August 7^th- We went into shore and walked up to the general store and market where we met Mike and Ivy so we sat with them a while and chatted. Finally around 10 we headed out. Instead of the 5-10 NW we were promised it was SW. We beat out of the bay and through another tangle of islands to the East passage. At least the wind was light and the water was relatively flat even though we had a contrary current. It was nice sailing as we were doing about 4 cruising along. Right around the entrance  to the Thorofare the wind died and we motored the last couple of miles into Seal Bay. This has a pretty narrow entrance and sort of weaves its way through some small islands and rocks until it opens up nicely to a large bay. We continued through this bay until we  wrapped around a couple of more islands and into a long channel where we anchored. This is a very scenic place a lot of it is protected so you can explore all the nooks and crannies. There were about 10-12 boats anchored here but it didn’t feel crowded at all. However this was the place of the attacking flies. The flies swarmed over us and seemed to be everywhere. The cockpit floor was carpeted with the carcasses of all the ones I was swatting but they still kept on coming. Nightfall did bring relief as  we had a nice quiet evening.

August 8^th- We got up early to try and catch the falling tide but all we seemed to do was catch more flies. They just seemed to nibble at you. I swatted another couple of hundred until the wind picked up and we left them behind. The wind was light NW until we reached the end of the island and the open ocean. There it picked up to 10-15 SW and we sheeted in and had a nice sail. We tacked through this maze of islands and reefs past Brimstone Island and up into Carver Bay. We went flying down the channel which was filled with lobster pots until we pulled into the harbor of Vinal Haven. There we looked around and amongst the hundreds of moored lobster boat we found one of the 3 rental moorings. This is a working harbor and it is filled with fishing boats and their supporting industry. It was fun to watch the activity. It seems amazing to me that the world could eat this many lobsters and that there would be some left under the sea.

    We rowed in to the head of the  harbor and got out and walked through town. It is an interesting mix of working folk and the tourists and second home owners all walking the streets together. We stopped in at the famous Harbor Gawker for lunch and gawked at the passing parade of people.

    The wind picked up to 15-25 SW this afternoon and with the seawall under water at high tide it was pretty bouncy on the boat. We watched the fleet pour in and off load the days catch and by 5 everything had settled down nicely. The night was very calm until around 5 am when the lobster boats started heading back out again.

August 9^th- Even though we were up we waited until around 9 to leave as we wanted to let the ferry go through first. We would be heading out the  Reach which was another winding and very narrow passage which the ferry uses. It doesn’t slow down for boats and it throws a good sized wake. So we thought we would follow it through. The Reach is only about a mile long and on the other side we turned south and headed for Hurricane Island. This is the former home of Outward Bound. We took a mooring there and went onto the island. It is now run by the Hurricane Island Foundation which gives classes with a scientific bent. There is some research going on and also some leadership training. They were very friendly and open and let us walk all over their campus. There are some great hiking trails also. We hiked up this old quarry and had a magnificent view of the surrounding area. I think these trails had been made by the Outward Bound folks as the scaled big rocks and had ropes to assist you. It was great to be able to walk along the granite shore. This is the first island up here where the trails actually led to the ends of the island. We explored all over the island. It was and old quarry and a lot of the old machinery was still lying about. There were tons of ruins of old structures made mostly of granite blocks. Some of the granite had been finished and polished. It felt like walking through an old Roman ruin to see the tops of  fluted columns sticking out of the grass.

August 10^th- we hung around until 9 or so and then headed out. We had a very nice sail reaching across the bay. The wind piped up in the middle and we flew across. It was a pretty overcast day and just as we arrived in Rockland it started to rain. This was the  first rainy day we have had since getting here. This is also the end of the road for us. It has been a great trip but now its time to head back to Vermont. We will leave the boat here and hopefully make it back over for some more sailing before winter.

I want to thank everyone who followed along with us and hope I didn’t bore you too much. Tim O thanks for reading and the encouragement to keep writing. I hope everyone has a great rest of the summer as I know my summer has been unbelievable… so far

Russ