Home Harbor, Thoughts on Anchoring

Owls Head Light at the north end of Owls Head Bay

From Rockland Harbor we headed south on August 25 through scenic Owls Head Bay, with its prominently perched lighthouse, to the top end of Muscle Ridge Channel. The channel tide would once again have been against us, so we took advantage of a light southeast wind to unfurl our sails and head northeast through Fishermans Passage. (We were determined to do more sailing than motoring, if possible, on this return leg of our coastal cruise.) Once clear of Crescent Island and some shoals, we tacked south, then northeast, and finally south again, straight toward the narrow entrance to Home Harbor at the south end of the Muscle Ridge islands. Home Harbor is well protected and quiet, a lovely bay surrounded by bird-perch rocks and bouldery islands. It seems infrequently visited, which suits us, and it's conveniently located on our way back toward Muscongus Bay to the west. We anchored and relaxed a bit in the cockpit. A few homes were visible on each island, and a dinghy and a small powerboat sat on nearby moorings, but for now, we were the only sailboat.

GPS track through Owls Head Bay (top), then tacking into
SE wind almost all the way to Home Harbor (bottom)

Before dinner, we climbed into the dinghy to explore the harbor and look for birds (and mushrooms, according to the photographs downloaded from Sue's camera). We went ashore on a small beach and wandered the shoreline and into the woods. The most common land bird by far was red-breasted nuthatch (we counted 35), but we also had great looks at a hard-to-see winter wren and a fledgling slate-colored junco being fed by its parent in a juniper bush. We were treated to an aerial contest between an adult bald eagle and an osprey: although larger and less agile, the eagle managed to get the osprey to drop its fish, which the eagle then snatched from the air and carried off. A resident merlin gave a great show chasing a shorebird (possibly a dowitcher) in dizzying zigags around the bay before finally giving up. Merlins are fast fliers, but the shorebird out-dodged it. Later that evening, we watched the merlin – or a merlin – go after a belted kingfisher. That would have been quite a catch for the small falcon. We lost sight of both of them in the gathering dusk, but the next morning, Curtis heard a familiar rattling call and said, “Ahh, the kingfisher lives to fish another day.” We also wished the merlin luck. It's tough business being a raptor.

Curtis birding in Home Harbor

Sue birding in Home Harbor

Fern forest

Yellow amanita?

Our Muir Hercules 1200 windlass

Spare 45-lb CQR anchor on port bow (foreground); working
35-lb CQR on starboard bow (background)

 A second sailboat entered Home Harbor just as we headed back to Cilantro, and we had the opportunity to watch them anchor. Sue admits that before taking some sailing classes and reading books about cruising, she really knew nothing about anchoring. She had only sailed small boats – who needs an anchor on a Sunfish? – and thought an anchor was just a heavy metal object you tied rope or chain to and threw over the side of the boat. Ground tackle? Scope? Holding power? Chain versus rope rode? Plow versus claw versus Danforth type? Electric or manual windlass? These were all concepts to learn and put into play. Cilantro has a Muir Hercules 1200 manual windlass, and we use a 35-pound CQR anchor as our primary anchor, with 30 feet of chain and 175 feet of nylon rode. A 45-pound CQR also came with the boat, but we don't have it set up to use. We store a back-up 25-pound Danforth with a mix of chain and nylon rode in a locker at the stern. All of this is probably adequate for our coastal Maine cruising, given the good holding and relatively shallow anchorages, but we are seriously considering switching to all-chain rode and, because this will be too much weight to lift manually, an electric windlass for the Sea of Cortez, where depths may be greater and the anchorages are not always well described.

View from above of both anchors on bow

We've watched quite a few boat crews set their anchors this week, and it's been a good way to see different methods and compare them with our own developing repertoire of skills. We've seen crews with windlasses and crews who lower and lift the anchor by hand or with the help of a winch. We've watched crews who bring their boat to a controlled stop into the wind, use an electric windlass to lower their anchor and all-chain rode in a straight line while backing down, reverse to set the anchor firmly, and finally rig a snubber line to take the weight of the chain off the bow roller and windlass. We've seen other crews power up to a spot, heave the anchor over the side (or drop it all at once from the windlass), then throw the engine into reverse and back down quickly and hard. Still others toss the anchor out while still moving forward – which seemed to us to be a less dependable method, since the anchor could start to set in the wrong direction and then be broken out or the rode could tangle on top of it as the boat drifts back downwind.

