Mistake Island is a place one would consider you may have to miss due to the name. We recommend not zooming past this area on the way to the magical Roque. Visiting the lighthouse on Mistake was a highlight, and afterwards our plan was to just skirt across the harbor to Mud Hole. This would have been on Great Wass Island with many rare plants and animals along a network of nature conservancy trails. There is room for one boat. Up you need to enter at high tide and someone got there before us, so we went to Cows Yard.

No indication of why it’s called Cows Yard except the shape of the anchorage is circular. It was not listed as a hurricane hole (like mud hole) , but the next best thing. It was one of the quietest spots. Many seemly abandoned hunting and fishing cottages we think are accessed either just by boat or by Beals Island. As we settled in after a short motor past dangerous ledges, etc., we set a stern anchor to keep away from the many lobster traps and forgot to attach the dingy painter. I love to swim, but couldn’t handle the Roque Island cold water on my shoulders and head for more than a brisk dip. However, all those years of lifeguard training had me shift in to gear. Without thinking, as the dingy was leaving in the wind, I stripped my clothes to my underwear (not even lobsterman to see) and did a long dive toward to boat. Halfway back I started thinking about the coast guard sailing safely class I took that talked about how our muscles stop working in cold water. I shouted up for Peter to tie a line on something to throw (just in case). He did, but it was not necessary 😊. I made it fine, and was happy I could use my swimming skills to get out dingy from the rocky shore! We measured the water temperature as 52 degrees! (( if you saw the peas post on fb, you saw this Harbor).

Our exploration of the shore on that day enabled us to realize there were two outhouses. We decided to empty our compost from our marine grade “Airhead” that we have been calling the magical toilet. Wow- thank you
Genie and Joe Field for suggesting it. Everyone who is a sailor should install one. No messy tank, no dumping at sea, no waiting at Billings Marina for the tide to rise so we can partially pump out our sewage. This is a much, much better system unless every marina were to have a good pump out situation. This was our maiden voyage with this toilet, so without experience we have been not sure if it was going to last for the whole month. Since we found the outhouses, we decided to use them to dump our compost. Amazingly it almost looked all composted, but they say to wait three months before using on your flower beds.

Humans aren’t used to the process to deal with our own waste. We love it all to magically go away if it’s toxic cleaners, plastic bags, or our own sewage. We need to transition our thought process. Stop using chemicals on the lawn that pollute our water - dandelions are important pollination opportunities for bees. Stop buying everything in containers that don’t even recycle. Recycling isn’t the answer...plastic can only be recycled a few times...that’s what those numbers in the triangles mean. Reduce is what we should do, or if not, we need to reuse and as a last resort recycle. The systems on our boats, cottages and houses should be using biomimicry as much as possible. We are so pleased with our Airhead and hope others who are big consumers, such as boat owners, feel free to ask us about it! I’d love to be a distributor!

We left with a great sail to Bar Harbor. A port we had never sailed to before, and probably won’t do again. (It we did make the Sunday farmer’s market).....But that’s a story for another day.