Tag: sailing harvest moon

Sailing in Maine 2021

The Flint Hills of Kansas feel the most like home to me. They’ve felt that way since I lived there for several years beginning in the early 70’s. On the surface, the Flint Hills are just some pretty hills that mark a transition from the mixed deciduous woodlands of eastern Kansas to the vast steppe of the Great Plains that central and western Kansas are part of. But as I spent good and deep time in the Flint Hills, from the high rolling peaks to the hidden low nooks and crannies, I came away with a much deeper and enduring appreciation of the magic of the region. I took bicycle rides that started off in calm and quiet beauty that turned to a raging tempest of wind roaring in my face by noon, making forward progress nearly impossible.

William Least Heat Moon discovered this as well, and wrote about it in his wonderful book “PrairyErth: A Deep Map”, where he explores in depth the land, culture, and history of a section of the Flint Hills.

What do the Flint Hills of Kansas have to do with Maine? It’s a question I’d be asking about now if I were the reader here.

Only this: I think it takes time in a place to develop a deep and good understanding of it. This was brought into focus again for me this year as we spent our third summer cruising the coast of Maine. It took us three summers to really start to scratch the surface of the place, to really start to feel it, and this is very apparent to me now as we make our way south for the winter.

And this: The more I develop an appreciation for and understanding of a place, the more I’m surprised by the subtleties and complexities that start to bubble up once I’m willing to spend relaxed and contemplative time with it.

Take the word “place” in the above paragraph, and replace it with another noun — “person” or “thing” or “concept” or “problem” — and the statement is equally true.

For example, the city of Portland, Maine. During our first two summers cruising the Maine coast, we viewed Portland as just a city. It was expensive and loud and didn’t fit at all the story we will building in our minds about coastal Maine. However, this summer, Dave, Gene and I made landfall in Portland after our sail up from the mouth of the Chesapeake. We spent a couple days walking the area, testing out a couple breweries and enjoying ourselves in a local dive that we later found out might have been a touch dangerous. Dave and Gene flew home, Christine flew to Portland to join me, and the two of us spent several days splurging on a marina right on the Portland waterfront. Later in the summer Christine had an unexpected family trip that required her to fly out of Portland, so we sailed back to Portland where I dropped the hook in an underused anchorage and spent over a week there while she was away, and a few more days once she returned. During that time in Portland we discovered a wonderful city with fantastic walking potential, phenomenal food trucks, truly outstanding breweries and eateries, and a laid-back culture that was as delightful as it was unexpected.

Over a series of posts, I dig down a bit into a few of the places we discovered this past summer. I’ll go back and talk about the places we discovered in our two previous summers in a different post, or perhaps those places will just show up in the book I am outlining on our cruising adventures in Maine.

I hope you enjoy the posts, and as always feel free to reach out to me with questions or discussion.

Port Clyde

Port Clyde is another one of those places that we’ve just passed by on our previous summers in Maine. A bit out of the way, tucked up into a rocky area, it’s not an easy place to just “stop by.” Its harbor is also only marginally protected with very limited anchoring—if you want to stay in the harbor you’ll need to find a mooring ball.

After leaving Maple Juice Cove, we dropped anchor on the north side of Hupper Island. This meant we had a five minute dinghy ride to town, but we like dinghy rides. There’s good holding in a little over 20’ MLW.

As much as any town we’ve gone to in Maine, Port Clyde is a fishing village. There’s surely a good deal of tourism in town as well, much of it because this is the ferry landing for the Monhegan Boat Line, but the town retains the strong feel of a small fishing village.

We found decent walking on the roads around town. It’s a modest hike down to Marshall Point Lighthouse where there’s a fun museum and great views. We stopped by Port Clyde Fresh Catch where fresh seafood can be had, but decided against buying anything that day because we had a lot more walking before we headed back to the boat. Our walk took us out along Drift Inn Rd, where we stopped and watched kids and families playing at Drift Inn Beach. It’s a road walk, but traffic is light and respectful.

