Into western Penobscot Bay, Maine

We took advantage of another good weather and wind day to sail up into Penobscot Bay, the largest of Maine's coastal indentations.  The Bay is 20 miles wide and almost 30 miles long made up of large and small islands. Entering the Fox Island Thorofare between North Haven and Vinalhaven took us by these imposing rocks marked with a U.S. flag blowing in 15 knot winds.

The Thorofare was busy with recreational boats like us, working lobster boats, ferries running from mainland ports, docks of waterfront homes along the way.  It was busy but we sailed through to Perry Cove.  We found it full of private moorings and a marked underground cable area so we moved on to anchor in Seal Cove.  The island of Vinalhaven is home to three large windmills that peacefully turned with the breezes that blew through the night.

The quaint inner harbor of Camden, Maine is at the foot of Mount Battie, one of the impressive shoreline hills on the west side of Penobscot Bay. 

The small inner harbor makes the best use of its water space by renting dockage at anchored wooden floats instead of the usual single mooring balls.  This allows two boats to tie up to a floating platform and be held in one position taking up much less water space than if the two boats were attached to single mooring balls. A shuttle boat launch would take us from our boat to shore as part of our float fee.

Camden keeps its small town feel since no large ferries or tour boats are in the harbor.

The public library sits on top of the hill at the head of the harbor with beautiful gardens and a large grassy amphitheater that many folks enjoy for picnics.

Our friends, Kathy and David from Nova Scotia, drove down to visit with us here in Camden on Friday.  We met them as they traveled on their sailboat on our Bahamas trip a few years ago.  A sail on Priority, exploring downtown Camden, swimming in the cool Maine water and dinner out kept us busy.