Beans for the Captains

Good Morning! It's one last time to boil sap! The barrels are overflowing and we're getting busy down at the boat. With all this great syrup that we harvested it's only fitting to share a maple syrup recipe. This is one of Captain Barry's (and Captain-in-training, Sawyer's) favorite! Enjoy!

Mary's Baked Beans

2 cups dried navy beans, soak overnight in water
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
1/4 cup mustard
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 T cider vinegar
Tobasco hot sauce, optional, to taste, (Captain's favorite part, "the hotter the better!")
salt & pepper to taste

Drain navy beans and mix with garlic and onions in a large soup pot. Cover with water with an inch above mixture. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover and simmer for about 1 1/2 hours until soft. Add water to the pot as needed to maintain the inch above mixture level while cooking.

When beans are soft, drain and stir in barbecue sauce, mustard, maple syrup and vinegar. Add hot sauce salt and pepper to your liking. To bake the beans, transfer to a bean pot or baking dish and bake, uncovered at 350 for approximately 30 minutes, stirring often. Pieces of leftover breakfast bacon can be added for additional flavor. Serves 6

Aboard Mary Day this is served with a ham dinner. Ashore, both Captains prefer a good ole' hot dog with their baked beans. Even better, enjoying them alongside a campfire... Enjoy!
Be well, do good, have a great day!

Windjammer Elves At Work

Good morning everyone. The little windjammer elves are at work. It may be Sunday but with Christmas just around the bend the pressure is on to get the cards in the mail and cookies made for the neighbors. We are having quite the snow event here with snow easily falling at the 1"/hour rate, maybe even faster this last hour. Bring it on! You know we love the snow. I just came in from shoveling off the shop roof. I am not sure how much more weight the sagging spruce pole rafters were going to take. One of my winter projects is to get new rafters and metal roofing on the shop. The good news is that it only leak when it rains.

I rowed my way through the skim ice yesterday afternoon to double check the chafe gear and the bilges. All is well aboard the schooner. I gave the lonely rocking chair a little pat. The harbor is lovely in the darkness and all was very quiet. I really just wanted to keep rowing for a while. There is a bright white star atop Mt Battie that is lit all through the holiday season. I would love to see it from the islands. I think I am starting to get hungry for a sail on the bay.

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Weekly Windjammer Work Update

Good morning everyone. It is hard to believe that the thermometer is reading just 8 degrees this morning when yesterday morning it was well up into the 30s. Taking advantage of the broken up ice on the harbor I went out to check the schooner. All is well there.


As you can see Mary's new wood shed is coming along nicely. For those of you who have ever had the joy of rifling under a snow covered tarp to get to your firewood, well, you know how luxurious this shed will be. Mary already has her boxes of gardening supplies lined up on the kitchen floor headed for the storage side of the shed. We should finish up the roof boards today and start in on the trim, the precursor to clapboard siding. For the curious, yes, Mary will be returning to sail another season. I can hear the angels singing from here.

Back on the home front Elisa and Jen are balancing office, firewood, kids, and family Christmas preparations. As some of you are seeing Jen has created a cool newsletter. We spent the weekend stamping and labeling. With all the post office has on its hands nowadays it is amazing that these get anywhere but we are already hearing from some of you making plans for next year. The annual calendars should be in the mail very soon.

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Thumpety Thump

Good morning everyone. A very light snow is drifting down onto the several inches we have received over the last few days. It looks like it will be a white Christmas here on the Maine coast.

We made our annual offering to the forest creatures at the Giving Tree just out at edge of the swamp behind our house. The kids lay down a sweet feast of apple slices for the beings out there. With snow this early I am sure that everyone out there will be thankful for the offering. Seems like a silly thing but to us the Giving Tree, a very large hemlock with wide sweeping branches, reminds us that we are not alone on the planet.

During the sailing season we have the constant and magnificent reminders; seals basking on the ledges, eagles calling from the island woods, porpoise surfacing for a breathe in the darkness. These moments touch our hearts with the thrill of connectedness. With the new moon just past the stars have been especially brilliant at night. I look up and feel like a speck only to be brought back to earth by the call of a barred owl in the woods. And my heart goes thumpety thump again. Last night we spent the evening making crafts with friends we do not see often enough. Thumpety thump again. The thrill of connectedness finds us in surprising places. I hope you notice when your heart goes thumpety thump today.

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Mary's Shed

Good morning everyone. A very chilly 3 degrees here this morning. The stars twinkle more brightly than ever. First light is coming over the ridge. Today we pause to remember the events at Pearl Harbor. On the way home from work yesterday I had a myopic driver on my tail and was thinking of a bumper sticker I would like to put on my truck, "Slow down...Life is fragile." I should thank that driver sometime for reminding me of what I value most.

Bruce and I are pounding along, literally, on Mary's new shed. The walls are all framed up. The building takes a little more form. Mary warmed the day with steaming hot blueberry muffins for coffee break. I told Mary she could start moving the wood in any time she wanted. We are all taking a day to attend to our other jobs. Bruce is a caretaker of a small island summer cottage while Jen and I have a meeting this morning. We will get to the rafters and roofing next week. We are having fun and that makes the chilly days as warm as Mary's muffins. If you have ever had a chance to sail with Bruce you know he is full of stories. Ask him to tell you the one about the chalk line.

