LIghthouses and puffins, oh my!

Our newly replaced engine transmission control cable worked perfectly today!  Not that we needed it much - we sailed most of our 38 miles from Boothbay to our new anchorage in between the islands of Dix and High. It was great for most of the way to follow the schooner American Heritage!

Morning dawned bright and very sunny, unlike the foggy and rainy day yesterday.  As we left the Boothbay harbor area, we passed the first of several lighthouses, the Fisherman's Island lighthouse.

Our first goal was Eastern Egg Rock, the nesting home of the puffin.  The American Heritage schooner beat us to it.  Here she is, drifting slowly around the island.

The island has several huts used for observation of the puffins.  Live cameras are set up there, too, and in Rockland you can watch the puffins real time.

They are here!

Not just one little puffin, but flocks of them, all floating in the water.  We read that puffins do everything in the water except lay their eggs.

We circled off Easter Egg Rock---here are our tracks from the boat, as traced by one of our chart systems.... The two passes from the bottom left toward the top were quietly under sail only -- probably increasing our chances of getting close to the shy little puffins.

The American Eagle Schooner sailed up as we finished our circle.  She was beautiful, against a bright blue Maine sky.

Next, another of the many scenic Maine lighthouse.  This one is the White Head lighthouse.

Our anchorage for the night is between the islands of Dix and High, about 5 miles from Rockport.  It is a quiet anchorage, with just a few other boats.  The islands used to have major granite stonecutting operations.  Large cut but unshipped stones abound.

As we brought up the dinghy outboard last night, we found a definite "wear" issue in the rope.

Not good!  This is the line that we use to hoist the 110 pound outboard engine every time we use the dinghy.  Can't afford having this break in mid hoist!

But, Luke again to the rescue.  He bought new line before we left Boothbay and was in the process of doing one of his trademark eye-splices on the new rope, with Chapman's "Piloting and Seamanship" as a guide.

The splice is done, the line threaded through the 6 part pulley, and we now have a new hoist line to use tomorrow morning.  We plan to explore one of the islands before we leave for Rockland tomorrow.

Time in Boothbay

After an uneventful upping of our anchor on Sunday morning, we took a mooring near the center of town.  We have moored here before, at the aptly named Tug Boat Inn.  Inn, restaurant, bar, and marina.   We were pleased to find that they have installed showers for the marina guests and laundry.  The showers? $0.25 for 2 minutes of water.  Did you know how well you can shower in 4 minutes? Pretty darn well!  The laundry was very expensive, too, but 2 loads and I am all caught up.

 

We discovered that this week is Windjammer Festival in Boothbay!  Yay! An antique boat parade.  Frankly, this little guy was my favorite.  That is typical Boothbay in the background.

Art shows, pirates, groceries (great trolley system here) and the usual tourist shops with tee shirts and ice cream filled our days.  But today!  The sailing in under full sail of the tall schooners in the area.  The day was foggy but it began to break just as the first boat worked her way slowly towards us.  First - not a schooner, but an old tugboat leading the parade, horns a blaring.

Luck!!!  Our mooring was the closest to the schooners as they approached.  100 feet from them, no further.  The first schooner was the beautiful Heritage.

Next, the very long and sleek American Eagle.  As they were nearing their anchorage, the first sails were already dropped.

In all, 6 beautiful schooners of various sizes sailed quietly past us.  Well, the ships were quiet.  People were cheering, horns were blaring, and the schooners were setting off the required cannon blasts to let the other boats know that they had arrived in the harbor.  Poor Smokey gave up and hid below.

 

Little did we know just how close the boats would anchor to us.  We did notice that the mooring field behind Latitudes had been vacated, but we thought it was just to give the boats room to turn around to leave.  NO!  to ANCHOR!  Again, maybe 100 feet from Latitudes.  Beautiful.

 

 

 A boat is so a boat....we noticed that it had become difficult to shift our gear lever from reverse to neutral to forward.  Increasingly difficult. We realized that we really shouldn't leave our mooring until we could resolve the issue.  Luke did extensive diagnostic work with the help of the manufacturer, and decided that the problem was the shifter cable.  At $44 for a replacement cable, that is about the cheapest thing we've done to the boat.  A local marina/boat yard was very helpful in determining the right cable and getting it to us next day.  Luke spent a lot of today pulling the old one and installing the new, taking time out to view the schooners from our channel side location.

And did it work??? YES!!! good job! This and the promise of good weather means we will leave tomorrow for the Penobscot Bay.

