Category: Down East Circle 2019

A clear and beautiful day turned into a gray and dreary day, but the wind was light and the waves were acceptable.  The only impediment to a great day of cruising was the obstacle course.

Seriously.  Imagine starting a nice drive from Phoenix to Sedona, only to discover that someone dropped ten thousand tire-popping spikes of different sizes and colors—including camouflage if that’s a color—all over Interstate 17.   Cause that’s what today was like.  Oh for the days of crab pots.  We’ll never again moan about crab pots.  Crab pot floats are to lobster pot floats as Twiggy is to a bus full of Mama Cass lookalikes.  Grrrrr.*

We also saw a cool sailboat.

Actually we saw three of them.  And a couple of lighthouses.  Then we docked in Rockland, ate a delicious dinner, talked to our neighbors about Looping, took long hot showers, put on pajamas, and settled in for Monday Night Football (Doug and Oscar) and a book (Dana).  Life still is good.

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* In the context of all that’s wrong in the world, we understand that lobster traps are not a significant problem.  That’s particularly true since the output of lobster traps is, well, lobster.  So enough complaining.  At least publicly.  To a near certainty there’ll be a lot more complaining in the privacy of the pilothouse until we leave lobster country.

Bummer to leave Rockland yesterday morning, because Rockland has a surprising amount of good stuff we didn’t get to explore.  Like the Maine Lighthouse Museum and a bunch of world-famous artsy places.   We also missed the Maine Lobster Festival by a couple of weeks.  Oh well, on to Boothbay Harbor.

Yesterday was a fine day, mostly because we decided to embrace the lobster pots and just enjoy the beautiful Maine scenery.  We took the inland route past hills and islands and lighthouses.

While underway we caught up to Cygnus, a Kadey-Krogan we met in Rockland.  Mr. Cygnus sent us a photo as we slid by.  That’s a damn fine boat right there.

Boothbay Harbor is a bit of a tourist town itself, probably because it has boats and lobsters and that quintessentially-picturesque Maine look.

The American Constitution—which apparently is classified as a “coastal cruise ship”—sat anchored out in the harbor, frankly looking kind of abandoned.  Doug flew the drone over for a closer look.

Two obvious questions though.  First, where are the lifeboats?  If they only cruise along the coast maybe they just expect everybody to swim for safety if the ship goes down, but somehow that doesn’t seem right.  What about the old people like us?  Second, who decided to install a putting green on a surface that pitches and rolls?  Probably the same genius who found lifeboats superfluous.  There’s even a berm around the green to keep balls from falling off.  Ridiculous.

Right now we’re tucked into a tidy quiet corner away from the masses.  The only boat around is Wren, a little Grand Banks that also seems abandoned but probably isn’t.

After a recommendation from the owner of a sister 43—Miss Elly—we changed our plans.  Tomorrow we’ll head to Dolphin Marina in Harpswell rather than Portland.

One thing you’ve got to give Maine, and that’s a bunch of cool islands.  With cool names.  Like The Cuckolds.

There’s got to be a good back story to that one.  The Coast Guard shut down the lighthouse on Cuckold Island and then auctioned the whole mess.  Some dude bought it and turned it into an inn, which he cleverly calls “Inn at Cuckolds Lighthouse.”

The place looks to be closed and the website’s down, however, so maybe it wasn’t as awesome as it sounds.

By contrast, the Seguin Light isn’t an inn.  It’s a museum.  This lighthouse is Maine’s highest, and having been established in 1795 it’s also Maine’s second oldest.

We also passed by the Sugarloaf Islands, Buttonmold Ledge, Spoonbowl Ledge, The Hypocrites, The Sisters, Brown Cow Island, and Bold Dick Rock.  Yup, we’d like to hang out with the dude who named these places.  Unless he’s also responsible for Bald Head Cove, of course, because that one frankly is a bit mean-spirited.

There’re surprisingly few trawlers up this way, but plenty of lobster boats and sailboats.  Today we saw a guy who couldn’t decide between the two.  Bizarre.

Just before turning up into Merriconeag Sound, we heard a sound.  It sounded exactly like we imagine spooling up a lobster pot into the hull might sound.  Long story made short, we backed up, then slowly pushed up to Dolphin Marina.  Then we paid Jerry to get in the 54° water, supervised by Mickey the black lab.

We indeed snagged something on the rudder, although it was a poor excuse for a lobster pot float.  The actual trap may have banged our bottom but thankfully did no damage.

This place turns out to be way cool.  It’s a family-run operation going back several generations, but it’s first-class all the way.  we missed the busy season, which was just fine with us.

Tomorrow we’re off to Kennebunkport.  Since Dana also is from Texas, maybe the Bushes will invite us over to the compound.

Supposedly Dolphin Restaurant delivers fresh muffins to the boats every morning.  Every morning, that is, except this morning.  No muffins, but we loved the place anyway even though it only was a one-night stand.

We left under brilliant blue skies and light wind, just as we like it.  We’re getting away from the sheltering islands now, which means more waves and less scenery.  Mostly it’s just Atlantic Ocean, but at least there’re fewer lobster pots.

Fewer lobster pots, but more upside-down picnic tables.  Okay we only saw one upside-down picnic table, but it was some 2 miles offshore where we’d sink about 300 feet if we hit it.  Hopefully it’ll wash up on a distant shore where someone can dry it out and use it for life-saving firewood or a driftwood sculpture or something.

A bit further we came upon a nun-shaped red navigational buoy.  Meh.  We’ve seen a zillion red buoys.  Wait a second.  This one’s not red.  It’s white and orange.

We’ve never seen one of these before, because we’ve never been past a “Presidential Security Zone” before.  And frankly we don’t understand this Presidential Security Zone.  The point apparently is to protect Walker’s Point and the Bush family compound.

We get that this is an important place.  Heads of State visited here.  And with the exception of Presidents who die in office, or are impeached, or who should be impeached or die in office, protecting them and their families is a good idea.  But look at that shoreline.  All rocks.  Too shallow for submarines.  It’s quite unclear what threat is being deterred here, and we didn’t see anyone patrolling the area.  We theorize the Bushes just don’t want to see a sea of lobster pot floats when they look out their windows.

We dutifully avoided the area anyway and went on up the Kennebunk River to Chicks Marina.  Kennebunkport is another cool Maine town.  Plus Kennebunk is another fun word to say.

Yes Doug flew the drone, and yes he wanted to fly over the Bush place but chickened out.

We’re going to explore the town more tomorrow.

Another state in our wake.  Maybe the most amazing thing is that we made it from Southwest Harbor to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, without stooping to the obvious puns.  As in “Lobster floats are a Maine in the butt” and such.

Last night we had quite the treat when Paul and Kathy—owners of Miss Elly—picked us up for a delicious dinner.  Big fun and we hope to see them again in New Bern.

We’d planned to stay one more night in Kennebunkport but decided this morning to head on out.  Mostly it was just a straight shot down the coast, past Cape Neddick Nubble and the Nubble Light.

We’ve seen hundreds of lighthouses, but none with a better name.  It’s such a cool lighthouse that in 1977 NASA sent a digitized photo of it into space aboard Voyager II as part of an informational package intended to educate any extraterrestrials who happened to intercept it.  True story.

We docked at Wentworth By The Sea, but failed to take a photo of the iconic hotel that was built in 1874.  We did, however, get one of the Portsmouth house—built in 1758—where Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones lived for a while before he started jamming with Jimmy Page and the other boys from Led Zeppelin.

Portsmouth definitely is a town worth a few days.  Maybe we’ll come back but it’s a good travel day tomorrow.