Two Days, Three Shearwaters, Forty Miles under Sail

We have been making our way slowly back to South Bristol from cruising parts east. We have also been gradually ramping up the amount of sailing versus motoring we do on each day, helped along by increasing winds. On August 26 and 27, the last days of our 11-day shakedown cruise, we spent most of each day sailing on south and southwest winds. Our combined trip logs for the two days registered about 41 nautical miles, 95 percent of which was under sail.

We left Home Harbor on Sunday morning and started sailing almost as soon as we were out of the harbor, near Two Bush Light. Our first leg took us out to Little Green and Large Green Islands; we ran the wide gap between them and headed for Metinic Island, a nesting ground for common, arctic, and roseate terns. According to the Bangor Daily News, after four days of nonstop rain in June of this year, all of the approximately 1,400 terns abandoned their nests and quit the island in a single day, likely due to a combination of predation by gulls and the terns' difficulty catching fish in the rain.

We passed south around Metinic and smaller Metinic Green Island –

Little Green Island, a smudge on the horizon

Sue has to interrupt herself here with a digression about Maine place names. They are, overall, wonderfully evocative – Escargot Island, Pemaquid Point, Round Pond, Two Bush Light, Muscle Ridge Channel, Muscongus Bay. Many places have kept their aboriginal names: Muscongus is an Abenaki word meaning “many large rock ledges,” a good description of the bay. (The cruising guide quotes a sailor as saying about the bay, “You have to navigate all the time.”) Penobscot means “the place where the rocks open out” in the Abenaki-Penobscot tongue. Pemaquid means “peninsula” in Mi'kmaq. Opechee reportedly means “robin” in Ojibway. Eggemoggin appears to be a Passamaquoddy word meaning “the place to catch fish” or “the fish weir place.” Damariscotta is Abenaki for “many alewives,” referring to a kind of herring. Monhegan means “out-to-sea island” in Mi'kmaq. Metinic and Matinicus both mean “far-out island” in Abenaki.

Many Maine places share the same name, so, for instance, you always have to clarify which Ram Island you might be talking about (there are 8 listed in the cruising guide). Likewise, there are 9 Hog Islands, 5 Burnt Islands, 5 Seal Coves, 3 Thrumcap Islands, and 2 places called The Gut, to name a few. And why Little and Large Green Islands – why not the more typical antonym pairs, Little and Big (such as Little Barred and Big Barred), or Small and Large? Then there's the small rocky pancake west of the Greens and south of Metinic called Metinic Green Island: perhaps the namers ran out of other ideas and just recombined names of the nearby islands? Place names appear to be as unregulated as botanical names – think of all the flowers called “sunflower” or “daisy.” Some people might fret over this messiness, but Sue thinks it adds a level of interest.

GPS track west from Home Harbor in Penobscot Bay to
Burnt Island in Muscongus Bay

– Getting back to the sailing. From Metinic Island, we headed northwest toward Burnt Island in Muscongus Bay, arriving there in mid-afternoon. Although we made nearly twenty nautical miles on this day, Sue doesn't have many pictures to show for it, mostly because of the difficulty of photographing low flat islands from a mile away on the water. They end up looking like greenish pancakes photographed end-on or smudgy lines separating sky from sea.

We did have excellent looks at (but no photos of, of course!) three greater shearwaters flying alongside the boat. These pelagic (meaning they spend most of their lives at sea) gull-sized birds fly on long, narrow wings that give them enough aerodynamic lift that they soar for a long time without flapping. Greater shearwater is probably a life bird for Sue, or even if it isn't, this was the first time she was able to pick out the fieldmarks for herself: the dark, well-delineated cap with white collar seen from above and the white underwing with dark markings seen from below. Groups of red-necked phalaropes puddled and fluttered around lines of floating seaweed; we counted 60 over the course of the day. But gannets were the big-number story: at least 125 of the elegant, white, plunge-diving birds flew past us or dozed on the water as we sailed. Alas, we don't have the equipment to photograph a veering shearwater or a diving gannet while sailing. It's usually all we can do to get a few panning looks while keeping the boat on course. Eventually we figured out that's a perfect use of our newly installed autopilot: simply press “A” (for Auto) on the control screen to continue steering at the current heading, then grab the binoculars. Simple.

Heeling more than 20 degrees; Sue
thought that was plenty.

