August 21 & 22 — Days 44 — Benjamin River to Castine to Belfast — 16NM & 10NM

 The two passages began alike in still water, and we passed a lighthouse in each. 

Pumpkin Is. light with the green buoy in the first passage and Dice Head Light among the pines on the second.  But the wind never came up during the first passage. My one attempt to unfurl the small jib lasted only a few seconds and ended in failure. On the second passage, once we had cleared the Bagaduce River, on the north shore of which rises Castine,  we cut the engine and sailed, albeit an average speed of 1.8 knots, for about an hour and a half. 

Then the wind came up and it was a fun exciting sail most of the may in to Bellfast. We had a chance to play with the schooners each filled with paying passengers out cruising from port to port.

Here in Castine are, from left to right: State of Maine (the training ship of the Maine Maritime Academy, ILENE on mooring and one of the charter schooners. She and another, ended up docked in Belfast.

In a sense, every port town is alike, with a street along the waterfront such as Water St., Front St.,, etc., and other streets perpendicular to it going up hill away from the water. Both Castine and Belfast rise steeply from sea level. They are essentially in the NE and NW corners of Penobscot Bay. And they bring out memories of our prior visits and of Bill and Sando who we first met in Castine because they recognized ILENE as a Saga, and connected with in Belfast (and many other places) in later years. We dined with them in Castine’s fine dining restaurant which was closed on the day of this visit. Hence Thai food in a quirky corner place this time.

Last time we walked in the eastern part of town and I jokingly called Castine the town with the greatest number of wooden sign posts memorializing trivial moments in 17th Century history per capita in America. A few random examples:

But the reality is that Castine has a proud, keen and active interest in its history. This time we roamed west, toward the lighthouse in the pines, but did not get that far (it was hot) and we stopped at the free admission Wilson Museum. Wilson, with his PhD from Columbia from before WWI, was an archeologist, anthropologist and collector. He purchased and lived on the island across the Bagaduce River from Castine. The museum has a thorough explanation of the various ages of Earth’s geologic eras, artifacts from native peoples from around the world, and the history of the town, the State of Maine and the Wilson family. Quirky but an interesting 45 minutes. We stopped to mail a check at the “second oldest continually operating U.S. post office in the U.S.”

We saw the newly arrived students of the freshman class of the Maritime Academy practicing at soccer and marching.

We were at a mooring right off from the tumbledown old fashioned Eaton’s Boatyard — in the family for generations.

In Belfast, Lene tripped and fell getting from the dink to the dinghy dock and the harbor master provided an ice pack, antiseptic and bandaids. After a rest in her office for half an hour while the shock of the trauma receded, we walked up the main drag. The Old Professor’s Book Store, is still there, but under new management after the death of the professor who used the store to sell off his library. We stopped at the Belfast Co-op Market for provisions and dined at waterfront Nautilus.

I’m flanked by a pair of Ilenes and Cruiser in his favorite “one foot forward” reclining pose.