Reprinted from Cruising World Magazine February 2004 Meatloaf Cordon Bleu was the Maine Course The l

Reprinted from Cruising World Magazine February 2004 Meatloaf Cordon Bleu was the Maine Course The luxurious five-day crewed charter along the Maine coast on a 64-foot Swan was pure decadence, but it took some strategically timed diner chow to put the venture over the top04-Feb-2004By Nim Marsh As Maine basks in the soft light of a fall afternoon, Ciao Bella's crew seeks the seclusion of Seal Bay wherein to lay on a romantic dinner for their guests. "Repeat after me," Captain Tim Forderer said to my fiancée, Naomi, in responsorial increments: "It's OK . . . for me . . . to be . . . decadent." Naomi dutifully followed her prompts-although not fully convinced of the righteousness of the mantra-and the skipper of Ciao Bella, the 64-foot Swan we were chartering-complete with first mate/chef-hugged her as though hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center reinforcing one of the 12 steps of Self-Reliants Anonymous. Two days out of Camden, Maine, anchored in placid Smith Cove, south of Castine, we'd been breakfasting in the cockpit, hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center and Naomi had wished out loud for paper napkins so we wouldn't have to soil the cloth ones. Overhearing her, Captain Tim had then sidled over and conducted her pledge of allegiance to this reverse spiritual awakening. It was hard for Naomi, a mother of three with a full-time job, not to consider such things. And it was impossible for me to feel like some grand old man of cruising who'd paid his corporate dues and was getting his just rewards. Heck, just seven years earlier, I'd hitchhiked around the Atlantic on seven different boats-how else would a journeyman editor see the world?-and here I was stepping aboard a year-old spit-and-polish Swan for a five-day, 150-mile, late-summer, crewed charter in midcoast hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center Maine. Related Resources This wouldn't be a simple change of mind-set, but once it had been methodically effected, miraculous transformations would result. For the two of us, this would be a lesson in letting go-in allowing others to do our daily chores, in transferring responsibility for all logistics from our shoulders to those of the crew. Ciao, Ciao BellaFor Naomi, it was her first luxury charter, first domestic charter, first monohull charter, and inaugural Down East cruise-and it would add five more days of sailing to her burgeoning résumé. For me, this would be a homecoming of sorts. I'd lived in Camden in the 1970s, in a Victorian house in the shadow of the Camden Hills, and I'd explored Penobscot Bay in a variety of boats and seasons. Visiting my old haunts was a goal we'd noted on the pre-departure questionnaire about destination, food and drink, and lifestyle preferences. But more important, the next five days would allow me, a dedicated minimalist, to put a handle hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center on the crewed-charter experience. We joined Ciao Bella at Camden's Wayfarer Marine on a brilliant, fall-like day in mid-September. Tim and his first mate/chef/significant other, Lisa Jouris, greeted us warmly and hefted our duffels aboard. "Ciao Bella is actually a Swan 60," Tim explained during his introductory tour of the boat, "but she has an extended transom, all above the waterline, for more room on deck and more stowage hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center below." On entering our aft-cabin quarters, hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center Naomi was bowled over by splashes of white, purple, and red in a vase of lilies beside the center-cabin hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center double. "They opened just before you arrived," Lisa offered, as though she'd planned it that way-and she probably had! "How about a Diet Coke, caffeine-free?" Tim asked Naomi, who melted then and there, for this was her soda of choice. Tim knew that. It was on the questionnaire. "The key to a crewed hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center charter," Tim explained, "is the quality of the communication before the charter begins." Some good crewed-chartering karma was going down, and we hadn't yet left the dock. But after the usual crunch hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center liberating ourselves with clear consciences from our respective offices, the five-hour drive from Rhode Island to Camden, and rapid immersion into a new lifestyle, those vibes needed more time to percolate in the two pilgrims from the south. This was no surprise to Tim. "When guests arrive," he said, "they're still in the mode of their usual lives-furrowed brow, stressed out. In 24 hours, they've shed that skin. By the end of the trip, they're hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center mush." We cast off, consumed hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center home-made cream-of-broccoli soup and chicken sandwiches on the run, and set sail for Seal Bay, a nearly landlocked anchorage on the east side of Vinalhaven island. During the 20-mile passage, Tim told us about a 16-day windward delivery he and Lisa had made from Hawaii to Los Angeles. "That was our first date," he said as though they'd gone around the corner to Starbucks to get acquainted. Their relationship progressed-Lisa greeted Tim at the finish of a West Marine Pacific Cup race between San Francisco and Hawaii wearing a sundress and a few dabs of intoxicating perfume-but when she met him after the return trip clutching hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center a home-cooked meatloaf, their