Patience seems to be an important factor in anchoring. Bill Creighton of Toda says he likes to let out some scope and wait, wait, wait while the boat drifts downwind, then let out more scope and pull it back in, helping the anchor to dig deeper. He might do this more than once. When he finally puts the engine into reverse, he likes to pull hard enough to feel anchor just start to move, then he waits some more. Nigel Calder (the former owner of Toda, when she was called Nada) recommends patience after anchoring as well. Before he is willing to load everyone into the dinghy for a trip ashore, he takes some bearings and then drinks a cup of tea, keeping an eye on the boat, the wind, the current, and the general environment for any potential hazards.

Curtis working our Hercules 1200 manual windlass

Especially in crowded anchorages, we've noticed that many cruisers in Maine anchor on very short scope, 3:1 or even 2:1, even though all the books we read before coming here advise 7:1 as ideal and 4:1 or 5:1 as adequate. We still prefer using more than 3:1 scope when we can, however, so we try to position ourselves in an anchorage accordingly. We've seen all kinds of approaches to anchoring on our short stint here in Maine, however – short scope, quick stop and quicker reverse, forward-moving anchoring, and throw it all over at once – and it has all seemed to work out OK for folks. We feel very fortunate to be getting our first anchoring practice in coastal Maine, where there are many recommended anchorages, the depths are well charted and fairly shallow, and the holding is generally good, usually a grayish mud. Weather and wind conditions during our cruising have also been benign. We've picked up and re-anchored a few times – twice in Dix Island, to reduce our exposure to current and to avoid swinging over lobster pots, and once in Seal Bay to put more distance between us and a neighboring boat – but it's all been character-building, especially for Curtis, who does most of the cranking.

Curtis using the washdown pump to spray
mud off the anchor as it comes up

Rockland Harbor: Going Shoreside for a Day

Friday morning, August 24, we prepared to leave early from the Barred Islands, although we were sorely tempted to stay the morning and dinghy over to Butter Island (owned by the Cabot family) for a hike. We wanted to catch the ebbing tidal current toward Rockland, however, and we hadn't been very lucky or smart about currents so far – except for Eggemoggin Reach! We had some boat business to take care of in Rockland, and we needed to fill our water tanks. We'd been out for eight days and didn't know how much of our 85 gallons of fresh water was left. We also wanted to re-provision with fresh produce and bread. It's not easy being big salad eaters on a boat – Curtis was turning to V-8 for his vegetable fix – and without sandwich bread, Sue resorted to spreading her peanut butter on sourdough pretzel knobs for lunch. “These are pretty good,” she mumbled stickily. (Of course, Sue could be baking her own bread onboard, but she's still pre-preparing for it.)

Sailing by 7:25 a.m. on a light north wind

We motored out of the Barred Islands anchorage by 6:55 a.m., and Sue insisted on sailing by 7:25 (our earliest sail yet) in the north wind that was riffling the water. It worked pretty well, and we sailed several miles along the north shore of North Haven, past Pulpit Harbor, and part of the way across west Penobscot Bay. Eventually, however, the wind became light and fluky enough that we motored the last couple of miles into Rockland Harbor. (Charging the batteries, we tell ourselves. Curtis admits to being surprised at the amount of motoring we have ended up doing during this week of cruising.)

Our GPS track from the Barred Islands north of the Fox
Islands and into Rockland Harbor

The lighthouse on Rockland Harbor Breakwater

Approach to Journey's End Marina

Rockland Harbor is easy to enter, with good protection from a long breakwater with a lighthouse at its tip. There is a large U.S. Coast Guard facility here, along with numerous private and rental moorings and a generous anchorage. We brought Cilantro in to the dock at Journey's End Marina, where we filled our water tanks, bought diesel, did laundry, took shoreside showers for 25 cents a minute, and rented a mooring for the night. It would have been just as easy to anchor out in the harbor, but we didn't mind giving them some business. Being at the dock also made it easy for Curtis to have Doug Pope of Pope Sails come down and take measurements to quote on a new Sunbrella cover for our genoa and a new high-cut Yankee headsail. After spending an entire week removed from the world of commerce, it took only minutes to careen back into spending mode.

Doug Pope of Pope Sails measures our genoa
for a new Sunbrella cover.

Dinner at the Lobstermans Restaurant

We walked over to Rockland's main drag on Route 1 for an early dinner at the casual Lobstermans Restaurant and then continued another mile or mile-and-a-half to a big Hannaford's Market for groceries. “Don't buy too much!” we kept reminding each other, since it's easy to forget you haven't come by car, and we don't have a cart yet for toting things back to the boat. As it was, our arms – or was it our elbows? the body is such a fickle machine – fairly ached from carrying our bags of fruit, vegetables, bread, and dairy products back to the boat. And although we enjoyed our brief visit to the mainland, we were just as happy to bid it good night, climb back into our floating home, and head out to the mooring field.