Several days we walked along Horse Point Rd out to the end of Hupper Point. A road walk again, but traffic is light and respectful. Our walk on most days took us past Collins Park one way or the other, and we enjoyed taking a break and watching local kids making use of the town park. The road beside the park is also the drive down to Dockside Lobster, where the big draw is buying lobster right at the lobster dock, and it seems they’ll ship them for you anywhere.

As far as dining, we stopped and had coffee at Squid Ink Coffee several times, overlooking the dinghy dock. Most days involved a trip to the Port Clyde General Store, where we might buy needed provisions, and a couple times sat down to the counter and had lunch at The Port Kitchen, a great diner right there in the store.

A handful of particularly fun things happened in the week or two that we were anchored at Port Clyde. Each of these little happenings scratched that little vagabond itch inside me—making me appreciate again this wonderful nomadic lifestyle that we’re living.

The Wild Blueberry Walk: Just a day or two after setting our anchor, a young couple rowed their little boat out to us and struck up a conversation. They were staying at one of the little cabins there on Hupper Island. Their family owned the cabin, and different family members spent varying parts of the summer there. They invited us to use their shoreline too beach the dinghy to walk ashore and explore the island. They even disclosed a couple of their secret blueberry gathering spots, inviting us to help ourselves to this quintessential wild Maine delicacy. Of course, we took them up on their offer and spent a morning enjoying this typical Maine island, accessible only be water, with cabins on the perimeter against the shore, and the interior wooded trails with no real roads. I love it when the human instinct to welcome nomads kicks in, and we are able to meet great people.

The Lobster Boys. I don’t know the economics that drive the lobster fishing industry. I know that it can be lucrative, as we’ve noticed some beautiful large estates on shore a few times with a couple lobster boats docked there. Add to that the fact that there are so many lobster buoys in Maine waters, and so many fishermen, and basic logic tells you that a whole lot of folks have decided that it’s a pretty good living. And my hat’s off to them—it’s hard and demanding work, and whatever they make they work hard for. Now I tell that much to set the stage for the story.

We regularly saw a couple teenage boys in a small runabout checking their traps. Their boat was not an expensive one, and very much a contrast to the big and expensive lobster boats we were accustomed to seeing. This seemed very much like a couple of enterprising young men who were willing to work hard and invest in their future. After watching them for a couple days we decided that when we wanted lobster, we’d flag them down in our dinghy and pay them cash for a couple bugs.

Christine and I like lobster, but it’s not the same delicacy for us that it is for some people. It’s good for sure, and we enjoy it when we get it, but it’s just not a big deal to us. Really good scallops, or clams, or haddock is more likely to get us excited than a lobster. All that to say that we’ll buy lobster in Maine because it’s less expensive and abundant, but when we do buy it we like buying directly from the fisherman with cash. In the case of these young fellas, breaking their rhythm to sell us a couple of their catch was something they were happy to do, and we loved helping them in their business venture.

The Kelp Farmer: There was a mooring ball at one end of the anchorage where we dropped our hook. For the first couple days I thought that there was some debris hung up on the mooring ball, but then I noticed that the debris was growing in size. After studying it through the binoculars, it was apparent that this “debris” was actually elongated mesh bags of something, apparently tied together.

After a couple more days, we observed a very odd looking small vessel approach the ball and add yet more mesh bags to the growing collection. We asked someone locally about it, and they told us that this was a kelp farming operation. This odd vessel goes out and harvests kelp, then bags it into these mesh bags. When he has enough, he drags the bags to shore where they are somehow loaded onto a truck and taken to whoever buys bags of kelp.

Cool operation, but I wonder how many times a boat has run over his bags of kelp in low visibility, not knowing to stay clear of the mooring ball?

Outward Bound Kids: And finally a story about Outward Bound. First off, I love the Outward Bound program. Both my sons participated in an extended program when they were in high school, and I believe it was an experience that had a big impact in their lives. When I was just out of college, I worked as a counselor in a program very much like Outward Bound, and experienced first hand how much positive influence these kinds of programs can have in the lives of young people.

