Out in front of SeaCat’s Rest are untold numbers of Mya Arenaria, the soft shell clam. This is the type of clam you will get most often when you order a clam dinner anywhere in New England. These clams settle in the intertidal mud vertically, with their “necks” (siphons) extended several inches towards the surface, where they filter seawater for food. When they sense danger, like a human stepping on the ground nearby, they quickly pull in their siphons and remain securely buried in six inches or so of the fragrant mud. As they pull in, they often squirt excess water, betraying their location. But even if they don’t squirt, they leave a little hole where you know where to dig. That’s where the work comes in.

The first step is to make sure you’re legal. In Lamoine, Maine, that means getting a license. It costs a whopping $6 for residents or $12 for non-residents for a recreational license. This allows you to dig one peck per day, 2-1/2 gallons or about 150 clams. Since I usually figure 20 clams per person, that’s enough for 7 people.  The next vital step is to make sure there are no closures. A clam flat closure can be due to either pollution or red tide, and is not to be ignored. The place to go is the Maine Shellfish Hotline, 1-800-232-4733

Next you need equipment. A bucket or “hod” (a slatted tray with a handle) to hold the clams, some rubber boots and a digging tool. Here, the clam flats are not pure mud, but a mixture of mud and rocks. This makes it hard to get to the clams without damaging them, and I’ve found the best tool is a straight four-tined spading fork. Mine is made by Ames and was found at Home Depot.  The tines are placed at least six inches from the holes and pushed down all the way. If rocks are in the way, try a different spot. When down all the way, gently lever the mud up. Often you will catch a glimpse of a clam’s neck squirting water. Grab onto the neck and hold firm as you continue to flip the mud. This is your first clam.

Reject any clams under 2″ across or with broken shells–you’ll never get the grit out, and you want live clams, not dead ones. Once you have made your first hole, now it’s time to hear the digger’s secret. Flipping back the mud might get you one clam, but there are more down there and the only way to get them is to thrust your hand down and feel for them! Go back and forth across the bottom of the hole and probe for the shape of a closed clam set vertically in the mud. Rock the clam back and forth to break the mud’s suction.  Don’t worry, they don’t bite. You will pull out rocks and more mud, but with a little luck, a few more clams. Don’t forget to go over the mud already pulled out with the first spading. Beware of broken glass! Commercial clammers in Lamoine have lubricated their activities with liquor for a century or more. Some pieces of glass are therefore quite old and may be worth saving.

As your clam bucket fills up you will eventually want to rinse them. Pour out your clams onto a bed of rockweed and clean out the mud in your bucket. Pour clean seawater over the clams and return them to the bucket with clean water. Now is the time to make sure there are no dead clams, closed but filled with mud. Your clams can stay like this for hours in the shade until you’re ready to cook them. If you use tap water be sure to thoroughly mix in 1/3 cup of salt per gallon. The clean water also allows them to expel any grit they may have inside. Some people like to pour in cornmeal to give the clams something to replace the grit with in their stomachs. Once your clams get their grit out you can store them dry in the fridge for up to two days, but using sooner is better. Do not seal live clams in plastic!

In an hour or two you will probably have enough for your meal. As the tide comes up you will find holes in higher ground, up to about 80% of the tidal range. Beware, it is hard to stop once you have tasted success. Just walk away! Rinse your digging fork with fresh water to keep it from rusting, and enjoy your clam dinner. You will have saved about $3.00 for each pound of clams you have dug (price as of 10/13/11) . A pound consists of 10 or so clams, so if you dug 100 clams you just made $30!

Another joyous Oktoberfest  Saturday has passed with the usual measure of fun and revelry. The 2011 Southwest Harbor Oktoberfest was not as crowded as previous years, probably because the weather was too nice to spend in a tent. This weekend has been almost other-worldly, with temps in the 70s and 80s, but who are we to complain? Someday we can figure out how the weather affects attendance at Oktoberfests, but for this time, it appears that a little cold and rain would have been beneficial for ticket sales.

