Merchants Row, ME (and a whale!)

I forgot to mention in the last blog, but as we neared Frenchboro a few days ago, we saw a whale! Not several of them, but one lone one cruising the waters between Bar Harbor and Frenchboro. We think a Fin whale. Very exciting!

After leaving Buckle Harbor, we headed to the Merchants Row area of ME. This is a group of islands westward of Mt. Desert, the Acadia park area. Our first, largest and highest one was Isle au Haut (high Island), largely set aside as part of Acadia Park. You can get there only by private boat or a ferry from Bar Harbor. We anchored in a small, wedge shaped inlet called Duck Harbor.

We thought we'd do a casual hike across the "mountain" in the island --- 300 ft. Well! Nobody said that the 300 ft was almost straight up! We actually were in a "toes and fingers in holes in the rocks" climbing mode up a couple of the rock faces. Not what we planned. But we did it. Here's the view from the top.

The clearly marked trail insisted on going over the top of every possible rock outcrop like the one I'm sitting on -- up one side, down the other, and again, and again -- for about 6 to 7 times in a 1.2 mile trail. It was a nice amble down (well, we slid down a couple of the rocks, they were so steep). In reading the fine print on the trail map, after the act, "most difficult" was mentioned.

The reward on the other side of the island was Squeaker Cove, a beautiful little cove of rocks.

The area is so typically Maine with carpets of soft, mushy, green moss.

On our way from Duck Harbor to the village of Isle au Haut, we passed the Isle au Haut lighthouse - pretty scenic!

The village itself has 45 year round residents, a small library, grocery market open twice a week, the usual town dock, and that's about it.

Next, an anchorage between two islands, McGlatherty and Round. McGlathery has no real trails so it was a real adventure exploring the island. It's actually full of trails made by the resident wild sheep -- as evidenced by their frequent droppings in the dim little paths. It's also full of heavily wooded areas, tangles of blown down trees and "meadows" of lichen covered rocks. We actually got "lost", not sure where we would end up when we got to the coast again. We underestimated where we were, but found a neat grave stone on the adventure. The birth dates were early 1800's.

There were no other evidences of anyone ever living on the island.

Luke made a project of photographing the mushrooms.

We were SO glad to find ourselves back to the island where our dinghy waited patiently -
- about 25 feet further from the water than we left it -- 12 ft tides.

Tonight we're back in Rockland, stocked up on groceries, picked up mail, and got my sunglasses fixed. We passed Goose Rocks Lighthouse, located in the Foxboro Throughfare as we passed through Vinylhaven.


and the town of North Haven


We did check out Perry Creek for future anchorage. Beautiful, but too full of private moorings. No room to anchor.

When we arrived back in Rockland harbor, we saw the largest sailing sloop we've ever seen, and one of the largest in the world, per the Rockland harbormaster, the S/V Artemis, 145 ft long, with a mast height of about 200 ft! For perspective, our mast is 65 ft... and it's privately owned...


Friday we'll head up to Castine to wait out Tropical Storm Danny. Should be just a lot of rain, some wind. sigh. Two tropical storms in one week in Maine! Not fair!!!