North Haven, Bucks Harbor, and Denver

We were without internet service (and cell phone!) for almost a week now. The Penobscot Bay islands tend to be high, almost cliffs, which results in the waterline being almost in a bowl. The reception there is between spotty and non-existant.



We ended up spending an extra day, a rainy one, at Pulpit Harbor.

The next day we sailed over to North Haven. North Haven is the little town that we accidentally walked to in our last blog post. It's a lot easier by boat :-) The town was more awake this time, and full of activity. The Community Center is a great little place, full of village folks spending time together. Moms with children playing board games, older folks reading the paper, teens spending time together. There is a little coffee shop there, plus an auditorium where some movies are shown and a local little theater. But the town shows life of better times in earlier days.

Inspired by Andrew Wyeth, I tried my hand at a still life in Maine --- simple and a little stark. I liked it.

A couple of artist shops and a YARN shop!, and a marine shop complete the town (oh, and the little restaurant). A car ferry runs from North Haven to Rockland daily, carrying tourists and locals who work in Rockland.

We were completely fogged in the next day; waited until 1pm to leave for Bucks Harbor.

There was heavy fog most of the way (remeber that fog horn a few blogs back?). The fog finally broke as we approached Bucks Harbor --- I hate that we missed most of this gorgeous scenory on the trip! Here is the lighthouse near the entrace to Bucks Harbor, complete with a little remaining fog in the background.

About 25 old wooden schooners are still running in this area, engged in the tourist trade. We saw several of them, under sail, just beautiful and a part of the past!

A couple of days in Bucks Harbor that included laundry and a nice walk (looking for cell coverage in all of the wrong places), and we left Monday (28th) for Denver. One of the dock boys gave us a lift to the airport in Bangor. Inland Maine, at least this area, is beautiful. It actually reminds me a lot of the Blue Ridge area.

A long trip later, and we are in Denver! Cian's parents, from Ireland, are now visiting the homeland, and have graciously invited us to stay in their home in Boulder while we're in CO. It's wonderful to have access of a house again.

Grandbabies! They are, of course, beautiful and sweet. Here';s the new Bonpa (that's Flemish for "grandfather" and Luke's new title) with his wee little ones.

Simon, Lisa and Mat's son, is now 6 weeks old.

Evelyn, Erin and Cian's daughter, is now 3 weeks old.

Penobscot Bay and the Fox Islands

Leaving Rockland Harbor, we passed one of Maine's many, many historic light houses. This one is built at the end of a mile long jetty that protects Rockland Harbor from northeast winds. The Jetty was begun in 1881 and took 18 years to complete, with 700,000 tons of granite, "most of which was brought from Vinalhaven by stone sloop".



Penobscot Bay has been our goal for Maine. This bay has been billed as the most picturesque and best sailing of all of Maine. We are beginning to believe it. The bay itself is only about 30 miles wide, with an island cluster in the middle. The islands are the Fox Islands, North Haven and Vinahaven. We are anchored in a beautiful little cove, Pulpit Harbor, in North Haven. The shore is lined by the fishermen's homes, families whose descendants have been here for hundreds of years.

At the far end of the harbor, a low bridge takes you to the end of the water in the little harbor. The bridge and following water is accessible only in high tide. The tides here have a 10 ft range, so 10 ft of water at high tide means mud flats or rocks at low tide. We have to be very careful where we anchor.

After exploring the cove, we left the dinghy at the public dinghy dock and went for a little walk. We kept walking. Inland by just a hundred yards showed us another view of Maine, the fields. There are no roadsides here, only road and field.

We stumbled onto a rural airstrip. How'd you like to take off from (or worse yet, land on) this one? The pilot scooted up to the roadside, made a sharp 180, rev'ed that baby up, and she was off the ground in nothing flat.

Anyway, we walked way too far, about 3+ miles, in one direction. We ended up in the town of North Haven. Had a well deserved ice cream :-) and called the grocery store about 2/3 of the way back to the boat for a lift. The owner zipped over, picked us up, let us shop, and then delivered us and our groceries to our dinghy. He actually offered to just take us back to the dinghy if we didn't need to shop - he was just being accommodating. They had the most beautiful flowers for sale, wish we could have bought some for the boat.

It's beautiful today - 75, sunny, and windy. Too windy. The gusts are up to 30 knots, too high for us to sail. So, we're sitting "on the hook" for the day, enjoying the weather, catching up on a few chores. Met some nice folks last night and will be inviting them over for snacks later.

