Scotland and Ireland Trip

Long Cove to Rockland Harbor

Day 28: July 26, 2015

Several days ago, Janine and I discussed the fact that our down comforter was perfect and had kept us warm in the cool Maine evenings.  And then!  This morning the discussion was that it almost wasn’t up to the task.  It got down to 54 degrees in the cabin and, although I toughed it out, Janine got up and put on a jacket in the middle of the night.

Rockland Harbor breakwater light in the fog

But, the steaming sausage gravy and toast with hot coffee made us both feel better.  It was foggy and dreary-misty out so we had no incentive to get under way early.  Our destination of the day was Rockland Harbor.  Rockland will be our last port of call.  We will head back to our friends, the Trimners, to pick up our truck and trailer in preparation for the trip back home.

The weather forecast called for showers off and on all day so at about 10:00, we dawned our “Frogg Toggs” (rain gear), dropped the line from the mooring ball and headed out.  The fog had lifted’ giving us a visibility of better than a mile so the trip was easy.  There was a south wind and it would have been a great sail, however, with the mist and rain, we decided to motor on in.  The trip was only  8 miles.

 

Our neighbor in Long Cove

We have been dodging lobster pots continuously this entire trip and have snagged only two until we entered Rockland Harbor. The engine stopped abruptly and the boat jerked to a halt.  We finally wrapped one around our prop.  I raised the motor out of the water and got into the dinghy and finally got the mess untangled.  I had to loosen the nut on the prop and slide it out to get the last bit of rope unwound. We appreciated having two sailors stop and ask if they could help.   The bigger boats mount a knife on the propeller shaft in front of the prop that spins and cuts the lines if they get entangled.  I talked to a lobsterman back in Acadia and he said that he understands.  He gets into them periodically himself.

Once we found our mooring ball amongst the hundreds of boats and balls, we headed into the dock to make our arrangements.  They have showers for $2.00 for an 8 minute shower.  They give you a token and that starts the timer on the water valve.  We were willing to pay!

Second order Fresnel Lens

From the dock, we headed into Rockland and the Maine Lighthouse Museum.  This a marvelous collection of lights, lenses, and all forms of memorabilia dealing with lighthouses.  We had been there back in 2000 when the museum was in a house.  The gentleman on duty that day walked around with us and gave us a wonderful history of the materials on display.  They have now moved it into a large new building and expanded the displays.  

From there we went to the Wyeth Center at the Farnsworth Art Museum.  What a wonderful collection not only of works of art from three generations of Wyeth’s but also many other artists mostly from Maine.  The Wyeth family spent a lot of time in Maine where they still have a home today.  This town and these museums must be a subparagraph in your Maine entry on your bucket list.

We walked back towards the boat in the rain,

stopping at Hill’s Seafood Company for a lobster roll.  Although Hill’s was not on the recommended list of our guide book, we found the food to be good and the bar patrons to be loud and entertaining.  

We returned to our boat, gathered our shower gear and went to redeem our 8 minutes of warm water pleasure.  I realized that I normally don’t take an 8 minute shower, but since I paid for it, I used every minute of the time.

Back at the boat, we prepared for bed.  The boat was rocking around quite a bit and promised to be a bumpy night of sleep.

Bell stack for a bell bouy.  Each provides a different tone/

.

Another day in Long Cove

Day 27: July 25, 2015

It rained last night and the boat was quite cool.  We awoke at the usual time and enjoyed sausage gravy on toast.  We have eaten our last pancake fixings so we will get to have the gravy for the remainder of the trip.  We do have eggs left and a bit of bacon but if I keep it quiet, we may finish out the trip with my favorite.

A Lobster Pound where they cook and serve the lobster on the wharf

It dawned a dreary day so we basically hung out in the boat until afternoon.  This being Saturday, we assumed that folks would start coming into our little cove and claiming their mooring ball.  The first to arrive was a cabin cruiser who took the ball right next to where we were moored.  I decided to row over and discuss the use of these balls with them and they told us that the owner of the ball onto which we were tied was his brother and he would be coming in later this afternoon.  I asked if any balls were unused and he pointed out one so we immediately moved to the new site.  I really like it better and I feel more comfortable knowing that we will not

Morning calm in Long cove

be intruding.

