July 16 -- Winter Harbor, Vinalhaven to Stonington, Deer island

Only about eight miles today, crossing the eastern half of Penobscot Bay, before entering, under motor, the Deer Island thoroughfare. It runs east west, like the Fox Island thoroughfare, but south of Deer Island. Stonington is on its north side. We anchored here, very close to town, outside the moored boats on one side and with the channel on the other, in 24 feet of water.

We sailed here with Genoa only, on a broad starboard reach, at speeds of about five knots or less in two hours and it was a fun sail, in warm sunny weather, the first in open waters without motor for quite a while. Except for the lobster pots that is. Lobstermen and pleasure boaters (mostly sailors up here) have to coexist. Here in this Mount Desert part of Maine, however, the lobstermen use two floats, one to hold up the line leading down to the big trap at the bottom and the other, called the toggle, as a pickup float, in case the first is dragged underwater by the strong rushing tidal currents. The problem then is to avoid passing between the two and thereby getting hung up on the connecting line. The pairs form these barriers, as much as fifteen yards wide. And you can't believe how thickly they are sown. Today, we were going east while the tide was running north so the tide both spread the pairs of floats out across our path and pushed us down onto them if we tried to pass to the right of them. So while we should be steering the boat and trimming the sails for the course we are on, and navigating, instead we are varying course to avoid the barriers and in doing so, depowering the sails.

We took outdoor showers in the cockpit, normal in the Caribbean but here it is often cooler.

Two days ago we were in Rockport and now Stonington. Get the picture? No, these towns were not named by Hanna–Barbara; Fred Flintstone does not live here. Rock quarrying was an important part of Maine’s economy.  I visited the Granite Museum, one room, filled with a model of the quarry, at the height of its operation, 103 years ago and lots of other information. The towers of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and many other landmark buildings of that era are made of Deer Island granite. 2000 people, mostly immigrants from eastern and southern Europe worked here. At the docks the big blocks were loaded onto wooden boats for shipment to New York and elsewhere. Some of the boats that were lost at sea and memorialized in Provincetown and Portsmouth, were carrying stone. But concrete and steel did in the Granite industry. Now only four men work the quarry, part time, creating blocks that are sliced into kitchen counter tops.

Here is the Main Street.

 Stonington is now a lobster town (I had lobster quiche for dinner!) with lots of boats running in and out past us making waves and noise.
ILENE's mast is easily recognized, the only sailboat, surrounded by lobster boats. and a fifty more are moored to the right.

And they start at five am (like the party boats at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn) a major problem warned the cruising guide. But not for us because our two felines wake us up then anyway. We had planned to attend a concert of Baroque music at the Stonington Opera House,

but the concert was in a church, four miles away, so we took a much shorter walk to a nearby lily pond

 and retired early. The lobstermen quit early and we had a very quiet evening and night. Cold though, in the low 60’s, while back home in NY, daytime highs are in the high 90s.