Camden and the Windjammer Festival

We arrived safely in Rockland, did all of our chores and errands, and took time to visit the light house at the entrance to the harbor. It's on a 1 mile long jetty, built over 18 years back in the late 1800's.

Yes! It's warmer here!

As we left Rockland, we decided to take a detour to Camden, 6 miles north, to see the schooners arriving for the Labor Day Windjammer Festival.

The steel schooner Angelina sailing in past Curtis Island Light House, into Camden Harbor.

As we got to Camden, we realized there was a good anchorage to be had, so we decided to stay for Labor Day.

Camden is a cute little town, centered around the city harbor. This is one busy city harbor. Just look at the crowd.

The schooners were all beautiful. Almost all of them are commercial vessels, taking passengers for cruises lasting from 1 hr to several days. We were able to board them and take a tour yesterday. As beautiful as they are from the water, the topsides spacious enough, but the cabin accommodations are tight and somewhat spartan once aboard.



Also in town for the festival was the USS Whidbey Island LSD 41 Navy transport ship.

They were offering free tours of the ship, so we took the ferry over to the ship and did the tour. Amazing. She can carry 2 hover craft or (I think) 8 tanks, plus a normal crew of 315 sailors.

Sometimes they transport Marines, taking on over 600 of them. oh, boy, I just bet that's fun.... 900 people in a space designed for 300.... The ship is most recently back from a tour in Somalia, protecting commercial vessels from pirates and actually rescuing 48 hostages from 7 different ships that had been boarded by pirates.

Just look at this view from her bow.

A few years ago impressive self defense armament had been added to the Whitby Island. It includes anti-missile missiles, close in anti missile Gatling guns, and IR and Radar directed anti surface cannon. A 20 ft armed patrol boat was constantly circling the ship. Reference was made to the SS Cole incident as the basis for the armament and tactics.

Mt. Battie is in Camden Hills State Park. It's the second highest mountain on the Atlantic coast, the highest being Cadillac Mt. that we climbed in Acadia. It's right here, at our anchorage. This one is only a mile hike, starting in town. Turns out, the "trail" goes up several hundred feet of rock face, steeper than we wanted to climb (and come back down). We took the challenge and went up about 1/3 of it, but decided that was enough. Beautiful view of the Camden harbor area from where we stopped, though.

And little Wickie has found yet another new favorite place to sleep. He's almost always there....wonder why.....