Foggy Maine

The next two days were spent motoring through thick fog. It is our opinion that GPS and radar are good. Though I know we were surrounded by islands, we hardly saw anything along the way. Occasionally we were close enough to an island to catch a murky glimpse through the fog and rain. We motored blind toward Mcglathery island, a protected island that is inhabited by wild sheep. When we arrived, we had the little cove to ourselves. Just us and the fog. Our hike on this island was nothing short of mystically magical as we wound through the deep, dark, misty woods blanketed, alternately, with deep green moss and ferns, and white moss that I kept mistaking for snow at first glance. We are sure fairies live here. Aaron spent some time making a house for one. I am sad to say that there were no sheep sightings, however. They were pretty well camoflaged.

The next day the fog was just as thick, but luckily, it was not raining. The GPS faithfully guided us to Frenchburo just as the fog burned off and we hopped off the boat in search of the famous lobster roll from the head of the cove offshore store. Though it was closed for the season, it seemed to be inhabited by kids when we got there. They ran across the street to fetch their mother who graciously made us a lobster roll and sold us some much needed water. As we sat and talked with the owner, we learned that there are no grocery stores on the island, there are eleven students in the one room school house, and the huge bones that sat by the side of her store were from a minke whale that washed up on shore there a couple of years ago. When we got back to the boat, there was a breeze so we headed out to sail in the glorious sunshine for a couple of hours. Along the way I felt a deep need to take a swim even though I knew I would freeze. As we got closer to harbor I knew it was my last chance and I would regret it if I didn't do it so we heaved to and I jumped into the water. It was cold. And I wasn't expecting a current so I got a little freaked out when it started pulling me away from the boat and swimming back was much more difficult than anticipated. But I made it, and all of my boys helped pull me back on deck shivering, dripping and salty. Next on the agenda for the day was visit to Eastern Beach where the it gets hammered all winter long by huge waves so all of the granite rocks on shore are round, smooth and very egg-y, perfect throwing rocks. The boys set to work as soon as we stepped out of the dinghy throwing as many of these round rocks into the water as they could manage. It gradually morphed into throwing small egg rocks at big egg rocks which had the delightful effect of bouncing like a pinball back and forth very randomly, and sometimes scarily across the beach. For little boys, Ne Plus Ultra.....Latin for "there is no higher," which was also the name of the Bermunda 40 that we were chartering.

I apologize for the overload of photos.