 The sky finally cleared, so Janine and I got in ole Dink and motored around our cove.  At the far end, the bay narrows down to probably 40 feet wide and the passage through emerges as huge boulders when the tide goes out.  The tide was coming in so we zoomed through the opening which broke out into a really neat lake. We slowly motored all the way around the edge and enjoyed the scenery.  At one point, we pulled the dinghy onto the shore and walked around on the rock beach.  These rocks are never subjected to the wave action that rounds stones that are exposed to open waters so they are angular and sharp.  Also they are either igneous or metamorphic in nature, therefore really hard and resistant to grinding.

Back in the dinghy, we met another couple who were making the same venture as

Church overlooking the harbor in Camden

we so we stopped and chatted for quite a while.  They are from Maine and are weekend cruising on a 40 foot Tartan.  They were interesting, charming folks.

We continued our exploration and came across another little pond off of another cove that also would be isolated from the main body of water at low tide.  It is fun to be able to cruise into places like this in the dinghy.

Janine and I discussed earlier in the day, as she was editing my blog, that I was using words like beautiful too often in these musings.  I realized that this place is so beautiful that my limited vocabulary has run out of adjectives to describe all that I am seeing.  

Back at the boat, we got out the Kipper Snacks and crackers as we prepared our bratwurst and garlic mashed potatoes dinner.  Last evening, we had prepared a blob spice cake so we devoured some of that for dessert.  And then bed.

 

And another Loon.  I like Loons

Perry Creek Cove to Long Cove

Day 26: July 24, 2015

Another peaceful night in a beautiful cove.  We slept well.  We kicked off another great day with blueberry pancakes and good hot coffee.  We were a bit disappointed in North Haven. We had planned to stay in Perry Cove for another day but decided to do a bit more “guck holing” before we had to head back toward Ohio.  This island, Vinalhaven, is quite large with a lot of interesting- looking pockets in which we can drop our hook so we went exploring. 

Entering Leadbetter Island Narrows

We left Perry Cove at about 9:30 and motored on glassy water down around the west side of the island. We passed interesting islands like Leadbetter, Fiddlehead, Dogfish, Hurricane, Lawrys, Cedar, and Crane.  We passed through Hurricane Sound along which were beautiful rock formations.  We ended up in Long Cove.

 

Long Cove is a lovely little spot that is well protected.  We wove in and around a number of these islands to get back in here.  Two other boats were already tied to mooring balls when we arrived and water depths that are suitable for us for anchoring are

Rocks near Fiddlehead Island

limited.  Since there were 5 or 6 unused mooring balls, we decided to try the “we will use it until someone tells us to move” philosophy.  We looked around and found one in a nice location and tied on but after looking at this particular ball, we noticed it had “PVT” painted on it and we thought that it may be that the owner really didn’t want us to use it.  So, I got into Dink and rowed around until I found one in which the paint was so worn off that I couldn’t read it and we moved.

 Eagle  loosing a fish  Photo by Richard Leighton

Our anchorage in Long Cove

Later, as I was reading in our guide book about this place, the author pointed out that this was a very popular cove and boaters come in, hook on to the balls and are then surprised when the owner comes around and demands an exorbitant fee for its use.  So, we spent the rest of the day wondering if the next boat coming in would be the owner.  By bed time, he had not arrived.

At one point in the afternoon, we heard some racket from a flying bird and looked up just in time to see an osprey attacking a bald eagle that was carrying a fish.  In the encounter, the eagle dropped the fish, attempted to retrieve it but had to move on because the persistent osprey continued the attack.  The eagle finally landed in a tree about 100 yards from our boat.

 Our goal was to do some exploring in the dinghy but the wind began to blow and thunder clouds followed by rain put a damper on those plans.  We spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening back in our books.  

We enjoyed our evening meal of faux noodles and spaghetti with meatballs.  We washed them down with cool beer and, indeed, we had our Tillamook cheese as our appetizer.