Why do people think of lobster when they think of the State of Maine? Our Atlantic or American lobster, Homarus americanus, ranges as far south as North Carolina, but the greatest abundance is in the cold waters of Maine and Atlantic Canada. In Maine, our 2009 harvest was 78 million pounds, valued at $228.6 million. Second in the U. S. was Massachusetts with 11.6 million pounds. Maine and Massachusetts account together for 92% of the lobster landings in the U.S.A. and of that, Maine’s share is 80%.

People watching the Discovery Channel’s Lobstermen or the earlier Lobster Wars may have been surprised to find an occupation similar to Alaska’s severe Deadliest Catch. But this type of fishing is not typical. Most lobster landings are closer to shore and from much smaller boats in the summer months. These familiar boats are what visitors see when they visit Maine. The TV show would probably have been a dismal failure without rough weather and boats big enough and out at sea long enough to host gossip and bitter quarrels.

Why do lobster landings keep going up in Maine? We keep hearing about overfishing and crashing stocks but lobsters continue to thrive…for now.

Rare colorful lobster caught in Maine

There are a few reasons why our lobster fishery is bucking the trend. First, lobsters are bottom feeders. They are able to thrive on a varied diet–whatever falls to the bottom or lives there. Crabs, starfish, dead fish. For a while, cowhide was being sold as a bait for traps! Secondly, the lobster’s main predator, cod has been overfished and essentially removed as a threat especially in shallow waters. Third, the growth of the urchin fishery has taken the pressure off the urchin’s food, kelp. It is thought that kelp beds are great nurseries for larval lobsters. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the fishers and their equipment and methods preserve the resource better than just about all other fisheries. Think about it: The lobster is only taken when 1) it enters the trap looking for food, 2) it fails to figure out how to get out 3) the trap is hauled before a biodegradable link allows an escape hatch to open, 4) the lobster is between a certain size range, and 5) not a “v” notched or egg bearing female. These conservative measures make it almost impossible to overfish and return by some estimates, over 80% of trapped lobsters to the sea.  Compare this to massive trawlers pulling miles of nets or draggers pulling up everything from the bottom. Our lobster fishers deserve much credit for this inspired management!

How did lobster fishing  start? Before the arrival of Europeans, the Native Americans used the plentiful lobster as fertilizer and bait. The first lobster landing was reported in 1605 by James Rosier, a member of  Captain George Weymouth’s crew. Still, in colonial times lobster was considered “poverty food”, served to prisoners and indentured servants. In Massachusetts, servants even rebelled, demanding that they not be forced to eat lobster more than three times per week! After 1840, when canning became common, the lobster industry finally took off. At that time it was common to use over 5 pound lobsters, discarding anything under 2 pounds as not worth the effort. Nowadays in Maine, any lobster over 5 inches on the body shell (carapace) or about 4-1/2 lbs must be returned to the water.

Captain John Nicolai

How can I experience Maine lobstering? The first and most important thing to know is that it is extremely illegal to tamper with traps or gear in the water! Even an abandoned trap on shore is off limits. The way to experience the Maine lobster is first, have one for dinner. You may approach a lobster fisher at a public pier and he or she may be glad to sell you one or more, or visit one of our plentiful pounds. Secondly, visit the Maine Lobster Museum at the Mount Desert Oceanarium, and the nearby lobster hatchery. Finally, take a trip out on the water with a working lobster fisherman, Captain John Nicolai aboard his Lulu, setting off from Bar Harbor.

The Nottingham Galley may have looked something like this

Saturday, the 11th of December, 2010 marks the 300th anniversary of the first known cannibals in the State of Maine. These primitives came from (pick one):

1. Equatorial Africa
2. New Guinea
3. The Amazon rain forest
4. England

The answer is, of course, “4″. How did we end up with human flesh-eating deviants from the mother country? Easy. Just wreck a 18th century sailing ship on a 5 acre lifeless rock in December, 1710. The rock was and is Boon Island, just 6 miles off York, Maine.

Courtesy of the collection of Jeremy D'Entremont

The next necessary ingredient for this fleshfest is extreme hunger. When the Nottingham Galley, having taken on dairy products in Ireland and bound for Boston, struck the reef off Boon Island, all 14 crew members made it ashore in the winter storm. Wet and cold, they made a shelter from sailcloth. The next day they found themselves on an island without the possibility of food or an easy swim to the mainland. When the cook died a day later, they set the body adrift, but when the carpenter died after two weeks, they ate him. Without fire, they wrapped the sliced carpenter in seaweed and ate him raw. English sushi.

