Set sail for Swan's Island

We had a great day of sailing on July 14 and arrived into Burnt Coat Harbor around 3pm. The pretty lighthouse marks the narrow inlet of this sleepy remote village. The Boathouse which used to rent moorings and deliver lodster meals to your boat had closed down, and a nice local lady sitting on her private dock told us to use the moorings at our own risk as they had not been checked for 3 years.

The Lobstermans Co-Op was in full working order though the price of lobster is so low this year some men are not lobstering everyday in order to affect the supply and demand.

It is that the warm winter caused the lobster to shed their shells and go to soft shells far earlier than usual  (August). So there are fewer hard shell lobster to sell as they are the only ones that keep well for shipping, and the local packing houses which gladly take the more succulent and difficult to store "shedders" or soft shells don't open until August generally. The packing houses got word of the problem and rushed to open, but there was still a lag.
So buying lobster is an important thing to do for the local families, and we are doing our darnest!

We bought 4 from the Co-op and they tied a pink ribbon on a floating cage with them inside so we could walk and explore the island ,and once back to the boat and showered with water heating in the Lobster pot on the stove, David dinghied over to the Co-op , pulled up alongside our cage and without getting out of the boat put the lobster into our bag and motored back.

The Island is more inhabited with homes than Isle au Haut partly because it is a little closer to the mainland and is accessed by the ferry at Bass Harbor the southern most tip of Mt Desert Island. We were already tied to a mooring so we stayed there and in the early evening we had upwards of 20 knots of wind and we held fine.
Cindra and David