In the Right Place: Windjammer Watch IX

It’s foggy as I write and it’s been foggy every other early morning this week. This gives us all a chance to play that popular game known as “Name That Windjammer!” For example, can you name this windjammer that was in Great Cove yesterday morning just by looking at what the fog has let us see of her:

Here are some of the hints that are exposed: she’s large; she’s got two masts and they’re schooner-configured; her Captain keeps her mainsail up as a stay sail overnight; she flies a topsail, and her sails are white (which eliminates “Angelique”).

If you guessed the 145-foot Heritage out of Rockland, Maine, you would have been correct. As the fog lifted, her unique yellow hull with red, white and blue bands were revealed:

This is her third visit to the Cove this cruising season. She’s on a six-night “Full Moon” cruise, according to her sailing schedule. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 16, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Win-Win

Our red bee balm river is cresting in scented waves and it has attracted the first monarch butterfly that we’ve seen this year. I haven’t seen any monarchs or monarch eggs on milkweed yet, but now I have some confidence that they will come like late baseball players.

Bee balm, also called monarda, is a native North American plant. It looks good, smells good, attracts all sorts of pollinaters (including hummingbirds) and is generally deer-resistant.

The plant is part of the mint family and many people consume its flowers and leaves as salads and garnishes or in tea. After the Boston Tea Party, many rebelling colonists switched to “Oswego Tea” made of bee balm by Native Americans to avoid the imported and taxed British tea.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 15, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Beach Loading

Above, you see David Tarr’s Fishing Vessel “Tarrfish,” all cleaned up from the scalloping season and waiting at the Naskeag Harbor docking float for David to bring a load of lobster traps down to the Harbor. He soon came down with a trailer load of traps and took them to the adjacent beach on Naskeag Point.

“Tarrfish” soon came around and was beached beside the trailer. The traps were then handed up to David and his daughter on the boat. When all of the traps were stored on board, “Tarrfish” pulled back and returned to the docking float, probably waiting for another load.

The traps will be taken out into local sea waters, baited and set, and submerged in trap lines to capture the tasty little critters that are on the move now. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 9, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Deco Resto

Barbara and I went to Bar Harbor’s Criterion Theatre Saturday night to catch David Sedaris’s performance and see how the historic Art Deco Theatre’s restoration was going. (There also was the calamari and wine at Testa’s around the corner, but I digress.) Short report: Both David’s sardonic raconteuring and the Theatre’s historic facelifting were deserving of a standing ovation. It’s great to have that live performance venue nearby.

By the way, for Jimmy (“Margaritaville”) Buffet fans who have studied the accompanying image of the entrance to the Criterion: That’s not a typo on the marquee, “Jammy Buffet” is  the name of an unrelated tribute band that played at the Theatre yesterday night.

The Theatre was opened in 1932 by a well-off resident who had served a jail term for bootlegging. Its smartly-decorated premises reportedly included a then-modern floating balcony, a state-of-the-art “Inter-Phone” system, and a basement “speakeasy.” It apparently is one of only two extant Art Deco theaters in Maine.  

The Criterion’s restoration is a courageous undertaking and still a work in progress, as well as a learning process. (Saturday’s sound and lights had to be corrected early in David’s talk.) And, of course, David was courageously hilarious in his unique takes on life and his ridiculous dress – he wore a white imprinted sport coat and bright red, knee-length “balloon pants.”

(Images taken in Bar Harbor, Maine, on July 12, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Ready or Not

The milkweed around here has been ready, willing, and able to please monarch butterflies for more than a week – lush leaves to lay eggs on, nectar-filled blossoms to sip from, and the heavy, sweet scent of musky perfume to put all pollinators in the mood.

Yet, I haven’t seen a monarch or a monarch egg yet. I’ve seen one FaceBook report of one monarch seen in Brooklin so far this summer. Let’s hope that the migration is only late and not suffering again. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 9 and 11, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Counting on You

This image of common a loon appears with my monthly column in the current edition of the Ellsworth American.  Click on the image to enlarge it. To read the column about what Maine loons are doing now and how you can join an outdoor adventure to count them, use this link: https://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place: Hunting the Buck Moon

The July full moon is called “The Buck Moon” because it occurs when male deer start to get their antlers. Unfortunately, The Buck Moon “rose” last night and we couldn’t see it here due to overcast and fog.

But I did “shoot” a local buck yesterday afternoon. And I did “shoot” the July 9 moon that was full as far as the unaided human eye can see.  And I did merge those two images into this image and fiddled with the moon color a bit:

And I am posting an “unfiddled-wlth” image of the July 9 full moon as it rose over Great Cove:

Perhaps I should note that the new July antlers of white-tailed deer are covered in nurturing “velvet.” That’s a living membrane of soft, hairy skin that’s rich in blood vessels and nerves, providing nutrients and protection for the developing antler bone. The velvet will be rubbed off and otherwise shed once the antlers are fully formed and hardened. 

(Moon and buck image taken separately in Brooklin, Maine, on July 9 and 10, 2025, and merged in processing.)

In the Right Place: Windjammer Watch VIII

Here you see Grace Bailey crossing Great Cove and mooring off of the WoodenBoat School pier in the early morning fog Tuesday. She was on a four-night “Adventure”, according to her schedule, and might have overnighted off of Babson Island.

This is her second visit to the renowned School this summer. She moored among some of the sailing classrooms there and used one of her side boats to send her passengers ashore to explore the campus. Once the passengers returned, she hauled up their boat and began preparations for departure.

Grace was launched in 1882 and began hauling lumber and other goods along the coast two days later. She’s a two-masted schooner that runs 118 feet long overall and is 23,5 feet wide at her beam. She has a removable centerboard for sailing and can accommodate 29 passengers. As with many coastal cruisers, she has no inboard motor.

Soon after her passengers returned Tuesday, Grace’s crew began adjusting lines and raising sails.

First the mainsail was raised:

Then the foresail:

Then the stay sail while the anchor was being hauled up:

Then the jib as she started sailing:

No topsails were raised and amazing Grace glided off:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 8, 2025.)

In the Right Place: The Bucks Stop Here

Yesterday, thanks to Barbara’s vigilance and strong voice – “Dick! Look out the window!! – we saw this uncommon, although not rare, sight:

That’s a virtually mature white-tailed deer buck sporting an eight-point rack and browsing his way through our North Field. His sidekick is an immature buck that has sprouted giraffe-like prongs. Their antlers are covered in bone-nurturing velvet membranes, which will be rubbed off by late summer.

Some yearling bucks leave their mothers’ home range in spring and summer, but often join one or more roving mature bucks for protection in what are known as “bachelor groups.” When winter’s rutting season arrives, the bucks usually disperse and compete in the yearly efforts to propagate their species and dodge bullets. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 8, 2025.)

In the Right Place: The Case of the Missing Frogs

My wife retained my investigative services to solve a mystery. As of mid-June, our ponds had the usual complement of what sounded like about a dozen green frogs here and there seemingly plucking their bass banjo strings randomly during most sunny days.

At the beginning of July, we started hearing and seeing fewer and fewer of these and then heard and saw none by July 5. The sound of that silence in summer was startling.

I inspected the scene thoroughly and found nothing suspicious at first. Then I set up a surveillance area in the cattails from which I could view the large pond without being detected easily. When I arrived on Sunday morning and peered through the green blades, there he was.

I said to my imaginary companion, “There’s your culprit, Watson! Note the small, shifty eyes, the big mouth, and rolled-up pants. Note that he’s trying to look like an idler in a place that is not for the idle. Elementary.”

Yes, the suspect is a great blue heron. He and his kind primarily eat fish and there are small fish in these ponds. (They’re mostly common and golden shiners, I think, that apparently have been brought in as eggs in the feathers and intestines of visiting ducks.) The fish attract great blues, which are not very particular about their diets. They’ll eat almost any moving body that they can get their beaks around, including insects, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, and other birds.

Yet, GBHs are painfully skinny and leggy, a condition that is obvious when they’re not fluffing up or flexing their magnificent wings. They often are more than four feet tall, but they weigh only between four and six pounds.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 6, 2025. Sex assumed.)

In the Right Place: July Is Bustin’ Out All Over!

This is the time when poppy patches go a little crazy here living up to their names by suddenly popping out in multitudes of pastel-like splotches that dance wildly in the summer breezes, providing provocatively fleeting glimpses of their complicated sexuality:

These are almost hallucinatory scenes at times, which reminds us that the flowers have been associated historically with Morpheus, the Greek god of sleep. Some species contain enough opium to harvest commercially for their medicinal and illicit drugs. But garden varieties have been bred to minimize or even eliminate the flowers’ opium-producing capacity.

Poppies have been associated with many other states of mind and polity over the centuries that they have been cultivated. These include remembrance of fallen military, death in general, peace, hope, and of course love. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 5 and 6, 2025. Apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein for manipulating their song title.)

In the Right Place: Seeing Spots

It’s high summer and the larger dragonflies are starting to come out. Here you see a male 12-spotted skimmer approaching a cattail head that is his favorite hunting perch. They’re known for their territorial behavior and the trait of returning quickly to their perch after being disturbed.

Many call these insects “10-spotted” skimmers because they count only the 10 light spots on the wings of the males. However, the insect naming powers counted the three dark spots on each of this species’ four wings – on those of both males and females -- and decided 12 was better than 10 as names go. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 5, 2025.)

In the Right Place: A Traditional Good Time

Independence Day yesterday was beautiful weather-wise and the annual Brooklin celebration was – as usual – a traditional good time full of flags and fun. There was rousing music by the amazingly good Brooklin Band, which played for viewers young and old as the parade was forming. .Morning refreshments were available from local entrepreneurs.

The parade not only had the obligatory Fire Department vehicles. It also contained an eclectic assortment of expressions and many antique or classic cars and trucks, which we have come to expect.

After the parade, the crowd assembled on the Town Green where there were young peoples’ games and contests, gossiping with neighbors, old vehicle exhibitions, and plenty to eat. Among the games and contests were the popular annual Dead Chicken Toss and Wet Sponge Toss, croquet and golf contests, and the very hard slippery pole climb for our well-conditioned youngsters.

Delicious food options included pulled chicken, pulled pork, hot dogs, corn on the cob, potato salad, Coleslaw, watermelon, and ice cream.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 4, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Meanwhile

Here’s one of Barbara’s patriotic peonies to start off what we hope will be a happy and meaningful Independence Day for you:

I hope to show you later that Brooklin’s renowned July 4 parade and celebration also was happy and meaningful.

In the Right Place: Osprey Nest Report

Bad news: This is Harriet on June 27. Alone. No Ozzy. No nestlings. She comes to the nest every now and then, “begs” for attention awhile, and then departs when she attracts none. Ever since the raids by a rogue male osprey that I reported on last month, the occupancy of the nest has been sporadic and only by Harriet.

Harriet should be tending one to three well-developed nestlings by now, as she has had for many years. Here she is (or at least the female we called Harriet) and one of her three nestlings last year:

As reported last month, Ozzie nearly killed the invading male, but Ozzie may have been seriously wounded, himself, without me seeing it. We can hope that Ozzie returns and I’ll keep an eye on the nest, but the Ozzie and Harriet sitcom this year may turn out to be a dark tragedy. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 27, 2025, and July 1, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Windjammer Watch VII

Yesterday’s dense fog prevented us from seeing Great Cove until about 4 p.m., when the lowering sun started extending exploratory rays here and there into those waters. It was then that I saw the top of a mast. Just the top. By the time that I got down to the shore for a look, the sun had become bolder and I discovered the schooner “Mary Day” lying there under the protection of Babson Island.

Not only that, but I could see through Mary’s rigging that another schooner was coming into the Cove out of densely-fogged Eggemoggin Reach. She was taking down her sails as she came in. It was the “J&E Riggin,” and she soon anchored safely, creating a contrast with Mary.

Mary is a high-riding, light-hulled schooner that runs 125 feet in overall length. She was launched in 1962 for tourist cruising and now hails from Camden, Maine. The Riggin is a low-slung, dark-hulled schooner that runs 120 feet overall. She was launched in 1927 for oyster dredging and now hails from Rockport, Maine. Neither Mary nor the Riggin has an inboard motor, which can make sailing in the fog on them even more of an adventure.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 1, 2025.)

June Postcards From Down East Maine

June is the long-awaited warm beginning of summer, when sweatshirts and sweaters are traded for short-sleeved shirts and shorts, when the fields turn green and flowers bloom everywhere, when the waters are alive with lobster boats full of traps, windjammers full of tourists, and recreational boats that range from the strange to the sublime. To be sure, June has her wet and foggy days — and this year also a few days that were too hot — but those times only make us appreciate more the arrival of summer in Vacationland.

