Days 59 and 60, August 15-16 -- Buck's Harbor to Rockland and Lay Day There -- 20NM

A late start, waiting for the fog to lift, and it did -- but it came back, though only a few short lengths of the 20 miles had the dangerous killer type fog, with at least 1/4 mile visibility the rest of the way.
Fog is like big puffy irregular clouds on a sunny day that the wind moves across the sky; only with fog the wind moves the clouds along at sea level.
We were underway for four hours essentially heading a variety of courses around 230-240 degrees magnetic (with lots of dodges for lobster pots, though they were absent in the early part of the trip and not nearly as numerous as in the Mt. Desert Island region). We motored the whole way and only put up the small jib part of the time. We wanted as much visibility as possible both for other boats and for lobster pots. We threaded between, but could not see due to fog, several smaller islands: Beach, Big Spruce, Little Spruce and Compass while heading down the eastern part of Penobscot Bay until we cleared the ledges off the south end of long, thin, Islesboro Island, which largely divides the eastern and western parts of the northern part of the Bay. Then we crossed the western part of the Bay to the lighthouse at the end of the 7/8 mile long breakwater that protects Rockland Bay and Harbor from most winds.

Later in the day I got an email from my navy buddy, Hugh, about his experience at Beach Island many years ago. I replied that we had sailed right past it but could not see it in the fog.
Unlike the coast of Nova Scotia, there are lots of boats out on the water here, sail, fishing, windjammer tours and ferries, and the airwaves were full of the chatter of folks trying to announce themselves to avoid problems in the fog. We blew our air-can fog horn in the bad parts and I must say that the crew does not like the noise. Alfie scrambled below.

Ned had given us the exact position of  his mooring off Jameson Point in the northeast corner of Rockland Harbor and I had placed it in the chart plotter as a waypoint. Ned and his wife Carolyn were introduced to us by their Florida neighbors, Elissa and Len, when we were in Fort Lauderdale in 2015. Elissa is Lene's HS classmate; she thought we might like to meet her sailing friends, who, she said, have a house and boat in Maine. And proving once again how small the world is, Ned is the brother of Harlemite Gene, who has befriended me at City Island. The only other time I have seen Ned and Carolyn was at the Harlem, for a memorial service after the very untimely death of Ned's nephew a couple of years ago. Ned had invited us to drop by if we were in maine. Further coincidentally, Elissa and Len are currently house guests of Ned and Carolyn here in Rockland.

Ned moved his 42 foot Jenneau, "Namaste," to an adjacent mooring to free his mooring for us.

Shown here, left to right, are the beautiful waterside condos on the bluff, one of which is Ned and Carolyn's, Namaste, the dinghy dock seen under her forestay, and the land end of the seawall.

Lene had shipped three purchases to Ned's house and they met us near the dinghy dock and gave us their car and use of their dock cart to bring those packages and the groceries we bought in Hannaford's supermarket to the dink at night. We also had dinner at a local brew pub. "Haddock Rockefeller" was innovative but sadly, not very tasty. And we saw the new movie,"Dunkirk" which had been so hyped that Lene was disappointed in the reality. Our only mistake was failure to leave a light on aboard ILENE, which made it a bit difficult to find her in the grocery laden dink on a dark (but not stormy) night. Such a light was not required by law because we are in a mooring area, but would surely have made it easier to find ILENE.
Next day we stayed aboard in the morning and cleaned. I blogged, taking advantage of good wifi signal to catch up, and Lene made a lot of reservations for moorings and docks and dinners in Belfast, South Freeport and Portland, and ordering some new rugs from L.L. Bean, to replace and augment our existing ones. We dinked ashore and walked the length of the seawall.

At the far end we mounted the lighthouse's platform and saw this wakemaker

send big waves over the seawall, which is less than a foot above sea level near the outer end at high tide, which is when we were there. The tail end of that wake is seen splashing over the breakwater in the photo above.


We saw yet another windjammer

from the platform under the lighthouse at the far end.

Next was a delicious dinner with interesting conversation at Ned and Carolyn's lovely home with Elissa and Len and a fellow resident of the condo community, a sailor, Bette, also in attendance. But my camera was out of juice so no photo of our friends, sorry.