Portland, Maine
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Tue 4 Sep 2007 18:14
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43:38.546N 70:15.067N
Here we are in Portland. We arrived on Sunday
(9/2) after a really short hop (6 miles) from Chebeague Island. This is
the first time we've been tied to a dock since August 12 when we were in
Halifax. We've noticed that it's noisy at a dock, and there are people all
around. Remember what I said about the boaters we've encountered that
always seem to be in a good mood? Not 100% so here. Maybe its
because its Labor Day weekend and for most boaters, the summer is over. One
sailboater arrived a few hours after we did and we could hear him cursing
halfway down the marina channel. I had a flashback to a Sopranos episode
because there were so many f-words flying around. Anyway, it seemed the
marina had put us in the dock space he thought he was going to get or
something of that nature. He ended up putting his boat in the slip next to
ours, so we're not sure what the fuss was all about?
We've been here two nights and plan to leave later
today (Tuesday, 9/4) when the tide brings in the water we need to float out of
here. It's a bit shallow. I've included pictures to prove it.
The first is our depth meter at low tide. See how the needle is
pointed to 0? If the depth meter could read negative, it would,
because we were actually sitting on the bottom with the water down at
least a few inches on our waterline. As usual, I was worried
thinking we were going to tip over or something, and Don was completely calm
about it and went to bed while I sat and watched the depth meter go to 0
the first time we experienced low tide here. Now that we've experienced
low tide four times and haven't tipped over, I'm as confident as Don that
we'll be fine. The second picture was taken from our boat looking out at
the marina channel and the neighboring water (what there is of it) at low
tide. The dots you see are birds. They are not floating on the water
like they usually do, instead they are standing on the bottom.
The first night we were here, we walked across
the harbor bridge to the more fashionable side of town (we are on the south side
of the harbor and the restaurants, etc. are on the north side). After
a nice walking tour of the old industrial warehouse waterfront area, now swank
restaurant, shopping and tourist area (Buffalo could learn from this), we walked
back to the marina. As we were walking over the bridge, we heard
really loud music coming from a party boat (or 'booze cruise' as we used to
call them when in college we would go on the party boats that cruised Boston
harbor) as it passed under the bridge. This was at about 8:30pm. We
didn't think more about it until 1:30am that night when we kept hearing an
incredibly loud noise. Now, our marina in the less fashionable part of
town, is situated right in the path of incoming and outgoing airplanes to the
Portland airport, so at first we thought we were hearing an abnormal number of
airplanes arriving at 1:30 in the morning. After getting up and peering
out our cabin port [non-boater translation: bedroom window], we could plainly
see a Coast Guard helicopter hovering with a giant search light (about a billion
candle power) pointed at the water not too far from our boat. It was so close,
we were getting waves from the wash created by the rotor blades. Next,
three Coast Guard boats rushed out to the scene, milled around for a bit and
then left, as did the helicopter. In the morning, the helicopter was still
searching the harbor, and continued all of yesterday, until sunset.
Apparently what happened was that a 24 year old man fell off the party boat (the
story is that he leaned back on one of the lifeline gateways and it wasn't
latched causing him to fall backwards into the water). The kicker is that
this person is a member of the Coast Guard. Unfortunately, he hasn't been
found. Not surprisingly, this episode has put a damper on the usual Labor
Day revelry here in Portland harbor.
As mentioned above, we'll leave later today to head
further south down the coast of Maine. We plan to make a few stops along
the Maine and New Hampshire coast, and then head straight for Provincetown on
Cape Cod.
Anne
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