At least two attempts were made to construct a vessel and sail to shore. The first failed and the two men were lost. The second broke apart soon after launch, but the men made it back to their dismal rock. One of these craft however, resulted in enough wreckage (and a corpse) to alert shore-dwellers that a rescue was needed. They knew where to look: Boon Island had been the site of many shipwrecks for many years. On the 24th day a rescue party arrived and the remaining 10 men were taken to Portsmouth, NH to recover.

In the aftermath, locals began to stock the rock with a cache of provisions to aid the unlucky visitor. Later still in 1799, a wooden beacon was erected but only lasted five years. In 1811 a stone beacon was erected, destroyed and rebuilt in 1831. Finally in 1854–1855 the tallest lighthouse in New England was built — 133 feet of massive granite blocks at a cost of $25,000. This lighthouse still exists and is in the above photo, but the lighthouse keeper’s house was swept away in 1978. Today the beacon is automated and powered by photovoltaics.

The Nottingham Galley’s Captain John Deane wrote a best-seller about his ordeal, as did his first mate Christopher Langman. The two accounts were very different, both accusing the other of lying, conniving and eating the most carpenter. Others have written books too. Our woeful tale is included in Great Shipwrecks of the Maine Coast by Jeremy D’Entremont. Kenneth Roberts wrote about it in Boon Island, a novel written in 1956, as did Edward Rowe Snow in Great Storms and Famous Shipwrecks of the New England Coast. For the 300th anniversary there are many articles appearing, such as the December issue of Down East Magazine and the November 29 issue of the Nashua Telegraph.

So for Saturday the 11th of December, eat something wrapped in seaweed and remember the Boon Island cannibals.

Castine, Maine from GoogleMaps

A few months ago I wrote a post called,  Castine: Maine History at Every Turn in which I recounted the story of our country’s worst naval defeat.

The Fort: A Novel Of The Revolutionary War By Bernard Cornwell Hardcover, 480 pages Harper List Price: $25.99

Now it seems the rest of the world is looking back at this battle, and they are doing a much more thorough job. I should narrow that down to author Bernard Cornwall and NPR All Things Considered correspondent Guy Raz, who interviewed Cornwell. This interview can be read at the NPR website here or you can play the podcast below.

To recap, on July 28, 1779 an American force of 19 armed vessels and 24 transports stormed the peninsula, with orders to oust the small  British presence.  Colonel Paul Revere was in charge of the munitions. The outcome of this battle was not one of America’s proud military moments, as the overly-cautious commander Dudley Saltonstall gave the order to retreat. British ships soon arrived and chased Saltonstall’s fleet up the Penobscot River, where he ran them aground and set them all ablaze. His troops then headed back to Boston by foot. Revere was acquitted of any wrongdoing in this debacle, but his reputation suffered. This has been long known as the greatest defeat of the American side in New England during the Revolutionary War, and our greatest Naval defeat of all time. All but one American ship was burned and by some accounts, 500 Americans were killed or went missing.

Cornwell has fleshed this story out and added a full measure of creative fiction. For American history lovers, it’s a good read. For Maine visitors, stop by Castine for a visit of this historic town on your way to Acadia National Park.

The NPR story is titled, “The Worst U.S. Naval Disaster You’ve Never Heard Of”, but you heard of it here on 8/21/10.
Here’s the NPR audio: 20101120_atc_05

When I was in college, way back in the ’70s we had an energy crisis. The Saudis were mad at us and embargoed oil shipments to the United States. President Carter appeared in a sweater and told us to turn down our thermostats and lowered the speed limit to 55 mph. This was a fun time for alternative energy; we took classes about rammed-earth houses, built solar heaters and considered  plans for very early hybrid-electric car retrofits from Mother Earth News. We all burned wood. Then Ronald Reagan came along on his horse and it was morning in America again, which somehow meant we could all go back to using lots of oil.

Now it’s a topsy-turvy replay of the 70′s energy crisis. We have no lines at the gas pump, but super-deep offshore wells mean environmental cataclysm is an ever-present threat. CO2 concentration  in the atmosphere has reached 388 parts per million while in 1976 it was 335. Glaciers are melting everywhere and here on the shore of Maine we are bracing for noticeable sea level change, weird weather, strong storms and acidified sea water. Our gas money is coming back at us in shoe bombs.

