weather. story of our trip.

Dan and I are safe and sound, snuggled up in a very very tiny little cabin in Wells, Maine. We are “stuck” here until the weather gets better. The winds and waves are big enough for us to shy away from them so we will sit here and wait. Hopefully it wont be for to much longer.

We left portland on a nice day, waving goodbye to some really wonderful friends and saying hello to favorable weather and seas for day one. It was incredibly encouraging. The day just kept getting better as we arrived at Higgins Beach. The Higgins Beach Inn had offered to let us camp in their yard on the first night. We walked up to the inn and they offered to let us stay inside… for free. Awesome! We felt like we didn’t deserve this kind of treatment on day one, but who would say no right? Our friend Brandy from Portland drove to see us and brought us Shipyard Summer Ale and a huge Papa John’s Pizza. It was a FABULOUS first day.

After that day, its been back to same old challenges and ridiculous situations that we know and love from the past portion of the trip. Day 2 was a hard and long paddle against the current coming out of the Saco River into the ocean. We were paddling less than 1mph for a long portion of it. Landing on an island, we deliberated for almost 2 hours trying to decide what to do and were to go because we could paddle any more that day. We finally decided to stay the night on an island only 200yrds away. ugh. Decisions suck sometimes. take forever. argue. tired. cold. The island, Wood Island, had no signs for NO CAMPING so we stayed the night. The lighthouse on the island as beautiful and absolutely “maine-y”. It was a good night.

The next day we paddled to Cape Porpoise, home of Kennebunk Port and the Bush family. Stopping for lunch on a day use island of the Maine Island Trail, we carelessly and annoyingly were caught in low tide and were beached for almost 4 hours… waiting and deciding again… what to do. After the long hot and dull wait, we paddled less than a mile to nearby Vaughn Island where we stayed for the night. Knowing the weather was on its way to yuckiness, we got up at 5 am the next day to paddle to Wells, Maine, where hopefully we could ride out the weather in a town, rather than a deserted island. We paddled past the Bush compound around 7am and arrived in Wells around 9am, ready for a long wait.

We landed right at the Webhannet River Boat Yard and they are letting us keep our boats there for the next few days. Dan and I are sitting in our cabin, watching cable tv, eating, and waiting for the weather to improve.

Just so you know, we have realized that we are using Twitter a lot to update along the way. It’s a lot easier than finding a library, (thanks Papa for the address however). We will obviously keep doing these detailed updates every time we DO get to a library but if you really want up to the moment info along the way, be sure to check our twitter. The address is: http://twitter.com/dbkayak and there is a button on the right hand side of our website that will take you directly there.

Thanks for keeping up. Pray for good weather.