Seguin Island lighthouse and Booth Bay

We were in no hurry to leave 5 Islands, so we slept late and had a big breakfast in the cockpit.  As we watched the lobster boats, we realized that they were leaving, individually, each making a stop at the lobster house on the dock.  We had been told that it is very early in lobster season, and many of the lobstermen are only now putting out their traps.  Sure enough, the boats were loading their traps from the dock.  A worker on the dock used a crane to lower the pots onto the boat.  You can see the huge piles of cages on the dock, as the worker gets one ready to be lowered.  Note that steep drop from the dock?  There is a 9-10 foot tidal range here!  This is about low tide.

Another boat took on her floats (the bright little buoys that mark the location of a pot)

From 5 Islands, we sailed slightly southeastward, back the 8 miles to Seguin Island.  Seguin is a tricky place to anchor - deep water all the way up to the shore (sailboats like about 10 feet of water), underwater cable, etc.  Anchoring is not allowed, so there are a few mooring balls free for use while you visit the island.  We got the last available mooring ball - an island association volunteer in a nearby boat assured us that our 42 feet would fit on the ball and not hit the island rocks.  The depth was fine - 30 feet - but boy, were we close to shore!  But he was right - not a problem. We were not comfortable, though, being about 20 feet from those rocks!

A nearby Black Backed seagull screamed her indignation at our close approach to her rocks.  Black Backed seagulls are the most aggressive of the species (at least, that is our decision!)  One of them took a dive bomb at Luke as he apparently got too close to her chick.  We have had them chase us and threaten us with sticks in their mouths.  A ranger on Isles of Shoals told us that is the most obscene gesture that a gull can make to anyone, fowl or human.

Luke rowed the dinghy to shore.  The tide was low, so with a 9 foot tide, we pulled the dinghy up as far as we could from the waters edge.  That is our dinghy behind me.

Lighthouses typically are on high points of land and this one is no exception.

There is an old tram that was used until sometime in the 1950's to transport the keeper, his family, and the goods taken up and down the island.  A failure in the mechanical system critically injured a keepers wife in a downward trip and the tram has not been used since. You can see it snaking up the hill towards the lighthouse in the above picture.  The picture below is the end point of the tram, at the bottom of the island.

Flowers are all abloom!

Almost there!

The Seguin Island lighthouse is the second oldest in Maine, commissioned in 1795 by George Washington.  It is also the highest lighthouse on the Maine coast.

The view from the top is beautiful

Luke climbed to the top of the lighthouse, along with the keeper. I opted to stay below, on a bench overlooking the bay.

Coming back down (much easier!) we were treated to a goldfinch.  Much more polite than the seagull

Back to the dinghy to find it just beginning to float. She shouldn't have gone anywhere, as we always anchor her to the shore, but it did save Luke a wade in the very cold (56 degrees) waters.

Next, Boothbay for the next few days.  A day to get a few things caught up, a day to sightsee, do laundry, and take the bus to pick up a few groceries, and  a day or two to ride out forecasted high winds.  On the way into the harbor, we pass the first lighthouse.

And a second one!

We will take a mooring near to town tonight but the winds and water are calm, so we opted to anchor out last night.  Our first attempt was abysmal...we decided that we didn't have enough room around Latitudes, so opted to pull up the anchor and move to a better location.  When the anchor finally came up, she had a buddy - a derelict lobster pot.

I tried a variety of options to try to knock the pot off the anchor, to no avail.  Finally, Luke, My Hero, used his engineering expertise to free us.  He attached a line with hook to the pot, attached that line to a cleat, lowered the anchor from under the pot, and then cut the extra line to drop the pot.  We bought a wicked specialty knife that attaches to a long pole the first year we had Latitudes, after our only encounter with a crab pot in the Chesapeake.   Specifically designed to cut lines to crab pot or lobster pot floats if they get caught around your propeller, we have never needed this one until yesterday but pretty damned glad we have it!. It is sharper than sharp, a deep V shape, with serrated teeth on the outside and a blade on the inside.  Luke said it cut through the thick rope like butter.  Perfect!

Finally anchored in a different spot, we all 3 relaxed in the warm cockpit and watched the schooners plying Boothbay Harbor.

Luke has been doing computer work, I have made pea soup, finished my blog, and have a few bills to pay.  After that, we will move Latitudes to the mooring near town and be official tourists.

New Castle, NH, and finally, Maine!

Next on our itinerary, New Castle, NH - A cute, 1700's town located adjacent to Portsmouth, NH. Best though, is the friends we have there.  We always look forward to that stop on our trips.  The town is situated on the Piscataqua River.  On our way in, we passed the old lighthouse, still sitting at the river entrance. 

Up to the Portsmouth Yacht Club for diesel and water.  We get a mooring here, as our friends belong to the club.  It always feels like coming home when we get here.

