Lobsters, lobsters - great and small

Just across the Sheepscot river from Five Islands is Ebenecook Harbour, off which there are three small Coves: Maddock, Pierce and Love. Avid readers of this blog will of course remember that Follyfin visited Love Cove in July 2018. Her crew found it so beautiful and tranquil, with swimming, mussels (though red tide prevented human consumption last year and this), lobsters and wildlife, that we determined to revisit the place. So on Tuesday 18 June, we motored the 2.5nm north east, bent first on replenishing our water supply. Hodgdon Yacht Services in Maddock Cove is perfectly situated for both water, fuel if needed (we didn’t) and pump out (we did). Then, in Love Cove again, we found the guest mooring - kindly provided by Eliot Winslow -available where we were not so lucky last year. Follyfin was happily tethered to the mooring ball and we duly left our note of thanks in the pickle jar provided. A half mile walk ashore to the Southport General Store in search of fresh provisions yielded delicious made-to-order sandwiches but little in the way of food (it does have an excellent selection of wines though). The substantial sandwiches meant that a cheese and onion omelette and (the inevitable) baked beans sufficed for supper. Corned beef avoided again thank goodness. Although the Skipper does like it but without potatoes, of which we have none, the galley slave declined to ‘cook’ it. So there!

Back to lobsters... having had no luck flagging down a passing lobster boat so far, we decided to try our luck with our own portable, collapsible creel, which has been used successfully to catch lobsters, crabs and shrimps in the past. Baited with fish offcuts saved from our previous catches - by now very smelly - and positioned well away from Follyfin (or so we thought), we went to bed dreaming of lobster dinner on the morrow. Early next morning, the white float marking the creel’s position was nowhere to be seen... because the line attaching it to the creel had somehow managed to get itself wrapped around the port rudder! Freeing it eventually, we did have a catch: a baby lobster and 4 crabs, one of whom declined to be photographed.

All were returned to the sea and our dreams of lobster dinner dashed... until last night, Wednesday 19 June.

Having already decided to leave our beloved Love Cove and explore 3nm further north up the Sheepscot River, we motored off at 10a.m. just as the fog (par for the course in Maine) was lifting. The plan was to visit the Coastal Maine Botanic Garden on the mainland to the east of Hodgdon Island, which we did, utilising the single big boat mooring provided by the Garden for visitors. That visit deserves a blog post in its own right ... so magnificent was it. But suffice to say, we did get lobsters for our evening meal after all. On our way back from the Garden in the dinghy, we just called in for milk to the Trevett General Store close to our mooring but to our delight we found that fresh lobsters were for sale there at a very reasonable price. What a find! These two bruisers were 1.5lb each.

Before and after cooking on board