Cutler - the Big Turn Around - and Mistake Island

We had a wonderful sail to our final Down East location, Cutler. You can see the Canadian island of Grand Maman from there. We'd been on a similar parallel to Nova Scotia for some time, but not close enough to see it.


As we approached Cutler, we could see the large aray of VLF antennas on the island. They are no longer in use, but are pretty darn impressive. This picture has dozens of tall radio antennas --- look closely and you'll see them standing tall across the island



Cutler is a small fishing village of 2 lobster buying houses, a church, and a library. Definitely a lobstering village and too far Down East for most cruisers. We were the only sailing boat in the whole harbor.

We took a little walk along a dead-end road, but that was it for anything to do on land.

Except !!!! buy live lobster and cook it on the boat. I finally got up the nerve to try it. Everyone said it's easy, and it was, but even at the low price of fresh lobster here ($5-$6/lb) I've been hesitant to try it. We got 2 at the lobster buying place. Check out the low tide at the place where we bought them - fortunately we bought them at high tide, or we would have had to climb the slippery ladder from the float to the dock - 13 ft tidal range. Having tried to walk down the slippery boat launch ramp at Mistake Island (see below) makes us appreciate NOT having had to do that.

We stored the lobsters in a mesh bag, hanging off the back of the boat, in the cold, running water, until I was ready to cook them.

Wickie had no interest them them while they were alive but he howled for more lobster meat after I offered him a taste.

On the way from Roque Island to Cutler, we saw anothe puffin! We were told that the bulk of them have already gone south as of August 15.

Cutler was our turning around spot. Far enough Down East. We really had only 1 more possible stop until going into Canada, and we decided not to bother with both customs for 1 day only. Besides, it's cold there ---- when we got up in the morning, it was 50 outside and 56 in the boat. Burr. I want A LITTLE summer weather!

From Cutler, we had another nice sail to Mistake Island. The anchoring place there is a small cut between 2 islands, Mistake and Knight and some other small rocky islands. Picture perfect, of course. Mistake Island has the Moose Peake Lighthouse on it.

The Nature Conservacy now owns the island, and they have a board walk path that runs through it. We rowed over to the abanded Coast Guard shack, tied up there at the boat ways, and walked across the island to the lighthouse.

There is no lighthouse keeper on the island any longer - check out the story here http://lighthouse.cc/moosepeak/history.html. Pretty interesting. All that is left is the lighthouse itself and the old shed with solar panels in front of it.

From the rocks on the Atlantic side, we could see forever.

What we DID see a lot of were seals! They were so curious. They kept popping up and watching us. It was great.

As we look back from the light house ---

And then a slower walk back along the wooden path, as we picked a small container each of wild blueberries and ripe raspberries.

Unfortunately, we found a tear in some stitching in our bimini (that's the part of the canvas that goes over the cockpit and keeps the Maine rain out. So, we got up at 4:30, left at the crack of dawn (5:15), and came back to SW Harbor on Mt. Desert Island. The nice canvas folks here did a quick and inexpensive repair for us. We picked up replacement light bulb for our running light, had mussels and a lobster roll for dinner, and hit the bed early. It's now Saturday, and our plan for the moment is to leave for Burnt Coat as soon as we have pancakes with blueberries and raspberries.