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Good morning everyone. Well we had a great snow storm here yesterday. (11"at the official Schooner Mary Day Global Headquarters/Appleton Weather Circus measurement station, the barbeque on the porch.) Actually it is still snowing lightly this morning. The kids had a chance to stay home from school and play in the snow all day. We took advantage of the day to set up the Christmas tree and catch up on office work. (Yes, crew your sea time letters are in the mail at last.) Is it me or have you ever noticed that having a "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree is right up there on the list of holiday cool. Well our indoor tree is a long way from Currier and Ives but we love it just the same and it has lots of cool factor. Hanging all those homemade ornaments that the kids made in pre-school is a joy. Made with pipe cleaners, construction paper and lots of glitter they make the tree complete. Nadie got to put the angel on top, an honor worth fighting over in this house! Our outdoor Christmas tree stays lit year round. We let nature do the decorating. Now that has all the Currier and Ives one could ask for.

I took a long walk in the woods yesterday afternoon under the guise of hunting. The woods were quiet and the snow deep. The kids and I plowed late in the afternoon. Nadie actually fell asleep in Sawyer's lap while riding shotgun. Very cute.

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Winter Arrives

Good morning everyone. Well it has been a while since my last entry. No excuses. Just taking a break here in my random musings. This blog thing takes time and energy both of which have been scarce since the end of the season. I appreciate your patience. I do not always understand how much a season takes out of us. The end of the season let down hits differently every year. We give as much as we can and love every minute of it but it does leave us with an end of the season hangover. Remember the tapes thing I mentioned last blog. I was inspired by Ed who posted a new tape on YouTube. What I appreciated about Ed's video of still shots was the way he made a new tape of sailing Mary Day. It got me thinking that I could re-visualize some old tapes by inserting new images. Thanks Ed!

We spent the last few days getting ready for the big snow event. A last minute check of the schooner, all well, bilges dry, chafe gear in place. Get firewood loaded in to the house and barn. The second round of leaf raking will have to wait 'til next spring. The bees are wrapped in tar paper to give them a little solar gain. I did not get a chance to wrap the fruit tree trunks to protect them from girdling by mice and will have to go down to field this morning before the snow gets too deep. We hiked out in to the woods to get our Christmas tree late yesterday afternoon. The small boats have finally been covered. And 7 cords of firewood are sitting in the wood "pit" waiting for splitting. Elisa has been knocking that out for the last week.
The barn needed a new wood stove installation which was completed last week. Bruce and I have just started building a firewood/storage shed for Mary. With the looks of the forecast I don't think we will be back there until Thursday. The website has been updated. Let us know if you see anything we have missed. The newsletter and Christmas cards are at the printers and should be sent before the end of the year. Just in time for the new brochure which we have been working on as well.


So as you can see we have been a little busy. All this and hunting season too. I have spent a fair amount of time in the woods these past few weeks, early morning and late afternoons in particular. The Appleton Volunteer Fire Department had our first chimney fire of the season at 5 AM this morning. Thankfully things have been quiet with the ambulance but the slick roads today might change that. Drive carefully out there, please! For those of you admiring the 4' wreath on the schooner, our friend Tracy tied that one. It makes all other wreaths look anemic in comparison. Thanks Coach!

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Halloween in Camden

Good morning everyone. We celebrated All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, last night in fine fashion. We have never been big on the trick or treating thing but have for the last few years celebrated with our school community at an evening walk through the woods. Most of the students at school carve a jack o' lantern the day before and these are sprinkled through out the woods to light the walking path. Fairies, gnomes, elves, dragons, and all manner of wood folk are seen as passersby stroll the path under the tall pines.

So this is more of a pagan event than some may be used to but the kids love it and the lack of candy does not seem to dissuade them. Saywer, dressed as Robinhood, handed out glass beads (his idea) to his friends. Nadie, a water fairy, was content to run with her friends, drink cider and nibble pumpkin cookies. In the pagan world this holiday marks not only a thinning of the veil between worlds but also marks the end of summer and the beginning of winter. For the kids it is just fun and, yes, we did visit a few houses to trick or treat.

As I see it, the entire concept of marking the year with holidays based on our relationship with the seasons and each other makes a whole lot of sense. I am not a pagan nor do I spend much time in church. The whole world is church for me, every square inch of it. I feel just as many goose bumps sitting in the church on Isle Au Haut as I do sitting in the woods near our home or watching the moon rise over Cadillac Mt. from the deck of the schooner or singing with all of you in the main cabin. It is all good energy to me. And as I watch costumed children running with joy through the gardens and woods of our local Camden nature park I know I am witnessing a far greater power than myself. Now that is cool.

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

Welcome Home Cap

Good morning everyone. I am some glad to be home. As I stepped out of the car the smell of crisp autumn leaves upon the ground and the kiss of temperatures in the low 40s was quite welcome. We wandered down to the field last nite to watch the comet 17P/Holmes just below Cassiopea in the NE sky. It took a while but with Jen's laser pointer the kids were able to see the comet through binoculars. In the distance we could hear coyotes and owls and Martha, the donkey that lives down the street.

As beautiful as Texas is I sure did miss Jen and the kids and autumn in Maine. I can't wait to get down to the schooner in Camden today and see all the activity. Mary, Jen, and Elisa have been very busy. Since the docks are coming out soon there is a ton of stuff to do. I am only home for five days before I return to Texas to help bring Elissa back to Galveston. So give me a couple of days to get back up to speed with our whirlwind windjammer world.

Have a great day. Be well. Do good.