Many are cold, but few are frozen………..

So what’s been happening in this last month? The US election argument continues as irregularities are uncovered in Ohio and demands for a recount grow, though not as vocally it seems, as the hoohah in the Ukraine. Still fledgling democracies and all that. It has been interesting that since my last comments on the outcome of the US elections how some previously friendly people have become very distant. Funny, I always thought democracy was about people having the right to express an opinion. But onto sunnier things…………

The first snow of the winter arrived in mid November but wasn’t much to write home about. Not so today, December 3^rd, as it has been at it all day. True to form the locals dismiss it as a "light dusting" although it is (a) 2 or 3 inches thick and (b) still falling. But, as ever, everyone takes great delight in warning us that we are in for a shock with the weather. From our point of view it appears that locals suffer from the cold more as they are cocooned in heated offices or cars 90% of the time. But we’ll see. We’ve watched the weather in the UK and noted –7C up in Cumbria recently whereas we’ve only managed a cool –5C to date, although that tends to be for much of the time.

First real snow of the winter

When we returned from the last sail we knew we would need to buy a vehicle but our enquiries before we left had suggested it might be difficult. Someone had given me a copy of the Maine "highway code" complete with local phone numbers and a quick call established that all I needed to do was turn up with two means of ID, show my UK licence and I could be issued a brand new Maine one. Hmmmm. So one fine morning we walked a couple of miles to where a mobile unit issued said licence. Located in a dingy hall, full of religious entreaties and half a dozen applicants, we sat down to await our turn. Called to the desk I wandered up and explained what I needed. "No" the uniformed official said, " you’ll need to take a test" and rang the same number I had, to confirm. "Pay 10 bucks and fill in this form" she urged but I was miffed by now and the prospect of having to take a driving exam, 39 years after first passing had got up my nose and I took my bat and ball in and walked off muttering. Bee, of course, was far more pragmatic and as we stood in the hallway talking about what 6 months in the US without a vehicle would mean and the need to just do it, we were startled by the front door suddenly being flung open and an elderly couple, well in their seventies anyway, shuffled in. He, apparently semi-blind and hardly conscious, staggered along with arm outstretched to ward off objects and persons he could not see. And then he spoke, I kid you not, these immortal words "Where do I go to renew my driving licence………."

2 days later we drove into Rockland, don’t ask, some 20 miles away to check on the licence. No I couldn’t get a Maine licence unless I sat both the written and the practical. Scraping through the written (25 required, 26 correct) I applied for a practical and finally received a date in late November. Duly presenting myself for the test I’m confronted with an examiner dressed as though a fully operational SWAT officer and an attitude to match. The big thing here is what the US calls parallel parking and the UK just calls parking. It means reversing your vehicle into a spot between parked cars and is deemed to be ultra difficult. I parked as required and was curtly told to carry on. Sliding the car back into the line of traffic my fun loving passenger flinched and squawked, "That was a bit close!  That was a bit close! " Yeah?" I said "But I didn’t hit it" "You were close. Why did you go so close?" "Call it judgement,” I snarled before I realised I’d better try to keep calm and get through this in one piece. And dutifully did. Now we’re US licensed to drive the highways of the country. ‘course we’d already bought the vehicle though that too involved an epic struggle. We thought about the vehicle to buy, went after Subaru’s, a vehicle that is considered to give good gas mileage here, but in the end found a 15 year old Chevy van, complete with bed. True the mileage is poor at 17or so to the US gall. but we’ve already had 2 offers to buy it so we think we’ll get our money back. Petrol by the way is about 30p a litre and considered expensive… As we had to insure and register it before collecting the plates we didn’t get it on the road until last night and today has been full of white fluffy stuff. The few times I have driven in the US have been an eye opener. Soon after we arrived and loaned a vehicle I drove over to Rockland and found myself speeding along Route 1 at breakneck speed. Realising I needed to slow down I checked the speedo and found I’d reached the dizzy heights of 37.5mph. A couple of months down the line I feel that another few years of wandering around by boat will see the end of my driving. It all seems so fast and out of control these days.