Thanks to this fellow for letting me photograph him

For the attendees however, the extra space was welcome. It was possible to drift from brewery to brewery without feeling like you were in a NY subway. Unfortunately, my favorite brewery from 2010 was missing. Marshall Wharf of Belfast, where were you?? Rumor was they just didn’t get it together. I did see lots of new breweries however. A favorite was Maine Beer Company of Portland. Their humbly named “Lunch IPA” was phenomenal. Their website is http://www.mainebeercompany.com . My second taste was from the bottom of the bottle and full of yeast. These folks are bottle-conditioned believers. It’s impossible to dispense 4 or 5 samples from one bottle without getting yeast in, a minor gripe.

I have to confess, I am always in search of a very hoppy IPA, so other beer types: lagers, pale ales, wheat types (yucch!) and fruity concoctions (double yucch!) will disappoint me. So among these 21 breweries, only three met my interest. Besides Maine Beer Company I found good hoppy brews at (in alphabetical order) Baxter Brewing Company (stowaway IPA) and Black Bear Microbrew (Bad Omen IPA).  There were other decent IPAs out there, but these were the best.

from http://www.blackbearmicrobrew.com

I just heard from David from Marshall Wharf about why his brewery wasn’t able to make an appearance. Marshall Wharf has their own beer festival the weekend after our Oktoberfest, in Belfast, Maine, an hour or so away. He says,

I have created a bit of a monster in our own festival which is always the
weekend after the SW Oktoberfest.  This year we are pouring 34 different
Marshall Wharf beers, and expecting upwards of 600 people to descend on
us…….SO……we had to focus on this event.  I have been hammering my
brew crew pretty hard over the last few years.  BUT, that is not an excuse
and if we can figure it out well enough in advance next year you can bet
that we’ll be there with bells on and lots and lots of Marshall Wharf
beer.

Cheers!  and if your in the neighborhood on saturday stop by…..it’s
going to be crazy!

So that Belfast event is called the 4th Year of Beer and Pemaquid Mussel Fest and it’s happening at 2 Pinchy Lane, Belfast. Doors open at 5 PM on Saturday, October 15, 2011.

Clambakes came to us from Native Americans, who would cook their clams on hot rocks. Early colonists expanded the practice to include other ingredients.

from http://media.photobucket.com/image/clambake/ronandmia/Whidbey/ClamBake3.jpg?o=27

A clambake combines several genuine Maine shore experiences; the gathering of the sea’s bounty, building a nice fire, exotic seaside aromas and a great feast. Local professionals will build you one and supply all the food for a hefty price.  You can even get a “clambake” delivered to your door, minus the fire. But with just a little work you can do your own. Besides the ingredients you need a venue. A shoreside fire pit fits the bill. A lonely stretch of beach with the pit dug during low tide will work, just make sure the tide doesn’t rise too soon and that the land owner is  on board. One of our best clambakes was in our driveway!

The rockweed goes on the fire

The primary feature of the fire is rocks and hardwood. The hot rocks will do the cooking after the fire is reduced to embers, so they should be big-ish (like your head). The hardwood will burn hot enough to get the rocks hot. The rocks may split from the heat, but that’s par for the course. Think of it as a bonfire, quick and hot. Just make sure the rocks are hot enough to steam any water they contact. As the fire burns down you need to be ready for the next step: the seaweed. Collect about 25 gallons of rockweed from the shore. That’s the ubiquitous brown bladder-bearing stuff that is so common you will have no problem finding it unless you look for it at high tide.

Meanwhile, another crew is preparing the food. Corn should be cleaned of silk but not husks, the husks are folded back over the ears. Our October feast was corn deprived; grocery stores were out.

A tarp covers the seaweed and food

Clams should be in mesh bags. That’s often the way they come from the fish store (like Downeast Lobster Co., 1192 Bar Harbor Rd, Trenton, ME 04605). Otherwise  use loose fitting potato or onion bags, or improvise with cheesecloth. There should be plenty of room for the clams to open. Mussels and other shellfish can also be prepared the same way. Mussels can often be collected at low tide right on the shore without a license, but be sure there are no red tide or pollution closures for your area. Pollution closures occur often after heavy rains when poo washes down from the land. The Maine shellfish hotline is 1 800 232-4733. The lobsters need no preparation besides last rites, but I like to cut off their bands before they go in. Potatoes should be quartered and partially precooked, since the big problem with this process is overcooking of the clams.

