Photos by Mark Pillsbury
On a Sunny mid-May morning, a brisk, cold wind blew across Camden Harbor, over water that was still in the low 40s, which helped explain why visiting sailor Andrew Firth had no trouble finding a mooring for his 36-foot 1984 Cape Dory, which he’d launched in New Hampshire a few days earlier. Or, why no one cared that lacking a dinghy, he brought the stout-looking cutter alongside the yacht club dock and left it tied up there while he met with me and then ran off to do a few errands.
Indeed, the harbor was pretty much empty. Our frigid spring—some might even say lingering winter—had kept sailors up and down the coast from uncovering their boats, never mind launching them. But Firth? He was in somewhat of a hurry, as his visa was due to expire at week’s end. With crew or without, he planned to leave that Saturday for Nova Scotia, and then eventually on to Ireland, and home to Norway.
An Aussie by birth, Firth grew up sailing on Sydney Harbor and along the rugged coast Down Under. Eventually, he married a Norwegian woman and spent 25 years as a cameraman at a media company in Norway before the couple relocated for a decade to a 300-acre cattle ranch back in Australia. About a year ago, Firth returned to Norway to be closer to his daughter and a couple of grandkids, and once there, he got an itch to get back out on the water.
Firth said he came to the States in late February because the selection of used boats and prices are better here than in Europe. After landing in New England, he looked at seven or eight solid, but older, full keel Sea Sprites, Bristols, and a Hinckley before finding the Cape Dory at a yard outside Portsmouth. The boat was listed by Gray and Gray Yachts for $65 grand. Firth could only offer $40,000, but that was enough to get the deal done. Then, with snow still on the ground, Firth moved aboard to wait for spring.
Having spent a few winters aboard a boat in New England myself, when broker Annie Gray called to tell me she had a client with an interesting story, I could only imagine what a couple months on the hard in a New Hampshire boat yard was like: cold.
Gray, a sailor at heart, said when she was nearby she would stop to check in on Firth from time to time, gave him rides if needed, and even offered a couple of ceramic flower pots to put over the burners of his Origo alcohol stove—a trick cruising sailors sometimes use to keep warm—but he bought a small electric heater instead and soldiered on.
Ironically, it turns out that Gray sold Firth’s father-in-law a boat many years ago, which was also sailed from New England to Norway. Small world.
While he waited for boating season to commence, Firth made a few repairs—though the previous owner had kept the boat ship-shape—and he installed an AIS transponder and a Hydrovane self-steering windvane for the Atlantic crossing ahead. When the yard finally fired up its lift in early May, Firth was rarin’ to go.
From Portsmouth, he sailed day hops along the coast as he got used to the boat. At one stopover, a broken part on the windlass made weighing anchor interesting. And a broken stopper on the traveler left him without a mainsail for a short spell before he repurposed a fitting from a fairlead car.
In Camden, he lingered for several days on a borrowed mooring while he provisioned for Nova Scotia, waited to hear from a couple of potential crew members, and settled into life afloat.
The details of his planned return to Bergen, Norway, in June remained fluid, however. Sailors, Firth said, write their itinerary in the sand at low tide. His principal concern, he noted, was the weather. He would be able to get forecasts at sea with the new InReach he’d purchased. But in the meantime, the weather window for Saturday was looking promising. And for Firth, as far as he was concerned, that was good enough.
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