partnership became a done deal. Tim's very favorite meal, you see, is meatloaf. Eagle Island PerspectiveWhen I lived in Camden, occasionally I'd volunteer my services to Captain Erland Quinn, who delivered coal and appliances to Penobscot Bay's island residents with his canoe-sterned freighter, Hippocampus. On one such run, in the same season as our charter, we off-loaded coal on Eagle Island, just east of North Haven Island, for a Mrs. Howard, who served us tea and biscuits in her kitchen. I recall looking out a window over the panorama of islands bristling with red and white spruce and remarking how beautiful hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center it all was. "Oh, you should have been here 30 years ago when they logged the islands," Mrs. Howard said. "Back then, without all the trees, you could see forever." As Ciao Bella reached in a light northeasterly between Bald and Eagle islands and into East Penobscot Bay, I warmly remembered that eye-opening lesson in perspective. The sun was nudging the tops of the evergreens on Vinalhaven as we negotiated the keyhole into Seal Bay and anchored just south of a cruising catboat, a fiberglass sloop, and what appeared hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center to be a classic spoon-bowed wooden Casey yawl rafted up in the middle of the anchorage. The 80-foot, 121-year-old centerboard schooner Grace Bailey-veteran of the West Indian trade, a timber and granite freighter until 1939, and since then a passenger-carrying windjammer-was tucked up against the east shore of the bay. At dusk, a pulling boat cut a silver ribbon across the mirrored mahogany surface, a spell was cast, and despite the mercury hovering in the high 40s, Naomi and I asked for cocktails in the cockpit. Gin and tonics, cheese and crackers, and a blanket hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center promptly appeared in the companionway, and we quickly warmed up to the temperatures and the concept of a crewed charter. It was so still and quiet in the bay, it was hard to believe that, in 1880, about 3,300 people (more than twice the current population) hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center lived on Vinalhaven while granite was being cut in its quarries for construction of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and New York's Brooklyn Bridge. And it seemed miraculous that a direct link to that era lay proudly at anchor beside us; well over a century earlier, the Bailey carried Maine granite to city construction sites to the south. After dinner with Tim and Lisa-steak, caramelized onions, sweet-potato mash, asparagus, and fruit-of-the-forest pie, all washed down with a fine red wine-we dragged ourselves aft and, while musing on how decadence can grow on one, crashed. hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center Our second day's destination was Castine, on the Bagaduce River, a 25-mile sail to the north, and I was on a mini-mission. I have a treasured hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center volume-Maine: A Guide Downeast-with the inscription hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center "To Nim Marsh, shipmate, aboard the State of Maine for OpSail '76. Regards, M.C. Hill, Master, 6/24/76." Castine was picked not only for Ciao Bella to hole up in a protected anchorage hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center should the remnants of Hurricane Isabel pass through but also for me to rendezvous with the State of Maine, the Maine Maritime Academy school ship, on which I'd accompanied the Tall Ships fleet from Bermuda to Newport, Rhode Island, a quarter of a century earlier. But a full day of exploring lay between Ciao Bella and her just-in-case hurricane hole. After a breakfast of cereal, fresh fruit, and strong coffee, we sailed-again in a light northeast wind-to the Fox Islands Thorofare, which cuts between North Haven and Vinalhaven, scattering rafts of puffins as we approached them. Ciao Bella motored to the roadstead off North Haven village, where we anchored as a small Murray Peterson schooner ghosted through under sail, its solo crew facetiously waving hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center a seat cushion at the mainsail to conjure a zephyr. A Fox Islands DeceitFox hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center Islands was the name given these two islands by English explorer Martin Pring in 1603, and this moniker, I'm ashamed to say, in the 1970s inspired two young Maine editors with too much time on their hands to contrive hilton garden inn orlando seaworld international center a deception. Both of us worked with the late John Gardner, revered dean of small-boat evolution, design, and construction, who was always discovering, in fields, barns, and tidal creeks, missing links between obscure traditional boats-say, a stem rabbet that might relate a Peterborough plank canoe to a Rushton Canadian Model. The links were often so esoteric we wondered if any of National Fisherman's readers would notice if we slipped a totally bogus design into one of John's columns. Thus was born the Fox Islands Carry Boat, a sailing barge, the story went, that removed the excess fox populations from North Haven and Vinalhaven and took them to the mainland for disposal. "Who'd ever question it?" asked my partner in crime. The statute of limitations on such publishing transgressions has long since passed, so I now could freely admit guilt, if indeed we'd done the deed. But we never did, a decision that I now applauded as I stepped ashore at the little village of North Haven, population 381, and one of the first summer communities in the country. The earnest and pristine Fox Island