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Saturday, August 28, 2010




We left Burnt Coat Harbor on another spectacular morning and, with the mainsail raised, passed a windjammer schooner that had come in after us the night before. They were about to leave as we went by. Next, we rounded the lighthouse on the point to the east and kept well clear of submerged rocks on our starboard side.
By the time we cleared the last island, we had a steady if light breeze and were able to turn off the engine.
Our destination was Stonington on Deer Island, one of the larger towns on these Maine islands. To get to Stonington, we had to traverse Deer Island Thoroughfare, which on the charts appeared to be a narrow path through dozens of islands and submerged rocks -- enough challenge for one day. The thoroughfare would take us from east to west.
But we had decided to make a lunch stop north of the thoroughfare in a long, skinny bay that the cruising gide said was a decent anchorage. So we sailed to the northwest in wind that built steadily to perhaps 12 to 15 knots.
Steadily, the breeze turned us farther and farther north, toward a rocky shore, and for simplicity sake, we took down the sails and motored into the bay.
The wind was southwesterly or perhaps westerly and, when we reached the narrow entrance to the bay -- pinched between large boulders to port and a ledge shore to the north -- the wind was blowing on Robin's nose and some velocity.
No way we were going to anchor in that stiff breeze. It was too much bother, although as always, the scenery around us was wonderful.
So we turned and left the bay, steering south toward the thoroughfare.
Again, we had to pick our way through shoal water and random rocky outcroppings, a chore made easier if not simple by the chartplotter.
The wind now was no help, blowing as it was straight at us from Stonington to the west about five or six miles.
In unknown waters, caution mixed with fear keeps your attention focused.
We had been told by the cruising guide that the municipal anchorage in Stonington was not a good option, so without trying it, we went a mile beyond the town and found a mooring at Billings Diesel and Marine on an island connected to the main island by a causeway.
After dinghying to the boatyard and paying for the night, we began walking to town. The cruising guide said the hike would be more than a mile, and so we were pleased when, approaching the boatyard property line, a lobsterman stopped his pickup and offered us a ride. He was probably our age but looked ancient, and we had a great conversation with him and later took his advice where to dine: Not the ritzy restaurant but "The Fisherman's Friend" restaurant, where the fish chowder was incredibly good.
When we headed back to Robin, we learned that our conversation with the lobsterman had blinded us to the terrain and distance we traveled to get to town. There was no taxi available in Stonington, and the hike was up and down hills through neighborhoods neither of us could remember.
In the restaurant, we had a window seat and this gave us a chance to observe a gentleman whom we had noticed before we entered the restaurant. He was sitting on the edge of the quay wearing a yellow slicker and a nautical cap. He looked homeless, with a beard as shaggy as mine, and I thought he might be trying to get tourists to take his picture for a fee. While he looked sort of salty, it was a somewhat phoney look.
Now, in the restaurant, while we waited for our food we saw that he had an old Ford van which he visited from time to time. He seemed to be cooking his dinner in the van.
When our server returned, I asked her if she knew anything about the man.
"Oh, that's Sid. He prowls through the Dumpster and feeds the seagulls," she said.
My guess about his employment was off base. He was simply a peculiar man who chose to hang out near the docks all summer long.
We determined that anchoring or taking a city mooring directly off town would have been a better option than where we had settled. But once we had hiked back to Billings and dinghied back to Robin, we passed a relaxing night aboard, ready for the next morning's adventure.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The availability of wifi at our various stops in Maine was zero, so I couldn't post to the blog. I'm home in New Jersey now and Robin is in her slip at Cambridge, MD.
But I want to tell the rest of the story of our Maine cruise, so I'll do it in installments, from memory, trying to get the highlights.
It was a wonderful two weeks with Monica on board, perhaps the best vacation we've ever shared.
Next -- we resume the cruise.

