Saturday, July 24th, we left Spaulding Cove on another “10” day. With sunshine, a light breeze and calm seas, it was relatively easy to dodge the lobster buoys. “Relatively.”
It took us two hours to travel the 12 nautical miles.
The Owls Head Light Station’s tower was first constructed in 1825 and then rebuilt in 1852. There are reports that this light house is haunted.
Owls Head Light stands 100 feet above the water on a steep rise near Rockland Harbor.
The turn into Camden Harbor is just ahead. Curtis Island Light, a 25-foot tall, white, cylindrical brick tower, stands at this entrance to the harbor.
Curtis Island Light. Originally built in 1835 at a cost of $4500. Over the course of time, the light evolved and changed. The dwelling was rebuilt, a barn, boathouse, and oil house were added. All of these buildings remain today. The present lighthouse was built in 1896.
Camden harbor
Before we could enjoy anything, Al did his engine check and dripping water from above in the engine room. Where did it come from?? I went into my galley and soaked my foot by stepping on my galley rug (my beautiful galley rug.) There must be a connection so Detective Inspector Al pulled everything out from under the galley sink to find a reason and make it stop. Ahha. The small hose to the cold water faucet had a pinhole leak and had been spraying water for several hours. We were both amazed at how much water there was from such a tiny leak. It even found a way into the storage under the salon seating near the galley wall.
Al went to work to fix the pipe and clean up the water in the engine room while I went through everything in the storage and put the rugs outside, thankful for a good drying day.
We had reserved a floating dock from Lyman Morse in the inner harbor at Camden, a very cool system.
On the third float from the beginning of the harbor, we shared our floating dock with a Grand Banks named Joyfull. Great location! We had a front row seat to everything.
This gull had dinner reservations on our dock.
The FISH!! Schools of fish swarm around the harbor in gangs 50-70 feet long. All day long. We were fascinated by how large the school was, just moving around the harbor all day. Any time I looked over the side of our boat – there they were! We think they hear the noise of the engine or sense the movement and quickly get out of the way. They are very agile.
It was a short dinghy ride into town for a first exploration. Camden is charming and it is easy to see why people flock to it. We had visited Camden once before by land and were happy to be back by water.
The Camden Library and green.
A waterfall flows from near the library down to the where the docks are.
Swans Island Yarn Shop. I had used Swans Island yarn in a shawl and was excited to find their store. Excited, but overwhelmed by the yarn. No purchase.
Checking out Camden’s ice cream option at Camden Cone.
Checking out Camden’s ice cream option at Camden Cone. You know we had to do this. The Maine blueberry ice cream was excellent.
Into each life a little rain must fall. Or a lot. The next day, Sunday, was dreary and wet, oh so wet. As if we hadn’t made enough of our own wetness yesterday with the water leak. Before the rain began, we decided to have breakfast at Marriner’s, a family-owned restaurant in town. We enjoyed sitting outside on the deck, watching and listening to the waterfall.
Marriner’s Restaurant
Lyman Morse Marine has a courtesy car so we reserved it for the 2-hour limit.
It was raining so why not use the courtesy car to take a little road trip? It will be drier than the dinghy!
Remember the Swans Island Yarn shop? We drove to their showroom and manufacturing location in Northport, about 8 miles. Cheryl gave us a personal tour of the facility.
The 1800s-built post-and-beam farmhouse in Northport has been the home of Swans Island manufacturing since the operations were moved to the mainland in 2002, from Swan’s Island. The wool fiber is sourced mostly from local New England farms, domestic, family-run farms that have been caring for their flocks for generations.
Here in Northport, ME, the wool yarns are hand-dyed, skeined, and woven into beautiful blankets. The throws and blankets (very expensive blankets) were displayed on the wall in the showroom. The rectangular design on each blanket is the Swans Island logo, woven into each piece.
The throws and blankets are woven on huge vintage industrial looms. Although a weaver works each loom, the shuttles are not thrown by hand but are powered by a pneumatic cylinder.
When looms are automated like this, is the finished product still considered to be hand woven? I guess it is!
The farmhouse includes the showroom, the looms, the dye house and a wall of YARN. The baskets on the floor held clearance yarns, a bargain. Of the 8 skeins I bought, 6 were clearance. I was a happy weaver! What a fun activity on a rainy day.
Monday’s forecast was for early fog and then clearing. Haha. There was dense fog that slightly cleared for a brief time in the morning and then slammed back in for the rest for the day. We had to leave our floating dock and move out to a mooring in the outer field for our last night in Camden. We lucked out and had enough visibility to find our mooring. Thinking that visibility would last or improve, we dinghied back to town for one more ice cream.
Well, the fog returned just as we entered the channel. With no instruments onboard our little dinghy, we were soon a bit lost. iPhone to the rescue! Al has the Navionics app on his phone so we were able to straighten out and head in to the town docks.
On land, the fog lifted and the afternoon improved. We tried the other ice cream shop, “River Ducks”, beside a little flowered walkway.
Back in the mooring field and guess what? A Kadey Krogen 44 had the mooring next to us!
We enjoyed meeting Jelles and Kathryn, and Windy, their dog, on Talulah.
The sun was actually redder than this photo shows as you can see by its reflection in the water.
What a nice time we had in Camden! There is even more but that will have to wait until another blog.
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