Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and surrounding area

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

We've been at a slip at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard since last Thursday night.  The dockage is in a great, protected area, with 40' slips, 30 amp power, and water.  The folks here are friendly, and we plan to be here until Sunday.  This will be the longest we've stopped anywhere since we left home.

The weather here has been foggy, with misty rain, hard rain, and bright sunshine, though not much of that.  

We rented a car for a week, enabling us to get groceries, go to church, do laundry, get lp gas, pick up prescriptions, and visit the surrounding area.  We made a trip up to Freeport, a little over an hour's drive, and did our mandatory tourist trip to LL Bean!

The "down" time has also given us an address for long enough to receive some mail.  The dogs are enjoying frequent walks.

I pulled the autopilot control head and display units off and sent them to RayMarine to see if they have the parts to fix my failing pilot.  That will mean we leave here without a heading sensor, so no radar overlay on the plotter, and no north up display on the radar.  After years of running vessels with North Up radar, I'll be temporarily reverting back to head-up radar.  I generally use a separate screen for radar, rather than a chart overlay when running in poor visibility anyhow.  Boy, these state of the art electronics really spoil you.

I don't think we've taken any photos since we've been here.  But, we have tons of photos of Maine, taken on our trip, since there are way too many to post.

Biddeford Pool to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

Thursday, Friday 20-22 August, 2015

This morning it was foggy.  The fog lifted for a few minutes, and there really wan't much hope of it getting better.  We'd seen the community of Biddeford Pool, we had reservations at the marina at Portsmouth, and it was relatively calm, so off we went.

As you follow the progression of photos, you can see a house in Biddeford Pool, the lighthouse , what the rest of the day looked like, and the approach into Portsmouth.

We went into Back Sound to a slip at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, an MWR facility for military/retired.  We decided to rent a car, and see go to Freeport and a few places around the area.

For others doing the same thing:  the slips are perpendicular to the current, so advance planning for slack water may be a good idea.  The base provides nice 40' slips, water, and 30amp electric.  The rates are reasonable.

 Lighthouse in the photo!

Another note, Enterprise wouldn't pick us up, said they were short handed in the office.  Can't you find a way down here?  Let me get this, the company who says "we pick you up" can't spare 10 minutes to come and get me, but, wants me to walk the distance in the pouring rain?  Someone at the marina gave me a ride down....  Thanks, Robert!

It rained much of the day on Friday.  We picked up the car, made a commissary run, and did some boat maintenance.