Tuesday
July 12, 2016
Another beautiful morning on Seguin Island today! We sat on the front porch with coffee and read for a half-hour or so before sitting down for a breakfast of fresh fruit, yogurt, and granola in the kitchen. Patty makes the granola but I eat most of it and we’re just about out. Uh oh.
Immediately after breakfast, we planned to start mowing the everything up top before visitors start arriving. It seems like Monday and Tuesday are our best days to get mowing done with the Thursday through Sunday being busier with visitors and being off-island most of the day each Wednesday. Cutting the grass once a week is enough lately because it’s generally been really dry and hitting a trail or two a week keeps us on top of the maintenance of those too. So, walking out the kitchen door towards the Whistle House to get the mowers, we were surprised that a couple of visitors were standing near the sunset bench – it was probably about 8:30 or so. It turns out, these guys sailed in to the cove after sunset yesterday and slept there overnight aboard their boat. Patty and I took them to the museum and then up in the tower for a tour.
Afterwards, they hiked out the North Trail and we got started with the mowing. We chatted with our early visitors for a few minutes more after they came back from their hike and then finished up the mowing by about 11. Plenty of time to cool off, change out of our mowing getup, and have a snack before Ethan’s ferry arrives. Of course we never know for sure if he’s going to come but given today’s weather, it seemed a safe bet that he would. And right on schedule, he did. In fact, we went down went down to the boathouse dock a little before 11:30 to record a video of the Leeward coming into the cove and then Ethan and Brook helping the first dinghy passengers transfer from the big boat and then row ashore. We thought it would be interesting for people to see how to get ashore when arriving in the Cove with Ethan (or any boat) and hope to get the video uploaded soon.
As Brook was paddling the first load of visitors to shore, Patty headed up the hill to be ready for our visitors and I followed a few minutes later after I finished recording. In total, we had about 31 people come up at the time Ethan arrived but five or six of them had come in on private boats. For the next couple of hours, we chatted with the visitors, showed them the museum & helped them in the gift shop as well as giving tours of the tower.
One couple from California made a beeline for Patty and asked “are you Patty?” She had no idea who they were. “Yes” she said and they replied “your nephew Billy says hi.” Unbelievably, they sat next to Patty’s nephew Bill (an aside – in Patty’s big family, he’s the same age as us) on a plane from San Diego to the east coast in the past couple of days. He was on his way to visit his Mom (Patty’s sister) and siblings at the shore in NJ and the three of them struck up a conversation as their flight was almost over. Our visitors mentioned they were visiting Maine and he said they should visit us – he couldn’t remember the name of the island but they all looked at a map together and found Seguin. A couple of days later, these visitors had made arrangements for the ferry and were here to see the lighthouse and us. Amazing!
We also met some other interesting folks including a family from Germany that had just arrived in Maine for a visit with their cousin who lives locally and a nun from Sherbrook, Quebec who I talked with a little about the home she lives in with 200 other nuns outside of Montreal. So many great stories from the people that come to visit this little piece of rock on the edge of the ocean.
Once the big group had moved off towards the cove, Patty made chicken salad sandwiches with leftover grilled chicken and we were just about to sit down when three visitors walked quickly past the kitchen heading towards the Whistle House. They seemed to know where they were going so we thought we’d eat quickly and then greet them but within a few minutes they were yoo-hooing us at our front door. With a mouthful, I went to welcome them and take them up in the tower while Patty finished here sandwich. Two of these guys were visiting Maine and the third lived 24 miles up the Kennebec River where they boated from this morning. After their tour, Patty met them in the museum while I finished my sandwich. It worked out fine and neither of had to wolf down our food.
As I finished up eating, I saw Patty out by the garden with four more guests. I started cleaning up from lunch and then went out to give them a tour while Patty finished the cleanup and then manned the museum and gift-shop.
It was quiet after the last foursome left and Patty took advantage of that to call her sister Chris (Billy’s mom) who will be visiting us soon to talk logistics. I suited up in my mowing clothes (stinky, dirty, and ripped) and went down the hill to mow down there. Patty came down shortly after and cleaned the Clivus before a young couple swam ashore from their sailboat. Yes, swam ashore. Actually, they moored at one of the further out moorings and swam to the rocks on the northern point of the island and rock hopped to the beach. Never seen that before! The young lady was clearly in her element swimming, sailing, and clamoring over the rocks. We decided she was testing the young man to see if he could keep up. Patty finished up cleaning and went up the hill a few minutes after them to give them the full treatment.
When they finished, Patty came back down with our swimsuits. Fantastic idea!!! I was hot and sweaty and it was time that we finally took a swim so we changed in Paco’s and went down to the cove. Both of us waded in and then I dove all the way in and Patty just dropped down until she was totally submerged. After we were both sure our hearts hadn’t stopped beating, we went under again. The water was cold but with the air being much warmer, it wasn’t as cold as I expected. We ended up staying in the water for several minutes and then stood in the sun on the beach drying off after.
Just as we were changing into our suits, we saw a sailboat out the window coming in to moor up. We figured it would take them awhile to do that and row ashore so we took our swim, but by the time we were drying off, they were coming towards shore in two dinghies. I headed back up the hill to change my clothes and Patty stayed down by the cove to greet them. We were expecting a group from a local camp to camp overnight with us tonight and thought this was them so Patty was going to direct them to the camping area and find out if they’d want tours, etc. Well, they weren’t from the camp we expected but instead from another camp and were spending a week aboard a sailboat with an instructor. It was six young ladies (late teens I think) and their instructor who has extensive sailing experience, having sailed his own boat to Africa, Europe, and all over the US.
It was around 5:30 by now and the sun was starting its’ slow move down towards the horizon and giving us a good show low in the sky. The sailing group came up the hill with Patty and visited the museum, gift shop, and up the
tower with both of us accompanying them. They were all excited to see the view and pointed out the route they had taken to us from Harpswell to Seguin. It was an enjoyable group of people and their instructor seemed to be having the best time of all. We got a nice group picture of them in the top of the tower after they came in from the catwalk. They plan to sleep in the cove tonight before sailing on and we told them we expected them to be awake and say good morning tomorrow at 7am when we get picked up by Ethan for our day off-island. They laughed and didn’t give us much reason to believe we’d actually see them that early.
Patty worked on finalizing the week’s paperwork to leave for Cyndy in the morning and I caught up the blog before we had dinner. Although the wind had picked up some, we were able to grill hot dogs and burgers outside and had corn on the cob along with a lot of toppings Patty made for the burgers and dogs – sautéed bell pepper, onion, and jalapeno, tomato, avocado, lettuce, and Swiss cheese.
The forecast looks good (but hot) for tomorrow and Ethan confirmed 
our regular 7am picked in the morning. We asked if we could stay off-island a little longer this week or some upcoming week to explore a little farther afield than Brunswick and Bath but because of expected wind shifts in the afternoon, I don’t think this will be the week. We got our stuff together (dirty laundry, etc.) for the morning and are prepared either way – short or long day off-island. We’ll see what Ethan thinks is best based on the updated morning forecast and roll with it.
Visitors – 49
Favorite Moment(s) – swimming for the first time and meeting visitors recommended to Seguin by Patty’s nephew Billy.
Sunrise – 4:57am
Sunset – 8:13pm
#Seguinisland #seguinislandlight #seguinislandlighthouse #maine #LifeOnTheRock
