Time in Boothbay

After an uneventful upping of our anchor on Sunday morning, we took a mooring near the center of town.  We have moored here before, at the aptly named Tug Boat Inn.  Inn, restaurant, bar, and marina.   We were pleased to find that they have installed showers for the marina guests and laundry.  The showers? $0.25 for 2 minutes of water.  Did you know how well you can shower in 4 minutes? Pretty darn well!  The laundry was very expensive, too, but 2 loads and I am all caught up.

 

We discovered that this week is Windjammer Festival in Boothbay!  Yay! An antique boat parade.  Frankly, this little guy was my favorite.  That is typical Boothbay in the background.

Art shows, pirates, groceries (great trolley system here) and the usual tourist shops with tee shirts and ice cream filled our days.  But today!  The sailing in under full sail of the tall schooners in the area.  The day was foggy but it began to break just as the first boat worked her way slowly towards us.  First - not a schooner, but an old tugboat leading the parade, horns a blaring.

Luck!!!  Our mooring was the closest to the schooners as they approached.  100 feet from them, no further.  The first schooner was the beautiful Heritage.

Next, the very long and sleek American Eagle.  As they were nearing their anchorage, the first sails were already dropped.

In all, 6 beautiful schooners of various sizes sailed quietly past us.  Well, the ships were quiet.  People were cheering, horns were blaring, and the schooners were setting off the required cannon blasts to let the other boats know that they had arrived in the harbor.  Poor Smokey gave up and hid below.

 

Little did we know just how close the boats would anchor to us.  We did notice that the mooring field behind Latitudes had been vacated, but we thought it was just to give the boats room to turn around to leave.  NO!  to ANCHOR!  Again, maybe 100 feet from Latitudes.  Beautiful.

 

 

 A boat is so a boat....we noticed that it had become difficult to shift our gear lever from reverse to neutral to forward.  Increasingly difficult. We realized that we really shouldn't leave our mooring until we could resolve the issue.  Luke did extensive diagnostic work with the help of the manufacturer, and decided that the problem was the shifter cable.  At $44 for a replacement cable, that is about the cheapest thing we've done to the boat.  A local marina/boat yard was very helpful in determining the right cable and getting it to us next day.  Luke spent a lot of today pulling the old one and installing the new, taking time out to view the schooners from our channel side location.

And did it work??? YES!!! good job! This and the promise of good weather means we will leave tomorrow for the Penobscot Bay.