We've made it to Acadia National Park! (edit)

I couldn’t believe it, we got to Jewell Island, an uninhabited island, at 5pm on Tuesday 8/22 and there must have been a dozen boats packed in that skinny little anchorage…don’t these people work!? It was a sweet spot though and we got in the back of the line at N43 41.444 W70 05.332 for a lovely view of the sunset. There’s lots of turnover in the Jewell Island Harbor (aka Cocktail Cove), some of the boats left right after sunset and the rest of them were out of there in the morning, but a whole new fleet arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Jewell is a very nice island/state park. The trails and campsites are beautifully maintained, and the coastal forest covers the entire island…so you come out of a wonderful wooded trail directly onto the beach. The abandoned military installation made for some really great views as well.

We left Jewell Island on Thursday morning for a 125 mile run east to the Mt. Desert Island area. Coming in was just gorgeous…a spectacular sunrise with the first rays of the sun hitting the big mountains of Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert. We planned to stay at Little Cranberry Island (N44 15.336 W68 14.735), but once we got there we just decided to pull the anchor right back up and go straight on to Mt. Desert Island to be close to those mountains. We are currently in famous Southwest Harbor anchored by the Hinckley fleet (N44 16.266 W68 18.225) in 50 feet of water! How much chain did we put out?...all of it. We plan to spend all of our time here on Mt. Desert Island through Labor Day weekend and then we’ll head somewhere to meet Mom and Dad. We’ll check things out here at SW harbor for a couple of days and then we’ll head to another harbor elsewhere on the island.

Well, we moved again after about 4 hours. We were getting jostled something awful in our spot in Southwest Harbor proper; both pleasure and commercial motor traffic was zooming past us on every side causing far more rocking & rolling than we’ve even experienced while offshore. I almost considered tethering myself to the boat when the lobstermen were coming home. The extremely helpful harbormaster suggested we move around the bend for a quieter ride N44 16.779 W68 18.588. This is a very nice cove with several moored boats which all seem to belong to the same yacht club...but since we were given the harbormaster’s permission to anchor here, I don’t think we’ll have to worry.