Castine to Searsport

Day 19: July 18, 2015

Another wonderfully calm night of rest.  We awoke again to a glassy cove.  We enjoyed eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast.  

After we finished cleaning up the place, I took the Dink out to pull the second anchor and the water was so calm, I rowed over to the shore to do a bit of beachcombing.  Not much accumulates on these shores other than the natural

Fort Madison from the water

debris that floats in.  I did find one piece of sea glass.  I ventured into the forest behind the beach and ran across an old abandoned road.  It obviously was one designed with some permanency in mind because it had been leveled up with large stones.  It did, however, have dead trees fallen across it.  I walked along for a ways and came upon a clearing from which you could see another bay, Smith Cove, located on the other side of the isthmus. 

MarKel's Bakehouse

Back at the boat, we motored over to the town dock at Castine where a very efficient dock hand was landing and arranging boats at his dock with the efficiency of a highly efficient parking lot attendant.  We waited in line at a small holding dock until he moved and arranged space for us to pull in.  We were then informed that we were allotted 2 hours of free dockage.  I told him that we had a couple of small grocery bags of trash and he said it was his job to take care of that and that he would provide a large trash bag and dispose of it for $1.50.  Super!

Abbot's School- Castine Historical Society

We walked up town, stopped at MarKel’s Bakehouse where we enjoyed a freshly baked sweet-roll and a cup of gourmet coffee on their deck overlooking the bay.  From there we walked to the old town square and visited their historical society museum that was located in an old Abbott schoolhouse built in 1859.  We watched an in-depth video that relived the disastrous Penobscot Expedition that resulted in a humiliating defeat of US Revolutionary forces.  As was everything else in Castine, there was also a significant display of information and artifacts about and around the time of the L’Hermione’s original visit.

We made it back to the boat with 10 minutes to spare.  We were afraid that the dock guy would cut our mooring lines and set Second Wind adrift if we had over extended our 2 hour limit.

Dyce Head Lighthouse, Castine, ME

We motored south west out of the harbor and turned northwest toward the village of Searsport.  After the turn, we picked up a wonderful breeze on our port side and sailed the 8 miles to this historic little town.  As we entered the harbor, we began to experience a bit of choppy water so we decided to pick up a mooring ball for the night.  This harbor is wide open to weather from the southeast to the southwest and the prevailing south westerlies were creating the havoc.  An anchor would have probably have worked but the mooring ball would give us piece of mind. 

We called the harbor master, who turned out to be the owner of Hamilton Marine

The Searsport dock

and he assigned us to mooring ball #1.  We noticed that there were very few boats in their harbor and their dinghy dock was located at the base of a 10 foot high pier to which you needed to climb an old wooden ladder that went straight up.  We inquired as to the cost for the night and the harbor master told us that we could put a donation in a can that was located at the end of the dock.

The town of Searsport has a rich history associated maritime history.  It was the home of 13 shipyards that turned out over 200 sailing vessels in the19th century.  It was the home of over 200 ships’ captains who roamed the

Cage chair to escort vagrants out of town

globe.  “Some wives waited at home; others went to sea with their families.  Many sea births were listed by latitude and longitude on the birth certificates… The Nichols family of Searsport had 35 members born at sea.”  This heritage inspired the Penobscot Marine Museum in which we spent several hours.  The museum consists of a group of 7 buildings that range from old store buildings to ship captains’ homes to boat houses and shops.  It is extensive enough that we were able to get through only a few of the exhibits.

Painting inside of a bottle

From the museum, we walked to the Captain AV Nickels Inn where we enjoyed an elegant evening meal.  Janine had steamed mussels on a bed of linguini and crab cakes tapas and I had a surf and turf dinner consisting of a shrimp, a scallop, and a crawfish along with a wonderful piece of ribeye.  

We headed back to the boat and found Second Wind dancing wildly on her mooring.  We rode the Dink to her stern where we both had a bit of a struggle getting aboard.  The boat would go up and the dinghy would go down.  The boat would go down and the dinghy would go up.  Going below, we both realized that this would be a really long night if we stayed here. I dug out the charts and found the north facing Turtle Head Cove on Islesboro Island which is located about 4.5 miles from Searsport Harbor.  It was 7:00 and I figured that we had enough daylight left to allow us to get to the cove and drop the anchor before dark.

We turned loose the mooring ball and headed southwest through a rough sea.  Our motor pushed us along between 4 and 5 knots and we pulled into the calm and well protected waters of Turtle Head Cove at about 8:15. 

Surf and Turf served at Captain AV Nickels Inn

We found a great spot to drop our anchor.  It had good holding ground with plenty of room to swing around on a long anchor rode.  And, Second Wind rested calmly as we prepared for bed.