We’re talking about the Monmouth and Brecon Canal in Wales, where the narrowboats motor slowly through the countryside, don’t heel, and where pastoral livin’ is easy and not a little magical.

“I can do that,” I replied to my boat partner, Geo. It was the end of the sailing season, and someone needed to go up the mast on a friend’s boat.

Part 1: So many small, simple implements – a fine chisel, the perfect rigging knife, even a small boat – can nurture heritages that live and breathe, like this 1968 O’Day Mariner that has brought joy and fellowship to generations.

We were two weeks into a delivery of our new boat, the Saga 43 Fika, from Fort Lauderdale to our home port in Portland, Maine, with a happy crew of six, and we were seriously behind schedule. What to do?

Despite minor mishaps our sail Downeast, past Mount Desert Island to Winter Harbor, was almost perfect for us, as we set forth with a fantastic August weather window and a positive cruising attitude.

Making the best of a difficult situation.

We entered our Freedom 30 in this year’s Figawi Race, from Hyannis to Nantucket, and we knew where we were the whole weekend – dead last in our class, with 18 post-race stitches on the sail home.

It was my last sailing trip of the summer: late August, with the school year looming and syllabi still unwritten for my fall classes at the University of Maine. But one piece of business on the water remained.

The question we get asked most about this lifestyle is, hands down, “What do you do all day on a boat?”

With a 22-foot lobsterboat spinoff, Kevin cruises to Monhegan Island from Casco Bay and returns via Penobscot and Muscongus bays, delighting in a sampling of what the Maine coast has to offer.