Notes on Maine - Fog

Foggy morning in Buckle Harbor, Swans Island.

What a better way to finish discussing Maine than to end with the fog. We may have been lucky or it may have been the time of year (the month of August 2010) we visited but we actually experienced fog on only four separate days in our travels through the mid-coast of Maine. Our very first day in the water, on leaving Tenants Harbor, we went right into pea-soup fog. But conditions were fine: seas were flat-calm, our radar was operating properly, cruising boats we encountered were using their horns (as were we). All went well up for the run up to Rockland but for the alarm as we had with a crossing situation with a lobsterboat doing 15+ knots only 50 yards away.

Notes on Maine - Lobster buoys

Buoys lining a path on Warren Island (just west of Isleboro Island) in Penobscot Bay. Park rangers and visitors collected these from the island shoreline over who knows what period of time.

Lobster buoys everywhere! We didn't find them to be much of a nuisance...probably because we were expecting to see waters thick with them and also because we hand-steer Pecan. And hey, you can't have lobsters without the buoys (and traps) to catch them, right? So, with non-autopilot control of our Rossie we easily picked our way among the buoys--never snagged one during our travels. That being said, we did have quite a few close calls when underway in the fog. I can't imagine cruising around after dark--that's a 100% guaranteed way to run into these!

What took us by surprise was what we saw along the exposed, and not-so-exposed, shorelines. Buoys wedged under tree roots at the high-tide line; buoys in rock and boulder crevices; buoys lying on pebble beaches. It didn't take long--once we decided--to collect a fair number of these. In addition to having the frayed, cut end of a piece of polypropylene float line attached, many buoys had the spindles, buoy sticks and breakaway plastic swivels attached. (The swivels have a 600 or 1000 lb. test strength are meant to break if a marine mammal get entwined in the float line.)

Notes on Maine - Lobster

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Notes on Maine - Rossies we saw

Notes on Maine - Launch Ramps

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Notes on Maine - MDI

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Notes on Maine - Harbors

Aerial photos

I just received an email with an attachments of 10 sample photos from that helicopter outfit that buzzed us. Here's five of them cropped a bit.

We're steaming along at 12.5 knots northbound in the ICW near Grant; winds are 20 knots out of the NW.

Back in Satellite Beach

Dotted line path showing clockwise journey around Florida, and the locations where we stopped each evening.