The next morning (August 25), we motored out of Rockland Harbor past two of Maine's famous "windjammers," or schooners, on their way in. Their sails were furled, and they were being pushed along by their motorized dinghies. These beautiful sailing-only boats occupy an important niche in the state's history. Many were originally built as fishing schooners, oyster dredgers, or freighters to carry granite and other products to southern ports, but by the 1930s, their commercial viability and profitability had declined to the point that most were retired, converted to power, or allowed to disintegrate at their moorings. Enterprising captains, however, began restoring and using the classic boats for fishing charters and passenger tours. Today there are more than 20 windjammers afloat along the Maine coast, some restored and others newly built. There are published "field guides" that help you identify the different ships by color, sail and mast arrangements, and hull shape. Most of the windjammers sail from Rockport, Camden, or Boothbay Harbor, but we saw several in Rockland Harbor while we were there. They continue to be sail-driven only, piloted by expert captains who can articulate the many sails to steer the elegant ships throughout Penobscot Bay and other regions of the Maine coast.  

Windjammer entering Rockland Harbor

The Isaac H. Evans, designated a National Historic
Landmark

Eggemoggin Reach and GOB

Ever since Cilantro was launched, we've talked about doing man-overboard (MOB) or crew-overboard (COB) drills, using a boat cushion or other floatable, so that we'll be prepared for a true emergency. But of course, we haven't done any. Until August 23, that is: while sailing up wonderful Eggemoggin Reach, we had the perfect opportunity to practice our GOB – gear overboard – technique.

Curtis had been reading in the cruising guide about Eggemoggin Reach – a 10-mile long, 1-mile wide passage between Jericho Bay at the southeast end and the top of Penobscot Bay at the northwest end. (It's called a Reach because you can sail its entire length on a reach in the prevailing southwesterly winds.) He had also been keeping an eye on the forecast wind directions and schooling himself in Maine tidal currents, which, depending on when and where you are trying to go, can be a tremendous help or a tremendous hindrance. After our experience fighting an ebbing tide into Blue Hill Bay, August 23 looked to offer the right confluence of factors: southwest wind and a flood tide starting in late morning. From our anchorage next to Opechee Island in Jericho Bay, it was only a few miles to the southeast entrance to Eggemoggin, and if we hit the flooding tide right, we might have as much as a one-knot boost for the three or four hours it would take to sail northwest to the other end.

View toward Mount Desert Island, with fog bank. "Gone!"
says Curtis. "It could close in again!" says Sue. 

Fog clings to Opechee Island. Curtis would say it has
"dissipated."

August 23 dawned, but we were completely fogged in at Opechee. “Can you see the shoreline?” Sue asked Curtis, who was up and making coffee before 6:00 a.m. “Nope,” said Curtis. “How about the other boats?” “Nope.” “The lobster buoy just off our stern?” “Yup.” It was about thirty feet away and looked to be at the edge of the world. We busied ourselves with chores and activities, and by 10:00, the fog had mostly dissipated. That is, Curtis felt it had dissipated; Sue's interpretation of the word dissipated, however, was more along the lines of "gone," "absent," or "vanished." She looked at the wisps clinging to Opechee Island and the fog bank offshore between us and Mount Desert Island and said, "Uh uh, diminished but not yet dissipated." We negotiated, which took long enough that the fog really had become a non-issue, then we weighed anchor and headed south around Opechee and west into the Casco Passage, where we found ourselves motoring against a 1.0-knot current. (Will we ever learn?)

Current in Casco Passage riffles past a
red nun.

Once through the Casco, however, it was a short hop north to Eggemoggin, where we picked up a freshening southwest wind and started sailing – on a reach, of course. It was lovely, one of our best sails so far, with good wind, cool sunny weather, and wonderful surroundings. We had enough wind at one point that we considered reefing the genoa, but just as soon as we talked about it, the wind settled back down. Around noon, we were even in a lull (Curtis called it a “lull for lunch”) and just drifted along in the current while we munched.

Approaching the Deer Isle Bridge in Eggemoggin Reach

As we neared the two-thirds point of the Reach, the towers of Deer Isle Bridge came into view, which is the only link to the mainland for Little Deer Isle. Sue was at the helm and Curtis got the camera out to photograph Cilantro sailing under the span, which is noted on the chart as having 85 feet of vertical clearance at its midpoint. Curtis stepped to the stern to frame the shot and accidentally knocked our solar lantern out of its wimpy mount. Away it sailed, or away we sailed while it bobbed unhappily in our wake.

