Despite
dismal forecasts all week, it didn't rain on the OpSail Maine Parade
of Sail, nor were the parading boats hidden by fog. There wasn't much
sun either, or even any wind. The tall ships still went by with sails
up for show, but they all had their engines on too.
I was a little disappointed that there were only three big square-riggers, what I think of as real "tall ships". These were all national military training ships: the US Coast Guard's Eagle, Argentina's Libertad, and Brazil's Cisne Branco. Most of the participating boats were schooners, which are certainly attractive boats with lots of character, but they are fairly common on the east coast, particularly as charter tour boats. Still, it was a treat to see so many pretty sailing vessels. A few had interesting sailplans: we saw one junk-rigged schooner, and one hermaphrodite brig (a sort of a cross between a schooner and a brigantine, also called, according to The Sailmaker's Apprentice, which we were using for identification, a "jackass rig", but I can't resist the opportunity to use the word "hermaphrodite" in a log entry).
Portland really made an event out of the parade. A fireboat streamed red and blue dyed fountains of water, helicopters and small planes and one blimp circled overhead, and decorated fishing boats and tugboats circled the harbor. Hundreds of boats (Windom was one of them) crowded the designated viewing areas; thousands of spectators lined the city's seawalls and hills.
We were anchored near Fort Gorges, which was built in 1858 and is now abandoned. The city of Portland owns the fort and keeps it open to the public, but it's only restored to the point of being reasonably safe to walk around in. After the parade, we'd poked around the fort for an hour or so with flashlights. It's a dense maze of brick and granite, overgrown with lush vegetation in the central parade and on the roof. Most of the rooms were filled with pigeons and pigeon by-products, but we did find a few interesting compartments deep inside, where, we surmised, powder and ammunition was kept.
Effie came down from their usual mooring on the Harraseeket River to join us for the fireworks in the evening. About half an hour before the official fireworks were to begin at 9:30, an unofficial display began from the top of Fort Gorges. We've seen pirate pyrotechnics at other fireworks events before, but usually they're just a few bottle rockets and Roman candles. This display went on and on, and it was impressive. The fireworks were being set off from various points along the roof of the fort, sometimes simultaneously, and the timing and grouping of the different types of fireworks seemed professional. We wondered why the police hadn't shown up;there were over half a dozen police boats with flashing blue lights around the harbor, keeping boats away from the official fireworks barge in the center. Maybe, we thought, they'd gotten permission from the city. When it was over, the harbor filled with cheers and yells, and soon there was an encore. That was when the police showed up, and the cheers turned to loud boos as they raked the fort with spotlights. The police were still searching the place with flashlights when we went to bed.
Oh yeah, the official fireworks were pretty good, too.
The next day, we and Effie motored to one of their favorite spots, a little anchorage at the head of a little sub-bay off of Casco Bay called Quahog Bay. The route we took wound through a watery maze of dozens of islets and hundreds of lobster pot floats. Those poor lobsters have no chance at all.
The final approach to the anchorage was up a long and narrow channel with pine-covered islands in the middle. By the time we got to the island we would anchor near, we were entirely land-locked. It looked more like we were in a high mountain lake than on the seacoast. Our instruments told us the water was a comparatively balmy 68°, but the air was cool and the sky cloudy, and none of us felt much like swimming. Instead we dinghied around the islands, and hiked across one of them, through pine forest and over rocks.
The next day, Effie led us out down the channel on the other side of the central island, then out through beautiful Ridley Cove where we motored through "George Bush" (the channel between George Island and Bush Island) and then parted company with our friends. They had to go home for the work week (ick!); we continued southeast to Damariscove Island.
Damariscove Island hangs off the south coast of Maine near Boothbay. It's owned by the Nature Conservancy now, but it's been settled on and off by fishermen for nearly 400 years. In 1897 a U.S. Lifesaving Station, which later became a Coast Guard station, was built on the island; it was abandoned in 1959, when the last year-round residents left. These days, the only permanent human inhabitants of Damariscove are a fisherman and his family who live in a derelict mastless sailboat anchored at the head of the narrow harbor.
The
harbor is a fjord-like slot about a quarter of a mile long and a
hundred feet wide. Two boats were anchored inside, and there were a
scattering of lobster pot floats and private mooring floats to
complicate things, but with some work we managed to turn around and
set a bow and a stern anchor to hold us in place.
