23 June 2011 Gluttony

They lay before us, a gleaming red pile of potential goodness, the carcasses of six lobsters.  Herein was probably the best problem one can have, namely that we had to pick six lobsters before we could retire for the night.  How did we get so lucky?  Now that is a story…

While ashore yesterday I received an email from a gent named Phil Poitier, saying that he & his wife, Susan, would be bringing out guests to stay in the Museum Quarters (Judy had told us to be expecting people), that they would be hosting a lobster bake in The Cove, and would Amy & I like to attend?  I responded certainly, we would be happy to come, and if the weather turned sour, we would be happy to host the affair up in the galley in our quarters. 

When I woke up this morning, I have to admit, I did not expect to see Phil nor anybody else today.  The foghorn was droning away, I had been wakened at 0430 by a driving rain squall, the temperature was dropping instead of rising, and the breeze was freshening.  The forecast for Friday was promising even worse weather, with seas in the 4’-6’ range.  Underestimating Phil & Susan’s resourcefulness & determination, Amy began sautéing tomatoes for dinner, and I laid down for a nap.  Then, out of the blue, a knock came on our front door.

Sure enough Phil, Susan, Roger, & Michelle, had pushed through the weather in Phil’s 39’ Allied Ketch, and were busily landing supplies in the cove.  There was initial hesitation on moving the festivities at the top of the hill until I pointed out the tram still operated and could get the gear to the top in short order.  Now before anyone makes fun of us for using the tram, let me tell you, Phil does not mess around.  He brought six camp chairs, a camp table, two propane cookers, a stockpot, a grill, sliders (mini burgers), red hotdogs, beer, wine, a pound of butter, a dozen ears of corn, eighteen lobsters, and whoopee pies.  For six people.  Mother of God.

Needless to say we had a fantastic time.  We ate for about four hours straight, cooking the food outside on the porch, than moving it into the dining room for consumption.  The space heater did double duty keeping the whole downstairs warm, and Darcy Dog ran circles trying to keep pace with all of the smells and new people.  I taught Roger & Michelle, both from Indiana and in Maine for the first time, how to get at the meat, and we all ate until we were stuffed.  Everybody pitched in with cleanup, I loaded Phil’s equipment onto the tram, ran it back down the hill, and before we knew it Amy & I had the house to ourselves again.

Which brings us back to the beginning: they left us with all of the leftovers, which included six lobsters.  Not wanting to pick more lobster, but not wanting to waste any, we knuckled down, and now have two quarts of fresh lobster meat in the freezer, along with corn, whoopee pies, hot dogs, and so on.  Coming on the heels of a day ashore, I’m not sure the galley fridge has ever been this full.  It’s all good stuff though, we’ll use it all eventually, although I doubt we’ll have to do much grocery shopping next week.

Phil & Susan are spending the night on their boat in The Cove while Roger & Michelle use the guest quarters, and as I watch the barometer dropping, and the wind freshen to a high NE’ly wind, with gusts upwards of 25kts, I hope we all have a nice quiet night.  The visibility is terrible with fog & rain, and the seas are picking up, so I really hope we all get good rest, because tomorrow is looking to be interesting.

24 June 2011 A Good Blow

The threatening weather delivered in spades overnight.  We woke up to temps in the low 50F’s, a steady 23kt NE’ly wind, socked in with fog, and impressive seas.  Taking in the situation I assumed that we would be sharing our quarters with Phil, Susan, & co for the weekend.  Surprising me again though, Phil & Susan came up around 0930, announcing their intention to depart with the low tide at 1130.  So they hung out with us for a couple of hours, then rousted out Phil & Michelle, and we all trundled down to The Cove.

Embarking everyone into Phil’s dinghy was as adventure.  With the steady NE’ly breeze, there was 3’-4’ surf breaking on the beach, with the occasional “big one”.  Phil did manage to get everyone transferred safely, albeit wetly, into the dinghy and then onto his boat.  Once they were all aboard the boat, Amy & I beat feet for the top, not staying to watch the departure.

I won’t belabor the details of the rest of the day, suffice to say the weather deteriorated further, and we stayed inside.  I did go out for a walk towards dinnertime, and used the opportunity to take some pictures of the weather.  To our readers in the Mid West, hope you enjoy the fog & storm pics, although this is not truly Downeast fog, rather it is Midcoast fog.  You’ll have to contact folks up towards Machias for true Downeast weather pics.

USCGC Willow transiting just west of Seguin & Ellingwood Rock

 

25 June 2011 A Sour (Dough) End to the First Month

Our friends Jason Chandler & his sister Laura were intending to visit us overnight tonight, but the weather seemed to be unwilling to cooperate.  We arose this morning to the same sight we saw our first morning on-island: rain and fog.  In addition the wind was still blowing steadily at 20kts from the NE, and the seas were stacked up into the 5’-7’ range, particularly around the entrance to The Cove.  However around 1030 the wind had completely died and the seas immediately began subsiding; I waited an hour to be sure it was not an aberration, and by noon we had a good 4’ swell running, but no seas to speak of, which are acceptable boating conditions.  As it now appeared that we would have guests, I tackled my big project that has been three days in the making.

Last week, when Mother came to visit, in what the Joy of Cooking refers to as a “true act of friendship”, she left me with a jar of her sourdough starter.  While I can produce a fairly consistent product with baker’s yeast, I have never once tried bread with a starter.  I read all of the notes Mom gave me, then read what Joy of Cooking had to offer, learning that the sourdough actually traps natural yeast in the air, and as that ferments with the flour & water added to the mix, it causes the bread to rise.  Keeping this in mind, I was particularly amused in Joy by the passage which read “In kitchens where yeast baking has been going on for centuries, these organisms are plentiful in the air, and success is assured”; I can only imagine what bugs are floating around in the Seguin air, just waiting to be trapped and incorporated into my bread.

As I said earlier, I started the process on Thursday, taking the starter out of the fridge and feeding it water and flour every day, sometimes twice a day, and leaving it next to the space heater, so it would be warm enough to ferment & grow.  By this afternoon I had a healthy smelling batch and was ready to make the dough.  Mother’s warning that the dough would be “wetter and stickier” than yeast dough did not do reality justice.  As you can see in the picture above.  It was so wet, in fact, I was unsure if I had measure the ingredients out correctly.  The resultant loaves however, looked & smelled perfect.     

Jason & Laura arrived around 1930 courtesy of Dad, bringing along the banjo, a bottle of Kraken rum, and Megan the intern, who works for their mother Nancy.  We ate a loaf of the bread with dinner and found it tasted even better than it smelled.   After dinner we went up in the tower to see the sights.  The view was okay, with Cape Elizabeth and Monhegan visible, although it was still cold and threatening rain.  We descended back down to the quarters and made up mugs of hot grog, and broke out the banjo & mandolin.

So we conclude our first month on the island in the company of friends, full of tasty food, the rum flowing, with homemade music backing up the conversation.  We are all fully enjoying the scene, and it strikes me that if we didn’t have the myriad of challenges that Seguin posses, our appreciation for all of these things may not be so deep.     

26 June 2011 The Hatching

In further confirmation of sourdough success, I reserved some of the starter from the bread adventure, fed it last night, and used it to make sourdough pancakes this morning.  I made a double batch thinking I would have leftovers to put in the freezer, turned out we ate all of them, washing them down with hot coffee and tea. It was a good, hearty, island breakfast, which fortified us for our walk around the island.

We went down the hill, the foghorn droning on in the background, and from there out to the north point.  We spent a while crawling around on the rocks, seeing what there was to see, and Jason asked if we would walk on the rocks to the south side of the island.  I was a little hesitant as the gulls were very territorial in that vicinity due to some nesting activity, but I suspected that they were close to hatching time, and as the chicks are mobile within days of hatching, figured that we could at least give it a shot, and if we were attacked could turn back.

The gulls, while somewhat disquieted, let us be for the most part, and we did make it to the Cobblestone Beach without incident.  Along the way we spotted many empty nests, but with very few scattered shell fragments, which didn’t help us either way, as the nets could simply be from prior years.  As it turned out, my suspicions were uncannily accurate, as we stumbled on a chick lying in a tuft of grass, watching us but otherwise unmoving, which means it had probably hatched within the last 48 hours!  We moved on quickly, making mother herring gull happy, leaving the chick in peace.  This also makes me happy, as it means I can probably clear the rest of the trails this week, weather permitting, as the gulls will no longer be protecting eggs.  Just in time for the 4^th of July weekend too!

The rest of the walk passed without seeing more chicks, but seeing shell fragment all over the beach.  I wonder if the gulls clean the nest out after hatching takes place…does anybody know?  If so, please share with me.  I’m curious and cannot find that in our bird book.  We had to clip the walk a little short, as Dad was returning at noon to collect our guests.  We moseyed back up the hill to collect up the gear, make some tea, and Jason & I pulled out the instruments to play a couple of songs, when unexpectedly out of the fog, Donna Richardson came barreling into the Quarters.

She had come out to the island with her father and some of his friends, and wanted some help getting them all ashore.  As usual, timing is everything in this world.  We all were heading down the hill to help Donna when Dad called, ready to make the pickup on Jason & Laura.  So The Cove was a busy scene for several minutes as we shuttled people back and forth between boats, and then we got to hang out with Donna & company for a few hours before they had to leave too.

For a day with less than a quarter of a mile visibility, it turned out to be a busy & exciting day.  Amy & I just hung out for the evening, playing mandolin and knitting, with the heater going still.  We went to bed early, still listening to the fog signal, hoping for better weather in the morning.  

27 June 2011 Confusing Weather

With the amount of rain, fog, and cold, that we’ve had, it has become the norm for us.  Imagine our surprise & confusion then, when we have a warm sunny day.  It must be a sight, to see Amy & I tentatively creep out of the house, crouched down in what would have been the fight-or-flight posture in a more primitive time, staring up at the sky, trying to make sense of what we see up in the heavens.  I’m not exaggerating too much either; even if we weren’t exactly fearful of the sun, it still must have been amusing to see us gleefully throwing open doors & windows to air out the mustiness we have come to know & love in The Quarters.

We weren’t the only confused ones though.  We don’t normally get seals in The Cove, and I didn’t get my camera out in time to get pictures of this little guy trying to climb up the slipway, but here he is swimming along the east side.  Fortunately Darcy Dog was not present to involve himself, as at one point the seal did make it briefly onto the rocks.

 

As the temperature climbed towards 80F, Amy & I had to get outside and do yardwork we were delinquent on.  Mowing, weeding the garden, and then back to clean out the museum & guest quarters.  We also had plenty of company today, with Ken Young & his wife Dottie stopping in, plus two boatloads of folks wanting to see the tower.  A little later in the day the motor yacht Callie Ellie attempted to visit; I was watching them circle the island, but due to their size did not think they would try to come in, until they actually turned up into The Cove.  I think I scared Amy in my race into the house, to get to the VHF, to call & politely let them know they were too big to fit.  Fortunately the captain knew what he was about, and taking my advice, nosed in, then used his bow thruster turn in a hurry, and head back out, in the general direction of Boothbay.

Even now, after dinner, we still have guests.  The ketch Northwind out of Yarmouth, MA, is going to overnight in The Cove, and come to visit us after breakfast in the morning.  Amy took a nice picture of me rowing out to chat with the skipper, and suggest moving to the bigger, heavier mooring.  It’s a beautiful evening with gentle SW’ly breezes, the barometer holding steady at 29.97”, clear skies, and unrestricted visibility.  The clear weather and light winds are supposed to hold through tomorrow, although the temp is going to fall off into the low 50F’s tonight. 

28 June 2011 Everybody Poops

During every tour of Seguin, the large, square patch of grass with the brick “H” in the middle of it is always a point of curiosity.  I than duly explain that it was, and is, a helicopter pad, which prompts the question, how many helicopters land here?  Not many I reply, maybe one or two a year, but we keep it ready for emergencies.

So there we were, on a bright sunny day, madly trying to wolf down some lunch, plucking some of the 25-odd tourists that Ethan brought out, out of the museum until we could man it, when I heard a helo very close in.   I ran outside just in time to see USCG Helo 6004 lining up for a landing- thankfully I had just mowed it the day before.

Keeping tourists out of the museum was hard, keeping them away from a landing helo was almost impossible.  We had no idea why the USCG was here, could it be for the light? Or the cable? Was somebody hurt & I didn’t know about it?  A pilot and an aircrew jumped out, walked towards us, looking imposing in the flight suits, ditch gear, and sidearms, took off their glasses, and very seriously enquired if I was the caretaker (at this point I was getting that feeling you get when you’re pulled over on the highway “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?  How fast was I going?”).  When I replied in the affirmative, a look of pure relief came of their faces, and they said “Thank God, we’ve been on patrol for hours.  Do you have a bathroom we can use?”  Apparently, even the Coast Guard needs to poop.

Honestly, they were nice guys, talking to the tourists briefly as the helo was still turning, even offering to take one woman for a ride when asked.  “Yup” said LCDR Steve “All you need to do is go jump off that ledge over there into the water and start yelling for help, we’ll come find you and give you a ride”.  They left abruptly as they came, leaving us with a fantastic story; hopefully they come back for a longer stay the next time around.

Helicopter antics aside, it was still a busy day.  Ethan’s guests were a large group, but we had two other boats plus two kayakers over the course of the day.   The crew of the ketch Northwind, who overnighted in The Cove, came ashore early for a tour.   George, Doc, Tim, & Ryck, were bringing the boat from her spring home in Penobscot Bay down to Cape Cod for the rest of the fall.  They were very nice gentlemen (with a beautiful boat); Amy & I had a very good time showing them the place.

In between tours we still managed to dismantle parts of the front porch in preparation for a mini work party tomorrow, mow the bottom of the island, determine Frankenmower is finally dead (a rock strike bent the drive shaft in addition to the blade, I almost tore my arm off trying to start it after removing the blade), and got the first coat of stain on parts of my dory.  I also used the sunny day to exacerbate the sunburn I started yesterday.  So ends another awesome week on Seguin.