Location: Rockland,
Maine
We’re anchored in the southern part of the harbor near
Rockland, Maine. Rockland is a small
town south of Rockport and Camden. It is
a nice walking town with a lot of shops near the harbor, a Hamilton marine
within walking distance and a large Ace Hardware about a mile from the town
marina. We decided to come and spend
Labor Day weekend here while everyone has their final end of summer hurrah
before going back to school. The harbor
here is big and protected with lots of room to anchor and a public dock to
dinghy into if you want to spend time in town.
We have been here since Thursday afternoon and plan to stay until
Tuesday, when most folks will be done boating for the season.
I’m still playing catch-up but hopefully this post will
bring things up to date. At the end of
the last blog, we were headed to Great Bay Marine in Newington, NH to do
maintenance, catch-up with family and then meet Heather and her boyfriend for a
weekend afloat. When we left the dock in
Newburyport, MA, after Jennie disembarked, we had a fuel leak from the manhole
cover on one of the fuel tanks. We
arrived at Great Bay and Dave shifted all of the fuel from the leaking tank to
the other tanks so that we could remove the manhole cover and replace the gasket. Dave’s Dad "Pa" lives about 15 minutes away from
Great Bay and that is where our truck is parked, so going to Great Bay also
gave us access to the truck for the few days we were going to be there. We could run around and find parts, get
groceries and other essentials, etc.
Thursday morning, Pa was going to come down for coffee and take
us back to his place to pick up the truck.
Of course, the truck wouldn’t start… the batteries were dead, so Pa came and picked us up in his truck and we went back to his place to
recharge the batteries. We had some
“smart chargers” that Dave had purchased to keep the boat batteries charged
while the boat was winterized, so we put the truck batteries on charge and went
back to the boat to work on the maintenance stuff.
We took the manhole cover off of the fuel tank and
discovered that the gasket was a complete mess.
The original gasket was destroyed and whoever opened it up last decided
to supplement the destroyed gasket with red form-a-gasket and put the manhole
cover back on. If you read the details
for red form-a-gasket, it is not fuel compatible. Needless to say, we needed a new gasket,
which is not easy to find. Most of the
auto parts stores only carry cork gasket and most of the marinas send you to
the auto parts stores. We got lucky and
found a gasket supplier, Marco Rubber, in Seabrook, NH. They happened to have a roll of
nitrile/BUNA-N (fuel compatible) in stock, and by that time, we had the truck
batteries charged and the truck running, so we went down and picked up the
whole roll (it never hurts to have spare stock on board). We replaced the gasket and transferred fuel
back into the tank and so far so good.
The other major maintenance item we finished (almost) was the audible alarm
system for the bilge. The original
design was only equipped with a light panel so if the bilge alarm went off and
you weren’t standing near the light panel you wouldn’t know you had a
problem. Dave and his brother, Pete, got
the parts to install horns so that if the bilge alarms went off, there would be
an audible alarm in addition to the light panel. They didn’t have time to finish hooking
everything up before we left Great Bay last time, so Dave and I finished the
hook-up and tested the system. The mid-compartment alarm was a little warbly so we put that on the list of things to follow-up on next time we stopped for maintenance and it is one of the things we are working on here.
We also got to spend time with Pa and the rest of the family while we were
in NH. Cathy, Erin and Mariah met us at
Pa's house one rainy afternoon and we visited with them. They were out school shopping for Mariah who
celebrated her 7th birthday in August. Pete came down to the marina one afternoon to
hear the audible bilge alarms. We left early
Thursday morning to head down to Salem to pick up Heather and her boyfriend,
Derek, for the weekend.
We met Heather and Derek at 62 in Salem and had dinner
before they got on board the boat. This
is one of the same places we had dinner with Jennie while in Salem. We liked it so much the first time that we
thought it was worth a return trip.
While there, we ran into Doug and Connie (the inventors of the cork
sunglass straps). They are Salem locals
and are regulars at 62. Friday morning
we decided to go out to Stellwagen Bank and do some whale watching and then go
to Scituate for the evening. We saw
quite a few whales, had lunch aboard the boat and then headed to Scituate where we went into
town, had an ice cream, wandered around some and went back out to the boat.
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| Humpback Whale Sounding, Stellwagen Bank off the coast of MA |
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| Scituate Lighthouse |
Saturday morning, we headed north back up to Gloucester and
decided to go back out to Stellwagen to see more whales. It was interesting to listen to the captains
of the whale watching vessels on the radio.
Apparently it has been a great season, lots of whales and they didn’t
have to try very hard to find them as there has been lots of food available to
attract the whales. We got into an area
with several humpbacks and turned off the engine to see if they would come
close of the boat. Four whales ended up
right next to the boat and swam alongside.
It is very hard to describe how magnificent they are when they are that
close. Here is a picture of Hedy with
the whales in the background.
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| Heather and the whales |
Heather took a video with her phone when the whales came around to the other side of the boat which is included here:
We watched them until they sounded and then headed in to
Gloucester for the night. We moored out
in the Gloucester Southeast Harbor and launched the dinghy to head into the
Madfish Grill in Smith Cove for dinner.
