The Terrible Toggles and Burnt Coat

I don't think I've mentioned "toggles".... they are the bane of our existence here in northern/down east Maine. The plain old lobster pots are bad enough. But as you get further north and down east, the loberstermen add a special touch --- they attach an additional small float called a "toggle" to the lobster float. We think the purpose of the toggles is to support the "pot wrap" or rope from the float to the lobster trap -- often 100 + feet down. The toggle and float may be anywhere from 3 to 20 to 30 feet apart, and are attached to each other by a rope approximately 2 ft under water. Now, our propeller is waaay more than 2 ft under water, so you can guess what would happen if we ran between a float and it's toggle. And believe me, the propeller doesn't cut the rope, the rope wraps around the propeller and stalls the engine -- dead! - not a good thing. These toggles don't "color match" their floats, either. It's a real art to decide who belongs to who, based on which way the current is going at the moment. If you get into a few and they are nice and symmetrical, it's ok. But get into a field of several hundred and ohhh, what a pain. And! if the tide is high or the water rough, the darn toggles can go completely underwater and you can't see them at all! At least, not until you are on top of them, and then it's too late.

Here's a nice set of float/toggle... The float has the stick in the middle and the toggle doesn't.

Here's a nasty set, with the toggle (white one at the bottom of the picture) almost submerged...

So, all of that introduction done, we left SW Harbor, bimini repair complete, and headed back southwest. It was a rough trip. The wind was dead into us, at about 20 knots. The current was dead against us, too. We had the boat speed through the water at about 7 knots, but we were only doing about 5 against the wind and current. The sun was in our eyes. The lobster float/toggles looked like someone had thrown a huge box of multicolored confetti into the water, hundreds of them, miles on end. The water was high, so a lot of the toggles were underwater, making it almost impossible to second guess which toggle went with which float. We struggled for 2 hours and retreated into a port along our way, Frenchboro (remember the little place with 30 families on the island, but 1 little 6 chair restaurant with good lobster rolls? :-)

We used the afternoon for projects and general housecleaning.

This morning we left with less wind, the sun behind us, the current in the right direction, tide in our favor, and the lobster floats more organized. Much better.

Our goal was Burnt Coat Harbor on Swan Island. We arrived in the late morning, passing the old lighthouse at the point. The Coast Guard donated the lighthouse to the island for a park. It's electronic, so no one lives in the house - it's a little dilapidated. The island is working on restoring it. The last lighthouse keeper lived there with his 9 kids...

We climbed around onto the rocks in front of the lighthouse --- very nice, relaxing against sun warmed rocks.

Here's the view we had.

After the lighthouse, we walked to the abandoned quarry. The quarry lake has been converted to a swimming hole. Fresh water, much warmer than the ocean! There were several groups out there swimming. Of course, they were sharing the ol' swimming hole hole with a big group of seagulls that were using it for bathing. Still, it looked pretty refreshing.

A walk around the old quarry on a nice wooded path and then on top of the rocks shown above and then back to the boat. Tomorrow we plan to anchor in the group of islands called Devil, Camp, and Bold. They are just outside of Stonington, the town where all of the pink granite is mined.