Day 38 – Gifford Island to Riverport

The weather was still mediocre when we woke up in the cove, but the air was warmer and the fog was forecast to burn off after noon. We headed back over to the town of Mahone Bay, to kill some time, and dropped anchor outside a small roadside cove not far from the marina.

As we gathered our stuff below deck, a man appeared at the edge of the water on his bike. He stripped down to his whitey-tighties, in full view of the houses and cars nearby, and waded in up to his chest. Worryingly translucent wet cotton back ashore, he left just before we rowed towards shore, and I was glad to leave his probably-wrongly-perceived privacy uninterrupted.

We walked to Eli’s Espresso and sat on the deck with Caly. The cafe had “public” Wi-Fi, but the barista insisted on typing the password into my badly cracked phone screen while shielding it from my view. I could think of no explanation as to how this was a reasonable policy, and I did not bother asking.

On the walk back to the boat we stopped at a flea market which had materialized in the grocery store parking lot. We passed on the used rigging knives and oversized marlinspikes, but picked up two dozen fresh eggs as they wouldn’t require refrigeration on account of the intact bloom.

The fog had mostly disappeared when we reunited with Isla and raised anchor. The wind was coming out of the southwest and we raised both sails, close hauled, out of the bay. We sailed a good distance offshore before tacking back to work upwind, but the winds died shortly thereafter, and we were left motoring the rest of the way to Riverport.

We passed the entrance to Lunenberg bay, cut between West Ironbound Island and Gaff Point and headed up into Moshers Bay toward the brackish mouth of the La Have River. We dropped anchor in the a smooth Ritchey Cove and rowed into Riverport to walk around before sunset.

The town was small, really not much more than a collection of houses, but the community center had public Wi-Fi of the normal variety, and Andrew replenished our podcast supply out front.

The sunset built steadily into a bright orange haze and the color last long after the sun’s departure.

We watched the ferry shuffle back and forth between the two banks of the darkening river. Back on Isla, we made tomato soup and grilled cheese, originally intended for the rainy day prior..