BY: JAMIE HART SV SASAÂ
As many sea stories begin, it was a cold and windy night in the Gulf of Maine, the seas building as the wind pushed against the current of the ebbing Kennebec…
Except this story doesn’t begin with me.
Those were the conditions off Seguin Island in September of 1886, when the lighthouse keeper rowed his pregnant wife ashore so she could give birth to my great-grandmother.
As a young girl, those were the stories that filled the air at my Nannie’s house in Maine. My older cousins chased me around the kitchen with live lobsters while the grownups told tales of fog, tide, and the light that guarded the mouth of the Kennebec. Seguin wasn’t just a landmark on the chart; it was family history.
So when my husband’s ten-year dream to leave our traditional jobs and go cruising finally began to take shape, we knew Maine had to be our starting point.
A ten-year dream might make you think we’re retirees, but we’re not even close. Tyler caught the sailing bug young and raced competitively at the Naval Academy. After graduation, he served ten years as a Navy helicopter pilot, and with every move the Navy handed us, we somehow managed to bring a boat along for the ride. First came a post-graduation trip to Pensacola, sailing an old Catalina 27 named Blue Angel down the ICW. Then the original J/30 Cannonball became a squadron beer-can racer in Norfolk, Virginia — and that’s where I met Tyler.
