Hurricane Island, Maine

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sat 14 Jul 2012 16:30
After the 'hustle and bustle' of Castine, it's back in the wilderness again! We are now hanging off a mooring ball off Hurricane Island.  Originally, this was set up as an outward bound centre for kids, but this closed in about 2005.  Since then, the Hurricane Island Foundation has been sourcing funds to set up a marine research centre on the island to look at the lobster population.  Here, as everywhere in Maine, lobsters abound, but there is a particular breeding ground here that is causing interest.  
The island is open to walk round, it takes about an hour or so, and there are great views across to the mainland and out to sea. The nearest 'town' is Carvers Harbour on the next door island of Vinalhaven. This is a very traditional port with a large working lobster fleet, and a small tourist industry, it is one of the few islands where local people live year-round.  It is so remote that they don't even have a mobile phone signal, as there is no mast and antenna on the island, oddly enough there is wifi everywhere.  We did manage to get an intermittent signal, but only just and you has to be sitting in the dinghy in the bay outside in 'exactly'  the right spot.  Small yachts can take moorings in Carvers Harbour, but they are packed so close together alongside fishing boats, that when the winds are light, the boats all just bump off each other - not ideal!! 
At the moment, the price of lobster is plummeting, it is down to $0.75 per pound as there is so much of it. The lobstermen in Carvers Harbour were out on strike while we were there, I say on strike, but I think they had a meeting and all decided that it was not worth fishing for lobster so would stay in until the demand and therefore the price increases again.  As it costs the lobstermen about $400 per day including fuel to go out and fish, they would need to catch an awful lot of lobster to make it worth their while.
Another thing here about the lobster industry is the 'lobster wars' - I kid you not, it is a very serious business!!  We have heard all kinds of stories such as in Friendship, the most inappropriately named place in Maine, one guy having had his lobster trap lines cut, retaliated by burning down the other guys barn, not content to leave things at that, the original guy went up in a plane and dropped a stone through the other guy's boat, sinking it!!  There are often stories in the paper of such goings on!!
Carvers Harbour was where we actually had our first Maine lobster roll, we have eaten them in other states but not here, so we thought it was about time we did, and it was delicious as expected.  
Once we left Hurricane Island, we had a brief stay over in Boothbay Harbour.  This was our last stop before we returned to Portland, where we had planned to leave the boat while we flew to New York for the weekend.

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 Hurricane Island

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 Seaduced at anchor, just off Hurricane Island

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  The old quarry in the middle of the island

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 Yummy lobster rolls from here!

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  It's tightly packed in Carvers Harbour