Trip’s first sailing experience was back in the 70’s to the Isle of Shoals, but he had no memories of the place. It’s a perfect half way point from Rockport, MA up to Portland, ME.   We started out with good winds, but things lightened up, so we drifted for quite a while, watched Lawrence play with his drifter, and most importantly had our first whale sighting! No idea what species, but reports are plentiful of minkes and finbacks in the area.

The single anchorage in Gosport Harbor is reportedly a mob scene on the weekends. It’s poor holding so anchoring is not really an option, but we got lucky and got the last two available yacht club moorings which are first come first serve. That was around 5:00 pm, if we had waited 3 hours the entire place emptied out as everyone went back to the mainland at the end of the weekend.

Star Island is the main attraction – with a big white hotel used as a conference retreat for a local Unitarian congregation. There are no services on the island, but there is a grill on the dock (we sampled the hotdogs) and visitors are welcome to join the family style meals at the retreat. The hotel reminded me of a much more rustic version of the hotel at Mt Washington – a bit ramshackle but a lovely place to stop and enjoy the view from a rocking chair on the massive front porch.

The island has trails cut through it out past the massive solar panel field, to a couple of monuments and to rocks with breathtaking views of the Atlantic. The trails take you through a ‘village’ of stone cottages and a chapel that have remarkably withstood the test of time.

And the storms!  The forecast called for storms to pass through, but we could watch the individual bands as they approached the island, the downpour began with lightening & thunder, and then the rainbow that appeared afterwards.  This happened 5 or 6 times, sometimes simultaneously as the bands of storms were passing through so quickly!