Welcome Home: Part One
By Dave and Jaja

	To order your copy of Dave and Jaja's new book, Into the Light: A Family's Epic Journey, click here. For their latest book reviews, click here. To view a gallery of images showing DRIVER, the Martins, and their adventures, click here.

Note: You can meet Dave and Jaja in person when they give a presentation on "Iceland and Beyond" at the Mystic Seaport Museum on November 20. For more info, contact Karin Soderberg at Mystic Seaport at 860-572-5308.

This past summer, sailing into Northeast Harbor, Maine, on Mount Desert Island, was an eye opener. Holly was sitting high on her bosun’s chair, hovering over the water, with her feet resting on the stern rail.

"Why are the houses so big?" she asked.

"Because the people who own them have a lot of money," I answered.

"But, even if you had a lot of money why would you want such a BIG house?"

Without waiting for an answer she pushed off the stern rail, swung in a graceful arc alongside the hull and landed on top of the lifelines near the bow.

Chris was hanging out on the back stay, above the solar panels, about 12 feet off deck level. He was sitting comfortably in his bosun’s chair observing the world. It has been his favorite place to perch for years, and he’s so quiet up there that we often forget he’s above us. He’s forever listening to our conversations but readily gives himself away as he corrects flaws in our discourse. There’s little privacy on a 33-foot boat. "Look at that house!" Chris shouted down at us. "They must be really rich!" He pushed off the back stay, did a double twist and landed neatly on the forestay.

Teiga swung on her chair (yes, we have three bosun’s chairs on DRIVER), carving lazy curves around the mast and shrouds a little above boom level. She was getting more proficient on her swing, and with Chris’s help would soon turn into an expert flier. "Are those houses?" she said. "I thought they were buildings."

"They’re neither houses nor buildings," Dave said sarcastically, "they’re cottages."

Dave and I were bewildered for a different reason. In the past five years combined, we hadn’t seen the number of boats we were now looking at. And these were all in one harbor. "Look at all those moorings!"

There was one thing we had to do. We tied up at the public dock and Dave went off to make the phone call. Five minutes later he came back grinning, so we cast off.

Like Okies in a big city, we goggled as we passed lanes of sleek, shiny yachts. The moorings were impossibly close, and arranged in a clever grid pattern to ensure maximum coverage. No anchoring possible here. We turned at the back of the harbor and headed out. "Whew!" I exclaimed as we were halfway through, "I can finally see the horizon through the boats."

"It was close in there," said Dave.

We approached the fuel wharf on the south side of the harbor. "Do you think we can tie up here?" I asked Dave.

"Of course," he said "It’s a fuel wharf, anyone can buy fuel."

I wondered where we would tie up; behind the 60-foot Hinckley with the sleek paint job - a paint job that probably cost more than our entire boat? Or maybe over by the 50-foot Morris. We felt like a ragged seagull in a flock of Swans.

A smiling man with a beard helped us with our lines. "What can I do for you?" he asked. While we were filling up with diesel and water we chatted. "Where are ya from?" he asked.

"Newfoundland," Chris answered. Startled, the man looked up to where the voice had come from and spotted Chris, sitting nonchalantly on his perch.

"What a monkey," he said.

"It’s the circus act," I offered.

He looked over at Dave "I always wanted to go to Newfoundland." He asked how long it had taken us to get to Maine.

"We left in June," said Dave. "We crossed Cabot Strait, sailed through the Bras D’Or Lakes, then ambled down the south coast of Nova Scotia. We just came across from Port Mutton. In fact I just called U.S. customs and cleared in."

"Welcome Home," he said heartily.