Short little hop planned for today, to get us a little closer to Portland, and then into some larger chunks down the coast. Hoping through the islands has been nice, but we know we are going to need to make some larger jumps in the near future once we get past Portland.

But for today just a halfway jump to Portland to another little anchorage. It was forecast to be a windy day, gusting into the 20's (knots), but we were pretty protected in our anchorage. We sailed off anchor with a double reefed main, and then floated out slowly into the channel on our planned route through a bunch of islands. It was a funny sail because it was a lot of weird angles to dodge shoals and islands.

But it all went well and we even navigated a tight little channel under sail just before coming into the anchorage. The anchorage looked nice on the map, but in person it was all mooring balls and fishing boats. We've been getting much more brave with our anchoring though, and we managed to find a little hole void of mooring balls and lobster pots to drop the anchor in. Nicely protected anchorage for the winds.

We had a bit of rain, and noticed the front hatch was leaking more. I guess ultimately we haven't had much rain overall yet, but this was now a noticeable and major problem. Leaking hatches onto your sleeping quarters is no fun at all. For the night I put a cover on the outside of the hatch, but we quickly made plans to get into Portland where we can get the materials we need to fix this up.

We bedded the hatch with butyl tape in the spring when we installed them. I had a feeling that might not be the best idea, but it was fast and easy and we were rushed so that is what we did. This pretty much mimics a saying I like which is:

Meskimen's Law: There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over.