Day 13 - Tenants Harbor to Booth Bay HArbor

Rain during the night and then thick fog this morning. We departed relatively early - 7:30am - and motored out to Monhegan Island then turned and motored to Boothbay harbor. We did manage to sail for about 30 minutes, barely, but the wind was not cooperative today. This is the worst sailing day of the trip.

Here is some fog as we awoke and a lobster boat just off our starboard bow. As you can imagine we were making a lot of use of radar today.

Monhegan island has a very interesting community which prides themselves on helping one another. They only catch lobster from Janaury to June to conserve their important lobster resource. They also and state that after June the lobsters are shedding and become the so called "soft shelled lobsters" which fetch a lower price. Thus its not worth lobstering at this time anyway. Also, in January, when the season begins, the lobstermen only go out if they are able to all go out. If there is an engine problem in one person's boat they all help to fix it and then leave for the beginning of the season together.

Monhegan Island is very different than other islands that we have seen having the more distinctive cliffs than is characteristic of these parts of Maine. Here are some pictures of the east side of the island which shows the more barren cliffs.

After traveling along the eastern side of Monhegan Island we turned and came us the western side through Monhegan Harbor. What a contrast. The harbor is situated between Manana Island and Monhegan Island, has a strong current and the protection provided by Manana Island allows homes to be built. At the northern end of the harbor is Smuttynose - a collection of rocks with water on bother sides. We passed to the east of Smuttynose. The narrow channel to the west is called Drunken Gut. Our guidebook says that of the few who use it, even fewer are sober.

Here is a view of Manana Island from Monhegan harbor

and a view looking back to Monhegan Island and Manana Island after we had exited the harbor and were heading north back to the mainland.

PHOTO OP - As we were nearing Boothbay Harbor we saw this classic sight which we have called - "one man and his dog went to catch a fish".

Before closing for the day I want to go back to Tenants harbor. The mooring ball we picked up was owned by a boat builder called Lyman-Morse. They make a variety of boats - sail and power - On youtube they have a series of movies about building boats. Their first step is to build a wooden replica of the boat for their customer to approve before they go ahead with the actual construction. Can you imagine the cost of these boats.

Here are three videos showing the construction of the Deerfoot 70
Video 1

Video 2
video 3

This makes me wonder, how many boatbuilding companies are there in Maine?