As usual. we Wish You Were Here with four Postcards of the iconic Down East scenes that we monitor during all seasons: the old red boat house in Conary Cove; the near-mountain called Blue Hill overlooking the Bay of the same name; the Harbor Island House that seems to guard Naskeag Harbor, and the view of Mount Desert Island’s mountains from Brooklin’s Amen Ridge:

June wildlife featured our athletic white-tailed deer in their new sleek summer coats; ever-hungry snowshoe hares; ospreys in their seaside penthouses; wild turkeys that got caught in the rain; our ubiquitous herring gulls enjoying warmish sea waters, painted turtles and green frogs enjoying warmer pond waters, and pollinators enjoying the nectar of the emerging summer flora:

Among June’s large floral displays this year were the last of the apple blossoms; horse chestnut tree candles; red maple winged seeds; mountain maple tented flower heads, and crab apple trees in full bloom:

Notable shrub-sized floral displays in June included the last of the lilacs; extraordinary rhododendrons; orange azaleas; beach roses, and viburnum:

The grasses and sedges in the fallow fields were lush and the wild flowers there included lupines; blue and yellow flag wild irises; cow parsley; daisies, and yellow and orange hawkweed:

There was plenty of water in the streams, ponds and bogs, and the flora in the wetlands of course included fragrant water lilies, as well as arrow arum, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and skunk cabbage:

The rain in June also kept the woods from drying out and allowed ferns and bunchberry to flourish:

In the gardens, the floral standouts included bearded iris; poppies; peonies, and allium:

On the working waterfront, June is when the coastal water fishermen get their boats in shape and begin loading and setting out lobster traps:

Fathers’ Day coincides with the opening of the lobster season. It was celebrated at our house by local lobsters, which were bought by our son. Then, they were prepared by our daughter into an insanely delicious meal that shouldn’t be eaten more than once a year. Here’s a look at long-gone Lobster Fettucine Beurre Blanc with pre-cracked shells:

Lobster boats aren’t the only fascinating vessels that cruise the coast. Maine’s fleet of windjammers sail the summer here, often serving their lucky passengers gourmet cuisine and wines, including lobster bakes at beach parties. But, of course, there is no escaping the Down East weather.

Recreational boating and educational boating at the renowned WoodenBoat School come in many forms:

June also contains Flag Day, which is no problem in Maine. The population of U.S. Flags here is not endangered.

Finally, there is the June full moon, which is traditionally called the Strawberry Moon because of that fruit’s appearance during the month. This year, due to its close orbital position, the Strawberry Moon was viewed through our gritty atmosphere, which sometimes gave it a reddish cast:

(All images in this post were taken in Down East Maine during June of 2025.)

In the Right Place: Encounters of the Canine Type

This cute Brittany spaniel was in an otherwise vacant car next to mine as I pulled into a parking space on Thursday. Once parked, I put down my window and said, “Hello, there!” She calmly looked me over and then ignored me as any unaccompanied small female should when a strange old man accosts her.

I was struck by the fact that she easily could have leapt out of the fully-open car window, but she didn’t, nor did she get agitated by my closeness. She apparently was comfortable with people, well-trained, and told to “Stay.”

The windows in her car apparently were left open because it was warm. You have to be careful not to close a pet in a confined space during the summer.

(Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on June 26, 2025; stated sex and breed were guesses.)

In the Right Place: Summertime

Here you see Summertime on a cloudy day in Down East Maine: The clear, fresh water of Patten Steam is chortling into salty Patten Bay at high tide; the reflections of the thick and lush leaves along the shore are painting the moving water a deep emerald in which alewives are jumping and making circles, and a few pink beach roses are adding visual spice for the observant.

It brings to mind the opening, brilliant, and scene-setting couplets of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” lullaby in Porgy and Bess:

Summertime
and the livin' is easy.
Fish are jumpin’
and the water is high.

Those lyrics were by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, except that my “water” above was their “cotton” in the original. As the renowned songwriter Stephen Sondheim noted, that famous opening line uses “and” instead of “when,” which makes an exquisite difference poetically. It expresses a universal feeling about Summertime, not just a description.

That feeling was created at the meeting of the two Patten waters that day last week. Adding to it was a youngster in Maine summer attire who was trying his best to catch one of those alewives;

(Images taken in Surry, Maine, on June 26, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Mast, Motor or Muscle

Here you see the various marine power sources at rest in Naskeag Harbor during Sunday’s golden hour: sail, gas, or oars. Being a working waterfront, the majority are outboard motors on the skiffs that take fishermen to their lobster boats in the Harbor.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, at 5:55 p.m. on June 25, 2025.)