Solar lantern, after its GOB plunge and rescue;
note droplets inside the globe

“Gear overboard!” one of us could have shouted. Instead, Sue shouted, "It floats!" and Curtis said, “Come about!” Sue tacked, while Curtis trimmed the sails to slow our progress. When we reached the lantern, however, we still had too much speed and zipped right past it. Sue turned downwind in a controlled jibe to come back to the lantern, and Curtis stood at the bow with the boathook. There was nothing for the boathook to grab onto, however, so Sue left the wheel, crouched along the port side lifelines, and reached down to the water to grab the lantern. Saved! Our technique wasn't perfect, but it was sufficient for the circumstances. The entire rescue took five minutes, plus about fifteen more to disassemble the lantern, dry it out, and reassemble it. And it still works, albeit with a residual fog of moisture in the globe. We hope an overboard crewmember (may it never happen) would have a similarly happy fate.

After all this excitement, we sailed under the Deer Isle Bridge for real, complete with photographs. We continued to the end of Eggemoggin Reach, turned south past the abandoned lighthouse on Pumpkin Island and entered upper Penobscot Bay. We anchored that night in the Barred Islands, between Big Barred and Little Barred to the east and west, respectively, shoals and reefs to our south, and Escargot and Bartender Islands to the north. A 10-knot SW wind was whipping up waves as we entered the anchorage, which was unnerving to Sue, but the winds were predicted to lighten up in the evening and turn out of the north by midnight.

Pumpkin Island with abandoned lighthouse

GPS track showing our 10-mile sail up Eggemoggin Reach
and anchorage between the Barred Islands

It was the windiest anchoring we had attempted, and the deepest (about 32 feet under our keel). But we took our time and followed what has been our method so far: reviewing the charts and cruising guide, motoring through the anchorage to choose the spot (this is a shared decision), heading upwind to it until we are dead stopped, dropping the anchor, and letting the bow and boat drift off with the wind while Curtis gradually pays out chain and nylon rode. He works at the speed of our drift, so that our rode is laid down in a reasonably straight line rather than heaped in a tangle. Once we have enough scope out for the depth and tidal change, we sit patiently until the boat has drifted all the way back and the rode is taut, and then Sue runs the engine up to 1500 or 2000 rpms in reverse while Curtis holds his hand against the nylon rode to feel whether it is jerking and bouncing (bad, suggesting the anchor is skipping across hard mud or rock) or just stretching (good). Then we shut things down, take a few bearings on nearby objects or ranges and keep checking our position over the next half hour. So far this has worked well. We feel fortunate to be learning and practicing in benign weather and with good holding in every anchorage we've visited so far.

Using the GPS anchor track for the first time; Cilantro
seemed to do a lot of wandering.

Our Northstar 952X chartplotter has a “drop anchor” tracking feature that we hadn't used before. We activated it at the Barred Islands to see how it worked and get a feel for the movement of the boat around the anchor. When we viewed the track an hour or so after anchoring, we were shocked at the spaghetti mess of lines showing how the boat had swung and circled and dithered and dallied in the gusty winds. What was the point of all that straight-line anchor setting? Curtis was sure at one point we were dragging, and he ran up on deck to check the ranges and bearings we had set. They were fine, he decided, although the tide had dropped about four feet, changing the shoreline shape and rendering some of the ranges useless. We left the track feature on overnight, and Sue kept hearing a slap or clunk or knocking sound and imagining us drifting, or slamming, aground. She got up several times to check the anchor track, which of course never looked more reassuring, only less, since it is really scribbles on top of more scribbles. This was a case of TMI – too much information!

Sunset panorama with moon and Little Barred Island

Blue Hill Bay, Tidal Currents, and Opechee Island

When we first planned this coastal cruise, we hadn't thought we would go farther east than Penobscot Bay, but we kept reading and hearing about Jericho and Blue Hill Bays, Merchant Row, and other wonderful destinations. Curtis had been to the town of Blue Hill years ago (by land) and was curious to revisit it by water. On the chart it looked like a very feasible day's travel, so Curtis set up a route in iNavX that would take us from Seal Bay on Vinalhaven to Blue Hill Harbor up at the northwest end of Blue Hill Bay.

Placid water crossing Penobscot Bay

The morning of Wednesday, August 22, there was little or no wind as we crossed Penobscot Bay, so we motored east through sunshine, flat water, and colorful lobster buoys. As we neared Merchant Row south of Deer Isle and the village of Stonington, an east wind was building (right on our nose), so we put up sails and tacked a few times just to get some sailing in. When the ledges, lobster buoys, and ebbing tidal current coming out of Merchant Row began to complicate our progress, we stopped sailing and motored toward wider Jericho Bay, where we hoped to sail our way east and north.

