Following our stay in Portland we moved on over to Harpswell. Specifically to the little cove just off Stover’s Point across the channel from Orr’s Island and Bailey Island. The point of our stop there was to chill and to get some work done.

In addition to the regular day job work I was able to get a few writing projects done and get a few boat projects done.

The most significant boat project to get done was to actually hook up our solar panels and install our charge controllers. We have a charge controller for each of the three panels which allows them to charge as much as they can individually.

We found that with our current power consumption we were basically full battery wise before lunch each day and even on overcast days. It is nice to know that we essentially don’t need to worry about electricity much anymore.

One thing we did though was to run the solar panel cables through the companionway door and tied them down rather than drilling a hole and sending them through the wire track like we will need to do. This was because we didn’t want to drill a hole in the boat until we were sure that we had everything the way we wanted it and well I didn’t have the drill bit we needed.

The holes can be drilled later on.

We also ran out of propane on our first or second night in the anchorage. Which was frustrating since we had just left a marina in Portland and could have easily filled our tank. It reminded me that we need to build a propane locker for a spare tank and then to also buy a spare tank so that we don’t end up having this happen again.

So we have a few more things now to order and have shipped to my parents’ house before we start to head south.

Orr’s Island and Bailey Island were cool, the sort of place that you would expect on the Maine Mid Coast although I did notice they seemed quite full of tourists and summer residents from away. It seemed like quite a few from New York and the like. Prices seemed to reflect that and I ended up quite disappointed with the $120 meal we had at Cook’s Lobster & Ale House. Not well executed and clearly a bit of a tourist trap. But it was what it was and part of that was convenient to dinghy to.

In the end we also had quite the dinghy adventures. The first time we tried to move the dinghy more than a mile she ran out of gas and we had to row back.

The second time we ended up running through some weeds and stalling the engine, then we ran out of gas. Luckily having ran out of gas before we started having the habit of bringing a mix of gas in a little gas mixer for our headache inducing 2 stroke engine.

Food wise we had mostly mixes of soups or rice or pasta since I decided it was time to order a fridge and that I just couldn’t do the ice box thing anymore. While I probably could have figured something out if this were 1981 this is 2021 and I don’t need to. So the fridge was ordered and sent to my parents’ house. Along with an order for an electric trawling motor, 55aH lithium battery, a battery box, and a 100w solar panel that we can use exclusively with the dinghy.

And of course some follow up emails were sent to Portland Pudgy asking for news about the dinghy. There was encouraging news. We were told maybe two more weeks.