Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors

2 weeks ago | maineboats.com | Letitia Baldwin

“You know it’s big when the islands disappear behind the wave when you’re in the trough,” Gouldsboro sailor Shemaya Laurel wrote, describing the blow she encountered on a late-spring journey aboard her 24-foot sailing barge, Great Auk, on a cruise from her downeast home to the Pemaquid River in Muscongus Bay. On that May morning, taking advantage of a brisk easterly breeze, the single-handed sailor took an exposed route outside the Muscle Ridge Islands.

Nov 29, 2024 | maineboats.com | Letitia Baldwin

Jesse Salisbury didn’t focus much on his own stone creations this past year. Instead, the Steuben sculptor’s eyes were trained on Mother Nature’s works wrought by multiple storms that ravaged and dramatically reshaped Maine’s coastline, from Kittery to Lubec.  In the Pine Tree State, Salisbury is known for spearheading the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium, held from 2007 to 2014 on the Schoodic Peninsula and the University of Maine campus in Orono.

Sep 24, 2024 | maineboats.com | Mimi Bigelow Steadman

Standing atop a jumble of pink granite on the very edge of Mount Desert Island’s southwestern shore, Bass Harbor Head Light Station has always been a welcoming beacon when we’ve cruised up Jericho Bay toward the island. But we’d never visited the small white tower and its red-roofed keeper’s house. Last summer, I decided it was time we did. Besides, I’d been wanting to go to Bass Harbor.

Sep 21, 2024 | maineboats.com | Ronald A. Joseph

Bill Sheehan was 10 when he fell in love with birds. It happened at the end of a long, hot June day in 1973 when his family moved from Long Island, New York, to an abandoned Patten, Maine, farmhouse on 180 acres of played-out potato fields. “Moving to northern Maine was culture shock,” said Sheehan, now 61. “The house was in very bad shape. Chokecherries were growing up through the steps, and overgrown bushes blocked views from first-floor windows.

Jul 27, 2024 | maineboats.com | Mimi Bigelow Steadman

All photos by Mimi Bigelow SteadmanWhen the pocket-sized South Bristol Gut drawbridge raises its bascule arm skyward, we wave a thank-you to the bridgetender and slip through the narrow, walled passage between the mainland and Rutherford Island. Arriving in the small harbor to the east, we’re surrounded by a fleet of handsome fishing boats resting near the salty docks of Osier’s Wharf and the South Bristol Fisherman’s Co-op.