Snow Island, Maine

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Thu 8 Aug 2013 02:11

44:10.4N 68:26.6W

 

 

Tuesday & Wednesday – 6th  & 7th August

 

Tuesday was a glorious morning, perfectly still and a clear blue sky, so as planned we headed off in the dinghy to the public dock at Southwest Harbor.

 

Here we visited the local Hamilton Marine which was a real fun store and not at all like their other branches. We bought a Canadian courtesy flag for our forthcoming trip to Nova Scotia, but were surprised to learn that we cannot buy Canadian Charts here in the USA. The only solution is to order these direct from Canada which is all a bit odd in this day and age, especially if you do not have a postal address but we understand that it’s to do with the lenient copyright laws in the US. We have a Plan B which involves borrowing the requisite charts from friends for the short time we are hoping to be there.

 

We then started our tour of Mount Desert Island using their excellent and free bus service (totally funded it seems by LL Bean). We should first clear up the issue hereabouts concerning the pronunciation of ‘Desert’.  A good many Americans say ‘dessert’ and are unimpressed when you mention that is a different spelling. It seems back in the day, the original settlers referred to the hill as the ‘deserted mountain’ and this got changed to Mount Desert, but pronounced dessert.  OK let’s move on……….

 

The bus service is great fun if a little challenging as the buses run in fixed loops around the island and most importantly through the Arcadia National Park. To get to different parts of the Park, you need to hop off and on different numbered buses at various random stops along the way. Added to this, you can request the bus to stop anywhere you like, but despite this, they run to a tight half hourly schedule which is a clever trick.

 

We visited Bar Harbor, Otter Cliff, Jordan’s Pond and MIT high school (don’t ask) and along the way saw some wonderful views and impressive scenery as well as a lot of trees! Although to be perfectly honest it wasn’t quite the experience we had expected: rather less viewing points at the stops (bearing in mind that James is a little less nimble) and absolutely no feeding opportunities which in the US we felt was unusual.  We might have considered ‘hiking’ but wondered whether the 1000s of holidaymakers from the amassed cars parked almost continuously around the park would make it enjoyable?  In Bar Harbor we abandoned the plan to do our food shopping having found that it took an hour to get there, so we opted for a coffee in a very eccentric internet café which was handy as it meant that Sarah was able to book James’ coach tickets to Boston Airport for the 14th Aug and print off the tickets.

 

Sarah spotted a deer and the flora was pretty special – incredibly lush lichens and mosses.

 

We then continued the tour and persuaded the driver of the bus on the final leg back into Southwest Harbor to drop us off at the grocery store ‘IGA South West Market’ which was a few miles out of town.  This was an excellent supermarket and offered a much better selection than the rather basic but expensive store we had used in Northeast Harbor last week. The only way back to the dinghy was by taxi and so we called the number advertised in the store and Nick arrived shortly in what he complained repeatedly was their least roadworthy vehicle. We were soon to learn that this might be because he was the driver least likely to return the vehicle intact. We jerked our way through the car park struggling to hear what he was saying over the loud music he was playing and then were unable to alert him to the folly of pulling out across the main road due to the rapidly oncoming car on our left. He lurched out regardless of this and as we braced ourselves for the inevitable crunch, I saw the driver of the other car brake hard and swerve inside of us, appearing to be completely unfazed by the situation. We then endured a nervous trip back to the dinghy as Nick regaled us with stories which merely reinforced his natural unsuitability to this type of work. It was with some relief that we got out on the dockside and waved him goodbye.  Taxis round here are an interesting experience all round and James and Sarah reminded me of their adventure back in Camden where their driver was patently not from the town and had little idea of where to go (fortunately Sarah knew the way) but once they had arrived at the quayside and unloaded their shopping, the hapless driver shut the boot (trunk) and found that he had now locked himself out of the vehicle which was blocking others in and still had the engine running!  He then was heard phoning his control office and the gist of the conversation made it clear that this was not the first time he had managed this.

 

On Wednesday morning we headed off to Great Cranberry Island to meet up with Jamie and his family who we had offered to take sailing. We picked up his neighbour’s buoy again and went ashore and spent a very happy hour or two at the Great Cranberry Fair.  We then returned to Serafina for lunch and then at 1330 hours we picked up Alastair, Sam and Jane (but not Jamie) from the beach and took them out for two and a half hours sailing. Sadly the wind was light, but it had its moments and we managed to sail at reasonable speeds until the wind died and we returned them to the beach again.

 

We then loaded the dinghy back on board and headed off to Mackerel Cove on Snow Island again. We had a wonderful early evening sail with Flossie pulling us along at 7 to 8 knots all the way in a true wind of barely 9 to 10 knots. Glorious clear blue skies and it was a very relaxing trip all the way.

 

We found a small rally of boats already anchored in the cove, but there was plenty of room still so we dropped the hook and had a quiet evening aboard.