August 17 - 19 -- Bucks to Belfast and Two Lay Days There, 17 Miles

We had planned to visit a couple of coves in Northwestern Penobscot Bay and the town of Castine before Belfast, but Witty is sick and we needed to get his anti nausea drug. He is not seasick; it is an aspect of his bowel disease! Our vet in New York City had faxed information to a Belfast vet, so Belfast got moved forward in the schedule.
It seemed like a day for sailing at last - wind from the south and our course mostly west. Even in sheltered Bucks harbor we changed our fenders from one side to the other to face the wind when approaching the fuel dock. Once out of the harbor, we put up full main and Genoa and were making a nice 4.5 to 5 knots until the wind, which had seemed so promising, died; so the diesel engine had to work for a while more with little help from the main. But the wind came back, the genoa came out and we sliced west across the north end of western Penobscot Bay at speeds approaching 7 knots with no noise and virtually no lobster traps. This was only about an hour and a half but it is episodes like this that remind me that ILENE is worth the trouble she puts me through.
On the mooring in Belfast and the dink lowered and Witty in his carrier ferried ashore, we asked and with a modest gratuity the Assistant Harbor Master drove us to the vet.  Witty was definitely looking sickly but the local vet had an emergency with a rescued bobcat and could not see him, making an appointment for Monday morning instead. She did sell us his medicine and it appeared that the worst of his crisis was over.
It rained hard the first night and Saturday until about 11 a.m. I pumped the water out of the dink dried its seating pontoons and we dinked ashore in light drizzle. We did food marketing both at the IGA and later, at the Coop, which is much nearer, organic, and more expensive. We took in the weekly indoor farmers market and found our way into an interesting and packed lecture at the public library by the head of Tufts University’s philosophy department about the nature of consciousness. The prof. lives on Deer Island in the summer, the south shore of Eggermoggin Reach. We dined out twice: at a Laotian place and a place serving pub type food. We did a lot of window shopping in various galleries and took in a movie each day, “Mamma Mia” on Saturday and “Sorry To Bother You” on Sunday.
This is a small old town with a sense of its history. Last year we happened to be here during their annual Harborfest, which was enhanced by our hanging out with our friends, Bill and Sando.  This time our visit accidentally coincided the same event again, but our friends had not gotten back from Nova Scotia. Maybe they can join us in New York on their drive back to North Carolina.
The festival had the same events, including the building of wooden boats, but we did not attend those events this time. The fact that it was such a busy weekend for the town, and the New York Yacht Club Cruise was in town, meant that to accommodate us, the harbormaster had to assign us to a different mooring each night, not a tremendously big problem, just a short move. She is very helpful. Here we are in the center of the picture very conveniently close to the huge dinghy dock with room for lots of dinghys.

I took a tour of the huge shipyard with a travelift capable of handling 440 TONS!  It had a 56 foot catamaran whose season ended a bit early this year: the starboard rudder and prop were all chewed up. It can happen to any of us.

The town has its one traffic light at the historic corner of High and Main Streets.

The slope of the streets is quite steep for several blocks from the waterfront. The older houses front on the street but they have multiple attachments added in the back making for long skinny houses.

Maybe a zoning or tax issue? The historical society was closed on Sunday when I tried to find out.








We talked with the mate of the Bonnie Lynn, a steel charter schooner which she and her husband had built 17 years ago. A pretty vessel with all of its sail handling lines easily seen.

An original wooden bridge across the Passagassawakeag River, which flows past the town’s north side, was replaced by a concrete railroad bridge, which is now a scenic walking bridge.

Route 1 is elevated and passes just upstream from the walking bridge.

Witty seemed to get better during the weekend, so we had cancelled the 9 a.m. appointment on Monday and decided to push on. But Sunday night he seemed to deteriorate again and Lene asked if we could cut short our cruise by a few days, to which I agreed.  The fact is that we have had rather little wind this cruise compared to our past Maine cruises and I fear that Mother Nature may be storing up her energy to whack us pretty hard on the way home. So planning a few lay days into the schedule is prudent.