I like to think that human beings are capable of making intelligent and abrupt changes in their behavior. After all, we made it this far. Here in Maine there is a big controversy about “industrial wind power” which is a strange new phrase combining something positive (wind power) with something sinister (industrial).

Glace Bay, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

Opponents like to use another bad word, “corporate” to indicate that wind power in Maine has now morphed into what we came to Maine to escape. The leader of this belief system, Jonathan Carter, has even tried to prove that the energy contributions from wind turbines actually result in MORE greenhouse gasses, since their contribution is not constant. This is nonsense.

Most of what I hear about this so-called controversy leaves me speechless. What is the alternative? Coal? Nuclear? As the Beatles said, “We’d all like to see the plan.” We need to get those parts per million down now. We can’t dither around by arguing about whether climate change is real, it is. Wind is part of the solution. Maine needs wind power, tidal power, photovoltaics and smart use. We need to drive electric cars powered by green power. Stop whining.

If anything in Lamoine, Maine can be called ubiquitous, it is the apple tree. Most yards have at least a couple, either on the lawn proper or somewhere along the periphery, and more than a few can also be seen along the roadside on state Highway 184, where about this time each year, they let go their holdings all over the road, to lie like billiard balls until they are squashed by passing cars or scooped up by wily crows. “Apples, apples everywhere,” as it were.

Grinding is the first step. Photo courtesy of Douglas C. Jones

Apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for co-opting his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but after watching nearly every species of wild bird and animal in Lamoine, from gulls to crows to fox to squirrels to porcupines to deer (even Labrador Retrievers get in on the act) gorge themselves on fallen apples throughout the Autumn, a few local humans got a little jealous and decided to appropriate some of this fruit for themselves.   These are our yards, after all, where the trees have taken root.   So recently, on a cold but sunny afternoon, about 7 friends brought many bags of apples, gleaned mostly from their yards and a nearby pick-your-own apple farm, to a house on Walker Road,  where the owners are in possession of a wonderful antique Jaffrey Manufacturing Company apple press.

The pulp is pressed. Photo courtesy of Douglas C. Jones

Prior to this get-together, we were encouraged simply to “get out there in your yards and jostle with the wildlife for your rightful share of apples.   And don’t be finicky.   Pick up any variety you find, even some crab-apples.”   As a preliminary step in the manufacture of our cider, we laid our many plastic bags of apples around the Jaffrey press for easy access, because once the pressing process starts, it moves apace.     The apple press has a small hopper with a wooden lid, a top-mounted corkscrew T-Bar, and a side-mounted hand-crank wheel.     Underneath the hopper, a bucket lined with burlap is placed to receive all the discard of the grinding apparatus on the press.     A volunteer with a strong arm is placed at the grinding wheel, and after the apples are washed, they are tossed willy-nilly into the hopper.     The person at the hand crank rotates the wheel rapidly and relentlessly.   Another person holds the small hopper lid on top of the tumbling apples, all the while pressing downward to keep the apples in contact with the ruthless blades.   As the apples are forced into contact with these rotating blades by pressure from the hopper lid, they are shredded into bits and come out into the waiting burlap-lined bucket.   There are chunks, cores, stems, seeds, and the odd leaf, but not to worry, as all these elements of refuse are snagged by the burlap.   When the burlap gets full, the cranking ceases, much to the relief of the volunteer, and a circular lid is placed on top of the scrap mound.   Next, the T-bar at the top of the press is lined up directly over this lid and cranked down tightly, squeezing cider through the burlap onto a slightly inclined rectangular wooden tray with a drain hole.   Under the drain hole, a bucket is placed to receive the apple juice.

Photo courtesy of Douglas C. Jones

When the burlap-lined bucket gets full of apple parts, and no more cranking of the T-bar is productive, the cranking is ceased, and the bulging burlap is lifted out of the bucket.     The scraps can be discarded in various ways, of course, but in this case, our host had designated a small area behind his house as a compost pile.     The burlap got carried over to that pile and emptied as compost.   The burlap was then shaken out a bit and fitted back into the wooden bucket beneath the hopper.     Meanwhile, each bucket of collected apple juice was decanted through a funnel, lined with cheesecloth (the second stage of a double filtration process), into standard plastic (previously cleaned and sterilized) jugs, such as might appear full of orange or apple juice at any supermarket.  When the burlap is placed back into the bucket, more apples are tossed into the hopper, and the whole process begins anew, although the previous wheel cranker is replaced by a new volunteer with fresh shoulder muscles.   We managed to crank out several gallons of cider that afternoon, and despite its mongrel pedigree, it was quite tasty.   The cider can be drunk on the spot, of course (a good deal of it was); refrigerated to be served cold on another day; or frozen to be thawed and heated up for cider in the dead of winter.

