Portland

It rained all morning and most of the afternoon. We stayed on the boat reading and doing chores until around 1500 when we took the Centerboard Yacht Club launch over to "Old Town" Portland. The waterfront and downtown area have been gentrified. The waterfront is up-scale condos and restaurants. The main street is the shopping district with more restaurants and boutiques. There are a few blocks of old buildings and cobblestone streets which give you some idea of what the port might have looked like in the past century. One day in Portland was enough for us.

DiMillo's on the Water

We had a lobster/prime rib dinner at a restaurant which had an unusual decor. The exterior and signage led you to think you were stepping into an establishment from the 19th Century. Once inside, you felt as if you were in the 1960s. The place was dimly lighted except for the huge, brightly lit aquariums that were behind the bar and along the walls. You were in a basement with dark red brick lined walls. The tables were dark stained wood covered with red tablecloths. The low-backed chairs were covered with naugahyde. A plastic bib with a red lobster on it was provided with the lobster dinner. All that was missing was the cigarette smoke which usually filled restaurants like this in the 1960s. Oh, I almost forgot, the patrons back then would have been men in coat and tie and women in dresses. The dinner was OK but not great. We won't be back. We should have eaten at DiMillo's on the water which is a converted car ferry. It is docked where the club launch dropped us off and picked us up.

We found ourselves surrounded by thick fog when we stepped outside after dinner. We couldn't see more than 100 feet in front of us. The fog was even thicker when we reached the dock for our ride back to the boat. We could hear the Wednesday night racers shouting out to each other as they tried to find the way to their moorings. The club's launch eventually found us waiting where we were dropped off and took us back to the club's mooring field where we picked up some of the members who were needing a ride from their boats to the club dock. We probed the mooring field for about 20 minutes before we finally found Foreign Affair. We must have passed her more than once hunting for her in the fog. In the future, we will leave a light on so at least we have something to help guide us to her position after dark or during fog.