Tomorrow we end up at Bucks Harbor, our moorage during our trip to Denver to see the new grandbabies :-)

We leave on Monday the 28th, back on Monday the 4th. Don't know that I'll get much done on the blog during that time.

Port Clyde and Rockland

Before we left Hog Island, we went for one morning dinghy ride. Our efforts were rewarded. Luke had seen an eagle fly away from the island during our walk the day before. Around that same area, we found him, sitting high and regal, on a tall tree. Not the greatest picture, but it's an eagle!
We also had a harbor seal finally take notice of us and come over to check us out. We got a good shot of him between us in the dinghy and the boat.

After leaving the island, we sailed past the Marshal Point light house, near Port Clyde. We had explored it on Sunday with new friends we were anchored beside. There is a nice museum in the old lighthouse itself.

The house and light have been renovated over the years. It is still an active lighthouse. In the 1800's the walk between the lighthouse keepers house and the lighthouse itself was a covered walk. With Maine winters, I can understand why!

Monday we finished out sail to Rockland, a popular town with cruisers. It's a great town, little Mainstreet USA type of town still. Everything except a grocery store are within easy walking distance of the harbor and town dock.

Lots of lobsters, too, of course. I'm sorry that the guy who generously took this picture of us couldn't get more of Maine's Largest Lobster (metal lobster, that is) in the picture. You'd never know were were tourists, would you?

One of the major attractions in Rockland is the Farnsworth Museum. Andew Wyeth, his father N.C. Wyeth, and son Jamie Wyeth are featured, being major Maine artists, of course. It's a wonderful museum with amazing pieces of art. It's incredible to look at the work and think that it is the original of long familiar artwork. Luke & I decided we like N.C. Wyeth's work about as much as Andrew Wyeth, not as fond of most of Jamie's.

We also visited the Project Puffin foundation, the guys who made possible the reintroduction of puffins in this area. Very interesting video about the puffins. They are cute rascals who live at least 7 months of the year --- solid --- in the water. They come on land only to go into burrows, have a single chick, and wait 6 weeks until the chick is ready to join them in the water.

Lobster laden anchorages and a PUFFIN!

We left Boothbay and traveled a whole 8 miles to our next anchorage, behind Boothbay Harbor, to Limekin Cove. Not much there except a free anchorage and the full moon, always beautiful.

The next day we also traveled about 8 miles to Pemaquid Harbor, but found it so full of lobster pots floats, moorings, and boats that we went on to Harbor Island. This is a tiny anchorage in a minuscule cut between Harbor Island and Hall Island. Lots and lots of lobster pots and a small spot for anchorage. We actually had the anchorage to ourselves, the first time since the Chesapeake. Hall Island has only a few summer fishing cottages.

Harbor Island is a small, private island, but they are gracious and allow people to access the island and walk their trails. The trail was, ummm, less than maintained, but beautiful. And --- there were many, many small artistic shrines done in local shells, feathers, rocks, etc, all along the walk. I suspect it's an artistic, spiritual thing. Very interesting.

BUT!!! We made a slight detour on the way to Harbor Island to see Eastern Egg Rock Island. It used to be the home of puffins in the 1800's but they were hunted for millinery trade and, yuck, to eat, almost to extinction. In 2o01 a project was implimented to reintroduce puffins to the island. They've been successful! This is the western most location for puffins. We should see more as we go "down east".

Today (Friday) we went the whopping 5 miles (that's 1 hour in sailboat time) to Hog Island in Muscongus Bay. This is the last bay we will cross before finding Penobscot Bay, where we will moor the boat for our visit to Colorado. Hog Island is privately owned, in conjunction with the Audubon Society. MITA ( Maine Island Trail Association) maintains the trails across the island. They are absolutely beautiful. We walked about 3 hours. We are moored at one of their 3 private moorings.
The beginning of the trail is an enchanted walk through pines and moss covered rocks, some of it in old growth forest.

It's in and around the seashore line.

The foliage here is amazing. With the cool temperatures and humidity, the ferns go wild. Many places they were waist high along the narrow trail

and little curious redish squirrels...

OH, and we saw an eagle! Didn't get a picture, but he was magnificent. At the end of the island, there was a Maine field, full of tall thistles and other beautiful plants. And ant hills.

We had our first rainy afternoon. Unfortunately, we were about 2/3 of the way through the trail when the rain started, and I had the boat completely open. We just got wet and then dried up the boat after we returned. First time we had left her completely open for the trip....go figure....