Sailing on a close reach, we neared Southern Mark Island, a low island surrounded – one might say festooned – with lobster buoys, where we planned to turn north on a beam reach toward Blue Hill Bay. Unfortunately, we hooked a toggled lobster pot warp under our rudder and began dragging it. This was the first one that didn't just slide off and pop up astern of Cilantro. Sue suggested getting the boathook and trying to reach down with it. Curtis wasn't sure the boathook would reach deep enough from the deck, but it might be possible to climb down into the dinghy (which we tow at our stern) with the boathook and reach from there. As Curtis headed to the bow to get the hook, we slid over a second toggled pot warp. “Great,” said Curtis. It was beginning to feel like a pile-up. But as luck would have it, the second line knocked the first one off the rudder and they both surfaced behind us, only to get slapped by the dinghy. Take that, we thought, although we don't really harbor ill feelings toward the abundant traps. Lobstermen are fellow boaters, and lobsters account for about 80 percent of Maine's total fishing haul. And we do like eating the giant “bugs.”

Lobster buoys in Jericho Bay

We continued up through Jericho Bay, keeping a watchful osprey-eye on all the buoys we passed, and soon neared the bottom end of Blue Hill Bay. Curtis was at the helm and had started the engine due to relatively light wind and Sue's calculation that we were still about 10 miles from Blue Hill Harbor. It was mid-afternoon, and we'd been on the move since about nine. ETA at Blue Hill at this pace was about seven o'clock, which didn't make either of us happy.

Sue was getting ready to photograph Blue Hill Light, a picturesque lighthouse set on a low, gravelly bar, when Curtis suddenly groaned in exasperation, “This current is 1.7 knots against us. It's all I can do just to keep moving forward.” The water's surface was roiled by numerous tidal rips, and there didn't seem to be a quick end to it. We also realized the flow coming down Blue Hill Bay wouldn't be much better. So Sue scrambled for the cruising guide, and we scoped out other anchorage options.

Sue looks for enough wind to sail to Opechee

Opechee Island, a couple of miles to the south of us, came well recommended as a quiet and uncrowded anchorage.. “We could sail to it!” said Sue, who was tired of motoring. So we turned, put up sails, and headed for Opechee. Mount Desert Island ghosted along in the distance to our east. Sue stayed at the helm and managed to scrape up enough wind to sail within a tenth of a mile of where we dropped anchor. The anchorage is protected by Opechee Island to the west, Pond Island to the north, tiny Sheep and Eagle Islands to the east, and Black Island to the south. It was quiet (three other boats, no cocktail parties), scenic, and placid. Sue loved it. Curtis loved it. We took hot showers, ate a hot meal, snacked on cookies, and took some sunset photos.

At anchor near Opechee Island; Mount Desert Island in far distance at left

A long day that ended well

Birding and Exploring High, Dix, and Birch Islands

During our full-day stay in High Island Harbor, we dinghied ashore on each of the islands that create the anchorage.

Quarry pond on High Island

High Island, as its name suggests, has the most relief of the three, and it's easy to understand why a commercial quarry was established here in 1894. Giant blocks of pinkish granite were cut from the island's rocky heart and transported south by schooner to New York and other centers of commerce and construction. We tied our dinghy to a few of the tumbled granite blocks along the shore and clambered up onto the stone wharf that was probably the loading dock for quarried stone. Wandering through the woods, we saw signs of stoneworking everywhere, including the enormous quarry pond itself.

Feathers and wedges (from Wikipedia)

Breaking the rock cleanly into straight-sided pieces was a difficult business: after drilling a line of holes (by hand auger and hammer!), quarrymen might use black powder or dynamite to split the pieces, or they might have to resort to the manual method of feathers and wedges. “Feathers” were paired half-rounds of iron that were driven into the holes, where they were pounded apart with a wedge to widen the crack. The resulting blocks of stone were lifted by derricks and booms, rolled downhill on small rail cars, or slung under horse- or oxen-pulled carriages called galamanders.

Lines of holes drilled into a piece of granite

According to The Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast, granite from Maine quarries built the Library of Congress, the House of Representatives, and the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. It also made its way into Union Station in Chicago, the Cape Cod Canal, and the rebuilding of the Statue of Liberty. Quarrying in Maine has a relatively short history; competition from other stone sources as well as the increasing use of concrete put most of the quarries out of business by 1920.

