Danny was a Dud

and we like it that way! No real wind, only 24 hours of steady rain. That gave us time to figure out that our inverter was dead (smoke, electrical smell, yuck) and for me to do some fall boat cleaning.
We did make a stop en route to Castine to pick up some books at the used book store in Camden, but didn't have time to read them.
The rain stopped mid Saturday night, clear and crisp today (52 this morning...), so we cruised on back to Rockland to ransom a new inverter. Luke is installing it as I type. Not much fun - a big, heavy thing in a small space, plus all of the electrical connections. He's doing a great job! We're rewarding ourselves with dinner out with friends Gail & Eric when he's done.

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!!!

Sorento, French Harbor, Bill, and Buckle Island

We sailed to Sorento, ME. Not much there except a walk around town and to the local lobster Distributor. This is the intermediary between the lobster docks, and the restaurants, grocery stores, etc. This place stores 60,000 lobsters at a time, some as large as 16 pounds (from Canada, not the US... we have size laws)
Anyway, we bought a whopping 2 pounder for only $10, off to the boat with friends Gail & Eric, who also bought a lobster, and a great lobster dinner!. oh, but to GET to the boat... a 15 minute walk from the lobster pound... well, we had already met 3 motorcyclists from Canada. One of them graciously gave Luke a quick trip to the dinghy, lobster on ice in our backpack.

From Sorento, we went to Frenchboro, on Long Island. En route we saw the sailing vessel Mary Todd. She's the only 4 masted schooner in Maine. Just beautiful!

At Frenchboro, we tried anchoring but managed to only pick up seaweed. Note the small "clip" at the top of the picture? That's our 66 pound anchor... the rest is about 10 ft of seaweed.

Anyway, took a mooring in the small basin of Frenchboro, along with mostly lobster working boats.

Frenchboro is a small community - 2 lobster stores, a church, school, and museum - plus walking trails throughout the island,

leading to beautiful vistas of the rocky shore

complete with a nice chair.

The tidal difference here is 12 feet between low and high tide. At high tide, the docks are all at water level...

From Frenchboro, we made a difficult sail in dense fog to Somes Sound. Miserable trip. The big challenge is avoiding the lobster pot floats tied to their associated toggle floats when they appear out of the fog only a hundred feet way - in bunches.

Somesville is about six miles inland, about as far as you can get in the Acadia area.

Safe from wave surges and high wind gusts. Hurricane Bill turned out to be just a lot of rain, no more than a few wind gusts to 25 kts. We were grateful.

From there, we made the quick trip to Buckle Island, a private island with great, mossy, public walking trails.

The trails went around the island, sometimes leading to beautiful sea vistas.

We saw our first seal basking on a rock!

The trails sometimes lead from dense forest areas

to sunlit meadows. Someone with a great sense of humor installed this door on the trail. It opens from a dark forested part of the trail to the meadow and seaside rocks. A sign on the door says "the door from dark to light".

We're safe & sound!

Bill didn't bring much wind to our safe anchorage, but a lot of rain. We've been holed up at the head of Somes Sound, ME (Acadia National Park) since Friday. Unfortunately, there is virtually no cell and internet service here. I'm lucky to have gotten on now. Our plan is to move today, so hopefully, I can do a catch-up blog tonight.
Somes Sound is a 6 mile long, narrow sound (the only fiord in North America along it's banks). It ends as far inland as possible in this area. That's where we and quite a few other boats rode out Bill. The high waves didn't come this far.
Later!!

Blueberry Festival and Mistake Island and 1334 miles

Ever wonder why blueberries cost so much? Because it's hard work, that's why... We took a side trip to a blueberry farm, one of the many small local growers in Maine.

These folks grow 34 acres a year. The harvesting is with a migratory Guatemalan or Haitian help, back-breaking work of "combing" the low blueberry plants with 2 ft long combs, and then dumping the berries into a box. The farm owner is showing us how. Those are a couple of the combs in the foreground. How'd you like to do that for 34 acres?

Next, for sale as "fresh" (as opposed to processed) berries, the berries are tumbled onto a little moving belt (think about the grocery store) while somebody else in the family picks out the obviously bad ones. The bad ones go to another buyer to make juice, etc, instead of selling as fresh berries. All this for $3.00/pint from the grower.

On Mistake Island, we picked enough in the wild to make a pie, and it was hard work. We happened to go to the farm as a part of the Blueberry Festival in Machias, ME. Machias was our most northern latitude this trip, slightly further north than our last stop in Cutler last year. We were at 44 deg 43.160N. That a 1334 mile straight line distance from our most southern point in the Bahamas this winter. Whew! The town of Machias itself is over 5 miles up the Machias river, a shallow river that Latitudes couldn't negotiate. It was a pleasant dinghy ride. Here is the low bridge that Latitudes could not pass under, not to mention the shallow water.