Back to the fire. The big heat-producing phase is over and the hardwood is reduced to coals. A tender with a rake is making sure all the wood is burned or raked away, and the rocks are pushed together. Now everyone gets in the act.  Start throwing seaweed onto the pit. Immediately you will hear popping as the air bladders explode and send their flavorful steam through the air. Keep dumping on seaweed until you achieve a six to eight inch layer. Now it’s time to throw on the food. Reserve the hottest areas for all but the clams, place the clams at the perimeter or on top of other food. Some like to put in a raw egg. When the egg is hard boiled it means the bake is done.  Cover with another layer of seaweed and a wet tarp or old bed sheet. Anchor the sheet with rocks at the edge. You will see steam rising through the weave of the cloth. Start timing. After 1/2 hour uncover the food and look for open clams, that means it’s time to eat. The process may take up to one hour or more based on the heat of the rocks. You may find some items are not quite ready, but if the clams are done, don’t leave them in! First course! Keep a hose or water bucket handy in case the tarp catches on fire.

I can’t claim to be an expert at this. Be prepared like I am to pop some potatoes or corn into the microwave because they weren’t over a hot spot.  But overcooked clams are to be avoided, unlike lobsters, which can stay in longer without harm. The best part of a clambake is not the perfection of the timing, but the flavors of woodsmoke and seaweed which infuses the food, and the fun you and your friends have putting it all together.

If you want the flavor of a clambake without the pit and the big group, consider wrapping the ingredients (seaweed, lobster, clams, corn, etc.) into an aluminum foil pouch and cooking it on the grill or in the oven.  It comes pretty close!

Photo courtesy of http://www.gardenpreserve.org

Paired up with Asticou Gardens, Thuya Gardens offers a beautiful formal English  garden set in a native Maine woodland. Asticou tends to the Japanese, so visiting both in close proximity is quite a world tour.

“Thuya” is a derivation of Thuja, which is the genus of the northern white cedar, Thuja occidentalis. While botanists know to pronounce the j like a y, I’m guessing garden founder and Boston landscape architect Joseph Henry Curtis (1841-1928) chose a name meant to avoid mispronunciation. His major contribution was Thuya Lodge, his home on the hillside, where visitors can find a broad selection of botanical and horticultural books. After his death the gardens were developed by Charles K. Savage in 1958, replacing the original orchard with a broad spectrum of colorful annuals and perennials arranged as borders to an expansive lawn. The lawn leads to a formal pavilion on the north side and a reflecting pool on the south end.  Mr. Savage designed the gardens in the style of English designer and author Gertrude Jekyll, as interpreted for the coast of Maine by island gardener Beatrix Farrand.

Photo courtesy of http://www.gardenpreserve.org

Visitors have a choice of how to get to the lodge and gardens. They can park at the lot on Rt 3 and walk up the steep steps on the hillside, complete with rest stops and covered shelters, or simply drive to the top on Thuya Drive.  We chose the former. Both Thuya and Asticou Gardens are accessible using the Island Explorer bus, and while both gardens ask for donations, there is no admission charge per se.

from Google maps

There is still time and lots of color in our fall season for both gardens, but Thuya Lodge is now closed (open mid June to mid September from 10-4:30). The gardens remain open until Halloween, during daylight hours. Both gardens are owned and operated by the Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve, a non profit, which would put your tax deductible contribution to good use.

Measuring the flow at 260 feet

We had a great summer season, but there was one fly in the ointment. We were on the edge of running out of water all summer long. One of our groups of guests had to endure several hours of no water, alleviated only by our kind neighbors who allowed us to connect their water system with ours while our well recovered. Thanks Kelleys!

