Fall is in full swing on the islands. The leaves are changing color and people are starting to put their gardens to bed. Soon they will harvest seaweed and kelp from the beaches to provide a warm fertilizing blanket to protect the gardens over the winter. On September 27, the Gott ferry arrived at Islesford to pick up students and teachers for the annual Inter-Island Event, hosted this year by Frenchboro. There were over 50 students from schools on Islesford, Frenchboro, Monhegan, Matinicus, and Isle au Haut taking part in the gathering which featured art projects, games, a cook out, a bonfire, an evening hike, and a pancake breakfast.
By mid October, most of the people with small motorboats have pulled their boats out of the water and stored them for the winter. The Cranberry Cove ferry that ran all summer from Southwest Harbor and Manset has finished its 2007 season. The majority of Cranberry Isles residents will once again park their off-island cars in Northeast Harbor and take the mailboat back and forth. The Beal and Bunker mailboat has returned to its winter schedule of three trips a day.
Seating on the mailboat is not designated, but seats on one side for each island is a part of the mailboat lore. Cranberry Islanders ride on the starboard side while Islesford residents fill the seats on the port side. It’s a tradition that is based more on practicality than anything else. The door that is most often used to enter the cabin of the Sea Queen is on the starboard side. When the 7:30 a.m. “work boat” leaves Northeast Harbor, it stops first at Great Cranberry. It’s a more direct route for passengers to stream out on the starboard side in line with the door. They won’t have to climb over the packages or around the legs of the passengers who get off at the next stop, Islesford. Morning passengers headed to the mainland from Islesford board the boat first. They gravitate toward the port side seats so passengers getting on at Great Cranberry can easily take their familiar starboard seats. When there are more passengers from one island than the other, people good-naturedly joke about permission to sit on the other side. Sometimes we just like to sit on the other side. If the ferry stops at Sutton Island, all bets are off. Those poor passengers don’t have any side of the boat to call their own!
On a recent boat ride, Jane Moran Porter was using the travel time to work on strands of wrapped sea glass for one of her mobiles. It made me think of Ted Spurling, who always had a piece of rope and a worn wooden fid to work on one of his Turk’s head knot creations every time he took the mailboat. The boat ride can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour so some people bring work to do. Knitting is a common sight and reading is an option as the mailboat usually has a copy of the Bangor Daily News to pass around. A parent of a nursery school student recently fulfilled her fund raising obligations by taking orders for tulip bulbs on the boat. School students have sold cookies and brownies to hungry passengers to raise money for field trips. Cell phone signals are pretty good on the water, so some passengers use their boat time to make calls. Most of the time a mailboat ride is just a good time to catch up on the latest island news.
If the tide is high when the morning boat arrives in Northeast Harbor, you can hear a collective groan from passengers as they cross the ramp from the float to the dock. They are expressing the realization that the tide will be low and the ramp at a steep angle when they return with their packages in the afternoon. The audible dismay is replaced by wonder when there is freight sitting at the top of the dock to go back to the island on the high tide. “I wonder who is getting a new couch? Does Paul know that refrigerator is arriving today? Did that new stove come from Sears or Brown’s?” Someone inevitably knows the answers and by the time we have walked to our cars, we all know. The mailboat carries lumber, sheetrock, wood stoves, washing machines, mattresses and bales of hay out to the islands. Much of the freight rides on top of the cabin if the weather permits.
When you consider that everything must come and go from our islands by boat, there are vast opportunities to see interesting freight and meet fascinating fellow passengers. Just last Saturday I shared my ride with four 12-week-old kittens and three snakes. Other animals that have made the trip are chickens, goats, ducks, pigs, and a pet tarantula. A few years ago, Scott Grierson, a local naturalist, made regular visits to the Islesford School. From his menagerie he brought a hedgehog, a monkey, a ferret, a fox, a tortoise and carnivorous diving beetles.
Visitors to Northeast Harbor will sometimes park in the spots that look out at the harbor and they watch the islanders loading and unloading their things on the boat. What is routine to us is intriguing to them. Taking the mailboat to go off the island is an experience islanders commonly share, but there is nothing common about it. q
Islesford
Oct. 15, 2007