Sailing Intermezzo: Quahog Bay

After sorting out my debacle with the mooring ball on Tuesday (August 18), we motored partway, sailed partway to Quahog Bay, a narrow inlet about 15 nm northeast of Portland.

This part of Maine's coastline looks to me like the long, streaking drips of wax from a melting candle. Long, narrow, closely spaced spits of land flow 10-15 nm southeast from more solid, continuous coastline, forming long narrow bays lined with rocky shores and dense trees. The spits of land are sliced cross-ways by water every so often to create long, narrow islands. Islets and rocks pepper the sea around the main spits,

The tidal range is over 10 feet, so the bays are wider at high tide, narrower at low. The shoreline is a plinth of rock from which the trees extend above and beyond at high tide. At low tide, golden-brown sea grass lying down on sloped rock creates a border between sea and land.

It all comes together as a place of rugged but serene beauty. We anchored Intermezzo in a pretty little cove formed by Snow Island. The water was flat, the currents and winds gentle and there was no mooring ball to deal with. Very, very peaceful.

Our first order of business upon arrival in the late afternoon was to launch the dinghy and speed over to Webber's Lobster Pound, about 10 minutes away at high speed on the opposite shore. When we landed, there was nobody to be found. We lingered for a while until a lobsterman's wife and kids who were awaiting the arrival of the lobsterman on his boat. We were told that if Linda wasn't around, we couldn't buy lobster and to try next door at the Quahog Inn. We dinghied there to find that no lobster was being sold as the proprietor was caring for her 97 year-old father and didn't want to take the chance with COVID. An investment banker (!) fishing from the dock told us to try buying lobster "at the store up the road". We walked up the road only to find that the "store" was Webber's, where we had just come from. The runaround paid off though, as Linda was now conducting business from her little shack on the dock.

We walked out on the floating dock with Linda where we raised a trap door to reveal a big underwater cage filled with lobsters. We were given our pick, scooping out two 2lb lobsters with a net. We paid Linda $22 for our catch and headed back to the boat to eat them. They were delicious.

We spent the next day kayaking around the bay, investigating little inlets and coves and exploring Little Snow Island, the island accessible to the public, all the others privately owned. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was lovely.

Back on the boat, we watched osprey's hunting and quarreling with each other in the air, a seal and cormorants fishing in the sea, fish jumping and splashing as they evaded being eaten or chased their own food. The sun set pink-orange among clouds and the dark night sky revealed the cloudy streak of the Milky Way, the cool air scented by the surrounding pines.

This was one of the best places we have visited so far on this cruise.