We made a difficult decision in August to get a new (second) well. Not a cheap item! Our income from SeaCat’s Rest will pretty much be exhausted this year by this decision, but we will no longer have to expect the dreaded dry faucet. That wheeze of air is etched into my memory.

The process of getting a well has been interesting. We settled on Williams and Taplin from Blue Hill, Maine based on their price and a recommendation. Mark Taplin drove his massive drilling rig here and spent a day drilling the well all by himself. The rig was awesome, consisting of a big diesel engine (separate from the truck engine) powering both a huge air compressor and hydraulic pump. The rig stood 25 feet high (maybe more), had 400 feet of drilling shaft in 20 foot lengths and two pads which dropped down from the truck to level it. The hammering was deafening, and was used when there was rock to drive through. Through it all, the drill shaft dropped down at what seemed a constant rate; there were no breakdowns, stoppages or head scratches.

Now we have a new well and our guests will not be bothered by water shortage. Check out the video and see what well drilling is all about! And forgive my misspelling of “ballet” I really did try to correct it!

Thanks to google for this image

It’s been a month now since I launched Eleccentricity, my electrically powered boat and perhaps primary symptom of mental illness. After all, who does stuff like this? Why can’t I just mow my lawn like normal people? Anyway, I’ve had a lot of fun cruising around and trying to figure out how far I can go on a charge. I still don’t know. I had the bright idea of setting out into the wind for a set distance and heading back, figuring that if I ran out of juice I could just blow back. I could do this multiple times until I ran out of power, thereby arriving at my range for one charge.

But I got bored, and the wind kept changing, and I started to stray off course. After all, the reason for building the boat was to experience the water and I was succumbing to the rapture. Besides, I was going back and forth and the boat was showing no sign of pooping out. So for now, the range will remain a mystery. After 5 or 6 days of light use I still got 37.5 volts, which translates to around 70% charge, so I am unsure of the range. Best estimate is about 20-25 miles.

A big beautiful fisherman's anchor!

On one of the days I decided to pull up an abandoned mooring I spotted close to shore. I knew it was abandoned because the orange ball was only visible at low tide. It sank under as the tide rose. So at low tide I tied Eleccentricity’s bow eye to the mooring and hoped it would not pull her down as the tide rose. I set about painting the interior to pass the time. Eventually I noticed  the stern was lifting higher. With just a little sinking of the bow the mooring was off the bottom! Now I could wait for high tide and move the mooring close to shore until it grounded. I was hoping the spot where it hit the bottom would be visible at low tide. Next day at low tide I surveyed my treasure. A big fisherman’s anchor had become tangled with a lobster trap and both were completely colonized by marine growth. I untangled and cleaned up the anchor and put it to use as a close-to shore mooring for charging Eleccentricity’s batteries. So far the scheme has worked fine. I have about 6 hours during which the tide affords me the water depth to keep the boat off the bottom for a full charge.  Next year I hope to charge using photovoltaics on a canopy.

The final entry in this story is Irene, the hurricane. I have seen lots of fizzled hurricanes in Maine, but on Saturday I was cruising about and noticed a very empty harbor at Lamoine State Park. The lobster boats were all in the parking lot. This caught my attention. There’s something quite unsettling about being one of the few boats left in the bay. Even the whale watch ship was booking it toward protected waters.  My friend Chuck (the veggie farmer, find his wagon at Lamoine Corners) was anxious, and had already pulled his sailboat. He offered to pull mine, I agreed. So now Eleccentricity sits in the park’s lot, waiting Chuck’s return. Irene was powerful, even up here. We lost power for a short while; the wind howled and the rain hammered. No telling what could have happened if I had left the boat in. Thanks Chuck.

Anthony Bourdain, from the Travel Channel

Travel Channel viewers know there are two guys with shows about eating strange stuff in faraway places. One is the nice guy, Andrew Zimmern and the other is his bad boy opposite, Anthony Bourdain. I watch them both. I encountered Andrew’s Bizarre Foods show about Maine when it aired and wrote about it here.