We saw eagles en route, several of them. But, I could only catch a shot of one as he soared away from us.

The festival had the usual church sponsored fish dinner (it was good, actually, with blueberry pie for desert!)

And then, the obligatory pie eating contest...

There were lots of the usual craft and art booths, many with beautiful art and jewelry.

From Machias, we headed for Mistake Island. This was one of our favorite spots last year. It has a deserted Coast Guard shack and lighthouse on it, with a narrow boardwalk across the small island.

There is a deep inlet between Mistake Island and it's neighbor. With tide variations of over 12 feet here, the inlet goes from 12 foot depths to a mud flat at low tide. Here's the dinghy, sitting on the mudflat beside the old Coast Guard shack. You can't stay on the island too long, though, if you leave the dinghy here. 12 feet in 6 hours means a quick change in the water levels, like 3 ft per hour at half tide!

The Mistake Island Lighthouse as seen from the same istmus between Mistake and it's neighbor, Knight Island.

We did stay long enough to pick those berries and to take some shots of the beautiful view from the top of the island.

We spent the night anchored among the rocky ledges at Mistake Island. There's more room than is seems.

The next morning was foggy. Here's the lighthouse as we left the inlet. It stayed that way almost all day, with only a few breaks in the fog. We had to finally dig out the ol' Maine foghorn. We have radar and can see all the other boats out there. But if they don't have radar, they can't see us, but they can HEAR us! Anyway, it's a law that you are supposed to blow a foghorn during dense fog. Makes me feel better.

Back to Acadia for the day, to meet friends from Portsmouth, Gail and Eric, for a couple of days. We spent a little time yesterday on Little Cranberry Island. Always wanted to go there --- been there, done that... There is a post office with a closed up general market, a couple of local craft shops, and a small museum of the history of the island. oh, and a restaurant that opens at 5pm. Nice to visit, once.

Acadia National Park

We spent several days in Acadia National Park - a GREAT place! Unfortunately, there was very limited cell and virtually no Internet available where we were anchored for the visit. So... a longer than usual blog.

We spent one day riding bicycles on the carriage trails,

trails put in by John Rockefeller so his guests could enjoy the beautiful surrounds while in a horse drawn carriage. The trails wind past several ponds, with only moderate slopes, designed not to overtax the horses..

The views were all spectacular. This is Bubble Pond, along the carriage road.

Jordan Pond, the home of the famous Jordan House and it's popover lunch - the view of Jordan Pond and "the Bubbles" from the lunch area.

Another day, we did some hiking on the trails along the coast, with unending spectacular views.

This is Otters Point (river otters that live up the river, not in the ocean)

Next day, we took the free LL Bean bus to SW Harbor, and also took a little hike on the Wonderland Trail, which ended up on a rocky point, where we saw two schooners passing in the fog.

We also did the usual things like laundry, grocery shopping, and exploring Bar Harbor - or, as they say here "Bah Hab Bah".

As we left our anchorage in Somes Sound, we passed one of our favorites, a schooner sailing slowly up the sound. Always beautiful.

Next, we went to an anchorage at Winter Harbor, still part of the Acadia park system, but on the mainland of Schoodic Peninsula instead of Mt. Desert Island where most of the park is located. The entrance to the harbor is graced with the usual picturesque lighthouse.

While only about 10 miles east of Mt. Desert, tourism gives way to serious lobster fishing.

We took the LL Bean bus to Schoodic Point, another rocky promontory.
Exploring Schoodic Point's big granite boulders on the beach, we saw some interesting veins of other rock mixed in.

Part of the park activities is a sculpting competition, 7 artists from around the world (selected from 150 applicants). The competition is every 2 years. Here is last year's winner, "Cleat", in the Winter Harbor harbor

The competition was set up at the closed US Nays Intelligence installation at Schoodic Point. This is reputed to be the base or at least organization where the ill fated sky ship USS Pueblo (captured by the North Koreans - remember?) reported. These artists really get into their work!

Luke caught this shot of two lobster boats "on the hard", waiting for their chance to go back into the water and live again.

Winter Harbor also has an eagle family - mom, dad, and 2 juveniles, about 2 yrs old. Here's one of the parents.

Leaving Winter Harbor this morning, we passed Schoodic Point

and the lighthouse at the island of Petit Manan. Pretty desolate...

A little afternoon fog rolled in, just as we were reaching our destination for the night, Roque Island.

After the fog cleared, we took the dinghy to shore, to walk the 1 mile sand beach, the only one in this area. It was deserted and nice to walk on. Only about 45 miles from the tourist center of Acadia and Bar Harbor, we are nearly alone - only 2 other boats spending the night within this beautiful Roque Island Archipelago.

Tomorrow we plan to head for one more down east location, not sure which one yet, but after that we will probably turn around and begin our adventure westward and southward (up west?).