Frenchboro, Long Island, Maine

August 6, 2012

Seriously, I don’t even want to write this post.  I wish I could just rip this page out of our Ship’s Log.  But I promised Tamara that I would make her smile with a great story, so here it goes:

We left Tenant’s Harbor and our cousins Lisa and Chris and headed for Mt. Desert Island (you’d better be pronouncing it “dessert” in your head as you read this, because, trust me, a Mainer will find you and correct you.  Don’t even ask why it is prounounced that way.  The answer is convoluted and of course involves the French).  Those big storms we were preparing for in Tenant’s Harbor never quite made it to us, which means we didn’t get the big winds that promised to fly us to Mt. Desert.  Nevertheless, we headed out knowing we had a few places we could stop in if there was no wind.

Porter sleeps off the seasickness..

Well, we had no wind AND huge following seas, which left most of us feeling a bit seasick.  I used my acupressure bands, which helped, but poor Porter was not happy.  We REALLY wanted to get to Acadia National Park, our northernmost destination, but we decided to bail out at Frenchboro, on Long Island – 16 miles from Acadia.  We should have kept going…

Cheerful Smurf feels fine, as always

It all looked very promising, actually.  We found a great mooring, right before a parade of boats started coming into the harbor.  Some ended up leaving for lack of a decent spot to stay.  We looked up after setting our anchor and saw a boat coming in with people waving to us.  They shouted over, “Aren’t you the ones sailing for a year with three kids?  We met you in Camden!”  Sure enough, these were the folks we had met in Cappy’s restaurant when we were with the Colemans.  We had chatted with them about cruising and living aboard after they called us over to tell us how lovely all of our children had behaved in the restaurant.  It was amazing that they had remembered the name of our boat and put two and two together.

Chris went to the dock to pay for the mooring but they didn’t charge us anything.  So far so good, right?  Chris gave the guy a nice tip and then bought three steamed lobsters to go.  The man wanted only $12 for them!  Chris came back and made us fresh lobster rolls, toasted in butter.  This is a terrible picture of me, but you have to see these lobster rolls that Chris made.  We were really digging Frenchboro at this point.

I know, I know.  What’s the big story?  We loaded everyone up in the dinghy and went ashore to go for a hike.  The dock house was adorable and they had some funny signs on the wall.  We found the wide, packed gravel trail and walked through a pretty wooded area to a beach on the eastern shore.  I was especially enjoying all the moss that is up here in Maine.  I love moss.  The beach was comprised of huge rocks (the size of basketballs).  The rocks got gradually smaller as you got down to the water.  It was interesting, if not completely spectacular.  But I was starting to get bitten by flies.  Have I mentioned that bugs really like me?  You’re about to understand this little tidbit in a way that you will likely not forget.

I finally told Chris and the kids that I would wait for them at the trail because the flies down at the water were too much.  I put bug spray on but it didn’t seem to help.  I had to constantly swat the flies away from my legs and arms and was relieved when they were ready to go.  We decided to continue on the trail, which looped around the northeast side of the island and back to the harbor, which was on the north shore.  It looked slightly longer than the trail we took to the beach.

We hiked from Lunt Harbor to Eastern Beach, then up around Northeast point on the yellow trail back to Lunt Harbor.

About ten minutes in, I was getting really agitated by the flies.  The trail was narrow and overgrown, with tall, itchy grass.  I started walking faster, thinking I could outpace them (seriously?).  Bryson came up behind me and yelled, “Mommy!  You have so many flies on your back!”  I jumped around like a lunatic, trying to get them off the back of my shorts and tank top.  We kept going but the flies seemed to be getting worse.  They were all over my legs and arms now and I had to walk and swat and attempt to stay on the narrow trail, which was quite a challenge.

When Chris caught up, he screamed that I had over a hundred flies on my back.  So I promptly freaked out.  What was going on?  I was the only one with bug spray on.  Does bug spray attract flies?  The flies weren’t going anywhere near the other four.  Chris told me to just run ahead and get back to the dinghy, figuring the flies would stay back in the woods.  I started running with Bryson behind me.  I was stumbling, swatting, and getting really panicked.  I could see the flies all over my body and even more were swarming around me.  The faster I ran, the more that came.  Soon they were in my hair, on my sunglasses, and all over my torso.  You can’t make this stuff up.

I could no longer find the path because I was getting disoriented.  Bryson ran back and got a towel from the backpack and led the way for me.  I wrapped the towel around my shoulders so that only my head and legs were exposed.  This made it even harder to run and more dangerous, since my arms were not available to catch me if I fell.  I stayed on Bryson’s heels as the trail went on and on forever.  Looking back, it might have been about 20 minutes, but it was a LONG twenty minutes.

The trail finally turned toward the west and we were approaching the harbor.  We were still a good way away from our dinghy and I decided I just could not take it one more second.  As soon as the trail got close to the water, there was a house with a dock.  Despite the fifty-seven “Private,” “ Keep Out,” and other warning signs, I ran right down that dock with the swarm of flies following me.  I had lost everyone by then and waited until they showed up.  I’m sure you can visualize the very classy scene: me.  Wrapped in a giant white towel.  Spinning around and swatting myself.  Yelling “get away from me!”  I sure hope at least you are all getting a chuckle out of this.

As soon as Chris and the kids reached the dock, I stripped everything off except my underwear and tank top and jumped in the water.  They took my things back to the dinghy and I swam back to the boat, which was over ¼ mile away.  And don’t you know two of those flies flew circles around my head the whole way?

Once in the water, I calmed down.  The water was freezing (I’ve only swum with my wetsuit since we left Newport) but the “Attack of the Killer Flies” torture was over.  I was thankful that I’ve been practicing swimming for 5 weeks because it really was a long way.  About half way back to the boat, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get ON the boat once I reached it.  The dinghy was not there and the swim ladder was fastened in the ‘up’ position.  Our swim platform lies high out of the water and there isn’t anything to hold onto.  But necessity is the father of invention and so I made a leap out of the water and grabbed on to our spare fuel tank.  I had enough of a hold to get my legs up on the swim platform and could then pull myself up with my arms, hoping that the Velcro holding the fuel tank would take my weight.  Another super-classy scene.  Good thing no one was around to take pictures!

At least there was a decent sunset…

I got safely on board, took a shower, and put on every warm item of clothing I owned.  I was frozen to the core and not just a little bit traumatized.  I waited for Chris and the kids to get back and hoped that we could leave Frenchboro as soon as physically possible.  Unfortunately, they also had some drama when the trail moved away from the shore and led them inland, making the rest of the hike much longer than they had anticipated.  We were all exhausted and pretty much done with Long Island and looked forward to leaving first thing in the morning.  Acadia, here we come! Unless you have flies…

(Well, Tamara?   Do I deliver or what?)