Monday morning Trip did one final load of laundry (sweated through everything the day before), and I caught a bus to Falmouth to do another round of provisioning (amazing how much tonic Trip goes through). Once again, there was no wind, but we wanted to get a little distance under our belts, so we headed out to Ridley Cove in Harpswell. James and Jenny had just been there over the weekend and were raving about it. It was raining lightly most of the way, but it was a comfortable easy motor-sail over. James had warned us about a rock always awash and poorly marked in the middle of the cove, so we anchored southeast of it where we could sit with completely exposed views to the Atlantic but with complete protection. Trip wasn’t initially impressed, as there were a few too many houses for him to call it remote, but I liked it.
Low tide the next morning was interesting, as we watched a long ledge appear as the water levels dropped (southern Maine has a 9 foot tidal range). At dead low tide we were just 30 feet away from the edge of a ledge that’s exposed only at low water. Though Navionics (our e-charts) said it was a 2 foot depth at low tide, we registered 8 feet at dead low on the depth sounder (we need 6 feet to accomodate our keel). And as Trip reassured me, it was mud we’d sink into – not rock – despite what I was staring at. The most amazing thing though was the temperature change. We had gone from sweltering heat two days earlier to needing long pants and long sleeves – and our Hudson Bay wool blanket at night!
The rain cleared by mid the following day and we decided to head over to Cundys Harbor. Trip rowed us over to a couple of lobster docks (past a really cool old sunken boat), where one of the lobster men kindly let us tie up for a couple of hours. We then walked 20 minutes into Cundys Harbor – the historic town that has the reputation for being Maine’s oldest continuous working waterfront. More than half the houses we passed were historic, and it was a really pleasant walk. We wound up at Holbrook’s for a lobster roll & clam chowder lunch washed down by local Maine beers. After that it was ice cream for the walk back. The sun had come out in the meantime and I finally got some good shots of the boat and the cove.
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