NEWSFLASH! Maine…has fog. Sometimes lots of it. Pictures of it are, for the lack of a better description, Not Very Interesting. Unless it is far off and doing cool things on the horizon, or rolling down upon you, which is does seem to do here.
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| Really, there is fog coming. |
Cradle Cove is a quite little harbor off of 700 Hundred Acre Island, a mostly private island near Islesboro Island in the middle of Penobscot Bay. It is actually off of Gilkey Harbor, which is more of a thoroughfare than a harbor. Cradle Cove is nestled among a few small islands with a single boat yard on shore.
The operating word is Quiet; there’s not a lot of traffic here. On shore there is the boat yard with a small (very small) ship’s store, showers and heads. 700 Acre Island, being mostly all private property, doesn’t afford much walking around though there is one state maintained dirt road that leads across much of the island. This is still a very nice walk through woods and fields with some gorgeous views, even if you can’t go “off road”. Bring bug spray though; we didn’t. They weren’t biting bugs but they were friendly bugs, flying around our heads in clouds and landing on us for reasons that were apparent only to them.
Nearby is Warren Island State Park which has a campground set up for boater only access. There are no ferries or bridges. Some nice trails around the island are available with campsites nestled in between them. The children are dying to camp on an island again this year, but unfortunately the state parks charge quite a lot of money ($25/night) for non residents to camp there. We don’t begrudge this since they have things like restrooms, water, etc. to maintain but we’re not looking to CAMP there with a fire and cooking so much as a sleepover in the back yard for the kids type of camping. So we’re still looking for that island destination, like Hay Island in Seal Bay two years ago. In the picture above you can see the South tip of Warren Island, accessible with shallow draft boats at high tide over the rock bar that you can see in the picture. Which is exactly what Kathy and the kids did with our kayak and the Pudgy.
A couple of days of lounging around, sailing, kayaking, seal watching, and walking in a secluded spot was just what the doctor ordered. Oh, and a little boat work. On the way over here our loudhailer stopped working. This is a speaker on the mast which we can both speak though (not so useful) and which will play automatic fog signals (one can not understate how useful this is!). It seems the wires are cracking, which allows our worst enemy, water, to get in there and start corroding things. For someone reason no one wants to send me (the guy that weighs twice what anyone else does) up the rig to fix things. This speaker is located on the first spreader (we have two sets) as you can see here where Kathy is cleaning up the wiring. We made it better, but not perfect so we will have to do this one more time while re-splicing the wires rather than just re-taping and securing them for a quick fix.
