Islands and Ferries - Part 2 – Monhegan Island

It’s a 1½ hr boat ride to Monhegan Island from Boothbay Harbor. We went with Balmy Days Cruises (highly recommend). Leaving Boothbay Harbor at 9:30am with the return trip from Monhegan leaving at 2:45pm, we thought we would have plenty of time to spare. As it turned out, we could easily have spent another day there.

Soon after departing, the weather went from bad visibility ...

to worse ...

to zero visibility. 

Fortunately, I didn’t get seasick, because if I had, the “Just Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon” advice would have been useless. What horizon? 

Here is Bob talking to Emergency Backup Captain Thoren. Bob was asking about navigation and collision avoidance in the days before GPS, radar, radio, etc. Don’t know what made him think to ask.

Coming into Mohegan harbor

On land

The island is overrun with artists

The streets are unpaved

The Cliff Trail. “Generally considered a moderately challenging route.”

Remains of a 1948 shipwreck (a dense fog around the island caused a tug boat to run aground)

We didn’t even make it half way around the island on the Cliff Trail before running short on time. We had to cut through the interior to get back to the dock in time to catch the boat, the last (of only two) of the day. Fortunately, this trail took us past the Tourist Attraction Mandatory Lighthouse. 

View of the town from near the lighthouse, and then back to the dock.

Fun Fact 1: Emergency Backup Captain Thoren is a real captain, but was working as a first mate on our trip.

Fun Fact 2: Ships need to signal their presence in zero visibility or at night by blasting their horns frequently according to ecfr.gov . However, Thoren told us, our boat only needed to do a “ping” whatever that is. Lucky for us, or we would have gone deaf.  

I looked it up and per clause (i) of ecfr.gov: “A vessel of 12 meters or more but less than 20 meters in length shall not be obliged to give the bell signals prescribed in paragraphs (g) and (h) of this Rule. However, if she does not, she shall make some other efficient sound signal at intervals of not more than 2 minutes.” Such as a ping. 

Fun fact 3: In the days before GPS, radio beacons, and radar, ships would try and figure out their location and heading by observing the sun and stars. Later they used charts together with complicated devices such as marine compasses, astrolabes, sextants, chronometers, etc. Many of which still required being able to see the sky. 

Pretty amazing to me, considering I can’t even remember the difference between longitude and latitude, port and starboard, or even locate my car in a parking lot.