Roque Island, Maine

 Location:  Roque Island, Maine (12-Sept-2012)

We spent the last two nights anchored up in The Cow’s Yard, a small harbor between Head Harbor Island and Steele Harbor Island, near Great Wass Island and south of Jonesport.   There were several recommended anchorages amongst these islands so we tried the Mud Hole first, but it was too close to low tide and the entrance was too shallow for us to get inside.  Then we motored over near Knight and Mistake Islands but there was a sailboat anchored in there so we decided to let them have the anchorage to themselves and turned towards the Cow’s Yard.  There was nobody in the anchorage when we arrived so we had the place to ourselves for the night.  This area of Maine is called the Bold Coast and is truly “Down East”.   Another powerboat came into the anchorage early yesterday evening and a sail boat came in after dark.  You’ll get a good idea of how many islands and how much coast line Maine has by looking at a map of this area and the Maine coast.  Someone told us there were 3500 miles of coastline in Maine if you count the islands.  I've included a link to Google Maps here; search for Roque Island and/or Great Wass Island.

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en

Great Wass Island, Maine

There is very little boating activity amongst these islands, with the exception of the lobstermen and women working the area and there are plenty of lobster buoys.  We did happen to catch some buoys on the way in, a pair on the starboard stabilizer and a single on the port stabilizer.  In order to get them off, Dave went for a swim the next morning.  As you can imagine, the water is not very warm up here so he was a little chilled by the time he got out.  We have a mask and fins on board, but no wet (or dry) suit, so that is now on our shopping list.  Somehow the list keeps getting longer and longer.  We did read one article that recommended putting things on the list and after they showed up on the list three times, then it was ok to buy.  Otherwise you end up with lots of stuff on the boat that you don’t use and have to stow.  

Weasel's Lunch Table

After Dave’s swim, we had nice hot soup for lunch and then went exploring with the dinghy during low tide and took it up on a rocky beach on Steele Harbor Island.We hiked around through the woods on the island and along the shore.While on the island, we saw a weasel and we saw a few deer from the boat.The picture here of the “weasel’s lunch table” shows a mound of moss with remnants of crabs, clams and mussels. 

 



Razorbills near Steele Head Island



We have been seeing lots of wildlife including seals, dolphins, birds like seagulls, loons, gannets, and a new one for us, razorbills, a member of the auk family. We have a US East Coast bird book on board as well as a Sea Mammal book, so we have been enjoying trying to identify the different species. If you look really close at this picture, you can see the razorbills.

 

This morning we moved over to Roque Island and spent the afternoon walking along the beach.  On the way here, we had a bald eagle hovering over a fish right off the bow, saw two in the trees coming out the north side of Eastern Bay and then saw two more in the trees when we arrived here.  Once again, we are the only boat anchored here, so it is very quiet and peaceful.  We saw deer tracks on the beach, so will watch from the boat around sundown to see if we can see anything.

Since the last post (from Rockland) we have been quite a few places.  From Rockland, we moved over to Pulpit Harbor, named because of the rock located at the entrance to the harbor.   The wind was fixing to blow and the rain was on the way in so we anchored up and stayed for two nights.  We arrived there early in the afternoon and watched while several other boats, including a large windjammer, came into the harbor and anchored or picked up a mooring for the night.  We did a few chores like checking the seawater strainers and some cleaning while waiting for the weather to pass.  This is a picture of the rock at the entrance to Pulpit Harbor with a windjammer crossing behind it.

Pulpit Harbor Entrance with Windjammer

From Pulpit Harbor we moved further north to Belfast.  Some friends recommended Belfast as a funky/fun place to stop and wander around.   We anchored just outside town and took the dinghy in to explore.  The town is very welcoming with a public dock and easy walking to all the amenities.  We wandered around some of the shops, including our favorite, the hardware store, had a beer near the dock and then went back out to the boat to bring in our laundry.   After laundry we stopped at the local Thai restaurant and had dinner and went back out of the boat for the night.  The next day, Friday, was a farm festival along the main street, so we brought in our shopping bags and picked up fresh veggies and some homemade baked goods.  The farmer’s market is the first Friday of every month and they had some good quality products so our timing was right to be in town.   We left Belfast on Saturday morning and headed east towards Blue Hill through Eggemoggin Reach.  We motored into Blue Hill Harbor but there was no obvious room to anchor, so we motored back out and anchored in Morgan Bay for the night.  It was foggy when we left the next morning and as the fog opened up, we saw about 15 sailboats in a race headed in generally the same direction we were headed.  With the wind behind them, they were faster than us so we got out of their way and then headed for the Bartlett narrows on the west side of Mount Desert Island.  This was a nice passage to cruise through, very high granite hills and several small harbors.  Our plan was to go into Bass Harbor for the night to wait out the north wind and the southeast swells.  When we got near Bass Harbor, we decided the available anchorages were too exposed to the swell, so we continued to Northeast Harbor and picked up a mooring for two nights. 

