Short Visit to Searsport

 On our next attempt, we secured Guest #1 mooring near the Searsport Town Dock. There are a very small number of slips, but none appear to be for transients. Still, a free morning is more than most towns offer to cruisers. It was just our luck that we were in town for the fireworks and had a front row seat.

Rockland to Searsport all of 6 mile!	Neighboring boat at town mooring.

In the nineteenth century, Searsport was an active ship building center with as any as 600 ships built here. Besides that, it is estimated that ten percent of all nineteenth century vessels saililng under the American flag were from Searsport. There are two visible signs of this heritage. There is the Penobscot Marine Museum that maintains a small village of nineteenth century buildings showcasing the life styles of the era. More striking are the gorgeous mansions left by those sea captains throughout tenth town.

Private Home	The Homeward Inn is a bed and breakfast with a restaurant featuring live music in season.	The Captain Nichols Bed and Breakfast

Mooring in Belfast

 We left Rockland and headed to Searsport to visit the Penobscot Maritime Museum. We knew that the town kept at least one free guest  mooring. The seas turned out to be choppy and we managed to wrap the mooring line around the mooring ball and had to abandon our effort and retreat to a mooring Belfast.

Belfast was one of the towns that I was eager to see having last been there about 25 years ago. It has a history as a shipbuilding town in the 1800’s. In the 1950’s it became a center for processing broilers (small  chickens), and now hosts a major credit card processing center for credit cards. Through it all it has prospered one way or another. This can be seen in the totally occupied store fronts on the well preserved main streets. 

 

Well Preserved and Fully Occupied Main Street

One of the more interesting waterfront items we saw on the trip was the dilapidated hull of the former presidential yacht Sequoia. It served presidents from Herbert Hoover through Jimmy Carter who sold it as a cost cutting move. It had been built by widow for her own use after having several other yachts built.Since leaving government service it has had several owners including the current one whose efforts at restoration were halted due to workers concerns working in close quarters during the Covid pandemic.

It seems its ultimate fate is in doubt.

Then	Now

Gerald, Chief of the Lobster Cooking Indians

The one surprise for us at the Maine Lobster Festival was that all the lobsters are cooked at one central permanent brick building. In a scene reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution a small team manages eight huge containers of boiling water. Lobsters arrive by ruck in large plastic totes. These are lifted by an overhead crane and immersed in one of the gas fired tanks for cooking and a timer is set. Once time has elapsed the totes are again lifted by crane and the lobsters are removed and loaded into another tote on a handcart for delivery to the lobster and shore dinner tent or the lobster roll tent.

It was interesting to watch as Gerald led his crew in tending the boiling pots and loading and unloading the lobsters. 

Central Lobster Cooker	Gerald Calls the Shots

Taking the Orders	Rub Their Backs and Asleep They Go

The 76th annual Maine Lobster Festival at Rockland

 As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” We woke up on the mooring at Monhegan Island to find that Nano’s house batteries were nearly flat after only on night on the hook. I decided that we might just need to replace the two six year old group 31 AGM units. That meant a change in plans and we diverted to Rockland instead of going to another mooring on Matinicus Island. Rockland is a big boating center and we thought mistakenly as it turned out that we could easily find replacements. Without boring you with details, I’ll just say that Nano’s batteries are unusual in having ‘flag terminals’ instead of ten more normal SAE terminals similar to auto batteries. It took some research and shoe leather to determine this and lo and behold the Maine Lobster Festival was nigh upon us. What could we do, but lay over?

The festival turned out to be like a medium sized country fair with an emphasis on, you guessed it, lobster. Just in case you haven’t been to a county fair recently, here are a couple of shots starting with the block long line for the lobster and shore dinner tent. Although Kevin had enjoyed lobster before, he hadn’t had any on the coast of Maine. As an informal ambassador for my homeland, I cajoled him into the whole lobster tent away from the lobster roll tent. I had my first shore dinner in decades and we declared (in Kevin’s wife Sally’s words) ‘Check Done’!

Scenes from Monhegan Island

 We arrived at Monhegan Island and took a mooring ball then dinghied ashore to fish beach. In this picture you can see both Nano and just the grey tip of our dinghy (just behind the kayaks). 

As we climbed the hill towards the lighthouse, Kevin decided that the lawn chairs on the lawn of the Island House had his name on them, so why not enjoy the warm sun? 

At the height there is a small lighthouse naturally commanding a panoramic view of the island and surrounding sea. Today, the view just happened to include our stout little tug, Nano.

Likin’ Lichens on Monhegan Island, Maine

 At every stop I make on my travels I seem to find something odd strange and curious that becomes a highlight of that visit. On my most recent visit to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine it was lichens. I was struck by their hardiness and subtly colored beauty. As a bonus I am aware that lichens are susceptible to air pollution so their hardiness is a tell tail sign of fresh air. 

This picture was of my first sight of a lichen covered wall on the island.

I found the next scene especially attractive with the day lilies complementing the lichen. What a wonderful sight to come back home to!