With the seas calmed down, we’re off to Maine!

A few miles offshore, we spotted this fin swimming alongside …

Shark!!?

No … but something almost as scary … an Ocean Sunfish.  They were given this name as they appear to be sunning themselves while swimming on their sides near the surface.  This one appeared to be a youngin’, as adults grow to over 6 feet. This photo is not distorted – they have a very unique roundish shape, including their distinctly shaped tail.

One of the lighthouses out on the Isles of Shoals, a cluster of 9 small islands 6 miles off the coast of New Hampshire & Maine.

Hard to see & a bit blurry at this zoom level, but this is an Atlantic Puffin we spotted passing Eastern Egg Rock. This tiny island 2 miles off the Maine coast is one of only 6 nesting islands in the entire U.S.  Researchers on the island study them while hiding behind wooden blinds.  The little white flags are likely marking nests, which the puffins build between the boulders.

Now! you can tell we’re in Maine!

After brief anchoring stops in Harpswell & Friendship, our first stay was in Rockland. We are beginning our lobster cuisine with a lobster BLT accompanied by lobster stew.

Belfast was our next stop. This was our most-favorite stop 3 years ago during the Lobsta Crawl cruise with other PDQ boat owners.  Lobsta Crawl video from 3 years ago

We had a few nice days here, but not as much as back then.  This time, no visit from Benj & Lily, no Celtic Festival & our favorite french bakery closed down last week  😦

Saved by a bike trip to a fairly new donut shop, The Only Donut, featuring potato flour brioche donuts!

We often stumble upon unique surprises … now covered in shrink wrap within sight of our slip in Belfast is the USS Sequoia as she arrived 2 years ago aboard a barge from Virginia.  The Sequoia was known as the “floating White House” with 8 U.S. presidents using her between 1993 – 1977.  Numerous famous events took place aboard, including Roosevelt & Churchill planning D-day with maps on the salon table, JFK’s last birthday party & Nixon’s making his fateful decision to resign. You can spend a few hours reading the very fascinating history & viewing photos on-line from numerous sources.  After tens of millions of dollars & several years of restoration right here, she will be re-launched & cruise back to DC under private ownership.

Belfast will be our most “Down East” destination.  We’ll spend the next few weeks more slowly heading south stopping at all of the great spots we’ve sped by!

We just had to spend National Donut Day (the first Friday in June for you amateurs) … researching!  22 miles north of us in Middletown is Neil’s Donuts. This, their 2nd location, is fairly new so we had never been.  Wow!!  While they don’t look like much due to the way they (unfortunately) pile them into the box, they taste really, really good!  Very moist with fantastic flavors without being not too sweet.

Even better was a long awaited visit from Benj!  COVID cancelled his usual Florida/Bahamas winter visit, so it’s been nearly 9 long months!  We crammed a lot into our fun week together, including a full day in Mystic.  For lunch we enjoyed a great meal at the S & P Oyster House, our go-to Mystic Restaurant for over 20 years, way back when we would take our Sea Ray powerboat to Mystic for the weekend.  Of course, we had to stop at Sift Bake Shop.  Chef Adam Young recently won the Best Baker in America competition on Food Network, so everything tastes as good as it looks.  They now have a large 2nd floor deck with comfortable seating so you can enjoy the view of the Mystic River along with your treats.

Of course, Lobster Landing in Clinton was another required stop with their famous lobster rolls.  Yes, Benj ate both of them!

We didn’t only eat … one day we took the Chester Ferry across the Connecticut River to hike the Gillette Castle State Park in East Haddam.  The “castle” was built in the early 1900’s by William Gillette, an actor best known for his on stage portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.  He personally supervised it’s construction with features which include 47 unique doors each with wooden “trick” locks he designed & passageways with series of mirrors allowing him to view visitors so he could ensure his theatrically appearing at the appropriate moment.  Even though I’ve visited dozens of times over 50+ years, I’ve never walked this portion of the property thru his (now abandoned) train tunnel.  Gillette was particularly fond of his 3 mile-long narrow gauge railroad, offering rides to his visitors which included Albert Einstein, Helen Hayes & Charlie Chaplin.  Even though he spent over a million dollars (around 30 million in today’s dollars), he loved it so much that his will detailed that the State of Connecticut could buy it for only $5,000, rather than selling it for millions to any “blithering sap-head who has no conception of where he is or with what he is surrounded”.

During our hike, we noticed an extremely oversized birdhouse high up on a tree. What the heck…?  Seconds later the answer became apparent as this large Barred owl flew out to a nearby limb keeping an evil eye on us – perhaps guarding her little ones still in the nest? Certainly a fascinating creature & only the second time we’ve ever seen one in the wild.

We always notice more unusual nature when Benj is around.  While grilling dinner onshore at our marina’s grill, we noticed a beaver swimming by.  Certainly not a common sight in the wide Connecticut River.  He let us follow him a bit & watched while he took a break, resting on some rocks. He soon tired of us & dove down & away, never to be seen again … until … the week later while kayaking a nearby creek, I spotted a newly constructed, “tiny home” – perhaps his starter lodge?

Researching on-line, we learned the young remain with the adults as a family group or colony until their second year  At that time, the adults drive the young beavers out of the territory, forcing them to migrate and search for mates and unoccupied habitat in which to establish a new colony.  So our friend is likely a 2 year-old freshly kicked out, beginning his new adventures!

Do we get to relax much while at a marina for a whole month?  We always hope to, after cleaning, projects, engine work, oil changes, etc.  Somehow though, there is always more to consume our time.  This paperwork is just a portion of my 8-month battle with Barclay’s Bank with whom we had Uber branded credit cards.  Having a credit card scammed is, unfortunately, a too-common occurrence. While a hassle, you usually simply cancel the cards, let your credit card company know which charges are fraudulent & wait for replacement cards in the mail.  Not so with Barclay Bank.

They must not have any fraud detection software, as they didn’t notice a sudden blast of dozens of Uber rides with amounts as low as 93 cents (Hint: you can’t take a 93 cent ride!).  I immediately called to cancel our cards, but they wouldn’t cancel Lori’s, as they insisted it had a different card number, thus not affected.  Of course, the next week Lori apparently took dozens of Uber rides in Australia!  We then cancelled our accounts completely, detailing the stack of fraudulent charges.  Their customer service is the worst I’ve ever dealt with. Long story short, all these months later, they have charged, credited, re-charged, refunded , re-charged again with now 100+ transactions to sort out.  Moral of my story: If you have any credit cards thru Barclay’s Bank, I would strongly recommend cancelling them!