August 17 and 18 -- Bucks Harbor to Rockland and Lay Day There

Underway from 9 to 1, for the 22 miles, mostly motoring in zero wind. This is what zero wind looks like: the absence of ripples. The darker horizontal smudge we call a catspaw or zephyr or puff of very light wind.

During three intervals, collectively more than an hour, the wind did come up and we shut off the engine (the sails were up throughout) and sailed, once getting to eight knots, with favorable tide almost the entire way. The wind was from our starboard side as we headed on various southwesterly courses, sometimes closer to the bow and other times abaft the beam. We cut among a whole bunch of little islands, including Beach Island,

which my Boston friend, Hugh, had told me about, and finally some islets to the south of the large Ilesboro Island, thereby leaving East Penobscot and entering West Penobscot Bay. Then we made directly to the lighthouse at end of the mile long breakwater protecting Rockport from Nor'easters (the seawall trails away to the right) and entered the large open harbor.

We took one of the harbormaster’s moorings right by the side of the channel and the Coast Guard base. The red and green objects are buoys at the base, freshly painted and awaiting placement.

From our mooring you can see the lighthouse in the distance. It is the rectangular dot above the fenders hanging from this neighbor's forward lifelines. The seawall  extends from the lighthouse to the left.
After lunch we dinked in to town to reconnoiter on Main Street. I checked out both an excellent used book store and a new one. Lene bought some cleaning supplies and a new ship's scissors to replace the broken ones. We saw a British tear-jerker at the old classic looking Strand movie theater, Unfinished Song, with Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp. Then dinner at 3Crows, a restaurant on Main Street which opened this spring. Lene loved the soup and the fried chicken.  In a very subtle unannounced way it features the chef’s interesting take on southern and Latin cuisine.

Next day was Sunday and we visited the Farnsworth Museum, celebrating Maine artists: The Wyeths, Winslow Homer and others. Maine’s beauty and isolation was and is a draw to artists, professional and amateur.  Rockland with a population of 7300, is the largest town in the Penobscot region and commercial/industrial rather than a quaint fishing village. Yet for a town with such a small population it has a mighty fine museum.

On the street we ran into a couple from Boston and Sarasota, Florida, Marshall and Cheryl,

and got talking. I’m proud of Lene for initiating the conversation and suggesting lunch; my shy one is not so shy any more as she was in Criswell, Virginia, on the Chesapeake, back in 2006. Then we met a couple who invited us to join them at a restaurant for dinner. Our responses could not nave been more split second simultaneous: I said "Yes" and Lene: "No, thank you." After lunch we invited our new friends to the boat and we whiled away the afternoon lounging in the cockpit getting to know them better. They have a car and took us to the market and back to provision for the three day trip to Portland, where we plan to meet Sherry, a friend of Lene’s from several decades ago. After dinner I plotted our way to Portland: 40 miles from here to Five Islands,  a cove on the west shore of the Sheepscot River (about 4 miles west of Boothbay Harbor as the crow flies); then 15 to Sebasco and 20 to Portland.