Mt. Desert Island 31 July 2007 (con't)

Views from an ocean front path on a point by Bar Harbor near the summer homes.

Main Street shoping area. Note the moose on the roof!

Great transportation system!! These buses really allowed us to see everything the area.

Mt. Desert Island 31 July 2007

We are enjoying the sights and sounds of Mt. Desert Island and Arcadia National Park. We will not be moving out of the harbor until the fog to subsides. The island has clear warm weather but out of the harbor the Atlantic Ocean is foggy. Weather reports look good for the next few days so we can start heading west and south. It is hard to beleive that it is August tomorrow!
Our plan is to head to Rockland tomorrow and be in Boothbay for the weekend and then head to Cape Cod on a straight overnight run Sunday or Monday weather permitting.
We are by the public library in Southwest Harbor, ME where they have good WiFi access. As we mentioned our boat is in a location with no cell access. We do get two tv stations from time to time and fortunately one of them is PBS so after dinner on the boat we catch up with the news and the PBS station.
We have be sight seeing extensively around the island and using the great bus service. We will try to include a few pictures of this area to get everyone caught up. This is a beautiful area.

Southwest Harbor

We discovered that the game of croket is alive and well at the Clermont Inn here at Southwest Harbor!

The other players watching the play intently.

A pond in Somesville near the harbor we are staying at.

Somes Harbor where we have been for a few days.

Somes Sound the only Fjord on the East Coast of the US. We are anchored at the head of the sound.

Mt. Desert Island as we are approching from the south coast.

Bar Harbor, Maine 28 July 2007

Hi Everyone!

We did not realize how long it has been since we have had Internet access. We have been anchored in several different harbors over the last few days and in this part of the country there is very very limited service for our cell connections.


We traveled from Rockland, ME to Castine, Me and stayed in a well protected cove called Smith Cove. The fog came rolling in and we stayed for a couple of days. We then moved on to Mt. Desert Island and upon arriving went into the Somes Sound, a beautiful fjord in the heart of the island and are anchored in Somes Harbor by Somesville.

We are using a great free bus service and our location puts us in the middle between Bar Harbor on the east end and Southwest Harbor on the west end and we are taking advantage of access to both towns.

There is a weather system coming in with two cold fronts along with southerly winds, that always bring dense fog. As usual we will wait out the weather and then start heading west. We plan to be back to Booth Bay by next weekend. We are enjoying the beautiful Maine coastline and the pristine waters. We have seen porpoise and a few seals occasionally pop their heads up for a "look-around."

We dropped by the Bar Harbor public library to get something on the blog and well try to get into one of the towns we have access to with our laptop in the next couple of days to post some photos.

Rockland, ME 22 July 2007

We arrived in Rockland yesterday around 3:00 pm after our long sojourn in Boothbay. It was a trip out on open water off the coast and then through a "short cut" called Muscle Ridge which was a mine field of lobster pot buoys for 6 miles. Coastal sailing was gloomy but once we started Muscle Ridge the weather cleared. The picture above is looking east toward Vinehaven Island from Rockland Harbor. You can see the harbor light house.






The Maine hills are appearing. Some of these top 1000 feet and will get larger when we reach Mt. Desert Island in a few days.










There were several picturesque light houses set into the hills on our journey to Rockland. This on is a Owls Head just east of Rockland.











This was at White Island as we started our run up Muscle Ridge.

We spent the day exploring the town and saw two great museums. One devoted to light houses and their history (http://www.mainelighthousemuseum.com/) and the other the Farnsworth Art Museum (http://www.farnsworthmuseum.org/) and Wyeth Center devoted to many Maine traditional and current artists. The primary focus of course was Andrew Wyeth. An incredible exhibit.

We are continuing to move east tomorrow and heading to Castine up East Penobscot Bays. We will work our way down Eggemoggin Reach north of Deer Island to Jerico and Blue Hill Bays and then to the south end of Mt Desert (pronounced Dessert) Island to a small bay called Great Harbor. We plan on visiting Somes Sound which is the only fiord on the East Coast of the United States. Our travels should being us there by this coming weekend.

Linekin Bay (near Boothbay) ME 20 July 2007

Still raining. Weather services promises sun will be out tomorrow and we will head east. We met this moose a couple of days ago.

Scenes around Linekin Bay

Lobsters don't stand a chance!!!

Linekin Bay (near Boothbay) ME 19 July 2007

We are still by Boothbay in a quiet anchorage. We have been waiting for a cold front to go through before proceeding east. This weather system is taking forever to come. Looks like it will arrive tonight and move on tomorrow. We have been rowing to shore and seeing everything there is to see in Boothbay. Had a great visit at the local historical society yesterday afternoon and met Commander (USCG ret.) Bill Wilson who had many stories to tell us about his years in the Coast Guard as well as with replicas of sailing ships that he has be involved with at Colonial Williamsburg. As we walk around town we have had a number of conversations with various folks. Very friendly town! In the picture you can see Jabberwocky at anchor in Lobster Cove.


This is from our weather fax receiver and is the forecast for the next 36 hours. This from Halifax, NS station CFH Environment Canada. The low and the cold front we are waiting for is on the left side of the map. These maps are received automatically and then we down load the maps we want to our laptop.








