A long time ago (last August) I wrote a post about a trip I took sailing up the coast of Maine with a friend on his 25 foot boat. At the time, I couldn't find the photos from the trip so I filled in with images I could find on the intertubes. (I reproduced the original post in the extended entry.) I recently found some of the photos and have managed to scan a few to share. I am still missing at least one roll's worth of photos. Everything form Hurricane and Monhegan Islands which is very sad. Some of the ones that I scanned I can't place specifically where they fall in the story.

I believe this photo was taken at Green Island. That's us with the blue awning rigged from a blue nylon tarp and some flexible tent poles. (click all to enlarge)

Here's a couple of shots of Jane's Will ghosting along in very light air with yours truly at the helm. These were taken as we made out way around Vinalhaven.

I'm not sure which harbor on which island this is but I would like to live there.

These next few shots were all taken in or around Pulpit Harbor. We had to check out the tourist cruise boat out of Camden that came in for the night. We got a good look at her at anchor but had a tough time keeping up with her under full sail. I don't need to say much about the sunset.

These shots were taken at our final overnight stop at Darmiscove Island. In the first you can just sort of see me down below making lunch. The building in the second shot was once a Cost Guard Rescue Station. Then there's a picture of Philip - he who owned the boat. And lastly a picture of a very young scruffy looking sailor wishing the trip wasn't going to end. Ever.

A while ago I wrote about how I came to love sailing and Ted asked for more sailing stories. And while I don't know the nature of Ted's thing for sailors, I'm more than happy to oblige. Ted, and the rest of you, will no doubt come to understand the danger in asking a sailor to tell you sailing stories.

Despite my deep love of the water and sailing I have never actually owned my own boat - yet. I have always depended on the boats of others. I guess this makes me sort of a Cato Kalin of sailing. It has worked out well. Race boats have gotten a good crew member. Friends have had someone to bring along who knows what he's doing on the boat. I get to sail.

Such was the case with my friend Philip.

Like most of the stories from my past, this one starts with a woman. I met Philip because he is the brother of my then girlfriend. Though we had broken up buy the time this trip happened.

Philip's Aunt Jane passed away. In her will she left him a little money. Philip used the money to buy a Cape Dory '25 which in her honor he named Jane's Will.

I got a call from Philip one day late in the season. After Labor Day actually. He wanted to take his boat and sail up the coast for a week, but he didn't want to do it alone. My boss was good enough to give me my week vacation with three day's notice so I signed on to go.

Saturday morning we left from the boat's mooring in the in a little summer community called Wyburg, Maine on the New Meadows River. Our destination was Boothbay Harbor.

Boothbay Harbor is the sort of place that most native Mainers avoided between Memorial Day and Labor Day. During the summer it was a tourist destination with crowds and traffic and no place to park. In the off season it was a sleepy costal town with lots of antique shops, gift shops and galleries, a couple of bars worth visiting - and parking.

$12 got us a mooring for the night. Other than the party boat that was cruising the harbor, probably full of locals celebrating a good tourist season and the fact that the tourists had gone, it was quiet and calm.

In the morning I was up just before dawn. There was no activity on shore or on the water. Everything was still. There were several hundred boats in the harbor each one was shifting in the current just enough that a halyard tapped gently against the mast. Each boat produced a slightly different tone. It was like waking up in the middle of giant wind chime.

As the sun rose higher more people began to stir both on the water and on the shore. The magic of the moment faded but the memory hasn't.

The mooring fee included use of a shower facility on shore so we took advantage of that, had a quick breakfast and headed out.

Monhegan Island

Our next destination was only a short sail away. There were three moorings at Monhegan. Two belonged to local fishing boats and the third to a tour boat that made a daily trip from Boothbay. Both of the fishing boats were out so we tied on to one of those.

There were a few houses of permanent residents on the Island, and a few decrepit looking vehicles that were probably ferried to the island in the 60’s. We actually witnessed a few of them in operation. Such mainland niceties as mufflers were long forgotten. I assumed they had breaks but didn’t think testing that theory was a good idea. There is a very nice inn, and a B&B. The main feature is the trails that around the perimeter of the island. (Note: when we visited the guest moorings in the slide show were not available, and the anchorage is not as sheltered as it appears in the photos) By the time we reached the spectacular headlands, I had decided that I wanted to live there.

Then we went back to the boat to have dinner and get some sleep. The one major draw back to visiting the isalnd the way we did is that the three available moorings at Monhegan are completely unprotected. That is they are not tucked into some little sheltered cove. They are right next to the island. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They put them there because the island offers no nice little sheltered cove.

Lying in my berth at night I could see a solitary light on shore through the cabin window. Then the light vanished and I could see the water. The light would reappear briefly before the moon became visible. Then the light. Then the water. The the light. Then the moon. Repeat endlessly.

That night on the mooring off Monhegan is the first and only time in my life that I have ever been sea sick. I spent the night in the cockpit to get some fresh air. I did not sleep. Philip slept like a baby in the forward berth. When he asked if I would rather have breakfast on shore I gave him one of those looks that answers forcefully and with just a hint of an insult to the questioner. So we went to the B+B on the island.

