Days 62-63 , August 18-19 -- Islesboro to Belfast and Lay Day There -- 9 NM

An all-motoring day, with zero wind. With steady 2000 rpms on the engine, our speed varied between  5.8 and 6.6 over the bottom. It varied because (A) various streams of water entered the Bay, (B) we got closer and further from the shore and (C) the tide changed.
We fueled and watered and were assigned mooring number two, right off the fuel dock, the closest to town by the friendly harbormaster, Kathy, who has held the same position for many years and celebrated her daughter's wedding the week before. In the afternoon I did a lot of charting -- the distances between each of the places we might want to put in between now and Friday, September 1, in Portland. It includes some new ports for us and some familiar ones. It includes our time with our niece, Yael, visiting from Israel. We are looking forward to exposing her to the cruising life in Casco Bay, ending in Portland. The challenge is that she keeps strictly kosher. But she has told us that we are more worried about her food than she is.
The rain did come in the afternoon and evening -- steady and slow, but we went in, showered, and met Bill and Sandy for a long leisurely dinner at Delvino, very Italian in its food and wine. I liked the food but Lene had problems with the pasta and Bill with the service. They plan to leave their trawler, Lucille, with inside heated storage this winter in Belfast's huge Front Street Shipyard. No need to drive Lucille back and forth to Oriental, NC. Instead, her summer cruise will be between Belfast and Shelburne Nova Scotia. An expensive, but alternative way, leaving more time to live aboard. Their car is here in Belfast for them to drive to N.C. One potential positive side effect is that we might hope that they will put in to NYC on the long car ride and let us show them around. We had breakfast with them at the local breakfast place and visited "Lucille",which is a Defever, not a Nordhaven, as previously misreported, the day we left.

By chance our visit coincided with Belfast's Tenth Annual Harborfest, a three day celebration of many things nautical.

Our boat is moored about fifty feet from Buoy Red Nun 6, in the heart of the harbor. Before we were dressed the committee boat, a trawler, was tied to "our buoy" barking instructions into a loudspeaker for the rowing challenge: two heats with three boats in each heat, manned, or in one case, womaned, by six or eight oar weilders. The starting line was our buoy and away they thrashed, way down the harbor and back.

Belfast has a well organized farmers market, indoors, every Saturday, at which we got some food.
Then it was the annual wooden boat contest. About eight teams of two people each were given the plans for a wooden rowboat to be identical to each other, about ten to twelve feet long, plus a stack of boards and a fenced off rectangle of workspace under a big white tent.

Some of them had clearly done this before.

Each team brought a variety of power tools  and fast setting marine grade glue. Within two hours they had constructed their boats, with the winner to be selected on the basis of three factors: speed of construction, quality of construction, and how well they did in the afternoon's race.
Next was a tour of Front Street Shipyard, actually a talk and questions to a man carrying the control panel for the mammoth travel lifts: "largest this side of Rhode Island."

I stayed around after and looked in on the long term boat projects underway in the yard.
















This boat, seen in the background of the adjacent photo, has a fifteen foot draft.

The 134 foot steel brigantine "Corwith Cramer" was built in 1957 as a school ship. She was in (and I do mean in) for a four month overhaul.

Her masts are very long.

The wheels of the travel lift are really big -- all 16 of them. need to be to lift 880,000 pounds!

In the afternoon Lene and I walked the mile to the local supermarket and bought another $150 in groceries, with prices a lot lower than in New York. Bill had offered to pick us up for the ride back in his car but we decided to take a cab. Except the cab company said he would be with us in about 90 minutes; Belfast is not like New York. At home there is a cab on every corner (except when it rains). But a gentleman named Skip, whose wife passed about twelve years ago, leaving him with their now older dog, stepped up. He used to help on deliveries of Hinkleys. Lene won the better seat though -- in the back with the cute little old dog, Abby. I tried to give Skip $10 for his gas which would also have been less than the price of the cab, but his refusal, while pleasant, was adamant.

Not that much has changed here since the only other time we sailed here, back in 2009. "The Old Professor" used book store is still in business though the professor in question has had to replenish his stock after his original purpose of disposing of his personal library had been completed. A very fine selection of good new and used books. Nearby is a store selling new books, at which David McCullough was signing copies of his latest book. Maine continues its tradition of being well served by independent book stores.