July, 2001
By Tom Snyder
There is a certain cruising guide to Maine that can be found on almost every cruising boat in Maine. It has a blue cover and many pages. You may have seen it. For the purposes of this article, it will remain nameless.
This very famous cruising guide to Maine is fine, I suppose, if that’s the only cruising guide available to you. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great guide if that’s what you are willing to settle for. Hey, I’m not here to take anything away from that guide. It’s a great guide for the kind of person who likes that sort of thing.
Yes, you guessed correctly. I am planning to publish my own cruising guide to Maine that will give sailors an alternative, a high-quality reference book to the magical waters of our glorious coast. With my guide you will not get a beautiful blue cover, but you will get more. Much more.
In the tradition of Balzac and Dickens, I shall serialize my new cruising guide in the pages of a magazine. This magazine. (For the title of your magazine, temporarily close the magazine, check the name on the front cover and then return to this spot.) In every issue, you will find another entry, another port or cove, another mesmerizing account. You could buy my new cruising guide, or, more economically, you can simply cut out the entries as they appear in each issue. Paste the articles into a large blank book with an attractive blue cover. Within a few years, or at most a few decades, your new guide will be complete.
My first entry will demonstrate a commitment to research and usability. Also, I hope you will bear in mind that no one man could possibly have time, even in a dozen lifetimes, to be as thorough as he would like to be on such a project. There will inevitably be small errors. For example, I am forever confusing latitude and longitude – not a big problem, but the sort of thing that a real accuracy freak might notice. But enough introduction. Let’s get to entry 1 – Cushing Island.
Cushing Island
At the Southwestern (or possibly Northwestern) corner of Casco Bay you will find the lovely Cushing Island, one of hundreds of Casco Bay islands, often referred to as the Calendar Islands because each island looks a little bit like a calendar. Cushing has a rich history and ecology that just begs for visiting sailors to “chill” there.
Approaches: Approaching Cushing from the south, head straight for the island and then avoid outcroppings of jagged and unforgiving rocks. Approaching from the north is not recommended on any but the calmest of days although rocks are less of a problem. I think. Drop the hook in 6 to 70 feet of water. The bottom is probably sandy but it’s not hard to imagine rocks, cables and kelp so you might want to put a messenger on your anchor rode. Try to furl your sails long before you are within hailing distance of the dock because Cushing residents are wicked tidy.
For the boat: There are no services for the boat. Period. However it is hard to believe that the residents of Cushing would be too upset if cruisers left their garbage bags piled neatly somewhere along the shoreline. As of 1983, there was no pumpout station on Cushing, but check with the harbormaster to find out about recent developments. Use channel 9 and then move up one channel at a time until 72. Identify yourself as a cruiser who would love to just kick back and spend a few careless hours on Cushing. You will get a swift response.
For the crew: There are no regularly scheduled tours of the island but let me describe a few highlights that might intrigue you. (First, it is important to emphasize that visitors are, technically, not welcome in any sense of the word. The points of interest described below are best appreciated from the cockpit of your boat, as you read aloud from this book:
The caves of Hell: Formed sometime before, during or after the most recent ice age, these caves describe a torturous labyrinth where better men than I have met their maker. In fact, the cave in which Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher encountered Injun Joe was probably not too different from these caverns. Strange hairless albino mammals wander freely in this underground Faustian basement. Don’t miss it, so to speak.
German soldiers: It is generally accepted that Nazi sailors from stealthy U-boats made Cushing their base of operations in 1944. Although the European war ended that same year, dozens of Germans remain hidden in the caves to this day, totally unaware that they are now free to surrender. Needless to say, these holdouts have become hairless and without pigmentation. Also, for reasons that are not clear, their eyes broadcast an eerie greenish light. Again, this phenomenon is best observed from the cockpit.
For the kids: In 1998 the State of Maine declared Cushing Island the official “home of the waterslide.” This 10-year, $300 million project will have bragging rights on the largest freestanding waterslide system in the Gulf of Maine. As of yet, construction has not begun, but your kids will enjoy imagining, from the cockpit, this extraordinary fun spot.
Leaving Cushing: Try to leave Cushing in the same state in which you found it. Maine. (This is obviously a joke and not something that the average cruiser must concern himself with.)
So there you have a taste of my cruising guide. Think of it as “a cruising guide for the rest of us.” A guide that blends history, seamanship and a sense of its own limitations. A guide that dares to be wrong.
Tom Snyder lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife, Anne, and children. He sails his Island Packet 350, Blue Moon, out of Peaks Island, Maine.
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