Buckle Harbor and Island - a Game Buoy trip

Caduceus
Martin and Elizabeth Bevan
Tue 12 Jul 2011 19:00

Position           44:10.89N 068:28.35W

Date                2000 – Tuesday 12 July 2011 (UTC -4)

 

The puns are getting worse but so are the buoys.  It becomes increasingly difficult to avoid going over something as most of the buoys hereabouts are joining by a tether to a marker; the skill is spotting which marker goes with which buoy.  So far where we (I) have made a mistake we have slid over the top and left the respective buoys bobbin in our wake.  We really do not want to end up with a pick your own lobster complete with trap if we can avoid it.  There is room here a Waddington’s board game, something between Battleships and Monopoly.  That comment shows my age; whilst I have fully embraced the computer age, computer gaming is somewhat of a closed book so no examples of those.

 

The number three lobster from yesterday provided an elegant lunch in splendid sunshine and the isolation of Eastern Cover before we left for an afternoon sail with enough wind to actually sail, even if only very gently, for the 9nm to Buckle Harbor which lies between Buckle Island and the north west of Swans Island and has wonderful views back over the mountains of Mount Desert Island.

 

 

We anchored alongside the beautiful wooden schooner Alemar, out of Castine a destination in Penobscot Bay on our itinerary.

 

 

Going ashore for a walk we exchanged greetings with Alemar and that ended up with an invitation for a glass of wine and a postponed walk.  It was an interesting story.  The schooner was built in 1947 specifically as a sail training vessel for summer sailing camps.  The skipper first sailed on Alemar in the 1950’s as a teenager and subsequently bought it and owned it for many years.  He has now passed it on but still retains the ability to use it which with two other couples is what he was doing. 

 

The party broke up abruptly when black clouds heralded the onset of some very vigorous rain.  The walk was cancelled and the pork in cream sauce intend for dinner remained in the fridge as we settled down with a pizza followed by a rare, for us, watching of a ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ on DVD whilst the rain thundered down on the deck.