Thursday, July 10, 2008

What a Sail! - Maple Juice Cove


Ahoy there mates its me Matt. Today we went to Maple Juice Cove and on the way out of Boothbay we saw a beautiful ship Sherman Zucker. We a also saw two porpoises. Then I played my gameboy down below until I got sick. Then I stayed in the cockpit for the rest of the ride. Then we went into the biggest lobster pot field and we saw a seal stealing lobster from the pots. I saw 27 of the same color pot. More tomorrow on Matt's Blog.

We awoke to fog in Boothbay Harbor but it was short lived. A west wind came up as predicted and since a west wind in Maine is off the land, it dissipated the fog and was also warm. The sailing was spectacular! We had a broad reach all the way into Maple Juice Cove with 12 to 17 kts of wind with crystal clear air and sparkling seas! Matthew's seasickness only lasted while he was down below playing his gameboy in the aft cabin (no ports open with 4 foot rollers coming in off the stern). Once in the cockpit, he was fine.


At last we starting running into respectable concentrations of lobster pots coming up the bay to the cove. However, every photo I take of the pots does not do them justice. You can see the extent a lot better than any photos show but we dodged them okay and made our way to anchor in 11 feet of water. The cove is huge, a fleet could anchor here without a problem - it's too big for any kind of crowding, my kind of anchorage. By the way, the seagulls just love lobster boats!

On the way we saw a harbor seal and two porpoises but they disappeared before a photo could be taken. On that note, I was thinking the other day, wouldn't it be neat if I could have taken a photo of what it looks like to have another boat appear out of the fog headed straight for you! Somehow, we seem to have other priorities at those times and never snap a picture. Likewise for dodging a particularly dense section of lobster pots. We were sailing through the pots and noticed that the denser the pots, the more the wind gusted, we were speeding along at 7.5 kts through the densest part of the field - another rule of sailing I guess. As soon as we saw a clear area, the wind almost died.

We're headed for Rockland tomorrow. There's a jazz festival in town and all the docks are taken so we'll try for a mooring so I can get into town and replace my depth sounder.

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