After another foggy night, we approached Bar Harbor, lobster capital of the world. Well at least it is the lobster pot capital of the world. The whole area around the port to about 10 miles out to sea is densely covered with little buoys bobbing on the sea surface, all attached to a pot somewhere below. With the good Radars that we have nowadays they all show up on the screen. The most important thing is then to figure out if all these echoes are lobster pots and that not one of them happens to be a fishing boat sitting in the middle, hauling in the catch of the day. That we can find out by plotting all the echo’s so we know if they move and also the size of the echo on the screen helps.

Avoiding lobster pots is nearly impossible. There are too many of them to sail around or to avoid hitting them. Most of the time the buoys simply pass unharmed under the ship but there is always the chance that one of the lines could get entangled in one of the propellers. To avoid this becoming an issue we have little knives sitting on the base of the propeller, there where the propeller joins the propeller shaft. This is the most critical place, as here could be a chance that a line ends up between the propeller hub and the shaft. That might damage the seal that keeps the water out from entering the propeller shaft and at the same time the lubrication oil from getting out.

Local authorities are trying very hard to regulate the areas where fishermen set their lobster pots and in doing so keeping them out of the traffic lanes. It helps us from running over lobster pots and helps the fishermen from loosing their pots when a ship propeller cuts through the lines. Thus far the results have been rather mixed. There are as many buoys in the traffic lanes as outside of them. It is now the season of harvest and according to the pilot, the fishermen are expecting as good as year as last year when they landed 76 million pounds of lobster in the State of Maine.

During sunrise the wind started to pick up and blew for most of the day near gale force strength. It had the advantage that it removed all the fog from the area and we had a glorious sunny day. Bar Harbor has only a tiny dock and thus the cruise ships have to anchor. But because we are in a bay, the hard blowing wind does not affect the tender service as there are no waves being built up. Just a few whitecaps form on the surface. In the bay, the harbor master is very good in keeping the lobsterpots away from the anchorage area of the ship. This is also in the interest of the fishermen, as our heavy anchor chain would create havoc with lobsterpots sitting on the sea bed.

As it was such nice weather we sailed almost an hour late as our guests made the most of it, enjoying the great sunshine and all trying to get back on the last tender. With the strong wind blowing, it was not really a matter of sailing out of the bay but mostly of being blown out of the bay. One positive effect of the all this wind, we are not expecting any fog during the coming night, so that should give me the first normal night since I came on board. Tomorrow we are in Halifax, Nova Scotia.