As mentioned, the particular Jaffrey model we used on this occasion was an antique, purchased at a yard sale more than 20 years ago, but there are updated versions available for perusal at http://jaffreypress.com. While anyone can go to their local market and buy cider, there is something to be said about enjoying the fruits of your labor and honoring a long time tradition.

Photo courtesy of Douglas C. Jones

Thanks to my neighbor for this guest post. Anyone notice how cider has suffered from the new pasteurization trend? Cider ain’t what it used to be! We have to make it ourselves! Bruce

Few people are going to come to Bar Harbor or Lamoine, Maine based on our tax rate on lodgings or rental cars, but high taxes could be nasty surprise if they go elsewhere. Lodging tax is popular with state legislatures because it is not paid by the voting citizens of the state. It is typically two or even three times the sales tax rate, or in the case of New Hampshire, an infinite multiple, since NH has no sales tax.

Beware the Lodgings Tax Surprise

Complicating things is the way lodgings tax is divided in some places between state and local governments. Massachusetts has a reasonable 5.7% state tax, but local government adds another 4% for a total of 9.7%. New York State’s 4% has another 9.75% added for a total of a whopping 13.75%. How about Canada? The sales tax in Nova Scotia is 13% (called HST) and lodgings add another 2% for a total of 15%. New Brunswick charges 13% and Quebec’s rate will increase to 14% on January 1, 2011.

I had to dig hard for these numbers, it seems that these taxes are somewhat cloaked in secrecy. Just try to price out a hotel room in New York and you may just get a “plus tax” quote. In fact, the rates quoted above may be wrong, (they are from the Brookings Institution) but my guess is if anything they may be higher. For example, if you first figure a 5% tax and then add another 4%, it does not add up to 9% if you add the 4% onto the adjusted amount:

$100+5%= $105

$105+4%=$109.20. $109.20/$100=9.2%, not 9%!

Maine’s lodgings tax is 7%. That’s all. We value our tourist industry so we don’t try to trick you into a double digit surprise. Our regular sales tax is a reasonable 5% and although our state gasoline tax is a hefty 31 cents per gallon, a recent trip to Michigan left me with the impression that Maine gasoline is among the cheapest in New England. Tourism is a big part of the Maine economy, we need you! We want you to come back.

Do yourself a favor and look at how Maine and our Acadia area compare to other places for value before making your vacation decisions for next year. We have the most free activities, free shuttle bus on the island, inexpensive restaurants, our own affordable lodgings and of course, the lowest tax.

Did I mention the beauty?

from http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Bizarre_Foods

Fans of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods show have watched host Andrew Zimmern eat everything from pig brains in Spain to tree worms in the Philippines. When I heard he was doing a show in Maine my first question was, “What do we eat that’s so bizarre? What could possibly compare to roasted caterpillar or fermented seal blubber?”

Also from the travel channel website

To answer this question, Andrew met up with his dad Bob Zimmern, who happens to live in Portland, Maine’s largest city. The two head out to Fore Street for lunch where chef Sam Hayward presented his signature dishes, monkfish livers and roasted sardines. Not a bad start. In a twist on the usual parent-child exchange, Andrew scarfs down parts of the fish (the heads, of course) his dad refuses to eat. Andrew makes an observation that Maine restaurants are especially close to their food sources, and like to feature what’s local.

At the end of the show Andrew returns to Portland and finds local chefs who prepared junebugs three different ways at the Bizarre Foods Deathmatch Cookoff. He must have hit the season just right. He also visited a sushi restaurant I hadn’t heard of called Food Factory Miyake on Spring Street (our usual is Benkay on India Street). Here he tried the ultimate bizarre food, sea cucumber. I’ve seen these limp “sea pickles” washed up on our shore and I will state here and now, I refuse to eat anything that routinely expels its internal organs. Good job Andrew!