Boothbay, nice people, and cat litter....

Per a recommendation from my sister-in-law Judy, we decided to go into Boothbay Harbor. What a great idea! We loved it. The harbor area is nice, busy with lots of boats, but not overwhelming. Just enough to keep things interesting as we sat on the boat and watched. The town itself is a little tourist town, complete with all of the quaint shops you could ever want, many art shops, pizza, ice cream, great seafood, a free trolley system, convenient post office, boat excursions for whale watching, fishing, etc.

In addition, we were able to get to a real grocery store for reprovisioning and did laundry at the marina where we rented a mooring. The marina is Tugboat Marina and has a restaurant, lounge, and hotel rooms as well as the marina. Cute, huh?

Have you got a clue how much cat litter an old, scrawny, 8 pound cat with kidney failure can go through?!! We didn't either. And cat litter is not an easy item to buy. For some reason, the marine stores at the harbors don't carry it... And it's bulky and heavy. We ended up with 5 boxes of the stuff, along with another 50 cans of cat food. I don't know where he puts it and still weighs 8 pounds, but he's a real chow hound lately. I used to have to give him appetite stimulants - these days he might eat as much as 4 cans of food. Must be the fresh sea air....

Anyway, with our 2 carts full of groceries, we called the local 1-car taxi service and waited. After 20 minutes we called them again. About that time a very nice lady stopped, said she'd noticed how long we'd been waiting, and would we like a lift back to our marina. She was a cruiser's angel! You can't really tell, but these grocery bags are 2 layers thick and on a layer of cat litter boxes. The dinghy is 10 ft long, so you're looking at 5 ft of groceries.

The lighthouse going into Boothbay Harbor is so "Maine". These old light houses are wonderful to see, especially since the Chesapeake has chosen to take down many of their old ones and replace them with strictly functional structures that have no rsemblance to a lighthouse at all.




Those lobster pots.... they are pretty. We're getting confidence in steering around them in masses, but being extremely careful at the same time. We know they are lurking and waiting ....




The air and water here are so clear and clean. I love this picture - you'll have a hard time (I hope) telling where reality ends and the reflection begins.

Wiscasset and The Musical Wonder House

We started this morning waiting for the thick, thick fog to lift before we departed Five Islands, 100 yds visibility. This is how we often wait, but sometimes little Wickie isn't the only one dozing... and yes, that's a sweatsuit! This is Maine, y'all!

We had an uneventful trip up the Sheepscot River to Wiscasset, until the current in the river became so strong that it pulled the lobster pot floats under water. Some had only their sticks showing, some were literally 2 feet under. Now, there are trillions of lobster floats in Maine, and a lot of them seemed to be up this river.

It's hard enough to see and avoid them when they are normal, but under water! impossible! Luke stood guard on the bow of the boat and helped direct me around them as I steered. Even with that, we ran over a few. Fortunately nothing caught the propeller and we made it to Wiscasset ok. Unnerved, but ok.

We got our revenge, though. We ate lobster rolls at Red's Eats. Red's Eats had a PBS documentary done about them several years ago. They were declared as having the best lobster rolls in Maine. Everyone must believe it...when we first arrived, the line to order was around the building. These were undoubtedly the best we've had. A lobster roll is usually lobster salad (lobster, mayo, a few spices) on a hot dog type roll. This was pure lobster on the same type roll. It was as much meat as a whole lobster without the mess of having to open it.

Wiscasset is an old fishing town that used to be an international customs clearing station for international trade back in the 1760's. In fact, one ship captain here had a plan to save Queen Marie Antoinette from the guillotine by bringing her here. Her furniture, artwork, clothes, etc, were already loaded onto his ship but the French locals got her just before she escaped. Anyway, it's a quaint town with lots of restored homes, antique shops, and museums. Luke found the perfect museum --- the The Musical Wonder House . He gets to tell about it---

This was a collection of hundreds of mostly "high end" collectors item music boxes. The machines were explained and demonstrated -- most sounded really good. Some interesting facts: The music box era was from about 1835 through 1903. Until 1873, the music was stored on cylinders - very tedious and expensive to make -- apparently custom for each individual machine. The machines around that time were very expensive at about $600 in those dollars. The cylinders were about $150. In 1873, the wily Germans invented the music disc - about 16 inches in diameter, where little "chads" were punched into the metal discs. The down protruding chads brush across the individual "teeth" of the "comb" that produce the notes. This design lent itself to mass production, and the discs could be stamped out at one per second, and sold for $ 1. Because of the German patents, the Swiss came up with a chadless punched hole variation, and a Beta vs VHS like marketing struggle ensued. The era ended in 1903, when Thomas Edison invented the talking machine -- the gramophone. The market wanted recordings of the real thing, and the music box business died.

