The Edge of Maine Read Online Free Page B

Anybody. Please come back, please. This is Blackwing . I am looking at a rocky beach on the west side of one of your islands. We are tired. And lost. I repeat [sic], we are frightened. Please come back.”
    And there came a lobsterman, clear-voiced. Said he was pulling pots, he had us on his radar, would drop by in a jiffy, lead us into Criehaven, the harbor on Ragged. He had an extra mooring, he said, we could use it. Drink a cup of coffee, he suggested. Take it easy. Welcome to Maine, he said.
    I could have wept. Asked again—“Do you sail?”—I would have responded, “Sort of, maybe, not really.” Did mister manly man resent how his woman and sons already felt about the savior with radar, and sense enough to find his way to a safe haven? I did not. My hemanliness, poor pathetic thing, was back there in the Portland shipping lanes, or where I’d lost my wits somewhere near Monhegan, where I’d gone plumb numb.
    When the lobsterman came alongside and saw my hands shaking, he suggested, seeing how thick o’ fog it was, that he tow us in. That seemed to me the brightest idea anyone ever had. He towed, disappeared into the murk as the line went taut; I pretended to steer, and the boys and Priscilla went below to talk about something. Criehaven’s a snug harbor, and when we entered I knew from the chart that we passed a breakwater not twenty-five feet to starboard. We never saw it. And till the fog lifted we never saw land from Blackwing .
    We hung on a mooring in Criehaven two days, two nights. That first night it cleared, and we saw the Northern Lights. Snug below, I listened to Nick on the forward deck explain with the timeworn patience of an older brother that the flashes were in fact World War III.
    Justin, evidently undeceived, said, “I’m glad we’re here.”
    â€œAmen,” Priscilla said from the cockpit.
    Next morning: fog. We stayed put. If the fog hadn’t lifted, we’d still be there, believe me. Back then, it was a common idiom of cruising guides to warn that a Maine fog could keep you so long anchored in one place that you’d ground on your own beer cans before you’d dare move. But the fog did lift, as it does. And way short of disaster it could have been worse. Roger Duncan has described sailing in a Penobscot Bay fog so thick that the Vinalhaven ferry coming in from Rockland with radar couldn’t find her slip. As for him:
    We underestimated the tide, mistook one headland we had never seen for another equally unfamiliar, got into a nest of half-tide rocks, bounced off one, stuck on another, but fortunately sailed her clear. We anchored, guessed, speculated, blundered about from island to island for three hours, went ashore and asked a party of clam diggers where we were, and at length made a safe harbor in the falling dark. Better we had not tried it.
    So now? I feel less and less like a fool, which is striking evidence of foolishness. More and more it has seemed to be a good idea to venture offshore, so we do. But never with Monhegan as a destination. Let’s call it a bad vibe coming from Monhegan, a really weak signal.

ANCHORED: RAGGED ISLAND
    A t dawn the dripping hatch above our bunk told all we needed to know. To sink my account even deeper in Roger F. Duncan’s debt, here’s his perfectly condensed description of our situation, fog dew drumming softly on the deck in a melancholy, irregular rhythm, the muffled “complaint of gulls standing on their weir stakes waiting for something good to happen.” But good was happening, the quickening experience of waking up in a place you’d never planned to find yourself. Pleasures can come as an outcome of having a trip diverted by weather: A flight meant for Barcelona is redirected to Lisbon, a stop in Reykjavik is forced owing to the inclemency of Gander. We had planned our Maine cruise with compulsive care, but this Ragged Island I had never heard of. I knew of