Aug 19. — Day 42 — Northeast Harbor to Frenchboro, Long Island — 12NM

 We slipped our lines at noon for the 3.5 hour passage to one of my favorites, but it was a tough and dangerous passage. I should have paid more attention to the wind speed and direction instead of blogging. The wind was at 17 knots true, on our nose, requiring tacking out through The Western Way, which is the N-S Avenue out of the south side of the Mount Desert Island archipelago. Yes, Long Island is south, but actually it is SSW, where the wind was coming from. Also, I had failed to put in a reef. Flying by the seat of one’s pants is dangerous. We got out past the reefs at both sides of the Western Way and a couple of miles more and then we hit a lobster pot float. Our speed slowed from six knots to two, gradually, as we towed a crate along the bottom.  I had to act fast lest we get dragged across another of the ubiquitous lobster pot floats. We furled the jib and then dropped the main. But the second of those two moves should be gone while facing into the wind. In this case with the stern anchor provided by the crate, our stern was facing the wind. It was a struggle to pull down the sail while standing on the coach roof in ocean swells maxing at six feet in hight. Then the plan, risky, was to try the Yanmar, but if the lobster rope is caught on the prop, this could damage the prop and the hull and choke off the engine. The alternative of donning wet suit, lowering the dink so I could get back in, tying a line around my waist and jumping in with knife to cut the rope was not appealing. I imagined getting a concussion when ILENE came off a high wave and crushed me as it fell the five feet. So the acid test: put the boat in forward and let’s see what happens. (Fortunately we were far away from reefs as we drifted.) Well we started moving forward and then immediately made two 360 degree turns, a figure eight as it were. And we were free at last, and motored with high rpm’s but slowly because our speed was broken by the waves and wind on our bow, the last five miles to Frenchboro. During those miles a super vigilance against lobster pot floats was maintained. The height and force of the seas dragged the floats temporarily under water. And we listened for the bilge pump. It comes on for a half a second every two minutes even when the bilge is dry to test that condition. If more regularly, or for longer duration it would mean a hole in the bottom through which water was rushing.  No pictures of the excitement.

Once on a mooring in Frenchboro, the day brightened markedly. We walked to the library which has resumed its former practice of remaining open 24/7 on the honor system (they trust us not to steal stuff) with good Wi-Fi. I got the prior posts posted.

We had lobsters with butter, lemon, cole slaw and corn on the cob at Lunt’s Deli.  ($35) I had a hankering for a slice of their homemade blueberry pie made with the small local blueberries, but I was full. Here is Davida, our chef, bringing  our lobsters up from the sea, ILENE’s hull visible at the top.

Their shells were rust colored, not bright pink; very rare.
Next: our dinghy at the dock, ILENE at the far left and the tall mountains of Mount Desert Island in the background to the right.

The night was the least calm of those we have experienced so far on this cruise. A bit of the big waves crept in and rocked us a bit because we were moored north the the ”L” in “Lunt’s Harbor” on this hand painted billboard map of the island.