Weather Not Spoiling Our Time Here

The jet stream has been in a more winter like position since mid-July. The effect in New England has been a series of cold fronts and low pressure systems with very few sunny days. There has been a threat of rain and thunderstorms most days. We have been fortunate and only experienced one thunderstorm which was while we were anchored at Block Island. We have had plenty of rain but with very little wind. It has altered our plans. We had originally planned two nights at Boothbay Harbor, but extended it to four waiting on better weather to travel. It has not dampened our enthusiasm for Maine. We have only had fog one day, and we decided to travel anyway, partly we hoped it would lift before we reached our destination, busy Rockland harbor, but also to build experience in case we get caught unexpectedly. We relied heavily on the radar and the chart plotter. It remained a thick fog and did not clear before we arrived. We knew we were approaching a mooring area from the radar display and as luck would have it we found an empty mooring right away and took it, not worrying about who owned it. As it turned out it belong to a bareboat charter company that was more than happy to rent it to us.

We visit the Maine Lighthouse Museum in Rockland. It is not a lighthouse nor is it near a lighthouse so we were intrigued. It proved to be extremely interesting and maybe not well named. It did have a lot of lighthouse artifacts, but also a good history of the US Lighthouse Service and a lot about lighthouse keepers. The museum also had a lot about the US Coast Guard particularly about lightships and buoy tenders, and a good section on the US Lifesaving Service. The had a nice selection of buoys and fog horns from different eras.

Over the past few months we keep saying we were going to Maine for the lobster and blueberries. Well we are keeping our word, maybe not so much lobster, although we have done that, but we are definitely enjoying the blueberries as well as other fresh fruit and vegetables from the farm stands.