Friday, August 13, 2010




We left Northeast Harbor with 200 feet maximum visibility and, employing the chartplotter, turned west and north, into the mouth of Somes Sound. We couldn't see the shore until we were well into the mouth and approaching a choker passage, and then the fog never lifted much higher than 100 feet, so we motored the entire way to Somesville and never saw the imposing and legendary cliffs and mountains on either side.
For the first time in three days, we anchored, this time in a mooring field, and settled in with onboard activities. Monica read. I sketched a nearby downeast boat and its backdrop of rocks, forests and a landing with a floating dock. Then I attempted to fill in the drawing with watercolors, hoping this time the picture would be a little less muddy than the last effort.
Late in the day, a sailing megayacht arrived and took a large mooring between the sound and Robin. Shrouded in fog, she looked mysterious, her dark hull turned so as to obscure the name on her transom. Her lines were exceptionally beautiful and I guessed she was a Ted Fontaine design. Every curved line blended perfectly with adacent curves, a Fontaine hallmark.
In the morning, the fog lifted and the sun came and went. There was a seal in the harbor and there were numerous kayakers. And there were many interesting boats in the harbor, in addition to the megayacht.
By nine o'clock, we had weighed anchor and begun motoring toward the sound, which we've been told several times is North America's only fjord. As we passed the megayacht, I hollered to the owner, who was having breakfast with several others and reading a newspaper in the center cockpit. "Who's the designer?" I asked. I think he said Chuck Paine, the man who has designed many of the Morris yachts. We'll never know for sure. I was unable to readthe yacht's name on the transom, in shadows.
Finally, as we headed through the sound, we got to see the magnificent scenery, the cliffs and mountains.
Out in Western Way, the entrance from the ocean to Northeast and Southwest Harbors, we raised the sails and for most of the morning, we tacked in light breezes toward Long Island and Frenchboro, where we hoped to anchor for the night. But after passing some rocky islands with ocean waves bursting on their stone chests and reading once again the description of the anchorage in Frenchboro, we thought again and went on to Burnt Coat Harbor on Swan's Island near Toothache Bay, where we took a mooring for the night and spent another good afternoon, reading and sketching aboard Robin and, with the binoculars, snooping on our neighbors and the local lobstermen who, in the afternoon, returned with their catch to the fishermen's coop.
Just before dinner, the sky darkened as if to blow up some electrical entertainment. But the clouds moved on, leaving only a beautiful sunset with oranges and purples and cool air that blew into the V-berth hatch and made for a pleasant sleep in a secure harbor.




Yesterday began overcast and grim but grew into a brilliant, sunny day by the time we reached the mouth of Blue Hill Bay. The wind, mostly from the west, was light to moderate, but by the time we had to turn east and make our way around Bass Harbor, there had been some stiff gusts that prompted us to reef the main an douse the Genoa.
Normally, we wouldn't have shortened sail. But we had to cross a stone bar only 13 feet deep right off the point east of BassHarbor,and we didn't want to place ourselves in the position where we could be overpowered in tricky waters.
There are two buoys, one to the west and the other to the east of this bar -- red and white buoys which normally mark the entrance to a body of water. In this case, they marked the entrances to the shallow channel across the bar.
As we approached the western buoy, we sailed Robin to a point where, when the buoy was a couple of hundred feet away, it lined up with the eastern buoy. At that point, as we had planned, Monica hauled on the main sheet and I steered Robin into a gybe (or jibe. I've seen it spelled both ways.)
Now we were on a run, the wind behind us, the reefed main out to starboard, the staysail out to port.
As we approached the bar, a Catalina 30 fell in line behind us. It looked to me as though the skipper was taking advantage of what he supposed was our superior local knowledge. Of course, we had never crossed the bar before, so he was following us with misplaced trust if that were the cdase.
The distance between the two buoys was about a quarter of a mile, and the water, rising up from the depths on one side to wash across the rocks, was choppy. We made 3.5 knots the whole way, watching the chart plotter and the depth guage intently as a ticket holder on a long-shot horse watching the race.
The bar is just off the coast from one of the most popular light houses on the Maine coast.
Tourists were scuttling over the brown, rust-stained boulders and ledges as we passed. A large seal surfaced to visit near the eastern buoy.
The passage was otherwise uneventful, and the Catalina made it through without incident, just off our stern. It was another two-mile sail to the green buoy that marked the entrance to Western Way, a passage between the mainland of Mount Desert Island and Great Cranberry Island, to the east. Ledges come out from either shore when you turn into Western Way, with waves breaking over them and thundering like surf on the New Jersey shore.
Now we had about three miles to go to reach the mouth of Northeast Harbor, our destination, and we were on a reach in moderate winds, making about five knots. Our hope was to find Lou and Astra, our young friends, in town. We had called Lou and knew he was busy all day sailing the Friendship Sloop with tourist passengers and Astra was working at the little museum in Bar Harbor.
But when we cleared the end of Great Cranberry, I saw the destinctive sail shape of a Friendship Sloop a mile ahead off our starboard bow. It was aiming away from us and for the harbor.
I got on the radio on Channel 16 and tried to hail "the Friendship Sloop entering Northeast Harbor." No answer, so I tried channel 9 and channel 68. Still no luck.
It was clear as the distance to the harbor shrank that we wouldn't catch the Friendship, whether it was Lou's or not.
Then the sloop came about, and when the sails luffed, I thought they were dousing them to enter port.
But no! The sails trimmed themselves and the sloop headed directly toward us.
It was, of course, Lou, who had recognized Robin, although he had only seen her before in photographs. He sailed past our starboard beam as we took pictures, then came about and, as we stalled our sails, passed us close by to port.
Later, we took Lou and Astra to dinner and had a wonderful time learning about their lives in Maine.
But that sail-by! That made my whole cruise to Maine.
A note:
We were without internet connection several days, so I wrote my blog entries in Microsoft Word. But I couldn't find a way to cut and paste them into the blog. So I'm transcribing, word for word, blogs written several days ago, trying to catch up. Hope this works in the long run.
Doug

Wednesday, August 11, 2010


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.