Emptying the Harbor On Friday, right on schedule, the floating town docks were hoisted out of the water with a crane and stacked in the municipal parking lot for the winter. Our platform for mackerel fishing is gone; the red and white “20 minute tie up” sign is sentinel to nothing. The harbor seals venture … Continue reading
Category Archives: Messing Around in Boats
Aural Postcards from a Maine Lake
Its name alone sounds like whispering wind and the waves lapping at rocky shores: West Grand Lake. No wonder then that after three days of paddling its coves and bays in August, sleeping on a slender island where blueberries grew in bunches like grapes, it is sounds which best carry my memories of this … Continue reading
Manual Boating Bliss
A Paean to paddling…. I decided not to buy the 5 horsepower outboard motor for my canoe, thanks to Paul. As we sat on the bake house porch Sunday, surveying the early morning harbor, he offered well-reasoned dissent from my notion. Boating perfection, he stated, consists of a canoe, the paddle and nothing involving internal … Continue reading
Setting Sail for Long-Ago Shores
Last week, I spent a morning in the 19th century. I shipped out on a wooden schooner named The Bowdoin, as if entering a time machine, sailing across Penobscot Bay from Searsport to Castine, Maine, with 15 high-school juniors from Belfast. They were students in an American Studies course who were learning about the Age … Continue reading
