northward back to maine, and now hauled out for winter

Koloa Maoli is now back in Portland, Maine and has just been hauled out for winter at Maine Yacht Center. I stretched summer sailing season out as long as I possibly could, but all good things must come to an end. We managed to sneak in an absolutely phenomenal warm, sunny, breezy sail on Saturday November 8, but by the next day, it felt like winter had set in, and we were removing sails and the boom in cold November rain. Un-stepping the mast on a Monday and pulling the boat out on a Tuesday, it was quite fitting that Portland received it’s first snow flurries about an hour before Koloa went into the slings of the travel lift.

All has gone pretty smoothly thus far, although the keel proved to be quite happy where it was, and was quite difficult to remove. The guys at Maine Yacht Center are super experienced in all things Class 40, and have removed probably more keels than anyone else in the USA, and they were able to get it off, but not without quite a fight. The keel was glued in using a lot of adhesive sealant (think of something like 3M 5200) and even when all of the bolts were removed, the keel was firmly stuck in place, even when using a jack to try to pry the keel bulb down. After a day and a half of work however, they managed to get it off. We then dropped off both of the rudders so that the boat could be set on it’s cradle in a very low configuration. Without the keel, the boat could be liable to blow over when set higher on it’s cradle.

Koloa Maoli with keel, rudders and rig removed.

The journey back north from Annapolis went very well, and included a lot more good sailing with good humans. After a windy couple of weeks in Annapolis and a mooring field that was always full, I ended up spending a lot of time in Back Creek at Jabin’s Boat Yard. We managed a couple of good sails while I was there, but I was ready to leave as soon as I could. The first leg was a very breezy upwind sail up to Baltimore. With a reef in the main and a staysail, Koloa Maoli was trucking up the Chesapeake and into Baltimore where we stayed at Port Covington Marina for a night. After a fun evening in Baltimore, I had multiple crew flying in and one local joining. Shopping for food and then departing the following morning, we had a lovely sail and motor up to the C&D Canal that connects the Chesapeake and Delaware Bay. With the strong NW’ly breeze just hanging in there, we had a lot of pleasant reaching conditions in flat water and under full sail. Transiting the canal in the evening and entering Delaware Bay at dusk, we motored through Delaware Bay all night in zero wind.

Departing Annapolis on a breezy autumn day to sail upwind to Baltimore.

To date, i’ve never heard anyone say anything even remotely positive about Delaware Bay, and so transiting it at night and without incident seemed like a treat. Wow, what a lot of shipping traffic! At least everyone was really polite and communicative on the radio and the weather was great. At day break, we exited Delaware Bay and entered the Atlantic Ocean at Cape May. We had beautiful sailing conditions in the last dying breaths of the northerly/ NW’ly breeze. Motoring by late morning or early afternoon, we had to motor a lot, but we kept shutting the motor off when it felt like we had breeze. The breeze was inconsistent however, we ended up doing a lot of very light air sailing, which was slow, but more pleasant than motoring. We spent the entirety of that day enjoying some very light and slow sailing, and also some motor sailing. Koloa is not a fast boat under power, and so whenever the motor is on we are not going places very quickly at all.

Entering the Atlantic Ocean at Cape May, New Jersey. Beautiful morning sailing, but the breeze did not last long once we reached the ocean.

Making slow progress under power and with the breeze slow to fill in, we had a bad daily run and were running behind our arrival goal of sunset on Sunday night. But what we got instead more than made up for it. As soon as we entered cell phone range approaching Newport/ Block Island/ end of Long Island, my phone was blowing up with messages about a gale warning and a small craft advisory. I knew that the breeze would be building, but the forecast had strengthened even further. That afternoon, we came ripping into Newport with a full main, staysail and msathead code zero. It was definitely one of, if not the best sail that i’ve had on Koloa Maoli thus far. We had a great crew of sailors onboard and were pushing pretty hard in breeze and seas and the boat was just loving it, and beginning to surf well into the teens and sitting on long sustained higher speeds. We blasted that way up until sunset, and when it touched 25, I started reducing sail out of caution while in delivery mode, but also as night was near and breeze was still building.

Epic sunset rip into Newport.

Switching down to a reefed main and jib, and eventually just a reefed main so that we could run really deep without needing multiple gybes, we came cruising into Newport at 9 or 10 knots of speed in breeze up to the upper 20s. Docking in Newport at night in close to 30 knots of breeze wasn’t fun, but fortunately it was at Fort Adams which is wide open and I had good crew on the boat and on the dock. What a trip to Newport! Special thanks to my crew, but also to John Schafer, who was delivering a J boat and had his crew catch our dock lines and give us a warm greeting.

After a few days in Newport, I assembled another crew and we left on a breezy afternoon on a dying Southwesterly that had previously been absolutely nuking. Departing Newport, we hoisted the A5 and had a gorgeous kite run up until sunset with a reef and an A5. The breeze wasn’t quite as strong as I had expected, and so in hindsight we could have carried more sail, but we still had a fantastic downwind sail to Buzzards Bay, ripping under spinnaker at sunset. Once in Buzzards Bay, I had even more sketchy interactions with power boats crossing my bow at night at very high speed (not my favorite), but the breeze just hung in there and we had lovely sailing to the Cape Cod Canal. Making the canal in quick time, we had current with us and blasted right through. Once into Cape Cod Bay, we hit the last of the breeze, and went ripping up the coast under Code Zero in the night. Eventually it was dead upwind into Boston, which seemed like it took forever to get into. We were tied up in Boston by breakfast time, to cap off another great delivery leg with great crew.

I slept most of the day after an all night sail, and then Marisa joined for the weekend and we spent a couple of days giving boat tours and some sailing with Courageous Sailing in Boston. Courageous Sailing is a non-profit community sailing center from Boston that we met during the Newport Boat Show, and it is a really cool organization, so we were quite happy to link up with them on our little east coast tour. After two days in Boston, my mate Adam from Wichard showed up and we doublehanded the boat back up to Portland in a 20 northerly. We had a super pleasant reach out of Boston to Gloucester, and then it was dead on the nose, short tacking back and forth with a reefed main and staysail. Upwind sailing is never super pleasant, especially in late October off the coast of New England, but with the diesel heater that Dave installed for his GSC, we kept the boat warm!

Back in Maine, we went sailing with the Portland Press-Herald for an upcoming piece, and also with the Knack Factory, which is a local production company that’s doing a trailer for our campaign and embarking on a film project with us. A nice article came out about the campaign in Maine Boats Homes & Harbors magazine, and we’ve got some good stuff going on in the background. Now that the boat is hauled out and entering her winter place of rest, there’s certainly a lot to work on over the winter, but not necessarily the biggest time crunch for all of it. I also have to work, and have some winter sailing plans, a few deliveries, etc and can then chip away at Koloa’s preparation for next season.

Coming up next though, Marisa and I will be headed over to the METS trade show in Amsterdam next week for a couple of days and then over to England for 1 day for the International Association of Cape Horners’ annual luncheon. Stoked to go back to Europe, if only very very briefly.

If you have not signed up for our newsletter, I definitely recommend to do so as we are sending out some campaign related announcements and info that don’t necessarily make it to our blog. You can do so at the bottom of any page on the website.

Thanks to everyone who has followed and supported our campaign during this first season of preparing for the Global Solo Challenge, and we are looking forward to 2026!