Marvelous Maine 2015 – Isolated Fishing Villages

We are finally in Maine!  After a foggy sunrise, the sky has turned postcard blue, and we are off to Monhegan Island, a rocky outcropping that guards the offshore waters of Penobscot Bay.  It is remote and rarely visited by cruising boats since the harbor would be unsafe in certain wind conditions.  Additionally it doesn’t cater to transients as all the moorings belong to fisherman.  And by fishing, we are referring to lobstering, the mainstay of the economy of Downeast Maine. Upon arrival we radio the harbormaster and ask if a private mooring might be available for an overnight.  Yes, there is one empty, and we are welcome to tie up.  The view from Exuberant oozes charm and authenticity.  Lobster boats fill the small harbor, and the shore sports wharfs and piles of lobster traps. 

Rows of lobster boats awaiting the new fishing season.

An island freighter, with its integral cranes, off loads supplies to Monhegan.

Unlike the other Maine islands, Monhegan fishermen have opted not to lobster in the summer months to sustain their lobster population.  As a result, we have encountered very few pots along the way; rather they are all onshore awaiting the beginning of the season in October. 

Lobster pots sit unattended in a field as wildflower grow amongst them.

 

We have been on passage for over 24 hours and are anxious to get on shore and stretch our legs.  Hiking up to the lighthouse, we admire the fields of wildflowers and gardens adorning the cedar sided homes along the way. 
 

Cedar sided houses on the waterfront.

The flower gardens are happy to see the sun in this usually foggy area.

The view from the heights is spectacular.   

View from the light house towards the harbor and Manana Island

We look down upon the village with its large summer hotel dating from around 1900 and across the small harbor to the adjacent island, Manana, where once stood a manned Coast Guard fog signal station.  Manana is barren and rugged, and was the setting for one of Andrew Wyeth’s most famous paintings. While at the Monhegan Lighthouse, we visit the island museum, crammed with relics of an earlier day reflecting island living and survival.  Next door is a new art museum that houses traveling shows, one per summer, featuring a famous artist who once painted on Monhegan Island. You see, besides being a fishing village, Monhegan is also an artists’ colony, with the likes of the Wyeths, Rockwell Kent, and Edward Hooper having been in residence at some point.

We hike across the summit of the island to the undeveloped windward shore, where most of the land outside of the village area is maintained as a nature preserve.  The view from the 160 foot high cliffs is breath-taking.

The view looking north.

The view looking south

Seagulls soar below us, waves crash along the rocky shore, and in the distance we see a rare ocean sunfish floating along the surface of the water.

A poor picture of a sunfish taken from the cliffs.  The head is aimed to the left and one fin is above water, a typical swimming pattern.  Sunfish average six feet across and can be much large - quite unusual looking fish.

We regret leaving beautiful Monhegan Island the next morning, but, with good weather forecasted, we depart for another rarely visited out island destination, Mantinicus Island. Mantinicus is considered the most remote island in Maine with a year round population. We are traveling far enough away from the larger ports that we see few lobster pots, a real joy in this neck of the woods.   Upon arrival we are able to find a mooring in this harbor which is otherwise filled with lobster boats.  Along the shore are many fishing wharfs and small homes scattered between the rocky outcroppings. 

A view across the harbor at Mantinicus Island

 

A fisherman's gear stands waiting at one of the wharfs.

Otherwise there is very little development here.  The ferry only visits twice a month, and food is delivered via special order by plane.  We wander the few gravel roads and find there are even fewer people and no infrastructure.  Somewhere, although we never saw it, there is a bakery in one woman’s house. And somehow we manage to find the only other commercial establishment, a small gift shop and gallery called The Fisherman’s Wife.  We stop in and visit with the owner and her daughter, previously the teacher in the one room school house that services around ten children in grades K – 8.  Interestingly, on the shelves in the shop are many books by a children’s author, Gail Gibbons, who spends summers on the island.  I had bought one of her books, Life on a Maine Island, for our grandsons a year ago.  Based on this island, we discover many of the illustrations in the book feature the shop owner’s family and the book is dedicated to her and her husband. With little else to do on the island – no ice cream or soda shops here - we head back to the boat.