Northeast Harbor Sunset

This is a well-protected harbor with a nice town dock, showers and restaurants and groceries within walking distance.  The weather cleared on Tuesday morning, so we headed out of NE Harbor and cruised up Sommes Sound.  The guide books rave about how picturesque Sommes Sound is and how it is just like the Norwegian Fjords.  It was pretty and interesting but not as nice as the books made it out to be and we didn’t think it was comparable to Norway.

I think the last blog left off with us in Boothbay Harbor visiting friends Brian and Kathy, so I’ll just do some final catching up from there.  We had a great time.  Both Brian and Kathy had Friday off, so we went out in their boat and cruised amongst the small harbors in the Boothbay area.  We had lunch at Oliver’s in Cozy Harbor and then motored up the Sheepscot River and around McMahon Island to Robinhood Marina.  This is a picture of somebody’s “pirate ship” in Cozy Harbor.

"Pirate" ship, Cozy Harbor

Every Friday afternoon at Robinhood Marina, they have a small jazz band playing near the waterfront, so we had happy hour cocktails and snacks and listened to the music.  This is a very quiet, laid back place in a beautiful setting.  From there, we went around Southport, down Boothbay Harbor and back over to Brian and Kathy’s place on Linekin Bay.  Kathy and I went to the grocery store and got marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers while Brian and Dave gathered firewood for the fire pit.  The neighbors, Jane and Leo came down to join us and we roasted marshmallows and made s’mores.  This really reminded me of my dad.  He loved campfires and while RVing would spend afternoons gathering wood.  His last few days in the hospital, he talked about wanting to build a campfire and wanted to make sure that Mom and I had everything set-up so that we could have one. 

Saturday and Sunday Dave and I borrowed Brian’s truck and went into town to get supplies and groceries.  Kathy met us for lunch on Saturday and then we went for a hike in the woods near Damariscotta.  Kathy swam out to the boat from their dock and Dave jumped in the water with her.

Dave and Kathy swimming, Linekin Bay, Maine

 

Sunday we met Brian at the yacht club where he was helping them out with the launch.  He took us out in the yacht club mooring field for some boat handling lessons and let me practice my docking skills.  Brian is a marine surveyor and had just finished a survey of a lobster boat turned racer when we arrived.  If you are ever in the Boothbay area or know someone who needs a marine survey there, please look Brian up at Brailsford Marine Surveying.  He has a site on Facebook, so if you have a chance, please “Like” his site.  

From Boothbay, we went out to Sequin Island and picked up a mooring for the night.  It was a little choppy out there but it settled down in the morning so we went ashore and hiked around the island.  Sequin Island has volunteer lighthouse keepers every summer.  The keepers this year were Bo and Beverly from North Carolina.  Beverly’s father was an assistant keeper when she was a young girl.  The next afternoon we went up into Pemaquid Harbor and stayed for two days.  Our insurance broker, Spencer and his wife, Laura have a “cottage” there so we stopped in for a visit and then cruised up to Rockland.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned maintenance this whole blog so for those of you who are interested... While we were in Rockland, we worked on the stabilizer system.  The plan was to change out the hydraulic fluid, repair a couple of leaks and replace the level gauge.  When Dave disassembled the unit, we discovered that there was a pinhole leak in the heat exchanger.  In order to disable the system, Dave removed the center belt on the main engine that drives the Vickers hydraulic pump.  Then we had to isolate the salt water supply and discharge to the system.  We did some research and have a replacement heat exchanger on order, scheduled to arrive at Pa’s house sometime this week.  We’ll pick it up when we head back south and then finish the repairs.  We have also passed 1600 hours on the main engine, so need to do some routine maintenance on it.  We’ve also changed out the shower heads to a more “low-flow” model to conserve water and have started insulating the hot water lines.  We’ve decided we’ll stay here one more night in order to do a few things:  test out the passive stabilizers (flopper-stoppers) as we’ve never tried to deploy them and this is a nice quiet place to do it and organize the lazzarette (the storage area near the engine room).  It is blivetized (has too much stuff and is not well organized) so we need to spend some time getting it in working order. 

Since writing the blog above, we have moved again and are now in Southwest Harbor, using the internet at the public library.  More on that in the next post.

Whales and Maintenance

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 7^th 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.

Humpback Whale Sounding,
Stellwagen Bank off the coast of MA



 



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. 



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.

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. 

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.

Sunset, Snow Island, Maine