We dinghied in to the floating dock. The Nature Conservancy has a sign-in sheet and pamphlets with trail maps and information about the flora and fauna, so we picked up a guide and went for a hike. Wild rugosa roses growing alongside the trail scented the air. We hiked past bayberry and meadowsweet, raspberries (which we ate) and poison ivy (which we avoided). Seaweed draped the rock ledges along the shore, exposed by the low tide.
The following morning we dinghied in again for a hike to the old Coast Guard watch tower. When we got back to the dock, we noticed the resident fisherman in his skiff by his house-boat, so we dinghied over to talk with him.
His hair and tanned skin were approximately the same color, and his smile of greeting had more gaps than teeth. Deep lines on his face spoke of years of hard living. When we asked if we could buy a few lobsters, he shook his head, saying he was just getting ready to take his catch into town to fill an order. "Got to take them over to Boothbay. The armpit of Maine." He pronounced it ahm-pit. "I'm from there. That's why we live out here."
We returned to our boat and started making preparations to leave. While we were getting ready, a lobster boat pulled into the harbor and motored up to us. "Hey, Cap! How many you want? Two dozen? Three?" The local lobsterman had called them on VHF, and they were happy to sell us a couple of lobsters for "dock price". We stashed them in the rear cockpit cooler compartment (in the Bahamas we kept coconuts there, so we call it the "coconut locker" -- we'll have to rename it the "lobster locker" now), and periodically added bucketsful of seawater to keep them perky. We steamed them for a yummy dinner that night.
American lobsters and Bahamian lobsters are so dissimilar that it's amazing they're both called lobster. The claws on the American version are only the most obvious difference; the American type has a single horn over the eyes rather than two, shorter antennae, and a thinner shell which is much easier to crack. There was also a lot of fatty liquid inside the shell. The taste is surprisingly similar, rich and sweet, but I bet if we tasted them side by side we would note a difference.
After an uneventful trip from Damariscove, dodging the usual multitude of lobster trap buoys, we anchored in the cove between Harbor Island and Hall Island. Britt had collected a few mussels and periwinkles earlier, which he extracted from the shells and used to bait a bottom-fishing hook rig. The fish started nibbling almost immediately, and after a very short time we had four harbor pollock and a mackerel.
This was the first fishing we'd done since the clear waters of the Bahamas, and it reminded us of the simple satisfaction of feeding ourselves from the great soup bowl of the sea. A low-tide hike around the southern end of Hall Island, which is a separate little islet at high tide, revealed wide rock ledges thickly encrusted with mussels. Mussel collecting, like saltwater fishing, doesn't require a license in Maine, so we collected a few handfuls for lunch. Steamed in white wine with garlic and thyme, they were so good that we went back to the ledges with a bucket the next day.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, "the coldest winter we ever spent was a summer in Maine." After a winter in the warm sunshine of the Bahamas, it seems ridiculous to be dressed in fleece sweatshirts and wool socks in late July. We've been comfortable enough at night under two blankets, but our down comforter is at the ready in case it turns any chillier, and on one foggy morning we fired up our little catalytic propane heater for the first time since last November. Admittedly, it hasn't been as cold as the ICW was then -- I've even worn shorts a few times -- but it would be nice to have a little summer.
We haven't seen a lot of fog, but when it rolls in it's impressive. Mostly the overcast has stayed up in the sky where it belongs, but for some reason whenever we need to make a trip through intricate channels to busy harbors, boom, down comes the curtain. The sun generally hides behind the overcast, and our tans are fading fast. We also haven't seen more than 7 knots of wind since we got north of Cape Cod. Every time we're out, we hopefully put up the sails, but after a few hours of making 3 knots we generally give up and turn the key again. Our wind generator turns listlessly at anchor, if it turns at all.
While not quite a weather phenomenon, usually mentioned in the same breath as Maine fog are Maine mosquitoes. We can vouch that they are fully as big as reputed. If we run out of diesel in this windless wilderness, we might try to harness a pair to pull the boat. Fortunately they haven't been very thick, and we're so well armored in our winter clothes that they probably wouldn't make it through anyway.