Penobscott Bay 44:03.88N 68:51.11W

Lotus
Sun 15 Aug 2010 23:48
Penobscot Bay is about 35miles wide and extends a similar distance inland.  It contains many islands (possibly hundreds) and is the premier cruising destination on the New England Coast.  Famous for both Lobster and Blueberries of which we have had our fill.  One small town that we visited, Vinalhaven which is no bigger than Keswick exports 5million lobsters per year.  There is a downside to this, not just for the Lobsters, the number of Lobster pots along the Maine coast is estimated to be somewhere near 1 million.  In particularly productive areas this means literally having to zigzag your ways through hundreds of brightly coloured buoys.  To give you an idea some areas of water the size of a football pitch may contain as many as 100 pots.  This can be frustrating and a buoy caught round the prop caused Johns first swim in these icy waters, he came out looking more than a little blue. 
 
 
Lobster pots aside, Maine is stunningly beautiful and we have been lucky enough to have blue skies most days, at this time of year the norm is 50% of the time spent in thick fog. 
 
 
 
 
 
In Vinalhaven we met a really nice guy called Mark who owned a self made holiday home on an idyllic island.  He very kindly let us use his mooring ball in a beautiful inlet which was a god send as all the promising anchorages were plastered with lobster pots.  We had a really nice night drinking by an open  fire in the company of Mark and some of his friends.  the island was once a centre for the granite quarrying industry and we took the opportunity to swim in a beautiful (amazingly warm) fresh water, flooded quarry before leaving on the next leg to Rockland.