We checked out of Bar Harbor and sailed to Gloucester.  The sail south was really delightful.  We did do some motor sailing in light winds, but most of the way the wind was perfect and the water flat.   It was about a 36 hour trip all told, including the time we stopped to catch some fish–have to keep the freezer full!

We haven’t had much luck with seeing whales up here.  In fact other than a quick glimpse of one through the binoculars while looking at other things, we have come up empty on the big creatures.  Other critters haven’t been so shy and retiring however!

Here is our Wildlife Count for the day and a half trip:

• Marine Mammals
  • Gray Seals
  • Harbor Seals
  • Harbor Porpoise
  • Another (unidentified) kind of dolphin
• Fish Seen:
  • Ocean Sunfish (8 or 10)
  • Unidentified Sharks (2)
• Fish Caught:
  • Haddock (3)
  • Pollack (3)
  • Mackerel (1) (Who ever catches ONE  mackerel????)
• Birds:
  • Guillemots
  • Northern Gannets
  • Storm petrols
  • Assorted Shearwaters

Efficiently catching fish.

We stopped at Jeffrey’s Ledge, the same place we did well a few weeks ago.  After three drifts across the best looking spot around, and I had nothing to show. A few nibbles but no fish in the boat.  What was I doing wrong? Well, it turns out: nothing.  Not the wrong place, or the wrong technique, just the wrong time.  We started our final drift just as the tide changed, and quite suddenly it was a different world.  Suddenly I was bringing fish up two at a time.

Oddly, one of the fish I caught was a mackerel.  Odd not because they are rare, they are the most common fish here.  Odd because I caught ONE.  They usually travel in schools of thousands, and if you catch one, you catch a cooler full.  All the same, it was our dinner.  Mackerel makes great sushi, especially when that fresh.  At the Sushi Bar it is called “Saba”.

One of our other catches was more unusual…  while trolling lures for tuna a large young seagull thought the purple plastic squid in our trolling spread was just the thing for dinner.  Seagulls are mean, and nasty at the best of times.  Dealing with them on deck when they are hurt and scared is a challenge.

Shark!  No…. Not this time!  The fin of an Ocean Sunfish, the largest bony fish in the ocean.

You know you are approaching Gloucester when you spot the first of the old gaff-rigged fishing schooners.

And you know you have arrived when you see Gloucester Light at the harbor entrance.