These days, Margaret McCrea’s studio is a small, square, royal-green room lined with watercolors and books at the front of an old farmhouse on the banks of the St. George River. Come summer, however, her studio becomes the great wide ocean – or rather, the coves and harbors that a sailboat can sneak into and snub up in.

McCrea’s summer journeys are now the delight of the many readers of “Maine Sail: An Artist’s Journal of a Cruise Down East” published by Down East Books of Camden late last summer. The book is a journal in words and watercolors of a cruise Down East to New Brunswick taken with McCrea’s husband, Peter. The words keep the reader moving from one hidden cove to another, but the deep pleasure of this book lies in McCrea’s delicate renditions of lonely sailboats and rocky outcroppings as she and her husband meander among the secluded islands that are the Maine sailor’s true calling.

McCrea, an easygoing, friendly woman in her early 60s (and looking a good 10 years younger), readily talks about how she loved painting as a girl, then nearly left it behind, returning to this first love only much later in her life. She began at age 8, when she showed a deep interest in the work of the amateur painter who lived next door. Her mother gave her oil paints, the neighbor gave her pointers, and she kept at it, painting through high school. But though she loved it, she never took art classes and found herself going to business school, not art college.

Marriage and children followed, then divorce and a full-time job, which happened to be in a yacht club. There she met Peter, an avid sailor who frequently singlehanded his 32-foot sloop. They had been dating but a short time when the instrument-design firm Peter worked for was bought, and he found himself staring at a pink slip. His reaction? Take a year off and go sailing, hopefully with McCrea. Somewhat flustered, she agreed. A year aboard is a long time. Among the books McCrea threw into her sea bag were empty journals. With them went art supplies.

Sitting now at her computer, McCrea turns to a 4-foot bookshelf crowded with many years of sailing journals in varying sizes and thicknesses, each one a log of the daily stories and vistas from the cruises she and Peter have since undertaken. “I started by keeping a journal that had paintings at the bottom of each page,” she says, opening some of her early journals. McCrea’s neat script covers three-quarters of the page. Lovely watercolors run along the bottom. When McCrea turns to later books, it’s clear where her heart came to settle. Paragraphs retreat to a line or two while watercolors of stubby islands and lighthouses rising from slabs of granite fill each page.

Four months into that first voyage, McCrea and Peter were married. As the sails continued (mostly summer excursions, though they have crossed the Atlantic), a routine developed. During the day, McCrea and Peter take turns standing watch. On off hours, she might read or sketch, even if it’s just getting the details of her own boat’s winches and sails. But as soon as Peter lowers the sails for the day, even before the anchor sets, McCrea is at the bow, paper and paints in hand. “Sometimes we’d run into each other on the deck, he’d just be leaving the anchor, and I’d be rushing up to the bow. I knew I would have to catch that scene before it got dark. It’s usually pretty fast work.”

As for the settling in for the night, that could wait. “It’s paint first, dinner after,” says McCrea. “There’s something about catching it, seeing Saddle Island off Islesboro from a distance, I want to get that image on paper. We may be gone tomorrow. We usually are.”

Over the years, McCrea honed her style, learning to use a thick brush with a fine point so it could carry a full load of paint while also handling the detail of a ship’s rigging. She also learned patience, building up many background layers before painting the details, using transparent watercolors to take advantage of the white paper. The more she worked, the more she understood her palette, the grays and blues of the Maine coast, the moodiness of a yellow sky at sunset. But mostly, she says, she learned to let go, let the paint do what it wants.

“It’s like putting on a play, you’ve got to let the characters get up on stage and do what they need to do. With paint, you need to leave it alone to settle in and blend without trying to direct it too much.”

On cruises, her focus is so intense that even if she’s just spending a week on Penobscot Bay, McCrea returns to dry land feeling as if she’s been to an intense art workshop. Watercolors have taken over her life. “Painting, drawing and history are driving forces, I can’t get enough of them,” she says. As president of the Thomaston Historical Society, McCrea is also painting every old house in town, along with researching their history.

“Maine Sail” is McCrea’s first book. The one cruise depicted is really a compilation of the many journeys she and Peter have taken along the Maine and New Brunswick coast. The words and images are lifted right out of her journals, which may explain the popularity of this book. Those of us who live here know that traveling in Maine, whether by sea or land, is not a matter of showy sites. There’s a more subtle splendor we connect to, one that has to do with the way the waters blend from green to rose at sunset, the immediacy of a wisp of fog lifting off a lone rock, the intimacy of the harboring shore. The very pace of a sailboat, traveling at whatever speed the wind hoists for the day, deepens the connection. It is this very personal appreciation of the Maine coast that McCrea has captured in “Maine Sail.”

Here’s just one example: On a lovely September morning, the McCreas are at the WoodenBoat School in Brooklin just as the windjammers have their annual gathering. McCrea remains aboard, sketching the schooners as they round their way into the harbor. As two crows screamed across the sky, McCrea notes the time in her journal: 8:52 a.m. That night, she wrote: “At sunset a bagpiper pipes mournful strains of ‘Amazing Grace.’ Flags are lowered and guests speak in hushed tones. Although strangers, everyone shares something intangible.” She says no more in her book, but later admits the date: Sept. 11, 2001.

Donna Gold can be reached at carpenter@acadia.net.