All Hands On Deck   Adventures on land and at sea

Photos won’t upload and I wrote this yesterday…

I am often dumbfounded by place names in Maine. Who came up with these names? How? When? How on earth do I pronounce them? I’m getting better with pronunciation but I need to know how Mt. Desert Island (which is not a desert at all) got it’s name. I suppose I’ll just google it next time we have decent internet (I’m writing this offline from a harbor devoid of 4g networks, imagine that!).

Our previous anchorages have had some interesting names as well. There was Brimstone island, Crotch island (aptly named, in this case) near Stonington, and Burnt Coat, my personal favorite so far. There must be a story behind that one.

Lee, little G and I arrived in Northeast Harbor, Mt. Desert Island this afternoon among a flotilla of other boats seeking shelter from the weather that is supposed to arrive tomorrow. Its really not much weather-wise but any kind of sea and wind is something compared to the flat calm conditions we’ve had so far.

We came here from Burnt Coat, where all three of us swam in an old quarry this morning. Before that we were in Stonington to meet family for a meal. Stonington was a pretty rugged working harbor compared to many of the yachtier harbors around here. Lobster boats outnumbered sail maybe 20 to 1. We took our first real showers of the trip there and had a good lunch in town.

Yesterday and today were both upwind sails. Most other boats seem to just motor to windward but we make the currents and wind to make headway the old fashioned way. Around here that also involves dodging lobster pots, which we’re not too good at. We’ve snagged several and dragged a couple that we had to work to free. We caught one today that snagged several others before we finally freed it. There was a trail of buoys following behind us.

Gunnar has been doing well with all the crazy boat stuff. He gets us lots of attention too. Everyone is curious about the baby on there boat.

We hope to do some hiking in Acadia NP tomorrow before the rain associated with this storm starts. We might spend another night here too. It’s time to reprovision perishables and do some laundry.