Leaving Maine – Sailing Oestara

On Monday the 21st, we woke up and finished our preparations for a 24-hour passage. We had a lot of things to check and store before we left. Patrick looked at the rig and checked the engine oil, we checked and pumped the bilge, we got the dinghy up on the bow and lashed it down, and we made sure all our foul weather gear, lifejackets, tethers, and headlamps were located and ready to be worn.

And before we left, we had a farewell blueberry muffin breakfast to thank Maine for all the fun we’d had!

Well, two blueberry muffins and a cranberry orange!

Just before 11 am, we cast the lines off and set our course for Marblehead, Massachusetts. Cecelia helped us close the gate on the starboard side.

We saw some friendly porpoises as we turned to head southwest–always a good sign!

Nothing terribly eventful happened during most of the afternoon. We rigged the jacklines (webbing lines that run forward and aft on both side decks; we clip ourselves onto these if one of us has to go up on deck while alone or after dark.) We sailed most of the afternoon but our speed was kind of sticky, so we kept working on it all day.

Then at around 4 pm, major excitement. A WHALE. Patrick was behind the wheel and all of sudden yelled “HOLY CATS there is a WHALE right next to us!” I did get a video but I can’t figure out how to post it here…so here are a couple of photos.

This whale was way bigger than the ones we saw on our way to Maine.

Like, way bigger. That’s just the front part of his head.

Well that certainly livened things up. The whale swam next to us for a little while and then disappeared.

Right after the whale, we saw a shark! I didn’t get any photos, unfortunately, but we decided it was definitely a shark, and not an ocean sunfish. And then we did see an ocean sunfish just 30 minutes later.

After that it was time for porpoises again. There was a line of a couple dozen of them that crossed our bow and then paralleled us heading southwest for a very long time. It is so hard to capture pictures but it was really cool.

There was a whole line of them swimming and jumping along the horizon. You can see a few of them here on the right.

As the sun sank down, we all had some pork chops for dinner and then started to get settled in for our night watch rotation. I put Cecelia to bed and then tried to get some sleep myself, so I could relieve Patrick around midnight.

We did enjoy a beautiful view as we continued on into the night.

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