The picture below is of a disc machine, produced by a German person who moved to the US. In 1903, he came out with the the Reginaphone, a combination machine that could play both chadded discs and the new fangled gramophone records. That too was short lived, and in casting about for other ventures, he started producing a carpet sweeper. This evolved into the vacuum cleaner and was the start of today's Regina vacuum cleaners.

Again, we've run into the nicest people. We were told that the town has a couple of complimentary moorings for guests somewhere in the mass of mooring balls in this harbor. We found one, but it was tangled up. We had given up on the second one and decided to anchor for the night when a very nice man and his daughter motored up from the Wiscasset Yacht Club. They asked if we were looking for a mooring, offered one from a member who is away, and guided us to the mooring. Three cheers for the Wiscasset Yacht Club!!!!

We've been seeing harbor seals each day. They come up, take a look around, and gracefully dive back into the water. There is at least one in the Wiscasset harbor. Luke managed to catch a shot of him. It's not great, and is from a distance, but here it is. You CAN tell it's a seal head. Can't you? :-)

Five Islands, ME --- picture post card

Five Islands, Maine....this must be where they take all of those post cards of fishing villages in Maine. It was a short 20 mile trip from Snow Island through the many rocky islands, rocks, and zillions of lobster pot floats.

When Luke & I came around the bend in Sheepscot the river and saw the little harbor, we both just gasped. It's a tiny cluster of 5 islands, with a tiny harbor area, probably 350 yards wide and 200 yards deep. The yacht club, which may well just be the home-owners on one of the islands, generously offers 5 free moorings for visiting boats. The picture just doesn't capture the setting.

The town wharf is a combination of commercial (lobstering, of course) and tourist. There are 3 buildings on the wharf.... fried food shack, lobster shack, and ice cream shack. The pier is filled with picnic tables to eat at; nothing inside the buildings.

This seems to be a trend here. We have seen a few times the combination of separate buildings for the fried foods and fresh lobster. Folks bring their own wine or beer and a salad, etc, spread out everything nicely, and picnic on the pier. Very family oriented. It reminds me of going to a state park in VA and having a Sunday picnic, except that the main course is available at the park. Yes, that's us in long pants, flannel shirt, and fuzzy warm shirt, standing on the dock.

We explored the small Nature Conservancy trail yesterday, goes out on the rocks of one of the islands.

We also climbed the hill to a cute fresh food and flower market. We bought our first container of fresh, ripe blueberries :-) Straight from New Jersey.... oh, well... they are IN Maine.

And, of course, ate fried fish for lunch and lobster for dinner. Ice cream twice...

.gotta stop that!!!!

There are lots of lobster boats and a gazillion more lobster pots. The system here is to leave a long string of 15 or so lobster pots on the bottom of the ocean and link them together and have buoys at each end. Some sets of strings will go on with multiple buoys, meaning 75 or so pots all linked together. It's a mess to go through, but with a lot of care to not snag a lobster pot rope. That would mean diving in the cold water to cut it loose. We're not interested in that. Luke did it once in the warm Chesapeake water, for a crab pot that I had caught, and that was once too many!

After bringing in the lobsters, they are held in these floating boxes below, linked together like a train. The lobster distribution truck came by while we were at the pier. One fellow brings over the train and they begin to hoist in (via an electric winch) the holding boxes, two at a time, up about 20 feet. They get put into the truck and off they go to restaurants.

Today we are staying put at Five Islands. It's a work day. Yes, living on a boat is just like living at a house. There is still vacuuming to do, floors to wipe up, bathroom to clean, and maintenance to do. I defrosted the freezer today, joy, oh, joy.

Wickie is settled into a routine. He's up and in the cockpit most of the time that we are at anchor.

When we start the boat, he sits by the safety of his litter box, just in case he needs it for security, but generally doesn't get in it unless we really start heeling. He has discovered the space on top of our closet in the back berth. I've put his blankie there, and he often spends the entire voyage safely there.

Tomorrow we will sail up the Sheepscot River to one of the other harbors in the area. All of them get great review in the guidebooks as being quaint fishing villages.