South of Port Clyde, out where Muscongus Bay meets the Gulf of Maine, is Burnt Island. Apparently this island is the departure point for a course called “Maine Coast Sailing.” (At least this is the assumption I’m making based on a couple of brief exchanges with some students in the course.) The course puts a bunch of students on a 30’ sailboat with oars, a rudder, and a square sail. The spend a week or two on this boat together, exploring the Maine coast. It’s an open boat with no protection from the sun, wind or rain. There’s no propulsion. There’s no head. The students sail or row, living together on a crowded boat for a week or two.

Our interaction with the first group we came across began one afternoon when we saw them slowly making their way toward our anchorage. A local resident came out and offered them the use of his mooring ball, a convenience that they jumped at. At first I wasn’t sure just what to make of this crowded little boat, and wondered if it was an Outward Bound group. We watched that afternoon and evening as they settled down for the night. They looked to be practicing knots and having class. Then as night fell they all wrapped up in their bags and settled in for some sleep. They were pretty packed in to this small boat, and sleeping obviously meant reaching accommodation with each other to find reasonable comfort for everyone. The next morning we watched the boat slowly come to life as they took turns at their daily ablutions, dressing, and hanging bits out to dry.

Watching this process required care. I wanted to respect their privacy, averting my eyes when privacy seemed appropriate, but I also wanted to watch and learn. Such an amazing exercise in civility, and the need for everyone to respect and care for everyone else. They were all in the same boat, and the boat wasn’t a big one. There wasn’t room to behave as-if you had unlimited space or resource, and in order to continue to move the boat forward to the next destination everyone had to respect one another, make room for one another, and yield to one another’s needs with the understanding that they would yield to your needs when the time came.

I propose that all members of Congress should be required to take this course before going to DC. Just a thought…

At any rate, we stopped and had a brief chat with them across 40’ of water as we dinghied to town that morning, and by the time we returned they had departed. We saw them (or another class) out on the bay in the next couple days, and we saw one of their classes making their way east from Burnt Island a week or two later.

The Moon: Finally, on one of our final nights at Port Clyde, we watched one of the most spectacular moonrises I’ve ever seen. I tried taking some pictures, but of course they never turn out as well as the event itself. It was an ideal close to a wonderful week or two at a gem of a place along the Maine coast.

Maple Juice Cove

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.

Boothbay Harbor and Linekin Bay

Leaving the Sheepscot River and headed east, we took the “shortcut” through Townsend Gut and the Southport swing bridge, across Boothbay Harbor and over to Linekin Bay, where we picked up a mooring ball at Linekin Bay Resort for a couple days. We’ve stopped at Boothbay several times, and have learned that we prefer the more quiet Linekin Bay side to the far more popular (and busy) Boothbay Harbor side. It’s easy to dinghy over to the park and walk to town from Linekin Bay Resort, or take the shuttle from the resort of it’s running.  We’ve also dinghied all the way around to Boothbay when the weather is nice, just for a nice dinghy ride. There are some very nice walks we take that start at Linekin Bay Resort, and this time one of those walks was up to the Hannaford Supermarket to do a little provisioning.

The walk to Hannaford’s is an absolute delight. We followed the main road from the resort for maybe a half mile or a mile, then turned right off the road onto an obscure path for a mile or two. It’s a lovely hike through the woods, and the bugs really weren’t that bad. We emerged on a somewhat busy road, but quickly found some side roads that weren’t as busy. We got too many groceries to walk home with, and weren’t able to find an uber or taxi due to Covid. The shuttle wasn’t running, so we called the Linekin folks for advice, and Dwight (the GM) drove out and picked us up and brought us back.

I really can’t way enough good about the folks at Linekin Bay Resort. The mooring balls are only slightly more than they are over in Boothbay, but you get access to the resort and some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet from amazingly diverse backgrounds. Most of the staff are young folks from other nations who are spending the summer in Maine on a work visa, and the gal who ran the dock, rentals, and launch was a delightful music professor named Mary Montgomery who was spending the summer working at the resort.