Our next port of call was Matinicus Island. A small fishing village which thankfully had a sheltered harbor. I slept most of the way there having gotten little or no sleep the night before. Philip was good enough to only wake me if he needed to tack or use the head. There were moorings available in the harbor for boats sailing the coast, but judging from the roaring engines and large wakes kicked up by the fisherman leaving in the very early morning, late season boaters might not have been all that welcome.

There really wasn’t much on Matinicus. A dirt air strip. A dozen houses and a church. It seemed to follow the same automotive traditions as Monhegan. But it was beautiful. There was also a little B+B called the Tuck-A-Nuck Lodge. Run by a rather odd little man, it was in the geographic center of the island. Precisely in the only spot on the island where you couldn't see the water.

Outward Bound.

After a peaceful night at Matinicus we set sail for Vinalhaven Island. A large island off Rockport complete with a town and a grocery store. This was a densly populated place in comparison to our previous stops, and seemed to have much higher automotive standards. This was a planned stop because there is not an over abundance of storage on a 25' Cape Dory. We needed food and ice.

We put up for the night in a small cove on nearby Green Island with a dozen other boats anchored for the night. This was the first night we had to rig up the canopy that Philip created for the cockpit. A standard issue hardware store blue tarp and some flexible tent poles. I had actually spent a good part of the first leg of sailing, to Boothbay, sewing channels in the tarp to hold the poles. It worked well in a light rain and few of the other boaters came over to look at the design.

The next day we spent at Hurricane Island, the Maine home of Outward Bound. We tied up to an empty mooring and checked in with the office to see if we could explore. They gave us almost free reign of the island but asked that we keep to the trails. They told us to stay off the rock climbing and ropes courses. The island was spectacular with a network of well maintained trails. It re-confirmed my resolve to live on a remote island.

We got back to the dock just as a group of Outward Bounders arrived back from running the island. They turned on the outdoor (unheated) shower and were gracious enough to allow us to use some water and some of the dish soap they had on hand.

After the shower everyone lined up on the dock - and again we were invited to join. The ritual was to step up to the edge of the dock shout out your favorite food an jump into the water eight feet or so bellow. I don’t remember what food I yelled; probably something impressive like "PIZZA." I was young then. I do recall that when I got back on the dock I got a stern lecture from the person in charge. She did not approve of my choice of diving head first into unknown waters. The literal application of one of life's great metaphores.

We spent the night in the calm of the outward bound cove to be woken by the beginnings of the Outward Bound day. They get started very early. So we had breakfast and set out to sail around VynalHaven Island to the next night’s stop in Pulpit Harbor.

There was not a lot of wind that day so the sailing was rather easy. Philip took the dingy and motored off to explore the shoreline while I ghosted along. (He got a couple of nice pictures of the boat with me at the tiller desperately trying to keep it moving forward. If only I could find them)

Pulpit Harbor was yet another beautiful stop that gets its name from the uniquely shaped rock that dominates the harbor's entrance. It was also quite a popular stop. There were over 50 boats at anchor that night.

There was one that stood out for it's sheer size and the large Union Jack flying from her stern. We of course took the dingy over to get a closer look at Esprit. To give you hint of the scale and style While we were passing they had open a large hatch and in the stern of the boat they had a small car. I would have figured that if you could afford a sailboat of at least 100 feet you could probably afford to rent a car where ever you went, but I could be wrong.

We got under way early the next morning as we were now on the way home. This part of the trip was less about seeing things than about getting as far down the coast as possible. We were heading for George Head Island. Not much to tell about it except that there was some sort of fish farm there. We arrived and set anchor at dusk. Ate and went to bed.

The wind was up the next day which made for a lively reach toward our final overnight stop at Damriscove Island off Boothbay Harbor. I was on galley duty for lunch and I don’t think I had a more difficult time making a PB&J.

Not much of an island just a little spit of land in the ocean with a lighthouse. Incredibly Beautiful. But unlike our previous Island stay off Boothbay it did provide a sheltered anchorage. It was a very narrow cut into the island that just held the half a dozen boats that pulled in. We had to pull anchor once when someone with knowledge of the place told us that we would likely find ourselves high and dry come low tide.

Our final destination was an easy sail in the forecast conditions so we lingered over breakfast and were rewarded for or sloth.

There was a 40 footer in the cove for the night with two families on board. My guess is that the men on board were brothers. They pulled up their anchor and one of the brothers was at the helm the other was in the bow peering into the water looking for rocks. At one point he began to softly wave to port. The brother driving apparently didn't see any urgency in the gesture. As they were really going too fast for the situation they hit the rock hard.



There was an audible crash and the stern rose about 3 feet out of the water. I don't know how the forward brother managed to stay on the boat. No one was hurt and apparently the boat wasn't damage to the point of taking on water. They backed off the rock and continued on their way. Through the binoculars I could see the brothers continue to shout at each other long after I could no longer hear them.

Our own trip home was uneventful and without shouting.

I would do it again in a heartbeat, though I think maybe we need a bigger boat.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 03:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment