We spent Sunday night anchored off of Cape Elizabeth, our last stop in Maine. We left early on Monday morning for our destination of Star Island, Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire. Since we would be on the ocean the whole time I knew it would be our first real hope of seeing whales since we arrived in Maine almost two months ago. I put on my lucky whale tail earrings! I always try and scan the water while we are sailing but I don't always pay a lot of attention. This time I tried to be a bit more attentive. I was rewarded by finding a whale! We are fairly certain it was a Minke whale. He didn't make a long appearance but both Bill and I got to see him. We are hoping for more luck when we head south to Massachusetts tomorrow.

For now though we are moored in Gosport Harbor, home to Star Island, a place where Bill spent some time as a teenager and has always loved. We came here last summer too, about the same week. It is a conference center and we met some wonderful people. We have corresponded with one of the people we met last year and she is here again for the same conference this year. We were looking forward to seeing her again. When we got here we looked for her and asked around and it turns out she had to leave the island for a medical reason but will hopefully be back today. We spent some time with her husband and met some other nice people. The picture above is of the hotel and cottages here on the island.

We tagged along on a Geology Walk of the island that was very interesting. We were sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs when we head someone behind us talking about the history of the island. It turned out to be the beginning of a History Walk so we tagged along on that too. It was great and we learned quite a lot. Before dinner we went to a Social Hour and met a lot of new people. Since we had paid to have our meals in the dining room we sat with our new friends at dinner. It's family style dining with ten people at a table. We saw a beautiful sunset and met up with a large group of people to watch the International Space Station fly over. Today we will hang out on the island, maybe visit Smuttynose Island where the famous axe murders took place, and generally relax. We plan to leave Wednesday morning for Gloucester.

Here is a link to our pictures from our visit to Star Island from last year.