The planning was intense, the execution flawless and the result? Magical.

A pair of venerable dinks, with a cumulative age of more than six decades, has for years served the Brighams and their five sailing vessels as tried-and-true tools in their quests for successful cruises.

Part 1: “Want to sail across the Atlantic?” my wife Nancy asked, knowing it was a life dream. “I told them you’d be interested.” I signed on, and the experience proved both pleasant and painful.

 Plan A was the Newfoundland south coast, but it had a COVID closure. Plan B was Maine, which endured a moth infestation with toxic by-products. So, Plan C, and a lovely one at that: Massachusetts.

Jeff and Molly Bolster discuss their 2018 cruise via Zoom host by the Gundalow Company’s World Ocean Experience series.

My mother, Gail Stanwood, passed at 96 in October 2020. She kept meticulous cruising logs, then retyped the accounts with detailed narratives. She would savor this 2021 log entry for the sloop, Prelude.

In many ways, the summer of 2020 was like any other. But there was the COVID pandemic, which changed everything, except for the things that did not change, like sailing along the coast of Maine.

My son and I, and his friend Dave, delivered Blue Moon, a Grand Banks 42 – named after that nocturnal orb – from Lake Champlain to his marina in Boston. It was a memorable getaway.

It was time to use the best days of August for some serious adventures.

I was back on our motorsailer in the Chesapeake Bay, where we’d left her for repairs while homeward bound for Maine from the Bahamas two years earlier. It was time to complete the cruise.