Friday, September 25, 2015

I didn’t think I’d make the departure from Popham, traveling on the same day from New York, when the conductor on the train to Boston announced that we’d be two hours late.  A new engine was put on in New Haven and we were on our way.  But Cyndy agreed to pick me up in Portland instead of Bath and I just caught a bus in time for us to get down to the dock to meet Captain DeBery by 5.

Once on the island with friends and familiar surroundings, it was hard for me to believe that I’d woken in New York and ended up on this island paradise once again.  Ethan and Lindsay had been on the island for a week and we were joined by her sister Sydney and Dan for a feast of lobster standing at the picnic table as the sun set.  I was too overwhelmed even to think of taking photos.  I spent some time unpacking and later we sat down to pasta and salad.

Saturday morning we saw our hosts and their guests off in a rough cove with north winds bringing swells directly in to shore.  There was a dead sturgeon we tried to push out to seea in the high tide which made for smells I didn’t know existed.  It was at least four feet long.

The rest of the day we spent getting acclimated which meant making lists of menus for two weeks and what projects we needed to dig into.  A couple came ashore and were delighted to tour the museum and gift shop and have a picnic in the unseasonable warm clear dry weather.  By the afternoon the wind began to shift out of the south and the seas became calm enough to see many sailboats in every direction.

Cyndy has a new puppy named Grady.  He’s six weeks old and you can almost watch him grow.  I think he misses his brothers and sisters.  After the journey out racing another boat to the island and the vast open spaces of the island compared with the pen he grew up in in close proximity to 11 other puppies, he may be traumatized for life.  He’s really cute!

In the afternoon we did a little prep which included roasting a few beets.

In the evening we made our first meal of scallops on a bed of beet greens, onion, garlic and bacon of course.  That was the appetizer.

There was a pause to watch the sunset followed by baked haddock with asparagus tomatoes and almonds.  We thought desert would be watermelon Ethan had left us from his garden but it turned out to be cantaloupe.  

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Waking to two piles of poo in the bedroom, I made coffee and hightailed it down to the cove.  Another beautiful sunrise and clear skies.  The tide is low but the sturgeon still hovers at the shoreline destined to be left high up on the rocks again with the tide.  We may have to tow it out to sea in the dingy.  We’re off to the North Trail to explore.