It’s not like it’s a month and half late or anything. OK, maybe it is, we did get back on Labor Day weekend and here it is mid October.
Finally with the kids back from school, the boat back from Maine and the sailing season winding down I’ve finally taken the time to load all the pictures and give this all some thought. So finally in little dribs and drabs, it’s coming but I’ll start with an over overview then get into some more specifics on each trip and destination in further posts.
The Plan for this trip had been formulating for some time, close to a year since I finally browbeat my wife into taking two solid weeks of vacation off at the end of the summer. All of this advance planning meant one thing of course – we had very little plan of where we’d actually be going and when. Sort of a vague “yeah let’s start around here and head that way” approach which we carried almost until the departure time arrived. Given our lack of experience in Maine and with traveling long distances together as a family this seemed wise. Of course our initial landfall location changed several times in the last week from Portland to Boothbay Harbor to Tenant’s Harbor to Mt. Desert Island and back and forth.
For our final itinerary we decided to make landfall at Tenant’s Harbor on the West side of Penobscot Bay. We didn’t want to do this in one long trip from East Greenwich so we opted to make Provincetown the first day then leave the following afternoon or an overnight trip, arriving in Maine well after sunrise.
After Tenant’s we moved to Rockland in anticipation of a day or two of rainy weather, then headed on to Pulpit then Seal Harbor. Our eventual plan was to work our way to Mt. Desert Island and spend a few days there, then start working our way back before leaving for the long trip home. When we arrived in Northeast Harbor we found that we were being stalked by Hurricane Earl which was expected to come up the New England coast the same day we were planning to be sailing down it. As posted earlier, this led to a longer than expected stay in Northeast Harbor as we opted to weather the storm out there.
As it turned out the storm was a major fizzle and we were perhaps a bit over cautious. But c’est la vie; we don’t regret the extra time on Mt. Desert Island at all (though perhaps our harbor choices might be different next time…).
With the notable exception of Hurricane Earl and one day of rain in Rockland we had stunning weather, a heat wave for Maine even. My extensive electronics overhaul served to guarantee us an essentially fog free trip – in fact the only fog we saw was on the evening the hurricane passed through. The lobster pots were mind blowing in their number but without the fog they weren’t so bad.