Heather’s friend’s parents, Ellen and Jim, were vacationing in Cape Cod
for the week and had spent the day in Ipswich and planned to meet us for a
drink at Madfish before they headed back to the Cape. It was raining slightly on the way in and
about the time we got to the restaurant dock, the dinghy outboard quit. We couldn’t get it started again, so Heather
and I paddled us into the dock and we commandeered Jim to take us to the local
auto parts store to get spark plugs and some new gasoline so that we could try
and get the dinghy motor running again. Ellen
got to spend some time and catch up with Heather and Derek while we were out
running parts. We can’t say Thank you!
enough to them for helping us out. We
didn’t get the dinghy running so ended up getting a tow back to the boat from
the Gloucester Harbormaster. Two great
guys were working that night and again, we can’t say Thank you! enough to them.
Sunday morning we left Gloucester harbor early and went over
to Misery Island, apparently named by a fellow who spent three days there
during a blizzard in December, and anchored up.
We spent some time trying to get the dinghy motor running with no
success. Dave and Derek paddled us
ashore and we spent a few hours on the beach and hiking around the island. We packed up early afternoon and went back
into Salem to pick up a mooring and to get Heather and Derek back to shore and
into the real world. Dave and I stayed ashore for dinner at
GrapeVine in Salem. It is one of those
restaurants that doesn’t look like much on the outside, but has a great garden
dining area, is quiet and not crowded and has really good food. We took off the next day and headed for
Maine.
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| Salem, MA sunset |
Same blog post, new day… It is a rainy Sunday morning here
in Rockland so a good time to finish catching up and to do some maintenance and
clean-up work. There is a sailing ship festival in Camden, the harbor just north of here, this weekend. Here is a picture of a sailing ship ghosting along in the fog with the Rockland breakwater in the background.
Our first night in Maine
was spent moored out at the Isle of Shoals.
These islands are about 6 miles off the coast of NH/Maine and the
stateline splits the islands so that they are shared by both states. There is a nice sheltered harbor between
Star, Cedar, Smuttynose and Malaga Islands with moorings available on a first
come/first serve basis. A large
hotel/conference center, rumored to be haunted, is located on Star Island. The next morning we headed north and steamed
to Snow Island in Quahog Bay (Maine). Our plan
was to go there and anchor up for a couple of days so that we could work on the
dinghy outboard and the grey water pump.
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| Sail boat on the rocks, Snow Island, Maine |
We anchored off the southeast corner of Snow Island with
only two other boats anchored nearby and a small mooring field nearer to
shore. There was some excitement the
first afternoon we were there. A
sailboat came in just before low tide and grounded on some rocks near the
island. One of the nearby sailboats and
a local lobsterman came over to help them out and once word got out, a parade of
small motorboats came around to have a look.
A marina/boatyard from farther up Quahog Bay came down and put a line
out from the bow and then the only thing to do was to wait for the tide to come
back in. All this happened about 4:30
p.m. and high tide wasn’t until 2:00 a.m. so it was going to be a long wait.
The nearby sailboat graciously invited the folks from the grounded boat
on board for the evening. The boatyard
folks came back out about midnight and the sailboat floated off the rock with
no problems; some of the gear aboard was wet, but there was no damage to the
boat and the people aboard weren’t injured.
I got up to watch to make sure everything went ok, which it did and was
treated to a clear night sky with lots of stars and calm water full of bioluminescence which
created an almost mirror image of the sky.
The next day, after doing some research about potential
fixes for the outboard, we disassembled the carburetor and soaked it in lacquer
thinner (recommended on the web as a good replacement for carburetor cleaner,
which we don’t have on board). We
cleaned the gunk out of all the little pieces and parts, then reassembled and
hoped for the best. The outboard started with the first crank and after
cleaning out the cooling water outlet, she worked like a charm. We took her out for a spin, up into the wind
and current so that it would be an easy paddle if she quit and had no problems
so we dinghied around Snow Island and into some of the small coves around the
island.
The other main thing we wanted to fix while near Snow Island
was our grey water pump. This pump is
used to pump grey water (from showering, dishes, etc.) out of the holding
tank. We started this project while at
Great Bay Marine by taking apart the tank gauges, checking all the electrical
connections, etc. but never did figure out why it wasn’t working. So we started again and disassembled the tank
gauges, swapped out the relay from the black water pump to make sure it wasn’t
the relay, and checked all the electrical connections. We finally decided that because of the way
the relay was wired, it wouldn’t allow the pump to operate if the empty light
on the gauge was on. Well, we couldn’t
get the empty light on the gauge to go off, even if the tank was full, so we
finally disconnected one of the wires to the relay, and voila, it worked. The problem is most likely something with the
tank gauging circuit board, so that is now on our list of replacement parts
that need to be ordered. After a full
day of doing maintenance, we jumped off the swim platform into the water for a
refreshing break from the action, then had dinner and enjoyed another sunset. We set off the next day and headed into
Boothbay Harbor. The rain has stopped
now and other chores beckon so I’ll stop here and finish up on Boothbay and our
current activities in the next post.
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| Sunset, Snow Island, Maine |
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