Several of the local folks we’d met had encouraged us to spend time in the Damariscotta River, but we had some weather approaching and wanted to find a well-protected anchorage. So we passed the mouth of the Damariscotta, then across John’s Bay and into Muscongus Bay, where we picked our way through the rocky islands and up the Saint George River in the fog. Learning to navigate in the fog is an essential skill if cruising in Maine, as I discuss in this post.
Up the Saint George river a few miles is Maple Juice Cove. As the physics of fog would predict, the fog became thinner as we moved up the river, closer to land on both sides of us, and by the time we reached Maple Juice Cove there the sky was blue and the water free of fog.
Maple Juice Cove is an excellent little storm hole for all but a NE wind, and I’m pretty sure there is good protection from the NE as well if you went to the right part of the cove. Since we had a storm predicted, we went to Maplejuice for the protection. It’s an excellent anchorage with fantastic holding, but it appears to be private all around, so there’s no going ashore.
We were just in the process of setting our anchor hard, with a good bit of chain out, when another sailboat came in and decided to anchor closer to us than was really necessary in this large anchorage. To make it worse, they seemed in a hurry to get the hook down without really taking in the waterscape around them and the boats around them, and they ended up laying their chain right across ours. This was completely unnecessary and would absolutely have been avoided if they would have taken the time to read the anchorage—especially since it was obvious where our anchor was based on the fact that we were backing down on it as they approached. In the end, no harm came of it and our anchors didn’t get tangled up, but it was yet another example of the importance of good anchoring etiquette and awareness. Entire books have been written about anchoring, and I’ve added my short and concise two bits in this post.
In hindsight, to be safe, I should have pulled out anchor and re-set it. Somehow the swinging worked itself out, and the wind was less than forecast. In the morning we pulled our anchor before the offending boat, and watching them pulling theirs after we were done I felt like they were a little sheepish about the bad job they’d done.
I will note that the charts made it appear that going ashore might be possible at a place called Sam’s Wharf on Burton’s Point. If we had planned to spend multiple days at the anchorage we probably would have explored that option a bit. But our plan was to go spend time in Port Clyde, so we hauled the hook and headed the few short miles back down the river to Port Clyde with a wonderful beam reach to help us along.