The current here RIPS.  I mean, rips! When we sit on the mooring, our speed indicator says we are moving at almost 2 knots (2 miles per hour) through the water. You can see the current rushing past this mooring  ball.  It makes for fun picking up the mooring, but we did it.

For centuries, gundalows connected up-river Seacoast towns to Portsmouth, the region’s seaport and primary market town. Harnessing the wind and riding the tide, the sailing barges moved bricks, hay, firewood, and goods crucial to the economy and everyday life.

A full-scale replica of the last commercially operated gundalow – the Capt. Edward H. Adams, built in 1886 – was constructed in Portsmouth in the 1980s. A second, named Piscataqua, after the river, was constructed in 2011 after a five-year fund-raising and planning effort.Operated by the nonprofit Gundalow Company, the Piscataqua provides sailing excursion and dockside programs up and down the Piscataqua River and around Great Bay.  We were fortunate to see her coming in from an excursion.

 

After a nice day of catching up and dinner with our friends, we were back at Latitudes to prepare her for the sail today.  Last treat - a beautiful sunset.

 

Up early this morning and finally sailed into the Casco Bay, the first large bay in Maine.  Yulp, this is Maine!

 

 

 

We ended up anchored beside of Great Chebeague Island, in Chandler Bay.  Down went the dinghy to go exploring the nearby Little Chebeague island, which is part of the Maine Island Trail Association.  We got here after 3/4 of a mile upwind  ride in the dinghy only to find this sign...

 

Closed!  They sprayed for the ticks and other assorted pests and have closed the trails until tomorrow morning.  drat.  Oh well, we had a nice walk on the windy, rocky beach (Very Maine)

 

We asked one of the lobstermen if he had any lobsters he could sell. This developed into an interesting story. We were told that the lobstering season was just beginning, and there aren't many lobsters to be had yet - he didn't have any. Luke of course had questions -- like what are the dates of the season? The lobsterman explained that it depends of the lobsters. Every year, virtually every legal lobster (defined by the length of its carapace) is harvested. Therefore, until they molt, they are still last year's throw backs, still too small. They molt about now, and their new shell is much larger, above the legal minimum, and it's a "bonanza" for the lobstermen.

Tomorrow, we hope to get a mooring at Five Islands, and I hope to have a lobster roll for dinner!

 

Rockport, MA

Based on the weather, we decided to go directly to Rockport, MA yesterday rather than the Isles of Shoals.  Good idea, as the weather (i.e. wind) was really picking up by the time we got in.

Nearing Cape Ann, we watched a schooner sailing out of Gloucester.

As we approached the mainland of MA, heading for Rockport, we passed the twin lighthouses on Thacher Island.  The island, named after Anthony Thacher, is located in perilous waters, where there have been many shipwrecks. With the large number of shipwrecks around this area, there was a petition sent from sea captains to erect a light on the island. On April 22, 1771, the provincial government authorized construction of two lighthouses on the island. The lights went on December 21, 1771.
Although these lights were valuable assistance for the fishermen and sailors of the sea, there was a strong feeling among the townspeople that the lighthouse was helping the British fleet more than it was helping the Patriot cause. This feeling increased after hostilities erupted with the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Early in July 1775, Dr. Samuel Rogers of Gloucester led his company of minutemen to the island. There they destroyed the lights, and brought the keeper, his family, and his assistants back to the mainland.

A few miles further and we assed the Straightsmouth Lighthouse and her maintenance building. Straightsmouth Island Lighthouse was built in 1835 to mark the entrance to Rockport Harbor. The relatively small lighthouse is maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard. However, Straightsmouth Island is owned by the Massachusetts Audubon Society as a bird and wildlife sanctuary. 

Luke got several good panorama shots of the Rockport area.  The first is the jetty protecting the small town.

Next, the inner harbor area of the old town,

And then the overall view of the entire Rockport area, including her harbors.  Latitudes is anchored in the second harbor, the smaller one on the upper right part of the picture.

One of the main attractions of Rockport is "Motif 1", an old fishing shack that is said to be the most photographed and painted fishing shack in the US.

As picturesque as it is, this is still a boating harbor and there are plenty of boats moored in the small harbor.

Like my watercolor version?

 

No, No, I didn't paint that!  But thanks to friend Connie, I have a new "water color" App on my phone!

 

Luke couldn't resist pictures of Motif 1

 

 

I liked this version of a no parking sign.

 

 

Getting to shore is a bit of fun here - there is a 9 foot tidal range, which means huge differences in the heights of docks and the shore.  It's a literal climb up a straight ladder from the floating dock to the shore.

 

 

It looks a lot further from the top...

 

 

I will leave you tonight with this beautiful picture of the first "strawberry moon" in 68 years.  A strawberry moon is a full moon that occurs on the first day of summer.  Welcome to summer!