Final Countdown.

Schooner Heritage

WINDING DOWN FOR THE SEASON

As our summer season is coming to the end, we’ve been able to get around to visit some nice places. When the weather isn’t so pleasant, having a vehicle puts museums and parks within reach. With good weather we can go by boat to quiet anchorages and vibrant communities.

Rockport Harbor

Folks in Maine cram a lot into their summer. It all winds down around Labor Day. Traffic is lighter on the streets and marina docks. We feel for the dockhand at Journey’s End, sitting on stand-by all day to only have one boat come in for fuel and a holding tank pump-out. And, that one boat is probably us.

At our dock, a few boats come and go. George and his island taxi makes his regular 40-mile round trip, back and forth to Matinicus Island. Jan and Joy visit to clean their new-to-them Cape Dory 25 sailboat, Sea Feathers. They’ve even gotten to sail her a couple of times. Our Lawry’s (locally pronounced as Larry’s) Island friends have packed up, leaving for the season. The air is cooler and we know that fall is not far off. A nice couple from New Jersey, Bob and Anne on Savannah, who are staying on a mooring in the harbor, are getting in their last sailing adventures.

Music is a big part of Maine life. With each community having a small opera house, remarkable talent is booked year ‘round. Music jams are held in public parks and museums, like Cap’t. Sharp’s Sail, Power, and Steam Museum. Cap’t. Sharp is the real deal among schooner captains. At 91, retired from sailing windjammers, he hosts a jam every Sunday, going on 15 years. We highly recommend his book, With Reckless Abandon, Memoirs of a Boat-Obsessed Life, to anyone who might enjoy sea adventures.

At Round Pond on Muscongus Bay, you can catch a talented group of players performing in a music circle. Each player sings a song and most of the group are accomplished enough musicians to join in with banjos, autoharp, bass and fiddle, mandolin, and guitars.

We appreciate our friends Pat and Frank for introducing us to this event to hear his brother, Tim, play banjo and 12-string guitar. It’s a like an old-time hootenanny!

The Penobscot Bay Maritine Museum is an amazing complex of houses and a historic Congregational Church in Searsport. An unassuming presence from the main road (US 1) obsures how much this museum has to offer.

After 5 years of passing by, we finally took a slight detour and visited the waterfront of the nearby town of Rockport. Only a few miles from our seasonal home port of Rockland, the community is laid back and not commercial. They have preserved several lime kilns from the early 1800s and developed a wonderful waterfront park where the kilns are located. The town has a couple restaurants, new upscale boutique hotel, ice cream shop and a bookstore. Less than a mile off busy US 1 it is a quiet, peaceful village with a pretty harbor. It seems that lots of boats take a seasonal mooring here.

Departing Rockport we were delighted to see a well-maintained Pearson Triton, sistership to our first sailboat, Tropicbird, launched in 1960, no.123. She saved us on our big adventure at sea: https://shoalsailer32.blogspot.com/2023/11/thanksgiving-35-years-on-and-were-still.html

After another couple nights on the anchor and away from our slip, we will be back in Rockland to clean and secure the boat for the winter. Journey’s End will haul AQUAVIT and do some maintenance and engine service over the winter.  Our boat will spend the winter secure and warm in heated storage (“Heated” means not less than 40 degrees.) Then, come spring, they will launch us for next year.

Thanks for reading!

Marvin and Lee

09.11.2024