Portland At Last

Portland, Maine
N 43 38.940 W 070 14.670

Previous times that we were in Maine, we always skipped Portland. Not so this time. We're on a mooring here, and we leave to take Nick to Vermont tomorrow morning.

We spent last night on Jewel Island. It's a bad pun but Jewel is a jewel. It is an unimproved Maine State Park, and it's great. See the panorama below of the little bay we're anchored in.



Nick and I set out in the dinghy to capture a mussel dinner. No such luck. There are no mussels on Jewel, not even any shells of dead mussels. I wonder why so many in Penobscot Bay but none here in Casco Bay?

This morning we saw an abrupt transition. We went from the natural isolation at Jewel Island to the commercial shipping harbor in downtown Portland. This is the first city we've seen since New Bedfort, or Washington DC.


Readers: don't expect any new blogs until next Monday.

Deep Sea Fishing

Boothbay Harbor
No LL

Today was deep sea fishing day for Nick and I. We set out at 0800 aboard the charter vessel Blackbeard. Captain Don Stevens was in charge. The weather was foggy, but the visibility was improving by the minute as we left.

Nick and I and two other anglers looked forward to a fish dinner. Captain Don announced that our day's goal would be bluefish. Fine.

We stopped along the way by an island where we all fished for mackerel to use as bait. Nick caught seven, and I caught one. Soon we had enough and Blackbeard moved on.

Racing ahead to the punch line. The boat's net catch for this morning was one lobster (Nick's) and one sea gull (mine) but zero blue fish. There were several strikes but none landed. One blue hit Nick's bait and bit off the line. I cast out my bait one time and a gull dove down and caught the bait mid air. I had a tug of war with the gull to get my bait back.

Oh well, it goes with fishing. Some days, they just don't bite.

I have another theory. I'm a jinx. As we fished today, I tallied all the fish I ever caught in my life. I caught a guppy when I was four years old. I caught a pickerel on Lake Champlain fishing with Libby's father. I caught two catfish in Florida. That's it. After hundreds of attempts at fishing in my life, I only caught four meager fish. It was me who jinxed the luck of the whole Blackbeard boat. Sorry Nick, you should have left your granddad behind.

Below are some shots of our outing to High Island and skinny dipping in the quarry pool. In the middle is a particularly beautiful sloop sailing single handed with five sails up. At the bottom are shots from today's fishing trip.



p.s. At first I thought that 100% of all lobster boats were right-handed. I thought it might be a tradition. Not true. This month we spotted three left-handed ones. The photo below shows one.


One more shot. A sunset in Rockland harbor that turned out great.

A Boothbay Story

Boothbay Harbor
No LL

On the way in to Boothbay Harbor is Newagen Point. On our honeymoon in 1966, Libby and I came to Boothbay pulling a little caravan camping trailer smaller than the car. We drove out to Newagen Point and we saw the huge, lovely and historic looking Newagen Inn. We decided to splurge on our meager resources and spend a night att the inn rather than in the trailer.

When we checked in they asked us, "American continental plan?" I didn't know what that meant. I still don't know. Anyhow, I chose the least expensive option. We started feeling uneasy though because the inn appeared to be the place for rich people, not newlywed paupers like us.

For some strange reason that I never found out, Libby and I appeared to be the only guests in this huge resort. It was July, hardly off season. Anyhow, in the morning, we came down for breakfast. In my memory, which may be larger than life, we came to an enormous room with tables set for 1,000 people and with 100 uniformed wait staff standing stiffly at attention, white linen towels draped over their forearms. Libby and I were the only guests. We felt extremely self conscious and under dressed.

The waiter came to take our order, but he asked for our room number. We gave it to him. We returned a minute later saying, "I'm sorry but your plan does not provide breakfast, you'll have to leave." We asked if we couldn't pay cash for breakfast. "I'm terribly sorry, no," was the answer. Oh dear. With tails between our legs and with our cheeks burning, we had to march out of the room, unfed, past those 100 staff people staring at us. The humiliation was complete.

