Bucks Harbor to Castine and the Hermione Parde

Day 16: July 14, 2015

This is a really well protected harbor and being on a mooring ball, we had no worries about a dragging anchor so we both slept soundly.  We again enjoyed sausage gravy on toast with V-8 Juice.  The harbor is still calm and we are planning on heading to Castine to check out that historic village.

 

I went over to the dock to take some pictures and ran into a guy who had just finished and won a sailboat race that ran from Marble Head to Halifax.  This was a 4/5 day 24 hour a day race in which his 36 ft. Pearson was the smallest boat in the race.  They won in a cruising boat class. 

He told us that things would really be hopping in Castine because the French tall ship L'Hermione would be there to celebrate Bastille Day.  Gilbert Motier, Marquis of La Fayette, was a 22 year old gentleman who boarded the ship which allowed La Fayette to join the American insurgents in the struggle for their independence in 1780.  The ship is a recently completed replica of the original vessel built in the 1779.  She was 145 feet in length, 36.9 feet beam, a draught of 19 feet and weighed 550 tons.  She carried 32 guns; 26 of which were 12 pound long guns and 6 were 6 pound long guns.

I had read about the coming of this tall ship and was aware of the fact that it would be stopping at various ports along the east coast.  I also noted that it would be in Maine during the time we would be here so I was excited about the possibility of seeing her. 

 But I get ahead of myself.

Just after breakfast, Janine looked out the window and noticed that a fog bank wfas rolling in to our cove.  The fog, although not entirely blanketing us, was enough that we were unable to leave the anchorage.  We had planned on making Castine our next port of call.  It is only 8 miles from where we currently are.  The L'Hermione is to be there for a 2:00 parade so we needed to be on our way as soon as possible. 

Light fog on our way to Castine

Finally at 11:00 the fog had thinned out enough that I decided to make a run for it.  We motored along at about 5 mph and easily made it to the area of Castine by about 12:30.  We weren’t sure what the schedule would be but we noticed a number of boats of various sizes heading in the opposite direction down the Penobscot River that we had come.  So when we were close enough to the village that we could easily zip in if the action developed there, we raised the sails and began tacking back and forth across the 2 mile wide river. 
We continued to tack for the next two hours in the semi-foggy weather.  We had a

Schooner Victory Chimes appears out of the fog

nice breeze and the sailing was exhilarating.  Meanwhile, boats continued to stream out of the Castine area throughout this entire time.  Finally, at about 2:30, the magnificent vessel appeared out of the fog with a tremendous flotilla of surrounding her.  We dropped the sails and headed to meet her.  We nestled into the middle of the crowd of over 100 boats (no exaggeration this time) and road on her port side for the next hour. She is a truly beautiful vessel.  Her decks

Then, L'Hermione appears with her following

were crowded with, I assume, honored guests along with her crew.  She is huge.  She dwarfed all of the other boats who were in the crowd some of which were quite large. 
As she neared the narrow river entrance where Castine is located, the Coast Guard began moving the crowd away from her so that she could maneuver into her dock.  We peeled off and headed for a nearby cove where

And Here She Is

we would anchor for the night.  As she moved into the river she began a 20 cannon salute to the folks of Castine.  It was really impressive with bright flash and roar of the cannons and the cloud of blue smoke enveloping the ship.  It was quite a site and a thrill for us to be a part of it.
A YouTube video of the parade is:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjGhFFVLlDE&feature=youtu.be

We are in the throng.  About 2/3 of the way through the video, you will see a large tug boat move into the area off of L'Hermione's port side and we were motoring just ahead of and on the port side of the tug.

L'Hermione Note crewman standing on foremast top yardarm

We set our hook in the eastern side of Holbrook Island Harbor in about 8 feet of water at low tide. Several other boats had the same idea of trying to grab an anchorage before the throngs of folks who followed L'Hermione into

And her beautiful stern

Castine finished their wine or grog and began looking for a place to land.  Being Bastille Day and reputed to be a day of great celebration, we opted to remain in our quiet peaceful cove about a mile from the festivities.
The area where we stopped had what appeared to be a nice beach exposed because of low tide so we climbed in Dink and planned for a waNote the crew standing on the foremast topsail yardarmlk.  It turned out that the beach was not a sand beach at all.  The area of that was nearest the water consisted of large cobble stones completely covered with barnacles and further up the gravel was all very angular granite chips that were sharp.  I assume that si

One of the many antique beauties in the flotilla

nce this area is protected from the pounding waves that grinds down stones on exposed shores, the rocks don’t become smooth.
Back at the boat we prepared beef stroganoff for dinner and accompanied it with a glass of white wine.  We baked a blob carrot cake in our bake packer and when it cooled slathered it with cream cheese icing.  Small pieces made a great bedtime snack.

This girl appeared to be steaming with black smoke coming from her funnel

And another