Charleston to Maine

Sunday 8 Jul: Half way Boston to Bar Harbour
By 1am, at shift change, the wind has died to below 9 kts behind us and our speed to 4. So engine goes on again. We have some catch up to do after our slow sailing. We are certainly using the engine a lot since arriving to USA, lucky fuel is cheap here. We motor on the rest of the night and through dawn. Sun is up at 04:55, the earliest we have seen it. But it takes hours before we really feel its warmth.
Even though we are in 120m water depth we start to see fishing floats, marking lobster pots and as it gets shallower their numbers increase till we are playing dodgems again. We are shocked to see the sea temperature is now only 13DegC …. it drops like a stone as you head north up this Maine coast. Clearly we are getting into the Labrador current coming from the ice up north. We hope we don’t have to dive under the boat in this temperature!
As we motor along a seal swims next to us, then flips and disappears. This really is a different wildlife scene to what we are used to. Soon the green rolling hills of Maine come into view on our port side. It’s nice to see some undulations in the land for once, the coast has been so flat up till now.
There are lots of little islands and inlets, and would probably feel like sailing paradise if there was some wind actually. We motor around Long Island through thousands of fishing floats, literally one every 50m or so. How do boats sail through all these? They must get so much rope caught around their rudders and propellers.
As we reach Mount Desert Island, we motor briefly in Southwest Harbor where the Hinkley boat yard is, to see where the mooring buoys are, and it all looks safe. This would be one of the options where we could leave Cloudy Bay when we fly back to Europe.
As we motor out, we see a huge red jellyfish, at least 70cm diameter, a seal, a dolphin, and a dead deer floating passed us. All within 10 minutes. Hm, certainly lots of wildlife here.
The shoreline is pretty; mellow hills, with pine trees and rocks at the water’s edge. We also motor passed a beach with hundreds of people on it, but we can’t see if anybody is actually in the water. We are dressed in winter clothes, and the locals are just basking in the sun!
We arrive into Frenchman Bay on the west side of the famous Mount Desert Island. Bar Harbor being our final destination in this journey north. We are a bit disappointed to find 2 cruise ships anchored off the town, as this means thousands of tourists ashore, buses loading them in and lots of souvenirs shops.
Now that we are off the ocean breeze, the air suddenly feels warmer and we are happy to be out of the cockpit tent and enjoying the sun again. We pick up a mooring buoy for $35 a night and soon after that we are ready to go ashore.
Not long before sunset now, so we walk the main streets for a while, enjoy an ice cream, admire few buildings and soak in the atmosphere of the town. A bit spoiled by mass tourism, but otherwise nice.
As our phone seems to have an issue since we arrived in Maine, we get the wi-fi password from a hotel nearby the boat and retire to Cloudy Bay for flights to Europe and boat storage search, and then an early night. Again snuggling in the warmth of the newly redeployed duvet!