Quarried granite stacked on the shore of High Island

We saw a good list of birds on High Island, including both red and white-winged crossbills (a life bird for Sue) and a mixed flock of fall warblers: Magnolia, black-and-white, black-throated green, Tennessee, Wilson's, yellow, and American redstart. An Empidonax flycatcher sat up for us, but it never called, and we could not decide if it was a least, alder, or willow flycatcher. A Swainson's thrush kept a wary eye on us, and families of red-breasted nuthatches and golden-crowned kinglets seemed to follow us around the island.

Curtis crouches between two blocks of granite

Birch Island is a popular day use spot, and the gentle beach makes it easy to pull your dinghy up. It's basically a small high spot with boulders, goldenrod, and a few trees, so we walked the entire perimeter in less than an hour. Curtis studied a flock of common terns, trying to pick out a roseate tern among them, but no luck. We saw cedar waxwings, red-winged blackbirds, a yellow-shafted flicker, catbirds, and an Empidonax flycatcher.

Dix Island is privately owned, but boaters are welcome to come ashore on a beach (not the residents' dock) and walk the signed, well mowed path that runs across the island. Residents of Dix live without electricity; we saw a few small rooftop solar panels, but none of the great arrays of panels we are used to in Arizona, so the residents must simply eschew electric appliances. This island is flatter and larger than the other two and seems to have more soil; there are large open meadows dotted with apple trees. We saw many of the same birds here as on the other two islands, plus a bobolink. Curtis enjoyed walking barefoot in the soft, wet grass; Sue kept her shoes on to avoid numerous thistles...and slugs.

Rowing in High Island Harbor

Fox Islands Thorofare and Seal Bay

Village of North Haven in the Fox Islands

The morning of August 21, we exited Hurricane Sound through Leadbetter Narrows, between Leadbetter Island and Vinalhaven, and motored north toward the entrance to the Fox Islands Thorofare. “Fox Islands” is the name given to the group of islands in the middle of Penobscot Bay that includes large North Haven and Vinalhaven plus numerous smaller islands such as Hurricane, Penobscot, Leadbetter, and the White Islands. The Thorofare is a well-marked channel passing east-west between North Haven and Vinalhaven and lined with large homes and cottages. We had thought of stopping in the picturesque village of North Haven to go ashore and look around, get a cup of coffee (we've been pretty disconnected from the world of commerce lately!), and buy fuel or food. Bill had described a friend's mooring that might be available to us for a quick stop, but as we motored slowly past the mooring field, we weren't able to spot it. We could have anchored, or brought Cilantro up to the town dock, but in the end we didn't really feel like bothering. “Do we need anything?” asked Sue. “Let's keep going and head for Seal Bay,” said Curtis, referring to an anchorage we had in mind for Tuesday night.

Goose Rocks Light

A light NE wind was picking up as we continued east through the Thorofare, so we raised the main and staysail and motorsailed toward Goose Rocks Light, where we unfurled the genoa as well and turned SE on a reach into eastern Penobscot Bay. With the engine off, sailing was slow but relaxing. It was around 11:00 a.m., skies were cloudy, and the wind was still very light but gradually picking up. We saw a few other sailboats in the distance, and Sue was reminded of Bob Steneck's comment that, if there are two boats under sail, it's a race. “We're moving faster than that one,” she said to Curtis, pointing to a sloop with lines similar to Cilantro.

A schooner in eastern Penobscot Bay

As we neared the entrance to Winter Harbor, from which you can access Seal Bay, we decided to keep sailing instead and make something out of the wind that was trying to develop. We turned E and sailed on a beam reach for a while, making 3.5 to 4.0 knots and enjoying a little sunshine as the sky began to clear. Sue spotted a dark bird sitting on the water to starboard and grabbed the binoculars. It had a black back mottled with white, a white throat, and a thickish, short bill with a small lump at the tip. “Razorbill?” she queried. This would be a life bird for Sue, but the plumage didn't look quite right. A second bird popped up nearby, with an all-black back, same white throat, and larger bill with a more prominent bulge – an adult. Curtis, meanwhile, had found his binoculars too. “Razorbill!” he agreed. By this time we had sailed past the two birds, but after consulting our Sibley field guide (and getting Cilantro back on course), we were certain of the ID: one adult and one first winter (“winter” plumage starts in August, so it was this year's bird).

On our next tack, we retraced our route fairly exactly but saw no razorbills. They were obviously not static decorations on Penobscot Bay! Birding by sailboat turns out to be a tricky business. You can't just stop to look at something, so you either see the bird or you don't, as you pass by on a reach or a run or close hauled. If you focus too much on the bird, the boat wanders off course and you look like a terrible sailor, sails luffing and lines dragging in the water. If you do manage to tack back to the same location (never guaranteed), it's been long enough that the bird has probably moved on. In this way it's not exactly like land-birding, where you can usually stop and stay still or go back as needed.

