FROM SHIPS TO BOATS

This morning we left Portland and drove to Camden, an incredibly cute town, one of many along highway 1.  Along the way we stopped at the very interesting Maine Maritime Museum which is either right next door to, or on the grounds  of the old Percy and Small shipyard.  

They built wooden sailing ships back in the day.  They have a sculpture there that sort of represents the size of the largest sailing ship ever built, or maybe that this shipyard ever built -- I wandered a bit.  The Wyoming was a six-masted ship and while the length is accurate, at 92 feet, the masts are only 120 feet tall, because if they were the actual height they would be 170 feet.  

We also saw  the blacksmith shop, rooms where they made caulking to put between the wood pieces, rooms where they ca fed half size models of ships they were building, to use as a pattern.  And finally we saw the rebuilding of the Mary E., a ship originally built in 1996 and taken out of service in 2006.  At least one time during its history, it sank at a dock.  Today the rebuilding of it is also a training program for young people to learn shipbuilding skills.  

After leaving the museum, we continued up the coast.  We went through Wiscasset, supposed to be the prettiest little town in Maine (probably proclaimed so by the mayor), and it was pretty, but so were others, particularly Camden, where we are staying tonight.  

When we got to Camden we stopped at the hotel, and went on a lobster boat ride.  That was a lot of fun, though clearly, this boat makes money by taking tourists out in the bay, not by catching lobster.  They only have a license allowing them to catch 10-20 per month, whereas serious lobstermen have declarations that allow them about 300-400.

 But we rode the boat out, in the warm! fog, looked at a couple of lighthouses  and islands and then pulled up a lobster trap.  It had two lobsters in it, one of which was an undersized male, and one was a female.  Both of them had to be thrown back.  It was their lucky day, even if they were being thrown back into the sea to fatten up and breed and produce more lobsters.

The town of Camden is really nice.  Tomorrow I plan to spend some time looking at the houses that aren't on the Main Street.  I happened to wander into the tail end of what turned out to be a pretty  good group playing big band music.  Wish I had heard more.