Rosie and Peter Mackie joined us from Scotland. This is their blog on Maine…

And finally they are on the ocean……!  To meet up with John and Caroline in Camden, Maine as part of our trip to the States for a family wedding in Maryland, was to make a reality the talk of so many evenings together over the years.  It was surreal and worth the flight to Portland the three hour bus ride to Rockport and the taxis in between!

Being assigned our beautiful double cabin with its triple aspect and en-suite heads made us quickly realize that our five days on board this amazing vessel were going to be anything but ‘roughing it’.

The archipelago of islands that form the Maine coast are a feast of adventure for yachts.  A bedrock of granite is covered with incongruous tufts of pine trees balanced as if stuck with glue on top, several of these islands are privately owned and many are accessible by small craft.

Our itinerary took us from Camden to McGlathery via North Haven, Duck Island via Isle au Haut, which is part of the Acadia National Park, Cranberry via North East Island and finally Seal Cove via Frenchboro.  In every stopover we encountered a huge welcome and friendliness from everyone, wonderfully colourful streets full of expensive boutique shops (a sure indication of the wealth of those who build their palatial summer houses on the islands and an idea of the Gilded Age when Astors, Carnegies and Vanderbilts built their summer mansions on Mount Desert Island)

Maine is famous for its –

Granite – pink granite, grey granite, speckled granite and there is much evidence of quarrying as you sail by.  Many of the famous buildings in New York and Washington have been built using this stone.  Our first trip ashore to ‘walk’ with Caroline, had us scrambling to the top of Isle au Haut   (Be warned ye who come after us!)  The molten lava has become a sheer smooth surface that requires an agility and length of leg that comes only in the shape of Caroline.  Had it not been for her generosity in the use of a ‘knee up’ and a buffer to slide against, Peter and I would still be wandering around trying to find a passage out!  Another walk with both John and Caroline on Frenchboro Island guided us to both Middle and Small beach.  No sandcastle building here or paddling at the beach; we were met with a mountain of granite boulders of all hews that had been spewed up on the beach like small pebbles in a past storm.  The joy of these walks is the wild raspberries, cranberries and blackberries that slake your thirst.

Maine is famous for its –

Lobster – The first thing that strikes you when given the helm of Discovery Magic is her sheer size.  How on earth could I steer her?  My joy was in realizing just how responsive she is.  However, this response was very soon put to the test when I realized that for every table of lobsters there has to be a corresponding number of lobster pots – 3 million of them in total! There they were, their markers sprinkled like ‘hundreds and thousands’ on the top of a cake, beautifully colour coded for identification.  One had to navigate through this plethora of markers, hard enough on a monohull, but even harder on a catamaran.  It was reminiscent of playing hopscotch – your two legs firmly apart and woe betide you if you stepped on a line.  And yes we did!   One memorable occasion had Peter and Caroline desperately trying to free the caught rope with the aid of the boat hook, only to have to release the boat hook to avoid being pulled over the side.  Without a word Caroline leapt in fully clothed, saved the hook and the lobster pot!  The lobster trade is the main livelihood on these small islands, the young boys getting their first licence at 10 years of age and their full licence at 18.  The lobster boats thunder their way around the bays with un-silenced engines menacing any tardiness in rising in the morning, and far more intent on their business than watching out for passing leisure craft.  However, what better way to enjoy our first Maine lobster than to buy them live early in the morning off a passing lobster boat.  We learned from the boatmen that they had started their day at 4.30 am and hoped to finish at 5 pm.  They work a seven day week except when there is a conservation order in place reducing fishing to six days.  They catch between 600 – 1500 lbs of lobster a day depending on the size of boat and they wholesale at about $3 a lb.  The lobsters we eat are about seven years old, but they are known to live to 100 years and can weigh up to 45 lbs.  I was glad they live on the sea bed!  Our biggest dilemma having bought our live friends was how to keep them until supper time.  Fridge and then salt water baths worked well and the final result of John’s cooking accompanied by Peter’s coleslaw could only be enhanced by the strains of Cecilia Bartoli singing the Barber of Seville in the background.  Could anything be more perfect?

Maine is famous for its –

Wildlife – Having come from Perthshire, Scotland, where we guard our osprey and her chicks avidly with viewing access only through a webcam, it was really special to see osprey happily nesting atop the marking posts as we entered coves and harbours. These glorious birds of prey just continued feeding their chicks unperturbed as we sailed by.  As we sailed past Sutton Island in the rain and the wind I kept my eyes glued for a sighting of the 100 year old osprey nest, but was denied it.  The dolphins were aloof, coming up to observe us and then diving again, but never coming out to play as we had hoped.  Many of these islands are aptly named – Duck Island, Deer Island, and as we left Seal Cove on our last morning we were not disappointed as we spotted five seals basking in the early morning warmth of the sun on top of the granite rock.  Cormorants continually struggled to take evasive action as the catamaran bore down on them, but invariably found diving preferable to the laboured take off with their un-oiled wings.

Maine is famous for its –

Weather – The weather was what we had come for.  The photos on the blog of beautiful blue water and endless blue skies.  Ours turned out to be interesting!  On our third morning as we deliberated our plan for the day, I was reminded of General Macarthur’s words ‘Make a plan, execute it violently, do it today’.  The weather for us could be described as ‘violent’, with three inches of rain in 24 hrs and the wind approaching gale force, but it was good to see the cat in such conditions.  The flowers were not quite still on the table, but the danger is that you have no feel of just how strong the wind is as you sail smoothly through without heeling over.  What amazed us was to see the church chaplain’s boat, aptly named ‘Sunbeam’ out in these conditions weathering the storm to make his regular visit to the remote islands.  We did see good weather and our sail to Seal Cove and our last morning coming back to Camden was just beautiful as we wove between the islands.

And so our five days have come to an end.  The magic of discovery enabled us to climb where we have never climbed before, navigate through a minefield of lobster pots, and sail the most magnificent of yachts. 

Perhaps one thinks of journeys of discovery in terms of the usual 3 S’s of self esteem, significance and security and with John and Caroline and their yacht you come away with those in abundance, but for me the trip will always be remembered for their special 3 S’s – Spode, Silver napkin rings and Silver fish knives and forks.  What else would you possibly expect from two such classic trailblazers who have designed a yacht that meets every conceivable need and whose hospitality would stop at nothing less.