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.)
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| 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.)
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| Our GPS track from the Barred Islands north of the Fox Islands and into Rockland Harbor |
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| The lighthouse on Rockland Harbor Breakwater |
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| 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.
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| Doug Pope of Pope Sails measures our genoa for a new Sunbrella cover. |
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| 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.
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| Windjammer entering Rockland Harbor |
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| The Isaac H. Evans, designated a National Historic Landmark |