We also used the autopilot for a break from sitting or standing at the helm. The wind was strong enough that Cilantro did some good heeling – more than 15 degrees at times – and on a port tack (heeling to starboard), our starboard-mounted galley sink took in some seawater through the sink drain. Not a flooding concern, but it did float the leftover coffee cups around, so Sue closed the drain seacock while we were on this tack. She appreciated the gimbaled stove when reheating leftovers for a hot lunch (see photo below). Because the wind was probably 12-15 knots with occasional stronger gusts, our two foresails (genoa and staysail) exerted significant forward and outboard pressures on the mast, so Curtis rigged the running backstays for the first time to balance the forces.

Gimbaled stovetop is actually level; everything else is atilt.

We worked on refining our tacking procedure with the staysail and genoa. We are finding that the genoa has a tendency to foul on the inner forestay when coming about, unless the wind billows it out forward and around. Sometimes the sheet frees itself, but at other times one of us has to go forward and release it manually. Curtis has been trying the technique of partially furling the genoa on each tack – so that we are shortening sail before bringing it across – and then unfurling it again, but this is a lot of line work to accomplish in a short time, and we lose much of our speed on the tack because we turn so slowly through the wind.

At anchorage by Burnt Island, with Outward Bound boat
and former US Coast Guard buildings in background

We anchored off the north shore of Burnt Island, protected from the southwesterly wind and swells. Outward Bound has a school here, and we shared the anchorage with what looked like a new crop of students climbing aboard and getting used to what would be their floating home for the next three or four weeks. The next morning, while the OB students took salty baths in the harbor, we pulled up our first string of kelp on the anchor. Sue, of course, wanted a photo, so she went to the bow. Hmm, the anchor is out of the water, but who is at the helm? We were in a “controlled drift,” says Sue, when she returned to the cockpit and found Cilantro headed in exactly the right direction to motor out of the anchorage.

String of kelp on our anchor at Burnt Island

Motoring south between Burnt and Allen Islands, we scanned the birds on nearby rocks and in the air. A pair of cormorants powered by, and we both shouted, “Great cormorants!” After days of studying cormorants, we had finally found two of these larger cousins of the double-crested cormorant. They are very similar in appearance, but the greats have a white throat patch below their yellow chin and somewhat heavier bodies. They prefer outer islands, so today's sailing route gave us the best chance to see them. Another life bird for Sue. Curtis apparently has seen everything before. 

We continued south, ploughing into swells that Sue thought were gigantic but were probably only about between two and three feet from trough to crest. She crawled out to the bow and took some photos and a couple of movies with her camera, only to be disappointed later when it all looked very tame. Curtis tried to cheer her up by reminding her that photographs always flatten reality. She tried to laugh at herself and was moderately successful.

Sailing from Muscongus Bay back to Johns Bay and South
Bristol Harbor

Once south of Old Woman Ledge and Old Man Ledge, we raised sails and headed west on a single long tack to pass Pemaquid Point and enter Johns Bay, where we tacked a few times for good measure and to enjoy the wind. We did more heeling and listened to objects sliding off the settees in the main salon. But we also hit our fastest sailing speed yet – 7.4 knots, towing the dinghy – as we neared Corvette Ledge at the foot of Johns Bay, just as we were preparing to furl sails and head into South Bristol Harbor. It made furling a bit tricky, but Curtis manhandled (is that where this word comes from?) everything while Sue held the bow into the wind, and we motored the last tenth of a mile to the mooring.

Jon Weislogel of Bittersweet works with Curtis
to remove and rebed our leaking Bomar hatches.

It felt nice to be back “home,” but it is an adjustment, too, after 11 days of traveling and exploring. Sue misses the rhythm of weighing anchor after breakfast and heading out on a new route each day. Curtis is torn between wanting that continued newness and taking care of business such as topside leak mitigation (it doesn't seem to end), scheduling the last refit projects, and arranging cross-country transport. “How terribly responsible you are,” says Sue, appreciatively. “How awfully adventurous you are becoming,” says Curtis.

Late August is a lovely time in Maine. The weather seems to be changing: for the first time since our arrival at the boatyard on June 21, the humidity fell to 35 percent, and the microfiber dishcloth dried out completely. Three mornings in a row, no dew soaked the decks and cockpit. As we head into September, we are looking forward to daysailing and maybe an overnighter or two before we depart mid-month. Still loving it.