August 14 -16 -- Lay Day, Thence to Frenchboro and on to Bucks Harbor, 11 and 23 Miles

The lay day was in Spurling Cove, Great Cranberry Island; it was entirely due to fog. It lifted slightly in the late afternoon, from not being able to see the adjacent moored boat, to being able to see to shore, perhaps 200 yards away. So we made a visit to the island by dink and got groceries in a remarkably well stocked tiny little store by the ferry dock. They had most everything on Lene’s shopping list -- and delicious soft ice cream cones too. But a longer walk on the island - to its town center - was not appealing in the remaining fog so the day was quiet with reading, writing and lazing about.

Next morning was the same, fog wise, but by 11 a.m. it had cleared in Mount Desert Island’s Great Harbor -- to more than a mile -- so we departed for Frenchboro on Long Island. (Our plan to visit there last year as our first stop in the U.S. upon returning from Nova Scotia, was thwarted by the U.S. government’s stern warning: “Don’t set foot off the boat until we inspect it!” So instead we had stayed aboard, on anchor, in Long Island’s uninhabited Eastern Cove, before checking in at Northeast Harbor of MDI the next day.) This time, once underway to Long Island, the fog rolled back in. The eleven miles took more than three hours because (a) we motored slowly and (b) we got caught, acually twice, on lobster lines! I had been complimenting myself on not having been caught even once during our two or three weeks in Maine in 2017 and so far this year -- and then twice on one short passage. Lene was stationed forward to look out for the floats and there was no wind to speak of so it was another motoring day, but the current was running, stretching out the pick-up toggles’ lines, 20 to 30 feet from the fixed floats to which they are tied. In fact, for some pairs the fixed float was sometimes dragged under water by the current and hence invisible. Driving a boat with many of these pairs of floats about is like those video games where you drive a car and obstacles keep popping up in front of you all the time. And since you cant see where you are going in the fog, you have to keep an eye on the compass too.

We had towed the dink due to the lack of wind so I did not have to lower it to gain access to the swim platform. So, the drill: turn off engine, lock the prop, get naked, lower and climb down the swim platform into the sea, take a deep breath, bob under the boat to the propeller and strip the loops of tangled lobstering line from it.  The first time I got us off in three “bobs” and I had climbed aboard, toweled off, dressed, lifted the swim ladder and we had gotten underway again. The second time it took about seven such bobs. When we approached Frenchboro there was a remarkable temporary clearing of the fog for the last mile.
we saw this tug and tow which had hogged the center of the harbor entrance before getting underway next morning.

When we got on a rental mooring (they are no longer free but a very reasonable $25) I had a chill and was shivering. I got naked and into bed under the quilt, Lene cooked up a can of soup for me and within half an hour I was OK again.

The lobster shack, Lunt’s Deli, was closed this Wednesday for a “crew change” so no lobster. And the wonderful moss-covered trails that we so love to hike were not appealing in the fog. So we went to the town library, now open 24/7 during the summer and has good wifi. I counted and it has 300 linear feet of books, quite large for such a tiny town. That is where the last two or three posts to this blog were done. We met a teenage boy with two of his friends, playing video games in the library. He is one of the three students in Frenchboro’s one room schoolhouse.

The biggest surprise of the day was when we returned to ILENE. There had been a blue hulled boat on the mooring next to us when we arrived, but it had left during the time I was warming up. And then it was back again when we returned from the library. But no, it was a different blue hulled boat, and its crew, were coming to it by dink and hailed me: “ROGER!” It was Rick and Claudia and their two year old son Dylan of s/v “Charisma,” a Hylas 44. They have been living aboard the past two years and are fellow Harlemites. So two Harlem boats enjoying an accidental rendezvous on a very remote Maine island in the fog, what are the odds! In any event we had blueberry pancakes the next morning. We were hailed by three men in a runabout. "Would you like a free cup of coffee?" Lene said yes and it was good. They are the entire staff of the Lobster Butter Brewing Company and sold they coffee for $15 per bag. But it was not ground and lene offered to buy a bag if they took it and another bag of non-ground coffee from us and ground them both for us. Actually, while they grind on the island they market and ship to stores in other Maine cities. Their income, they said, was the pleasure they get from living on a very remote island.
We got underway for Bucks Harbor at about 11. The route was north of Swans Island, through Casco Passage across Jerico Bay and through Eggermoggin Reach. No wind at the start, but it came up and could have been a very pleasant beat up the reach, albeit against the tidal current, except we had to do laundry. So yet another motoring day. We passed this pretty boat with its passengers and others who were beating up the Reach. So the view that we dont follow a fixed schedule and hence can avoid beating by waiting out the fog or storms is not totally accurate. We could get a lot more sailing in if we were not governed by a route. This day, to get to Bucks, we travelled mostly NW, where the wind was coming from. If we were not trying to go to Bucks, but could go to a different port, southwest of Frenchboro, we could have sailed. But of course we had been through the southern part of that area in Northhven, vinal Haven and Mcglathery and wanted to get to the ports in the northern half of Penobscot Bay.

In Buck’s Harbor, before dinner at Buck’s Restaurant (reservations are needed because land people drive to it from miles around) while Lene did the laundry, I dinked out to s/v “No News” a Freedom 30.

This is Ken and Camille’s boat and they are Harlem alums. They keep their boat these years in Maine, in Buck’s Harbor, during the summer, and live aboard her, and store her after October in Brooklin, Maine, at the other end of Eggermoggin Reach. I spent a pleasant time chatting with him but Camille was napping. A nice cozy boat to which Ken has vented a propane heater. So two lobster pots was the negative but meeting two Harlem boats sort of balanced things out.