GPS track from Hurricane Sound (lower left) through Fox
Islands Thorofare (top) into Seal Bay; note our sailing
detour to the east into Penobscot Bay

We continued on toward the entrance to Seal Bay, which lies within the entrance to adjacent Winter Harbor. It was relatively early afternoon, maybe 1:00, as we poked our way along, following the narrow twisting channel into the anchorage area. As we rounded the final turn, we were somewhat disappointed to see about 15 boats already anchored in the farthest embayment. Reading the Maine cruising guide had led Sue to expect a remote and unfrequented spot, but obviously other people had read the guide too. Curtis picked out a spot to anchor that was tucked in between a small island and a shallow area. He figured no one would want to squeeze in next to us. The very next boat to arrive, however, dropped anchored and back down so close to us that we could see right into his cockpit. Curtis groaned. “I have 90 feet of scope out; he's going to end up right on top of it.” The cardinal rule in anchoring is first-come, first-served, but there's no particular rule about a second person anchoring too close to you. Basically, if you don't like how someone anchors next to you, it's on you to pick up and move. So we did, about 60 feet away and with less scope; we were closer to the shallows but still with a safety margin.

We know that people typically put out less scope in crowded anchorages, in order not to swing too close to other boats, but all things being equal, we still like to use at least 3:1, and 4:1 if we can get it. The other thing we noted was that most of the boats in Seal Bay – and in fact, most of the real cruising boats we've seen this week – are using all-chain rode for anchoring (and electric windlasses), rather than the mix of chain and nylon that Cilantro was outfitted with. With all chain, the weight of the chain itself (about a pound per running foot) is a big factor in your holding ability and allows you to use shorter scope. All-chain would be unmanageable with our current manual windlass, but we are considering upgrading to an electric one and switching to all-chain rode at that point.

Seal Bay

So, Seal Bay, the gorgeous remote anchorage, has apparently been discovered by everybody. Boat after boat kept arriving, and then the dinghies started to travel back and forth for greetings and cocktails and dinner. A helicopter went over, dogs barked, and then there was the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaner? “Probably someone inflating a dinghy,” Curtis suggested. It was a very friendly scene, and there was lots of waving and smiles from people going past Cilantro, but Sue couldn't help feeling disappointed by the crowdedness. Curtis suggested we go for a dinghy ride ourselves, which was just the thing.

Semipalmated plovers in Seal Bay

Short-billed dowitcher in Seal Bay

We rowed to a nearby shallow inlet, where we found black-bellied plovers, semipalmated plovers, greater yellowlegs, and short-billed dowitchers. Then we beached the dinghy on Hay Island and went for a walk. The middle of the tiny island was wooded, but the woods was ringed by a solid hedge of poison ivy, so we walked the perimeter instead, stepping on clumps of salt-tolerant grass. A sparrow flushed from the grass ahead of Curtis and landed in the poison ivy. It was a Nelson's sharptailed sparrow: with a drably spotted breast, buffy yellowish face and eyebrow, stripes down the back of the head, and narrow notched tail. It was also another life bird for Sue – two in one day! She felt better about Seal Bay, just like that.

West Penobscot Bay to The Basin

We left High Island Harbor late Monday morning and motored ENE from Muscle Ridge Channel across Two Bush Channel, heading for Hurricane Sound on the SW side of Vinalhaven and the rest of the Fox Islands. 

Two Bush Channel is extremely deep (our depth transducer recorded 398 feet!) and perfect for large ship traffic, but it also has lobster pots that use a double float system we had not seen before. A basic lobster trap consists of a large metal cage divided into several “rooms,” including a “kitchen” where the bait bag hangs and a “parlor” (for watching undersea TV?). There are small holes for undersize lobsters and crabs to escape, and there are also biodegradable rings that allow trapped lobsters to escape through a door eventually, if the trap is abandoned or cut loose from its float. One or more bricks are added to the cage to make it sink quickly and stay on the bottom. A warp or line travels from the trap to the color-coded float on the surface, so that each fisherman can find and pull his or her traps. 