Toots has been in her element since we attached mooring lines. After a daylong kip, wrapped up in blankets with a small hole to ensure air, she surfaces to taste Bee’s offering of scallops, some kind of fish. John and Mary struggle to come to terms with our feline extravagance given our budget but Brits and their animals. Lately of course she has found out the joys of takeaways and we have been treated to a succession of voles, moles and pigeons laid out for our approval. Hard enough to come to terms with when you’re compos mentis but distinctly unattractive when getting out of bed in the morning to find a saloon full of feathers and a half chewed bird awaiting inspection. Toots continues to grow and has changed from a harmless and cute kitten to a killer with attitude. Bee claims she growls at visitors who climb aboard and feels any boat parked within her territory, all of the pontoon, is hers.

Spot those ears…….

Since I last wrote we’ve had another live-aboard arrive but this time in a Vertue and less than 26 feet long. Exquisitely finished (he is a boat builder, she an artist) it is nevertheless a small boat but a reminder too that it isn’t that long ago that that size boat was the norm for long distance cruising. As if to remind myself of those times I re-read Knox-Johnson’s story of the first, solo, non-stop circumnavigation. In these days of safety obsession it is sobering to read of him diving from the bowsprit, swimming alongside the still moving boat before catching hold of a trailing line from the stern. In the Atlantic. Or of Moitessier’s using a catapult to send messages to passing ships and thus onto the rest of the world. Very different times.

Some US observations. Browsing the local paper we occasionally see items that cause us to double take or shake our heads in wonder. A car for sale contained the line "…..roof dented from collision with moose…….." and then in another paper a long report about a trio of local villains who had held up a local chemist. The leader of said gang received a hefty jail sentence as he was using a gun to emphasis his superiority to the poor sod behind the counter. The thing that caught my eye was the fact that he had stolen, the previous day, this gun from a blind man! Is it me? Is a blind person with a gun not something of a contradiction as sight would possibly be of some importance in the general run of things? But telling the story to Americans around here raises no expression of wonderment.

Maine is a poor state, little industry, lots of mountain and wood and attractive to hunters. A debate has been going on for some time about bear baiting and a vote was recently taken on whether to allow its continuance. Apparently, not being content with the right to stalk and shoot bears some hunters have taken the "sport" a stage further. Bears, they claim, are difficult to track and very dangerous so a safer way should be allowed. The answer was to allow bear traps. The unfortunate animal, caught by one of it’s paws was then unable to defend itself, run away or do anything but stand there, in agony, whilst the "hunter" is able to shoot the bear, possibly whilst drunk, in perfect safety. Actually the bear is able to do something, as a local paper reported a bear found dead by the side of the road with a missing front paw. Caught in a trap the bear had chewed it’s own paw off and staggered away to die of blood loss. For one month, and it has just ended; the woods are alive with hunters stalking deer. Everyone, not just hunters, wears some piece of bright orange clothing to differentiate them from deer. And not just in the woods.  Now, I wish I was being facetious here but not too many years ago a woman, wearing white gloves and hanging out her washing in her own back yard was "mistaken" for a deer and shot. Dead. The local paper, in a leader article, claimed the woman was partly to blame as white gloves could be mistaken for the rump of a fleeing deer……….  And then two weeks ago a group of 8 hunters returned to their property and found a stranger sat in their "hide". As he was on private property they told him to leave and go find his own patch to hunt in. The guy walked away from the group, allegedly fiddling with his rifle (the same type I was issued with in the army) and, when a little distance away, turned and opened fire. Outcome. Six dead, two seriously wounded and the killer in jail on $2.5 million bail. Welcome to America.

Today, to prove it was no fluke, we were wakened in the early hours by a scraping noise, a noise that Bee correctly identified as ice and daylight showed the harbour area covered in a thin layer of ice.

As I write the rain is falling but landing on the tarp as ice. Bee has constructed a canvas door to protect the companionway from the Southerlies. The door is solid ice and getting thicker.

The aftermath of a mini ice storm

One of the other live-aboards, who winters here regularly, has regaled us with tales of standing underneath his bowsprit on solid ice. fggrvttttttttttghhhhhhhhhhhhb- that was Toots’ contribution to the dialogue

She objects to items being on the table as it interferes with her belly warming position and so walks nonchalantly across the keyboard to warn me to shift over.

This time last year we were preparing to leave the Cap Verdes to cross to the Caribbean. The barometer we knew would remain fairly constant, perhaps changing a few points at most. Not so here, changes can be enormous and 15 or 20-point drop or falls can happen easily and daily it seems. Up and down like a donkey’s trot as my mum would say.

By the way the vote to ban Bear Baiting was lost.