We just got back from a little over a week of cruising Pen Bay and all but two days were interrupted by rude boaters running gen sets and generally being jerks.. The proliferation of generator use, and stadium level lighting as anchor lights, & mega yachts in anchorage where they don't physically fit is at an epic high here in Maine. Sad really...

Even we sailors are in on the rudeness so it's not just the power boaters. At Harbor Island in Muscongus bay a big Perry designed boat from Houston, TX named Tenacious pulled in late. (last boat in) Within 15 minutes of being there he fired up his gen set right at cocktail hour/sunset.. Not a single other boat had a generator going. It was very peaceful and beautiful until Tenacious arrived. There were the sounds of Loons, Seals, waves and Osprey yet we could not hear ANY of it once the gen set aboard Tenacious was BLASTING away during the entire peaceful evening. This from a boat with at least 300W of solar above the center cockpit bimini....... Arghhh.......

At long cove on Vinalhaven a HUGE catamaran came in late. They insisted on trying to anchor in the inner cove where there was not enough room to do so. Due to the location of the windlass, supported on the aluminum cross member, the sound of anchoring was like listening to a jack hammer. It was glass calm and right at sunset. They certainly scared off the wildlife.... They tried to anchor FOUR TIMES for a total of about 40 minutes. This was 40 minutes of listening to the jack hammer and yelling back and forth from the helm to the bow.. It literally sounded like a NYC construction site. I have never heard a windlass and anchoring make so much noise in my life and never thought it possible. After 40 minutes they FINALLY realized there was NO ROOM for them to fit in the inner harbor and left.

In Seal Bay a HUGE PNW fishing style trawler named Sunset V from Montreal pulled in gens blasting. Lucky he was down wind. Sadly though he had STADIUM LIGHTS illuminating the entire bay ALL NIGHT. Completely ruined the beautiful starry night for EVERYONE in Seal Bay... He was over a hundred yards away from us and we needed no candles in our cockpit. His stadium lighting illuminated our entire cockpit and nearly all of Seal Bay that was upwind of him.. I have never experienced more rudeness in my 40+ years of cruising the Maine coast than this year.

At Isle Au Haut a trawler from Florida named Odyssey pulled in and proceeded to grind up one of the locals rental moorings sending the Coke bottle full of earned rental money, and the pick up buoy, drifting away. How do you do that with a bow thruster and minimal windage especially when there was NO WIND..?? After he shredded the mooring I hailed him on the VHF and suggested that he try and at least salvage the pick up and bottle of money. I was greeted with a very curt and RUDE "roger that"....

He never did a damn thing except get into his dinghy, with his inflatable life jacket, and motor over to his buddies to try and figure out how they were all going to fit in IAH thoroughfare. This was after picking up a NON-RENTAL mooring because he had just ground up the last rental mooring at IAH.. This behavior, & utter lack of seamanship, went along with a flotilla of boats that EXPECTED moorings in the IAH thoroughfare. One of the guys came in with a Sabre/Back Cove and immediately headed for a non-rental mooring and went directly over, and I mean RIGHT OVER the MARKED solid granite ledge. His props could not have missed that ledge by more than a few mm's at that tide.

After this week I am convinced a divine providence must over look the idiots among us. If that was one of us we would have surely had damage, but not the clueless..... Go figure... Only 30 minutes prior the rock was physically showing above water. This group reportedly had 11 boats at McGlathery Island the night before and came blasting into IAH expecting the moorings to be vacant for their rather entitled and elitist little group. Who plans a "flotilla" to hit the IAH thoroughfare...? Seriously???

No less than 5 boats motored by us, within feet of us, asking us when we were leaving? They did this even after they were told we were not leaving via VHF transmissions. We had been listening to their conversations all day on 71 so we already knew what they had been told by other members of the flotilla. They still tried to "muscle us out".... "When are you leaving?", "When are you leaving?", "When are you leaving?" .....

At one point a "Where is so & so." went out on CH 71. After a few seconds there was the response "Were are currently aground." "Oh okay." like that was normal behavior. Sheesh.....!

My friend Mark and I chased down the bottle of money Odyssey chopped off, not easy to find, it took about 20 minutes of searching, and we put it in the owners punt for him. There was at least a hundred dollars in there that Odyssey could have cared less about. Course $100.00 to him is peanuts but to a guy living year round on IAH that is REAL money.. Some of the bills clearly needed tape. We then chased down the pick up float and re-tied and fixed the mooring pendant so it was usable. We got not so much as even a thank you and were greeted with; "Is that mooring ready for use now?"...... Really f'ing RUDE !!!!!!

At Billings, while getting fuel & water, I was greeted by a sailor from MD with a "salty" looking full keeler. He was praising his prop in an aperture and bragging how he'd only chopped up "four pots" this year. "How long have you been here cruising?" "Just got her four days ago."... FOUR pots with a full keel and prop in a aperture in less than four days????? Holy shikeys Bat Man...... Is that even possible.....?

He then smugly insinuated our boat was obviously a trap magnet with a how on Earth do you sail "that" up here tone..... "How many have you hooked this week, with that fin keel?", "Not a single one in many years, and I cruise Maine for 5-6 months per year, not a week." was my response..... He shut up and walked away..... This guy also had a mooring pendant trophy sitting right on his deck... Don't know where it came from but it was clearly "chopped up" and then hacked off.....

There was so much more but these were the ones worth noting... (wink)