Buoy and toggle on deep-water lobster trap

In the deep water of Two Bush Channel, many traps have two floats: a buoy and a “toggle.” The buoy is attached to the end of the line and the toggle float is attached farther down on the line and is intended to pull up on the pot warp and take the tension off the buoy; this allows a fisherman to pull the buoy aboard, without having the full weight of the trap on the line, and hook the line onto the winch used to raise the trap. Ideally, the toggle sits well below the surface and is not a factor for passing boats. But when the tide is low, or if the line lengths aren't perfectly adjusted for the depth, both the toggle and buoy float at the surface about 20 feet apart, with the line between them hung a few feet below the surface, perfect for hooking on a keel or propeller. Sue was idly staring at a float as we sailed by, and she was surprised to see it suddenly sink. A few seconds later, Curtis said, “&*@^#%, we've hooked a line.” Fortunately, the toggle line slid down, under, and past our keel, and everything popped up again intact at the stern, bumping harmlessly under the towed inflatable as we continued. Cilantro's propeller sits inside an aperture rather than being exposed at the stern, so unless we back over a line or spin the propeller sidewise into one, we are unlikely to really get fouled on it.

The rest of our passage across western Penobscot Bay was uneventful except for some good bird sightings: Curtis found a single Atlantic puffin floating on the water, and we came across a flock of 15 red-necked phalaropes feeding on a line of floating seaweed. Gannets were relatively plentiful (probably following runs of herring, according to Bob Steneck), and some of them dozed on the water ahead of us, taking to the air only when we came uncomfortably close.

The White Islands in Hurricane Sound

We were able to sail most of the way across to the Fox Islands on a light south wind, but we also ran the engine for a few hours to charge our batteries. Without alternative power sources such as wind and solar, we are still dependent on the engine's alternator to keep our amp-hours up. As we passed the south end of the beautiful White Islands, we turned north on a broad reach up into Hurricane Sound. Until a few years ago, Hurricane Island was home to Maine's Outward Bound school. We have seen several of OB's boats on our trip. They are open wooden boats that appear to hold about fifteen young people, one instructor, plus two rectangular sails and four extra-long oars for windless days. A simple tarpaulin is rigged as a tent at night. 

The Vinalhaven ferry roars past Cilantro (note the UPS
truck on the bow)

At the north end of Hurricane Sound, we rendezvoused with Bill Creighton on Toda, his 40-foot Pacific Seacraft. (We had met Bill through Mikey at Bittersweet.) Bill grew up around Vinalhaven and had given us the GPS coordinates of an anchorage he likes. As we were about to make a turn to the east toward the anchorage, the big Vinalhaven ferry came zipping south across our path. Sue, who was at the helm, determined we weren't on a collision course, but we were still surprised by the speed with which the ferry appeared on the scene and then left us in its wake.

Bill Creighton gives us a tour of The Basin

After anchoring along Conway Shore in about 20 feet of water, we hopped into Bill's inflatable dinghy, equipped with a 9.9-hp motor, and explored The Basin. This “magnificent tidal lake,” as the cruising guide describes it, has depths ranging from 111 feet to rocks awash at low tide. It would be clogged with cruising boats were it not for the narrow, rock-obstructed entrance through which the tide fills and empties like a river in spring flood. There seemed to be about a two-foot vertical difference between the water levels in The Basin and Hurricane Sound. It is possible but not easy to pass through the entrance in a sailboat at absolute slack tide (which, according to Bill, lasts only 96 seconds!), taking care to avoid the big rock in mid-channel, but otherwise The Basin is visited mostly by dinghies and lobsterboats. Vinalhaven locals say that the big schooners used to enter The Basin under sail and spend the winter inside, protected from fierce Atlantic storms.

The Basin's tiny southern exit

We left the Basin via its south entrance, beneath a car bridge that is too low to pass under at high tide but too shallow to navigate at low tide. We hit it just right (Bill has definitely done this before) and scooted into a harbor south of Barton Island, where we docked at Bill's father's cottage on the site of an old paving stone quarry. Schooners used to ground out here at low tide, lean against the piled rock wharf for loading, and then float off on high tide with their cargo to start the journey southward.

Paving stone pieces left from quarrying days

From this harbor, it was a quick dinghy ride back north to Cilantro and Toda. Before we returned to our boats, however, Bill took us back through The Basin entrance, now against a roaring ebb tide. We inched our way up-current at full throttle, sat at idle in an eddy above the entrance, and then surfed back out in neutral. Sue was covering her eyes at times, but she still managed to take some photos (and a video that we might post a link to when we get back to a Wifi connection). 

Surfing an ebb tide out of The Basin

Later that evening, at anchor next to Toda in a spot not written up in any cruising guide, we were reminded that there are countless gunkholes and anchorages to find and explore on our own, as long as we have charts and depth sounders to guide us in and evaluate the protection from wind and waves. We were just two boats in a lovely location, in the company of bald eagles, ospreys, black guillemots, and several hundred common terns. 

Placid shoreline in The Basin