We are becalmed just south of Long Island in Blue Hill Bay. There is a lobster boat in front of us, loaded with lobster pots, going from buoy to buoy. There are evergreen-encrusted islands to the east and south, like the mainland to the west, their sawtoothed silhouettes various shades of blue, the closest with a hint of green.
Cadillac Mountain or one of its sisters is draped in clouds to the east.
Oooh! The jib is flapping as if there were wind. There is! We're sailing -- a bit.
Last night, we stayed in Blue Hill, north of where we are now, where we met Rusty Duym (sounds like dime) from the Bermuda One-Two. Rusty grew up in Blue Hill where, we learned last night, he split his teenaged time between the locals -- with whom he attended school -- and the summer people, the wealthy whose estates are tucked into the evergreens and are -- unlike waterfront estates on the Chesapeake -- inconspicuous when viewed from the water.
Rusty gave us a tour of the town in a borrowed car. (His is too small for three people.) Oh, to have a friend like Rusty in every port! As we left this morning, we could see the estate of the 40-year-old heiress whose 120-foot motor yacht is moored in front of her property. We recognized the town dock (not the one in town but the one created for locals) where the town folk have constant battles with their neighbors who own an adjacent launching ramp -- battles about who owns what real eastate.
The details of this pretty little town, as related by Rusty, suggest the background for a good novel. No doubt one has been written.
We chose to go to Blue Hill because we knew Rusty lives there. For the same reason, we rented a mooring near the local yacht club, the Kollegewedgwok Yacht Club (pronounced just like it appears.) Blue hill has an outer harbor (where the yachtg club mooring is,)and an inner harbor with good holding. But the inner harbor is a long dinghy ride from the landing. Thus we rented a mooring.
Rusty is a member of the local steel drum band (he never played a musical instrument before joining the band.And he doews paragliding, in which the participants run and jump from a precipice wearing a parachute. Blue Hill, the mound for which the town is named, is a good location for that sport because it has a large cliff near the top. Rusty, when the spirit moves him, jumps from that cliff.
The night before last, we anchored in Benjamin River, as mentioned before.It was a gloomy morning when we left, but we raised the sails just outside the mouth of the river, in Eggamoggin Reach, and sailed all the way from there to Blue Hill, going East and then North to reach our destination. It was a slow sail. At one point, when the wind died near the end of the reach, we started the motor to make it through a grove of lobster pot buoys thick as pigeons in a park.Once there was a faint breeze, we shut down the engine and sailed the rest of the way.
Now we're making 4.2 knots along the eastern shore of Tinker Island. The clouds left over from the rain during the night are burning off and the sky to the south is pale blue with puffy white clouds.
I just phonedl the Northeast Harbor harbormaster and learned that we can't reserve a mooring there. We'll have to hope one is available when we arrive.
Once again, we are planning a visit with some young friends from home who are working in northeast Harbor. We met Lou Gallagher and Astra Haldeman when they attended sailing school at the Red Dragon Canoe club. They were 14 then. Now married after graduating from college and their separate fellowships -- he in South Africa, she in New Zealand -- he is captain of a Friendship Sloop sailing ouit of Northeast Harbor and she, when she is not serving as first mate on Lou's vessel, is working at a small museum in Bar Harbor.
So of course we want to stop and say hello, and that means taking a mooring. We'll probably arrive in mid afternoon. With luck, we'll see the sloop under sail when we make landfall. Lou says he is working non-stop.
Tough job.