went to shore to walk around the small village, but I quickly returned to my boat; I'm one of those who can just stay aboard the boat indefinitely--I don't crave getting to shore. Not unless it's a mountain or a river or some good food.
The residual slop and swell from the storm crashed against the breakwater and thundered on the beach, and that made for a restless night wondering what the following day would be like out there. I listened to the NOAA marine forecast over and over. I had around 35 nautical miles to go to reach the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hamshire, and it'd be a bumpy, windy ride.
Pre-dawn the next morning I was off. Jade's bow dove and splashed and rode over the incoming swell; she was an athletic boat, like a young, energetic horse. Full of motion. So different from Polaris Jack, which slices through the waves like a knife, steadier but slower.
The seas calmed as the day progressed, and by early evening I was nearing the 9 islands that form the Isles of Shoals. The isles are rock and not much else. Some buildings, a research station and a grand historic hotel called the Oceanic.
The yacht club from Portsmouth, NH, keeps moorings in the small harbor at Star Island, and since it was the off-season, I had my pick. I took one and settled in for a rest.
I'd never been to the Ises of Shoals, though I'd grown up not far away. The islands' history is as old as any on the continent; native artifacts date back 6,000 years. As far as white folks are concerned, the islands were a longtime safe haven for pirates and fishermen. Now there's the Oceanic Hotel, a marine laboratory, and a fleet of ghosts, including one of Blackbeard's wives whom he apparently abandoned out there. And, of course, one needs mention the famously violent Smuttynose Murders back in the late 1873.
The winds still blew hard and outside the rock-guarded lagoon, the sea splashed and heaved. I launched my little inflatable canoe and paddled around the harbor, stretching my arms that were stiff from holding the tiller all day.
On the shoreline, perched on a ledge, sat a big, old piano. Soon, a guy came down the path from the Oceanic, took a seat, and began to play. A few other people, most of them probably in their 20's, arrived. Twilight approached.
I lingered in the shallows near the ledges. When he stopped, I started back to my boat. By then it was nearly dark, and more folks had gathered around the piano. I stopped paddling, and my canoe spun in a slow cirlce as it slowed.
Then they took a few cans of kerosene, or maybe gas, doused the piano, and lit it.
I paddled back to shore and joined them at the fire. They were the hotel crew, closing-down for the season, and charged with cleaning out the attic (if I remember correctly).
The next day, I was gone early, riding the strong north winds down around Cape Ann to Gloucester.