Top Travel Days of 2024, Spending My 60th Birthday in Camden, Maine

Sailors know the British Virgin Islands as legendary cruising grounds. Here, in places like Virgin Gorda, Peter’s Island, and Tortola, you’ll find sheltered marinas where you can dock or throw down your anchor, shopping, restaurants, and small hotels that are popular with yachters. Even better, you can sail to these various islands without going outside the reefs into the open ocean. But you won’t have to worry about navigational charts on Festiva Sailing Vacations 7-night night cruise around the BVIs, because a skipper comes with you. Their 45-foot Lagoon 450 catamarans, which sleeps 8 passengers in 4 guest cabins with private bathrooms, also comes with a chef and liquor to make this the ideal all-inclusive package. The weeklong jaunt starts in Tortola and includes snorkeling with sting rays in The Baths of Virgin Gorda, a stop at Cane Garden to listen to the steel band play at Stanley’s, and a night anchored off Norman Island, the treasure island author Robert Louis Stevenson made famous in his book. Cost of the trip starts at $3595 per couple, including meals, a berth onboard, and, of course, transportation. They still have one berth available on the March 19-26, April 9-16, and April 16-23 sailings. Please contact ActiveTravels and we’ll be happy to make the booking. 

We wake up to blinding sunshine at Buck’s Harbor in South Brooksville, best known as the spot where children’s book author and illustrator Robert McCloskey (“Make Way for Ducklings,” “Blueberries for Sal”) summered. FDR would also stop here on his way to Campobello Island for a short ice cream break. We found some of those famous wild Maine blueberries in our pancakes that morning before hoisting the sails and setting a course for that hump atop Big Spruce Island. Each one of these Penobscot Bay harbors and islands has a legacy and Big Spruce Island is no different. This is the place where artist Fairfield Porter and his brother, photographer Eliot Porter, would spend their summers and there’s still a working artists’ community on the island today.

With early spring weather in Boston this week, I’m already thinking of booking another windjammer sail in Maine this summer. A question I’m always asked is where does a travel writer/advisor go for downtime? For me, I’ll jump on one of these historic schooners any chance I get. Two summers ago, I made the wise choice to sail on the Schooner Mary Day with my daughter, Melanie, before she left for her first year of college at Indiana University. We had a glorious trip dining on all the lobster we could stomach on a deserted island off the mid-Maine coast, spotting harbor porpoises, lonely lighthouses, and making new friends around the country as we hoisted sails and sucked in as much salty air as necessary. This comes on the heels of two memorable sails aboard the Grace Bailey with my dad and his wife Ginny. A memory I won’t soon forget is my father taking the wheel of the Grace Bailey and sailing for a good hour or two.