McGlathery is a granite outcrop covered in spruce, beech and fir trees. The water’s edge is rocky, almost smooth in places, which giant boulders scattered around. It’s nestled in an archipelago of small, but closely packed granite islands, known as the Merchant’s Islands. They’re simply beautiful. We snuck into a little notch on McGlathery, just inside of Round Island, and threw our hook, and ourselves, into the sea.
We still swim everyday. Here the water seems a little warmer, our temperature instrument, part of the boat’s electronic speedo, reads 17C, but I think it needs calibrating cause it just aint that warm. We’ve seen it down to about 14C, and that plunge was a very, very quick one.
Afterwards, to exercise the suspension, we took the dinghy onto the rock, and started off on the McGlathery Circumnavigation, a bouldering, leaping rock run. Hard work! It took about an hour and a half of leaping, scrambling, slithering and of course horsing around. We saw a bald eagle! Still, it was great fun and we were both pretty stuffed when had a rinse in the ocean, and settled down to a barbie and an icy-cold Dark & Stormy*.
Finally, a comment on the season: If you ever doubted how short the sailing season in Maine is, you need only sail here in August. It’s still beautiful by day, warm and nice, and mainly sunny, and there’s still swimming. But where we have been having cool nights, they’re now almost cold. Last night was down to 8C: I had to dig out my doona! It won’t be long before us softies without boat heaters head SW to warmer climes. The observant navigators among you may also have noticed that we have turned around. I’ve given up on getting my visa in time to get to Nova Scotia (Homeland Security has registered nil progress on visas in the last five weeks), and there’s a chance we can meet Henry in Portland or Camden for a week of sailing; a much better option than cursing.
Today we will motor – for there is no wind – to Isle Au Haut (pronounced ‘Ho’ which has us full of expectation).
[*although almost the national drink of Bermuda, Kady Tremaine insists that whenever we have one we acknowledge that it was her and nobody else that introduced it to us. So here it is:
“We had a Dark & Stormy, a drink introduced to us by Kady Tremaine.”
A D&S is made by squeezing lime into a glass, adding a few lobsters (like fingers) of Goslings Bermudan dark rum, and topping off with ice and ginger beer. It makes Max’s cheeks go red].
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