What I didn’t know was that Tony Bourdain did his own take on the Maine food scene too. Filled with the usual frequent profanity bleeps Tony followed his long-time (and Emmy winning) cameraman Zach Zamboni to his home town of Milo, Maine as well as a few coastal stops along the way.  Their show is called No Reservations and like Bizarre Foods, they probed the endless quirky backroads (and bays) of Maine to find strange people and stranger food. But in our country of endless malls and cookie-cutter towns, what seems bizarre to the folks of suburbia is quite ordinary to those of us who have made the escape, or never knew they were born in areas of strangeness.

So fasten your seatbelts and take a trip with Tony and Zach to their odd corners of Maine. Portland (the foodie town), Rockland (Midcoast culinary impressionism) and Milo (just watch). There are three parts of this YouTube video.

On July 31, 2011, a day ahead of schedule, we launched Eleccentricity, my electric launch (and someday, lobster boat) from the ramp at Lamoine State Park. My friend Chuck Weber, the veggie farmer at Lamoine Corners towed my trailer the mile to the park and the launch proceeded without incident. What happened after was a little off-script, but in a funny way.

Author/builder on right

Once the boat became afloat and upright (an achievement in itself, I might add) all that remained was to drop in the electrified outboard and connect the big thick wires providing 36 volts of current to the permanent magnet motor. This I did while chatting with Ben Fuller, curator of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, ME. He and many other small/wooden boat enthusiasts were present for the Small Reach Regatta winding up at the park for the second year. My frenetic preparations prevented me from attending the event, but I was bathed in attention from the crowd during my launch.

Connecting steering with Ben Fuller

Once I got a push off shore from the helpful crew I encountered the reason why my friend Dr. Jim counselled me to launch the first time in the dead of night. I twisted my throttle (actually, a little knob like you’d find on an old transistor radio),  I noticed the motor humming but no forward motion. In fact the boat was moving in reverse, back toward shore. OK, easy enough. Just reverse the big wires on the motor. It took about a minute, and I managed not to drop the nuts in the ocean.  Now everything was set for a spin around the harbor. I goosed the throttle and away I went. But the steering was weird…I turned the wheel and the boat went the other way. BACKWARDS STEERING!! I had connected the steering backwards and never noticed! I was so confused I steered the boat into the shore and my alert shore crew prevented me from grinding on the bottom as I cut the power.

Cruising with electrons

So the steering’s backwards! OK, just deal with it. I steered my boat to the dock and picked up three more friends and we took a cruise into Frenchman Bay. Among them were several who were sure the batteries would go dead within seconds of departure, but they were proved wrong. We cruised back and forth to Mount Desert Island and around the bay without depleting the batteries more than 30% from a full charge. I brought along my car’s GPS so I could see my speed and managed to top out at about 6.1 MPH, real close to the calculated hull speed (note: “hull speed” is used in reference to “displacement hulls”, which have a maximum theoretical speed, based on the square root of their waterline length. Speed boats have planing hulls which rise out of the water and can go much faster. Eleccentricity is a displacement hull design).

Prop wash

In the week since I have been working on getting power to recharge the boat and putting together a mooring. Currently Eleccentricity sits at anchor, slowly discharging as batteries do. Soon I will take her mackerel fishing.

Samuel Gorton, founder of Warwick R.I., anti-slavery legislator

I had put off researching my family history for years, unwilling to discover  ancestors who kept slaves. Instead, I was surprised and pleased to find none.  In fact, I discovered many who were decidedly anti-slavery, including Rhode Island founder and eighth great grandfather Samuel Gorton, who wrote America’s first anti-slavery legislation in 1651. This radical bill proposed that all slaves be set free after 10 years of service. It was passed, but not enforced.

Still, it’s easy to fall into the belief that New England was slave-free. It was not. In the big picture, New England’s slave population was a drop in the bucket compared to southern colonies, and the slave population in the southern colonies was in turn a drop in the bucket compared to the Caribbean.  Also, our Puritan background moderated our treatment of slaves somewhat and the abolition of slavery happened in New England long before the Civil War. By the time Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820, Massachusetts had been slavery-free since 1783, so you could say that Maine was never a slave state.