Our broadband internet connection has been poor from the boat so we have not been able to update the blog for a couple of days.

This trolley is the local transportation around town. All you have to do is tip the driver. The trolley is sponsored by the Rocktide Inn.












This is the town's Catholic church, Our Lady Queen of Peace, that dominates the harbor. The church bell rings the time on the hour and half by sounding ship's bell rings consistent with 4 hour watch keeping starting at 12, 4 and then 8. The pattern is: one bell at 12:30, two bells at 1, three bells at 1:30 and so forth with eight bells a 4 and the sequence repeats.














This memorial overlooking the harbor is to the seamen and watermen from Boothbay lost since the town was founded.

Boothbay, ME 15 July 2007

We had Tim the diver come this morning and check boat bottom, cleanup the prop and put on a new zinc.












Boothbay had a parade of boats this afternoon as a memorial to a local well known and well loved business man who died in a small plane crash in Connecticut several days ago. There were over 100 boats from lobstermen to work boats.

They did a big circle around Boothbay Harbor and all came through a channel between our mooring field and the marina on shore.

This tug came roaring through.

At the tail end was this work motorized work barge firing a small cannon from his deck. Quite a tribute.

Boothbay, ME 14 July 2007

Another nice day in Boothbay and we are going to gobble down some lobster this evening. Had our fix a problem on the boat adventure this morning when we discovered a leak in a small stainless steel elbow in our cooling system. Went to the local hardware store and could not find anything satisfactory to fix the part and the fellow helping us said you need a welder. Of course we said it was Saturday and we don't have a car. He said don't worry I will take care of you and he called a fellow , set things up and then found a cab for us as well. We headed out into the country side to the welder's place and it turns out that he also is a blacksmith that does a lot of interesting oriental metal work. He fixed our part and the cab driver took us back into town. Really great folks here. Tomorrow we are having our bottom and propeller check by a local diver. Took a number of calls to find someone. We need to have our propeller cleaned and our zincs checked (they prevent damage to our prop and prop shaft). The last time we did this was a couple of days before we left Florida at the end of May. In the cooler northern water the prop doesn't foul as quickly. In Florida we had to have a diver come at least every six weeks an that was probably a bit too infrequent.

A traditional wooden dingy.

These sailing vessels are what the fishermen and lobster men used prior to having mechanical propulsion. Now the tourists enjoy a ride on the harbor in them.

A view of some of the local older hotels on the harbor.














An afternoon harbor view.

Boothbay, ME 13 July 2007

Arrived at Boothbay Harbor east of Portland ME about 50 miles this morning from an overnight trip starting yesterday morning at Provincetown. What a change from southern New England. Late yesterday afternoon observed an number of pods of whales within a half mile of our boat. The waters off Boston and Maine are the summer feeding grounds for a variety of these mammals. It is quite exciting to encounter these creatures.





A light house that marks the entrance to Boothbay.














A lobseterman heading out this morning to work his traps.












A light house which was our initial contact with the Maine Coast. The nice thing about sailing here in the summer is the short nights! Evening twilight ends at around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. and morning twilight starts at 3:30am. On clear nights like last night the sky had an incredable number of stars which you never see near metropolitian areas and made the night sail quite enjoyable.

Our plan is to lay over here for a couple of days and then head further east.

Provincetown, MA 10 July 2007

We are still in Provincetown. The are reduce visibility conditions on the ocean north of us so we want to wait for awhile as the waters have extensive fishing activity and major shipping lanes into Boston Harbor. A scene on the beach near the warves.

We walked to the Atlantic side of the Cape. The area has extensive dunes. The walk turned out to be further than the little tourist map indicated and a one of the park rangers was kind enough to give us a lift for the last couple of miles.

A restored sea rescue station on the coast. Originally there were 13 of these in the 1800's along the coast. During the days of sailing ships there have been hundreds of ships lost on this dangerous shoreline.

These small pine trees hold the sand in place.

Ther dune areas are still pretty extensive.

Commerical Street in down town Provincetown.

Provincetown, MA 9 July 2007

Walked around Provincetown this afternoon. The major tourist attraction was the Provincetown Museum and Tower commemorating the landing of the Pilgrims on Nov 11, 1620 here. Most folks do not realize that Provincetown was their first stop in America prior to moving over to Plymouth across the bay 20 miles. We saw a chart showing the landfall of the Mayflower with notes from the ship's log. What is interesting to note is that this area had been charted a number of years before by Henry Hudson and others and the captain had land marks and even a couple of buoys to go by.

This memorial is for the signing of the Mayflower Compact in November of 1620 when they landed at Provincetown. This document was drawn up to assure there was some form a governance agreed to by the group as they set forth to establish a colony. It was interesting to note that the date of the signing was designated by an old and new date. In the museum they mentioned that around 1589 the Pope designed a revised ca lander but it took until 1752 for the colonies in America to adopt the revised system.

The Pilgrim Landing Monument dedicated in 1910.

From the tower, the harbor, looking west.

Looking south.

We are on our way to Booth Bay Harbor, Maine in the morning. We will be looking for whales while we head to Maine since this is a summer feeding ground for the right and finback whales.