Before leaving the Boothbay area, we wanted to spend a couple nights across Linekin Bay at Paul E Luke boatyard. Of all the places we’ve been in the Boothbay area, Luke might just be my favorite. It’s a very small, quiet, and unassuming place currently transitioning from second generation ownership to third generation ownership. As is always the case in family transitions like this, the future of the place will be decided by this upcoming generation. In our short visit at the Luke boatyard, we met and spent time only with the outgoing second generation—Frank Luke and his wife Nora—with whom we loved spending a couple hours learning the history of the yard and getting to know them a bit.

At the Paul Luke boatyard is an old shed with stacks and bits and pieces and memorabilia from the first generation. Nora came out and talked us through some of it. It really brought to mind how a real legend in the regional boatbuilding business is likely to meld into obscurity as time passes. I enjoyed reading about the history and touching the bits and pieces of memorabilia. Looking back toward the office and the third generation who seemed less than enthusiastic about keeping the traditions going, I felt great sadness to taste tradition and history slipping away. Will these treasures mean anything to anyone when Frank and Nora are gone?

Next summer in Maine we’ll stop here at the Paul Luke Boatyard to see how things are going, and will probably continue to do so as long as Frank and Nora are there.

Sawyer Island and Love Cove

Further south on the east side of the Sheepscot is an inlet to the Back River by Hodgdon Island. The little town of Trevett is there, and on the charts was an anchorage called Sawyer Island that looked like a great place to anchor for a couple days. As it turned out there was barely room to get the hook down with enough scope between the mooring balls, and the bottom was covered in kelp, so we stayed only one night before moving on. However, this seemed to us like it would be a good place to stage up to dinghy over to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens to walk. If you were on a mooring ball, using the dinghy to go over and walk to the gardens seems like it would be a good idea.

Unlike most towns we go to in Maine, Trevett was not particularly cruiser friendly. We went into the store and told them we would need to buy some supplies and lunch, and could we use their trash for our small bag of trash from the boat. No, that would not be okay they said. We changed our mind about provisions and lunch. We did try walking along the road, but it was quite busy, so we turned back.

A few more miles south on the east side of the river is Ebenecook Harbor, and off that harbor is Love Cove. We spent a few days there on a free mooring ball that’s provided by the Winslow family who own a beautiful property on the east side of the cove. All of our hiking consisted of taking the dinghy over to Hodgdon Boatyard and walking the roads from there, and really those road hikes were pretty nice. Hodgdon has a number of balls available as well, but we really liked the quiet in Love Cove. Walking around the boatyard, talking to a few of the folks, seeing their work, I really felt like it would be a good boatyard to get work done in the area.

Oven Mouth

Further up the Sheepscot the northern end of the Back River forks off to the right, and marks the entrance to an extremely cool area called Ovens Mouth. While the Back River will bend around to the right (or south), continuing left as the passage narrows takes you through what they call the “Oven Mouth”, a very narrow little passage where the current runs strong with the tidal changes. We went through on a favorable current of about three or four knots, and I would not have wanted to meet another boat coming the other way.

Once through the Oven Mouth, a wide anchorage opens up that could easily hold 10 boats or more. There’s a nice little 13’ hump in the middle of the anchorage where we were able to drop the hook to limit the scope necessary. There’s an excellent preserve on the south shore of the passage, and we found truly outstanding hiking there. The only downside was that there isn’t a good place to tie the dinghy without dealing with mud, so it’s best to plan your time on shore to span low tide, half the time with the tide falling then the other half with the tide rising, bringing you back to the dinghy at (theoretically) about the same water level as when you left the dinghy. Obviously this can be done at high tide as well, and actually at high tide can be less messy walking to and from the dinghy.

This little “split the tide” trick is one that we use a lot in Maine, where the tidal range is always in the double digits, and dragging the dinghy out through the mud, or swimming out to it, is something we like to avoid if possible.