There is often stiff competition between and within these fishing communities for control over lobstering territory, reminiscent of a cross between the Wild West and the Hatfields and McCoys.  Referred to as “Lobster Wars”, a good example is cited in one of our cruising guides.  Apparently a serious feud developed between two of the fishermen on Mantinicus Island, escalating to the point that one individual took a plane loaded with a large boulder (not hard to find around here), flew over his competition, and dropped the boulder on top of his rival’s boat, sinking it immediately. In this land of rugged individuals, the fishermen are a force to be reckoned with.  We sense this atmosphere on Mantinicus, while at other islands the people are remarkably friendly.

The next leg of our adventure takes us to the southern end of Vinalhaven Island and Carver’s Harbor. 

Congested Carver's Harbor

Again we find ourselves in a harbor chocked full of fishing vessels and are lucky to find a fisherman in a dinghy who is willing to show us to one of two rental buoys. It is a tight squeeze for us between other fishing boats and a raft full of lobster traps, interspersed with random lobster pots floating between the moorings.

Shore side wharfs are at a premiium here so large floats in the harbor also off load the day's catch.

Some of our neighbors at the mooring.  The names on the boats can be quite amusing as in this one "Haul a day" and another nearby, "Lobsta Tales".

This is a fishing village on quite a different scale than Monhegan or Mantinicus.  Probably over 100 lobster boats populate the harbor, leaving in a roar at sunrise each morning and returning in a steady stream of traffic during the afternoon as they unload their catch at numerous commercial wharfs.  Further down, a ferry from Rockland arrives every few hours.  The streets are paved and the downtown has all the amenities of the mainland – a bank, sizable grocery store, several motels and restaurants, a K-12 school, and a small scale hospital. We have returned to civilization, albeit still a bit remote from the tourist side of Maine. 

After wandering the streets of the village, we walk out of town to Lane Island which connects to Vinalhaven by a small bridge.  Most of Lane Island is Nature Conservancy Land, and we enjoy a hike along the rocky shoreline.  Vistas overlook marsh land, tidal pools bedecked with kelp and seaweed, fields of wildflowers, and the coast line we traversed on our way into the harbor.  

A series of scenes from our hike at Lane Island.

It is a delightful way to spend an afternoon, but as we head back to the boat, we notice the sky is beginning to darken – our stretch of perfect weather is about to come to an end. We arrive at the boat in time to batten down the hatches before we are pelted with heavy rain.  

Storm's a coming!

As luck would have it, we have made dinner reservation at the “upscale” Haven restaurant in town. In true cruiser mode, we don our foul weather gear and water shoes and head out for a drenching in the dinghy.  But this is Maine, and the restaurant has an anti-room where we can leave our dripping outwear.  It is worth the effort as we have a gourmet dinner at a price one would normally pay for hamburgers in more well known vacation towns. After dinner we chat with the couple at the table next to us.  A fisherman by trade, he has just returned from assisting on a two week tour with a NOAA research vessel in the Gulf of Maine.  He is full of stories about whales, sharks (he saw a 12 foot great white shark jump completely out of the water), and even a few of the rare, although perhaps not as rare as we have been led to believe, sunfish.

