8/21/22 -- MacMahan Island to Rockland

                                             8/21/22 -- MacMahan Island to Rockland

            We spent the last week at our regular rental cottage on MacMahan with family and friends, which usually involved taking day trips on Craunological II. When we weren't using her, she hung on a mooring. Janet became quite adept at picking up the mooring line from the bow with a boat hook and in taking the dinghy back and forth to the island dock. Zach took this nice picture of Craunological II on her mooring near sunset. 

And Ashley took this one of her moored in the harbor at Monhegan Island, which was one of our day trips. Moorings are very popular in Maine because they are inexpensive but effective in a land of ten-foot tides. 

            But back to our travels... On Sunday the 21st, after cleaning the cottage and worshipping at the little Episcopal chapel on the island, we dropped Damon and all his stuff off at the mainland dock at 11:25am (Ashley and the boys had left on Saturday) and headed for Penobscot Bay. We plan to meet our friends Ted and Julie in Camden on Monday and wanted to get as close as we could given a good weather forecast. We had a beautiful ride until we ran into a pretty thick fog bank off the mouth of the St. George River. Visibility was only about one hundred yards, and I don't know how we would have managed without the GPS plotter. We slowed down to about 7 or 8 mph and just ran from one buoy to another. The fog was in an area with a well-marked channel through assorted shoals and ledges, which would have been terrifying without GPS but was manageable with it. The fog lasted for about two miles, and then we were back to cruising speed. 

            We reserved a dock at the last minute at the Landings Marina in Rockland, which is a major port (commercial and recreational) with a nice town. We rounded Whitehead Island and its nice lighthouse

and then ran up the Muscle Ridge Channel to Owls Head and its lighthouse (with mountains and some fog remnants in the background).

            We pulled up to the marina fuel dock at 2:45 and then over to our slip. We walked to a nearby restaurant for an early dinner, and though they were slammed -- being one of the few places open on a Sunday night -- everyone was in good humor, and we met a nice couple at the bar that were fun to chat with while we waited for our table. They live in Cape Cod in the summer and Naples in the winter, and he makes his living as a lobster fisherman, so we had lots to talk about. (Her name is Janet, so she and I bonded! 😊)