Our sailboat Va Bene in Five Islands.
FALLING IN LOVE WITH MAINE Written and photographed by Craig Kaminer
Since 2016, I have been lucky enough to sail over 8,000 miles in and around New England, down the entire East Coast, through the Bahamas, around Key West to Tampa Bay, and back again. My wife Debbie and I, and on occasion, our sons and friends, traveled offshore and via the Intracoastal Waterway, frequently stopping to look around and walk our now 10-year-old chocolate lab, Charlie. But some days, we sailed around the clock to get to an important port before the weather changed, where we would wait until Mother Nature returned to a more moderate and predictable pattern. While each port we've visited has been unique in its own way, perhaps our recent trip to Maine this past summer was the most memorable. I had seen pictures of the great towns, the lobstermen, rocky coastlines, and fog in every imaginable book and website I consulted. Still, nothing prepared me for the Maine experience, even my enthusiastic friends and colleagues who have summered here for years. Sailing from Newport, Rhode Island to Sorrento, Maine, (across the bay from Bar Harbor) required a flexible itinerary, patience, and a minimum of two weeks. And, even then, it would have been better to explore this under-appreciated jewel for a month or more. So, amid the pandemic, which afforded us the 46 slmag.net
flexibility to be away from St. Louis for almost four weeks, we set out to discover what the fuss was all about Down East. After a few quick stopovers at ports in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, we sailed to Portland, Maine. While it's worthy of an even longer stay, we stopped for two nights at Fore Points Marina (forepointsmarina.com) as we awaited friends from New York to join us. Portland is vibrant with excellent craft breweries, seafood joints, galleries, great shopping, and museums that appeal to its hip community of residents and visitors. Mega-yachts, including the 312-foot Kismet at the end of our pier, share dock space with transient yachtsmen and smaller craft. We had the best lobster rolls ever (at Highroller; highrollerlobster.com), amazingly fresh oysters farmed the same day from nearby coves, and a great dinner at Scales (scalesrestaurant.com). At the crack of dawn, we woke to walk Charlie and hit the fog-filled open water to Rockland. The coastline was exquisite, but it was only visible for half of the day. The balance of the sail, we were socked in with fog, fog horns, and surprising blips on the radar that, out of nowhere, heralded vessels on a collision course. A severe weather forecast ended the day early. Fortunately,