That night we cooked our own lobster banquet over a can of Sterno in the tight quarters of our little trailer. There, we felt like king and queen. Our experience at the Newagen Inn was life changing. Ever since, we like things plain, simple and blue collar. We would choose Motel 6 over the Ritz Careton any day. We prefer eating in a neighborhood diner than the fanciest restaurant.

Puffins Not Home

Boothbay Harbor, Maine
No LL

Yesterday was another one of those beautiful days. Halfway between Dix Island and Boothbay, is Eastern Egg Rock. That rock is one of the places where puffin populations have been restored.

We detoured a few miles to Eastern Egg Rock. We circled the island close in. We saw lots of birds, but alas, no puffins. Perhaps they weren't home that day.

From Inaction to Action

Penobscot Bay
No LL

Just after posting my blog yesterday complaining that we couldn't get radar repair help from Furuno, the Furuno technician called. Hooray. We made arrangements to meet at the public landing in Rockland. We sprang in to action. Hastily, we weighed anchor and set out fo the landing. Too hastily. It seems that there was a lobster pot directly under the boat when we first started the engine. Sure enough, it wrapped around the propeller. It didn't wrap tightly enough to stop the engine. We were
still able to motor in to the landing. When we got there, Nick volunteered to go swimming and to get the rope fragments away from the shaft. Thank you Nick.

The Furuno guy came. It took him only minutes to discover the problem. There was a screw-in cable connector in the back of the unit that wasn't screwed in tight. Oh no. All those months for such a simple problem! To diagnose the problem I have been up and down the mast twice, I disassembled and reassembled the cable wire terminations at the base of the mast three times, but never once did I check the cables at the back of the display unit. Oh well, the dunce hat for me today. Anyhow, it's
fixed and I'm glad even if a little embarrassed.

We left Rockland immediately and headed for another semi-wilderness place at Dix Island. We discovered that our coastal navigation skills are really rusty without the aid of our Lowrance GPS chart plotter. Our skills are fine for navigating 5 mile or more from shore, but here in the archipelago with numerous shoals and rock hazards everywhere, we need *precision* navigation. Libby drove while I constantly checked the charts, and our bearings to marks and our lat-lon from our hand held GPS. We
did OK. Oh well, the practice will be good for us.

While Libby made dinner, Nick and I hopped in to the dinghy and went over to nearby High Island. We landed near a pier made of massive rectangular granite blocks. High Island had been used as a granite quarry. The pier was granite, the foundations and cellars of building ruins were granite, a road leading inland was granite, every bit of infrastructure on that island was granite. It makes extreme sense doesn't it?

After a short hike inland, we found the quarry. It was a very deep pit, and it was filled with fresh water. I tried the water. It was fresh and it was plenty warm enough for a nice swim. I went skinny dipping in the pool while Nick did a little rock climbing. Nick took a picture of me swimming from 200 feet above. I'll post it if it turns out good. The little side trip was fun.

This morning, we are en route to Boothbay Harbor. It is 25 miles as the crow flies and 50 miles by water. We'll try to stop along the way at Eastern Egg Rock where we may be able to see puffins. Winds are SW at 5, sunny and temperatures expected to hit 80F(27C). We'll have to do half the trip by motor and hopefully the other half under sail.

We also have a plan for the coming week. We'll try to find a deep sea fishing excursion in Boothbay, and we'll also receive mail and Lowrance parts. Then we'll leave for Portland, ME. I reserved a car to pick up in Portland Friday to return on Monday. We'll drive Nick to Vermont, then we'll drive to Albany NY to visit my sister Marilyn, then return to Portland. I was very proud of my Internet skills on the car rental. First, I discovered that cars cost $115/day in Rockland, or $70/day in
Portsmouth, NH, but only $59/day in Portland. Then, I searched the web for Avis coupon codes. I found a page listing 20 or more codes. I tried one code after another that didn't work. Then, I tried one more time. PRESTO; the price dropped to $33/day. What an enormous difference -- $115 to $33!