After our dinghy adventure back to the boat, David and I decided to stay put in the anchorage for the next day to finish out the work week without moving. Saturday morning, we woke up and cruised to Belfast where the wind was blowing pretty hard as we secured to a mooring in the harbor. We drove the dinghy to pick up Russ and Jax and headed to the brewery in town. When we arrived a band appeared to be setting up for a show.

It turned out to be quite a large band with a variety of instruments including bongos, a violin, and a tenor saxophone. We decided to stay for the beginning of their show and they were very good!

We walked up through the town intending to eat at a local italian restaurant that everyone had recommended, but their wait was too long, so we ended up at a sushi restaurant, sitting at the bar. The sushi was delicious and the bartender was a born and raised local and shared a little of the town’s history with us while we ate.

On Sunday, Jax and I dinghyed to shore with scooters for a grocery run and then we all came back into town later to try the Italian restaurant again. The wait was extremely long again, and in the end, we decided to head back to the boat and I cooked pasta for the 4 of us on Highwind!

Next we headed to Camden, where we planned to stay put for the entire week since David had his long days of quarterly planning. This was a our fist opportunity to receive packages in about a month – so we had quite a few waiting for us when we arrived! We stayed for the first few days on a mooring with the Camden Yacht Club, and then switched half way through the week to a different mooring with Lymen Morse.

Wednesday was our 9th Anniversary and David’s schedule allowed for us to head to town for a dinner celebration. I had made reservations, which was fortuitous since the town was packed with people and most restaurants had a wait!

On Friday, David was finished early and after my meetings ended, we headed to land for an escape room (which unfortunately wasn’t very good) and some amazing Thai food (the best we’ve had in several years) to celebrate the end of a long and busy work week.

The weekend finally arrived and we headed to Rockland to meet up again with Russ and Jax who had discovered that there was a Maine Lobster Festival happening just in town. We ate some delicious lobster for lunch while enjoying some live festival music, and then wandered into town to spend the afternoon at a brewery playing Hanabi!

Russ and Jax had heard from a brewer that the brewery on Monhegan was worth a visit, and a friend of David’s had also told him that Monhegan would be a good stop, so it had been on our radar. This is an island 10 miles south of Port Clyde. The weather was not looking good on Sunday for us to cruise their in our boats, but we discovered that there was a ferry from Port Clyde. With the weather closing in, we decided to return to the boats and do an afternoon cruise to set up in Port Clyde, and then we’d take the ferry to Monhegan the next day. As soon as we pulled out of Rockland, the fog descended and we had an extremely low visibility cruise (maybe only 150ft) all the way to Port Clyde, where the visibility opened up just in time for us to anchor and Russ and Jax to pull up alongside.

The layers of fog made for an atmospheric sunset and we sat on the bows to watch.

The next morning, we dinghyed into town to catch the ferry to Monhegan. The ferry ride was about an hour and we sat on the deck enjoying the warm weather and a perfect breeze. The number of people who live on Monhegan year round is sub-1o0 and the island is mostly hike-able preserved wildlands. There is an excellent museum that covers the history of the island which includes a guided tour of their lighthouse.

After visiting the museum and lighthouse, which had an amazing view over the village, we hiked the width of the island to the cliffs on the other side, which were beautiful. We closed out our visit with beer at the brewery (yes there’s even a brewery on the tiny island) and ice cream.

We returned to the boat in the evening after a wonderful day! With the work week ahead, and some windy days predicted David and I decided to stay put in the anchorage outside of Port Clyde for the beginning of the week when we’ll start making our way west towards Portland.