It is a cold, wet day. We woke this morning to cloudy skies over Holbrook Harbor, and after an hour-long shore trip to the colonial village of Castine, those skies let loose. The sideways rain that now falls upon West Penobscot Bay has cleared the Angelique’s decks of everyone but crew.

The Angelique has two things going for it on a day like this. First, the deckhouse salon offers a warm, dry refuge for passengers

Last night, while hanging out on the foredeck with Shelly and the cook, Chad Pelletier, I expressed an interest in going aloft. In this mad, season-long quest to experience firsthand the knockabout lives of schooner bums, I’d logged — at least to my mind — some notable achievements: I’d tacked headsails in a gale; demystified the myriad lines of standing and running rigging; climbed the head rig to furl canvas while underway; practiced all manner

The weather forecast for the next few days is “unsettled”—a polite euphemism for wet and dreary. For the time being, however, it’s merely cloudy, so it’s a good time for a midday lobster bake. Captain Mike motors his Angelique out of Mt. Desert Island’s Southwest Harbor and heads for nearby Placentia Island. As we putter along the calm channel waters, we pass Great Cranberry Island, the lobstering community portrayed in

An hour before breakfast, Captain Mike motored the Angelique out of Swans Island’s Burnt Coat Harbor and into the Gulf of Maine. We’re heading toward Mt. Desert Rock, a tiny island roughly 15 miles offshore.

Today is our whale watch, but Captain Mike is already downplaying our chances.

Every year, Captain Mike schedules a whale watching trip, but for the past two years, Mike’s

The Angelique is quietly bobbing in a dead calm off the northern tip of North Haven. The Lewis R. French drifts slowly to starboard; the Mary Day drifts to port.

The weather all around us is unsettled: to the west, scattered showers wash over the Camden Hills; to the north, anvil-shaped storm clouds rake eastward over the mainland. Here, in our tiny pocket of sky-blue stillness, we swelter under unfettered