When in Rome, do as the Romans, right?  So when in Carver’s Harbor, it seems only right to head to the Lobster Cooperative and purchase a lobster for dinner.  Bought directly from fishermen, lobsters are pretty cheap and our 1 ½ pounder runs us $9, up a bit from the prices we saw last year.  The only problem is that we’ve never cooked a lobster.  Burt gets on the internet and researches how to prepare lobster.  We decide on the steaming method.  Now purchased, our lobster is residing in the refrigerator in a plastic bag, and I am freaking out imagining that it has gotten loose and is roaming the frig, ready to snip off any wayward fingers.  Reaching in to grab a soda takes all the courage I can muster.  The lobster has been carefully measured to fit into the largest pot I have on board, but there will be little room to spare and I fear it might decide to climb out as it is a frisky one.  Come dinner time, I get the pot steaming but it is Burt’s task to actually do the deed; I am totally incapable of sending the lobster to the sauna of doom even though I am looking forward to its exit from the refrigerator. Minutes later Burt is enjoying his lobster (I’m allergic to seafood so am not partaking) and claims it is the tastiest ever. Meanwhile, I am calming my frayed nerves with a glass of wine. 

We spend two more days in Vinalhaven, with rain and fog keeping us mostly on the boat.  We finally decide to move on despite the weather.  The forecast says the dense fog will lift by mid-morning, but, guess what, the forecast lies.  Once we leave the harbor the fog really closes in on us.  Visibility is no more than 100 feet, so we proceed with both of us intensely watching the radar, listening for the sounds of nearby boats, and dodging the ever more plentiful lobster pots. Our automated fog horn is blaring, and we are proceeding at an antagonizingly slow pace. We finally arrive at our anchorage in a cove near Hell’s Half Acre Island, a mile past the town of Stonington on Deer Isle.   What should have been a gorgeous sail past rocky islets and pine rimmed and boulder strewn coves, ends up being the source of stress headaches. With the anchor down and our nerves settling, the fog lifts enough for us to enjoy this lovely anchorage., a quiet cove surrounded by small rocky islets. We decide to take the dinghy into Stonington, another fishing village, albeit a developed one as the island is attached to the mainland by a bridge.  

The view of Stonington Harbor with lobster boats tucked between rocky outcropping. Note the fog bank in the distance beginning to creep in.

Stonington shoreline with the fog thickening.

At the last minute, I decide to bring along our handheld GPS to lay a track line just in case the fog should return.  We wander the streets of Stonington, stopping at our favorite book store in an old fishing shack, and resting along the harbor front with a soda.  The trip back to the anchorage begins with a leisurely ride around the harbor in the dinghy, but quickly the fog begins to roll in and minutes later we can see nothing.  It is totally disorienting and without the GPS track we would have been motoring in circles for the entire night.  Upon returning to the anchorage, we can barely see a large wooden schooner that has anchored nearby,

The schooner that is about to pull a disappearing act.

and a few minutes later the only evidence of it is the sound of its crew chatting on deck.

The next morning dawns with some fog, but visibility has greatly improved so we head ten miles west to the Fox Island Thorofare which divides Vinalhaven from North Haven, otherwise known as the two Fox Islands. It is a fun cruise up this narrow passageway, strewn with small rock islands and rimmed by a mixture of woods and sloping lawns on the shore.  And, there is no shortage of lobster pots to challenge our piloting skills. Up until now we have been visiting villages where lobster fishing is the primary economic force, but North Haven, along with the nearby portions of Vinalhaven, is primarily a vacation destination.  The harbor is full of boats, but the majority are recreational vessels on moorings and fleets of junior sailors from the yacht club, underway to the nearby cove for a practice session.  From our anchorage, it is a short hop to Perry Creek which we explore by dinghy until we run short of water depth. Except for the very beginning, the creek runs through land controlled by the Nature Conservancy – it is a tranquil setting disturbed only by the sounds of birds.

One way to get waterfront views - a houseboat moored in Perry Creek.

 Exploring the village of North Haven doesn’t take too long; it is a small, quiet community of vacation homes and a few gift shops.

A vacation home along the North Haven waterfront - note how it stands on stone piers made of the native granite.

And on Tuesday, even the ice cream store is closed. We return to the boat for a rushed dinner on the grill as thunderstorms are passing within a few miles of us. Tomorrow we will exchange our week exploring these off-the-beaten-path islands for the bustle of the relatively big city of Camden.