Time on The Water

The most Maine thing you can do is spend some time out on the water sailing on a schooner. Today was the perfect day to do that. We chose the schooner Surprise, a wooden vessel built in 1904 because it is small and fast.

As Nancy, Karen, Russ and I are all early risers we decided to take the first boat of the morning and drove up to Camden at 9:00. We were plenty early for our 10 AM sailing so we walked around town and saw Warren opening his store before going to wait on the dock. The couple next to us were also going on our boat. They asked each person where they were from and let us know they were from a small town in the middle of Illinois. He was a farmer and reminded me of a character in a progressive insurance ad of the people who turn into their parents at too young an age.

We boarded the boat and got great seats. The captain was entertaining, telling us all kinds of great stories. The only annoyance was the farmer often was talking back to the captain non-stop, while the captain was also talking. In spite of that we had a beautiful out of Camden Harbor and back in. We saw a seal and some porpoises as well as a number of big windjammers going out for a week long cruises.

Once back on land we felt the need for lunch so we ventured into my favorite Mixed Greens. True to form I had a grown up lunch of a salmon tartine, Karen had the sophisticated goat cheese and fig tartine and Nancy had the child-like lunch of Peanut butter, banana and strawberry Tartine. We were all happy.

By the time we had walked around some more we were easy to go home and take a little rest before some rounds of games and leftover for dinner. A perfect Maine day.