The Browns' Mantra: Portland, Maine

The tide was low when we raised anchor in Wood Island Harbor at 11:30 yesterday (Tuesday, June 17), and we followed our course out, returning to the open water after dithering about where to go next. With the main outboard engine in need of an impeller, our options for exploring the 200+ islands in Casco Bay were limited. Peter has a very long list of projects and small jobs that he wants to complete before we head to Greenland, including: install a spotlight for navigation; service the outboard engines; buy a windsurfer mast as an ice pole; select and install a diesel heater in the saloon (because it is only going to get colder!), install the old depth sounder; install Starlink power and router; reroute the running backstay deck plates; remount the boom preventor deck blocks; mount new deck rings for the boom break; order and install a new bilge alarm; and service the windlass electric motor that failed to we have as a spare. Unfortunately, things seem to get added to the list at least as quickly as others are checked off. Thus, he was anxious to get to a place where he could work on things, get parts and equipment shipped, and find mechanics to help if necessary. We had determined that we were going to the Safe Harbor Marina in Harpswell for some of this, but we debated stopping in Portlane, Maine, first. When we set off, our course was set for Harpswell.

Portland Head Light (1791), oldest lighthouse in Maine

I could tell that Peter really wanted to get some of the things he needed soon, so after we passed Port Elizabeth, I, as the admiral, made the decision to stop in Portland for the night at a marina, since there are no transient moorings in Portland Harbor and the anchoring space is limited to a small area northeast of the peninsula with no dinghy access (without the Yamaha engine functioning, this was rather a moot point). Peter was then able to focus on calling suppliers on land prior to docking, and after lunch, he got an Uber to transport him to the places he needed to go. Success! He was able to purchase an impeller repair kit as well as other items.

Meanwhile, Shalako and I used our spare time to explore the small city of Portland, which is the most populous place in Maine. Although it was first settled by Europeans as a fishing and trading village in 1632, Portland has few colonial or post-Revolutionary buildings since a fire on July 1, 1866, ignited during the Indepedence Day celebrations, destroyed almost all the commercial buildings, half the churches and hundreds of homes, leaving 10,000 people homeless. With the exception of a few stone buildings, the entire downtown area is constructed of red brick. A few have Beaux Arts or other stylistic features, but for the most part the architecture is not noteworthy.

Brick building with bow windows

Neoclassical style building

Gracing the side walls of a few of the buildings are murals, including one depicting a scroll inscribed with a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Portland's most famous native son.

Mural with Longfellow poem

Mural with people mucking for clams

In addition to strolling along the waterfront and streets of the city, we visited the Portland Observatory, which I assumed was an astonomical observatory. In fact, it was designed not for scientific discovery but for sighting ships coming into the harbor and communicating that information to the merchants and ship owners. It is the only surviving tower of its type in the U.S., and is both a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

Portland Observatory

In 1807 Captain Lemuel Moody (1768-1846), ordered construction of this octagonal, 86-foot high tower on Munjoy Hill (an area of pasture land at the time) to serve as a communication station for Portland’s bustling harbor. It was a commercial venture designed to give a competitive edge to ship owners who paid Moody a subscription fee of $5.00 a year to alert them when their ships were arriving. At the time, ships entering the harbor could not be seen from the docks of Portland until they rounded the point of land at Spring Point Ledge and were almost at the wharfs. With his powerful telescope at the top of the tower, sea captain-turned-entrepreneur Moody could identify incoming vessels as far away as 18 miles. Moody informed subscribing merchants by hoisting signal flags identifying their vessels. This signal tower communication greatly increased the efficiency of Portland Harbor, and the Observatory remained a working marine signal tower run by the Moody family until 1923 when the invention of the two-way radio made it obsolete.

There are 104 steps from the base of the observatory to the telescope room, and Moody climbed them 3 times a day for 39 years to look for ships. Starting in 1816, he made detailed observations of the weather, including temperature and wind velocity and direction, until his death. He used the achromatic telescope mounted upside down from the ceiling of the lantern of the tower for the last time the day before he died at the age of 79.

It was the focal point for community gatherings, and was a tourist attraction from the beginning. It may have been the novelty of the hill-top tower that brought people up to see it, but Moody did his best to keep them there by building stables, a banquet hall, a dance hall and a bowling alley at the foot of the Observatory, next to his own house. He even allowed tourists to climb the steps to the top for the view, for the small fee of 12 cents.

An interesting fact about the lighthouse is that it does not have a typical stone foundation. Instead, holding the tower in place is 22 tons of Maine granite rubble (which we observed through a trap door on the first floor), resting atop pine foundation beams. The large chunks of stone act as ballast, hold the weight down of the building and allow it to be resilient in strong winds.

It was just starting to rain lightly as Shalako and I exited the Observatory. We stopped at a food co-op for carrots and bananas and made it back to the docks and the boat before getting soaked in the drizzle. Shalako remarked that finally a change in the weather had arrived--from overcast and damp to gray and wet. We had made inquiries about good seafood restaurants, but going out to dinner was not an appealing option.

After dinner of homemade split pea soup and cornbread, Peter updated the charts and Garmin. (The updates the night before had made the charts disappear on the Garmin monitor in the pilot house, so we traveled on Tuesday without them.) The new display is much better.

Peter and I took showers, and Shalako and I walked to the UPS store to return to Amazon the enormous overalls mistakenly ordered for Father's Day. At 11 a.m., with intermittent drizzling and fog rolling in, we cast off from DiMillo's Marina. The plan was to go to the anchorage by Snow Island, near Harpswell. However, the admiral had to intervene again as confused seas made the ride a bit uncomfortable, increasing fog made navigation around lobster pots and marks more challenging, and the chilliness of the air had brought out foul weather gear and beanies as well as, for the first time, warm gloves. We set a new course for Jewell Island, where the water is calm. The fog is persistent but has lightened and darkened throughout the afternoon, sometimes almost obscuring the rocky shores on either side of us.