Day 174 - Thu 17 Sep 2015
Docked – Bath, ME

[photo: view from our boat to the town dock and park - our only photo of Bath since I was not around to take any]

It was a glorious sunrise and comfortable morning, so we dropped the mooring at 0800 and made our way through the sometimes tricky inside passage from Boothbay Harbor to Bath. There were 2 stretches where the waterway was quite narrow and we left just a little after low tide. That makes things look scarier because you see so many rocks crowding the edges, but that offers the advantage of seeing (hopefully all) the hazards.

While this area may not have quite the beauty of the region we just left, the inside passage was quite nice and very scenic in many spots. There were 2 sections called Upper and Lower Hell’s Gate where it got really narrow and the current was flowing fairly strong. I was using available info to get there about when the current was slack or slightly in our favor, but it didn’t quite work out and we had a foul current of over 3 knots in the narrowest section. It didn’t last long and it actually allowed for much better control going slowly through the potentially hazardous spots. I would not want to traverse it with 3 or more knots of fair current pushing us along.

We arrived at Bath and had a large, low RR bridge between us and the town dock. The bridge will lift on request, but the tender told us that the E end of the bridge had a lot more clearance and plenty of water depth. I lowered our VHF antenna and we went under with 4-5 feet to spare near low tide. The town dock is in great shape and typically used during the day only. With permission from the harbormaster, which I obtained in advance via email, we tied up on one end for the night.

The adjacent park is very nice, with attractive polished and engraved stone benches everywhere. Unfortunately, I had a mission to figure out what happened to my new phone. It requested that a system update be done and when it turned off, it could not start again (boot error). Verizon tech support was no help, and since I was forced to purchase it at an authorized retailer and not a corporate store, my only recourse was to rent a car and drive 2.5 hours round-trip back to Ellsworth to swap it out while still within the 14-day return window. Lest the techies out there say, “why didn’t you just perform a factory reset?,” rest assured that it was tried several times while conversing with LG tech support (on Diane’s reliable flip phone) with no success.

While I waited for the Enterprise guy to pick me up, Diane started walking around the town. I took her phone for emergency purposes, so we were incommunicado for almost 7 hours, and that felt strange after being with each other 24/7 for so long. I guess I was mostly concerned that there would be some system problem on the boat and she would be unable to sort it out. My fears were unfounded.

The phone resolution had the potential for a real problem a few times because of the way the one rep kept making comments that implied I was not really due any warranty satisfaction on the phone because of the type of sales transaction it had been. I kept my cool and assured her she would figure out some way to do right by me. The other rep was trying to be as supportive and helpful as possible and she finally got me a better phone for just a little more money.

I arrived back at the dock with the rental car near 1930 and Diane called out even before I got on the boat, “do you feel like going out?” I had no idea what she meant. It turns out that our friends, Toby and Almut from home, who we met in Quebec City during their long car touring trip, just arrived here in Bath today. Because Almut is a diligent daily follower of the blog, she knew we were here.

They walked a few blocks from their hotel and sure enough they spotted our distinctive boat and came over to visit. They had just left about 1900 (a half hour before I got back) and so we walked to the restaurant where they were having a bite and joined them, with them generously buying us a drink. It was great to hear first-hand how their trip has been going since we parted in Quebec. We are both close to being done with our trips and somewhat eager to get home at this point.

On Fri, I have to return the car and get a ride back to the dock. We want to cast off as soon as possible to catch the ebbing tide down the long Kennebec River out to the ocean. From there, we plan to turn back up towards the mainland and stop at South Freeport for 2 nights. We have friends from PA that are in this general vicinity and they will drive up to see us on Sat. We are not sure where we plan to stop after South Freeport at this time.