Mad About Maine
- theblacksprayhood
- Jun 29
- 3 min read
"We were hoping to see bears or moose but had to content ourselves with a snake..."
Maine is legendary among American sailors as being the best cruising ground in America and one of the best in the world.
Maybe its because we have been hearing this from every American sailor we’ve met, but it did seem that as soon as we crossed the Maine border, the scenery suddenly got even more beautiful.
The Maine flag has the emblem of a pine tree. The landscape is characterised by round pink rocks and the spiky shapes of the trees that sprout from them stand out starkly against the sky.
You could never get tired of sailing here because there are so many tiny islands to explore. In Maine you can get always get peace and quiet if you want it.
In south Maine we anchored in a pool surrounded by rocks and tiny islands. As we entered, a seal poked its head above the water, its head dark against the white fog. It stared at us with its huge black liquid eyes and then submerged itself again. We can understand where Stephen King gets his inspiration from. The fog and stark rocky landscapes are certainly atmospheric.
From there we went to Maine’s largest city of Portland, birthplace of Stephen King, where we took the opportunity to do a big provisioning. It was our first time coming across the supermarket Trader Joe’s, which had loads of great foods for our onward passage, like dried fruits and nuts and because nearly everything it sells is own brand, it is relatively cheap. We did two huge loads and so we are hoping some of it will last us until we do our crossing.
From Portland, we travelled to the beautiful anchorage of Tottman Cove, a small quiet harbour with just a couple of fishing boats around.
Our next stop was the town of Rockland, which is really pretty with a lovely waterfront walk. It also has a fantastic chandlery where we were finally able to find immersion suits. These are a type of drysuit you can wear in case you were to enter cold water. If we go overboard up here we would not survive the cold long enough to be rescued. If you go overboard in the Caribbean, the water is warm enough to survive for many hours. Hopefully we won’t need them, but they are another peace of mind for the Atlantic crossing.
Our next anchorage was Burnt Island where we could walk around the island with its varied scenery of trees and rocky shoreline. The following day we explored the adjacent Calderwood Island where there was a hilltop view and sandy beach. From there we visited Seal Cove which has lots of seals and interesting rock formations.
Our favourite anchorage was Opechee Island. An anchorage set in a pool between several islands with a mountain view of the Acadia national park nearby. We saw hundreds of seals sunbathing on various rocks and walked around several of the islands including Sheep Island, Eagle Island and Pond Island.
At Eagle Island we stopped paddling the dinghy and let the tide drift us close to the island. This meant we didn’t scare the seals, which were sunbathing on the nearby rocks. We also excitingly saw two eagles. One was perched at the top of a tree and another flew in to join it. They preened each other and were very sweet.
From there we sailed to Southwest Harbor, at Mount Desert Island. This place has lovely mountain scenery and lots of marked trails. We hiked in the well-signposted Acadia national park, walking up the small peaks of Flying Mountain, Valley Peak and St Sauvel. The walking was steep but the views were beautiful along Somes Sound. We were hoping to see bears or moose but had to content ourselves with a snake. We think it was a milk snake which luckily is non venomous.
We would have loved to stay longer, but Canada was calling. More on that next time…
Click the links below for the videos
Video1 EP 084 - Maine
You can find our PODCAST episodes at the links below
Love the pics (esp the snake) - it looks beautiful and great to celebrate the King of Thriller lit