I think I’ve been swimming in Maine a grand total of 3 times to date, and one of those times was a 10-second dip to confirm that our brand new prop was, indeed, too big for our boat, and was, indeed, trying to tear a chunk of our hull.

So when Jon mentioned that people really liked “The Basin” because of its warm swimming waters, I was… highly skeptical, to put it nicely 🙂

But we wanted to go somewhere new for our spectacular Canada Day / 4th of July extra-long-long-weekend, so The Basin it was.

A gorgeous downwind sail reminded us of how fun sailing can be…

And an absolute idyllic, land-locked anchorage reminded us of how much we like being out on the hook…

Drinking coffee at anchor might be my most favourite activity in the ENTIRE world…

Oh and this was the debut of our new flexible solar panel (below) — so now we can actually see over our dodger when we’re docking, anchoring, or just generally driving around.

Personally I felt like being able to see exactly what’s in front of you might take some of the surprise and fun out of maneuvering a small, hard-to-maneuver sailboat, but Jon convinced me to give it a go…

And she does look kind of nice with the cleaner lines…

AND, surprise of all surprises — we got in the water and SWAM.

And not just a 10-second dip either! No, no, no, instead we discovered an additional fun aspect of the newly-made outboard throne — it floats! Since it’s stuffed with 4 adult lifejackets, it even floats quite nicely!

It was heaven.

And with a boisterous bash back to Portland, the whole long-long-weekend was complete!

I think we’ll be back to The Basin soon!

LMK 🙂