Samuel Fressenden, Portland's anti-slavery activist, from mainememory.net

But the truth is a bit more nuanced. Remember, Maine was a busy trade center. We built ships, traded for rum, molasses and cotton and turned the cotton into cloth in our many river-powered mills. Sea captains put down roots in Searsport and other coastal towns. Their livelihood, as well as those of boatbuilders, mill and dock workers depended upon slaves at the other end of the voyage.  Compare these attitudes with frontier farmers in upstate New York who had to compete with slavery-subsidized agriculture from the South, and it’s easy to see how Harriet Tubman, who organized the underground railroad, lived in the middle of New York, not Maine.

Though slow to rock the boat of institutional slavery, Maine had an active anti-slavery movement from 1834, when the Maine Anti-Slavery Society was formed in Portland.  It existed to educate the public about the evils of slavery and the need for abolition, but meetings were often poorly attended or attended by hostile crowds.  After 1850 however, the anti-slavery movement took root in Maine and hostilities towards it’s messengers largely ceased. Among notable Mainers in the movement was Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802-1837), born in Albion and a graduate of Waterville College (now Colby College), he became a martyr to the movement when his printing press was thrown into the Mississippi River and he was shot dead in Illinois.

Joshua Chamberlain, from mainememory.net

But before abolitionism became universal in Maine, there were pockets of slavery supporters, or at least agnostics, and they called themselves “Nebraskans”.  This odd moniker derived from the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed settlers of those two states to choose whether they wished to be slave or free states. Residents of a portion of Biddeford, Maine called their area Nebraska and took their stand for free choice.

Though slow to embrace abolitionism, Maine became a full member of the Union effort in the Civil War and produced famed lieutenant colonel Joshua Chamberlain, Bowdoin College professor and later governor; but he’s a subject for a future post. Find much Maine history on line at http://www.mainememory.net

Guest are flooding into our SeaCat’s Rest Oceanside Suite and are very tolerant about the rough-looking host working away on the boat in the garage. I even got an impromptu shove from two guests who saw me pushing my boat back into the garage after I switched it end for end. This came after the realization that I couldn’t load it onto the trailer transom-first.  So a quartet of wagon wheels fastened onto the cradle and away I went.

I have begun messing with the outboard. The vile stink engine has been removed and I am now puzzling with how to connect the DC electric motor which will run on the 36 volts produced by the six 6 volt batteries. Out came the water pump (pictured) which resulted in much less friction. It won’t be needed for an electric set-up. The shaft turned much more easily with the thing gone.

The other water cooling related item to remove was the outlet pipe where the heated water exited the outboard. This was unceremoniously dispatched with a sawsall, and plugged with wood and epoxy. This task was recommended to me by a helpful boat guy on the west coast, who did a similar conversion on his outboard. He has a nifty .pdf file of his conversion. Go here and right click “Swe’Pea Conversion Story” and save or open with your .pdf reader.

I also checked the gearbox, which contrary to perceptions, is (or should be) completely sealed so that the water stays out and the gear oil stays in. I found mine to be in perfect shape. Still, I plan on draining and changing the oil before I finish.

Sort of like vanilla and strawberry

Back on the boat it was time for floatation. This will keep those heavy lead batteries from sinking the boat like, well,  six lead-filled batteries. I cut up and put about 7 cubic feet of foam into area under the floor. A cubic foot of salt water weighs 64 lbs, so seven cubic feet of foam would displace 448 lbs minus the weight of the foam, which is about 11 pounds. This gives me a net buoyancy of 437 lbs, more than enough to counteract the 370 pounds of batteries plus a bit more. Now,  even a partial flooding would be ruinous for the batteries, so I don’t plan to let salt water over the tops of the batteries. They are each in their own plastic boxes and are protected by a sump pump which will keep the bilge dry…hopefully. Still, if the worst happens I may lose the batteries but not the boat, thanks to the foam.

Now the foam is epoxied into place, the floor can get screwed on and no more bad footing while working inside the boat.

Next:  It’s time to build the bulkhead which will isolate the motor well and serve as a mount for the outboard.