Still Water & Private Places
There’s a longing among coasters to chance upon a perfectly protected eel rut of a wild anchorage, inhabit it in solitude and know the delights of discovery. Though some despair there are no unpublished truths of the sort yet to be divined, they are out there if you know where to look—for there’s something of an art to fathoming still waters and private places.
Often, the only reason such treasures still exist is that they throw a challenge or two at you and demand a greater investment of self. It’s the price of extraordinary experience, though most of those we’ve chanced upon have proven surprisingly straightforward to plumb. The little time it takes to know the truth of such matters pays handsomely and yields a richer approach to coasting.
Seeking shelter from weather has driven a few of the discoveries my wife and mate, Leigh, and I have made. One time, bullying seas bared their teeth as our 26ft put her shoulder to a snotty northeasterly under a Kansas tornado sky scudding low over Maine’s East Penobscot Bay. The previous evening’s forecast had said nothing of easterly weather, but when Leigh pulled up the latest report, we learned we were in for a wet, windy and foggy time of it.