In between, the Bizarre Foods crew head out to Isle Au Haut where Andrew met up with The Perfect Storm author Linda Greenlaw. Linda took him lobster fishing and treated him to a full-blown clam bake with lobster, corn, clams, the works. Not bizarre at all, just great!

also from the travel channel website

The bizarre part happened at Pretty Marsh, where Andrew is treated to beaver chili cooked by Kate Krukowski. Leave it to Andrew to come to Maine to eat a large rodent! Kate lives in Pretty Marsh on Mount Desert Island and is the author of Black Fly Stew: Wild Maine Recipes. I have to get this book. I hope it’s not all about sea cucumbers.

Kate and Andrew Zimmern from http://www.blackflystew.com

You are ready to pop right up and begin the house search, Right? Slooooow down. We made mistakes. You should know about them. Maine is a great place to live. The people are helpful and respectful, crime is practically non-existent, you can get what you need and prices are not outrageous. Sure, winters are long and social options can be few, but you knew that, right? Below I have assembled a list of things to be mindful of.

I’m assuming you know where you will be working. If not, I hope you have a nice bankroll or a free place to stay until you figure that out. If you have not yet settled on a location, start out here. The counties of Maine are rated for their health rankings. Here in Hancock County where Acadia National Park is located, we’re #2 in the state. Next door is Washington County, #15. Go figure. This site is rich with information and rates things like high school graduation, smoking, obesity, vehicular death and so on.

Schools are an obvious concern. Even if you don’t have kids, buying into a community with a poor school means your home may not sell easily. Around here, Mount Desert has the best school, and the home prices reflect it. Bar Harbor is #2. I’m stopping there lest I get into trouble. Mount Desert Island (not to be confused with the town of Mount Desert, which is on Mount Desert Island) is the most expensive place overall to live in the county. Here in Lamoine, we always say our house would be twice the worth if we moved it onto the island, a mile away. So talk to parents with kids in school, that’s the best way to get the lowdown on school quality. Be ready for lots of details, like whether kids have to go to one high school or if they have a choice. Finally, don’t think that small is better. Having a one-class class (all 6th graders in one room) means that your child will never escape the difficult characters in her elementary school.  Diversity is good. Sometimes so are bigger schools.

Rumford paper mill

Don’t buy a house downwind from a paper mill, incinerator or toxic waste dump until you inform yourself about the risks. There are mills in Old Town and Bucksport, and there is an incinerator in Orrington. A list of contaminated sites in Hancock County can be seen here. Overall, Maine is not bad in this regard, although some complain bitterly about aerial spraying of blueberry fields. Perhaps the worst polluter is us, in the form of ozone and smog from cars which blow up the east coast in the summertime.

Take a local map and put pins in everyplace you are likely to go. Grocery stores, work, doctor’s office, lumber yard, school, favorite restaurant, etc. Keep this map in mind as you start to consider places to live. When you find a property, find out how long it’s been on the market. Houses in Maine are hard to sell in certain areas. When we first settled in Belfast, we noticed that putting out a for sale sign was an annual event staged for tourists. People were asking prices unjustified by the jobs likely to be found there. Things are better now, but there are places where you may be tempted by a big sprawling house and barn; just a little too far from all the pins in your map.

I had a boss once who told me (after I bought a sprawling house and barn in the wrong area) that you should not buy a house in Maine unless it was either 1) waterfront or 2) view. He was right. Of course, there are other factors which may substitute for waterfront or view, but if you’re not careful you will end up with a house you can’t sell for more than you bought it for, as happened to us and our Belfast house. Those first few years in Maine were instructive. We saw more houses burned down (for practice by the fire department) than built. Houses were crumbling into the ground. That would not happen on MDI or Lamoine for the most part, but make sure you remember my boss’s warning.

Culturally, Maine life varies widely. Near the coast, big cities and universities there are theater, music, reading groups, good libraries and educated neighbors. In other places snowmobiles, ATVs and hunting prevail.  You may want to read The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute. This is recommended for anyone moving to Maine. There are really two Maines. The book is an extreme version of the “other” Maine, but there is a real dichotomy. You may want to figure out where you fit in this continuum before committing to a particular area. The best places are where people embrace both cultures, like Lamoine.

Our resident playwright and theatrical director Carol Korty is now putting the finishing touches on our  talented acting company, Lamoine Community Arts (LCA) and their production of Neil Simon’s  farce Rumors.  Carol has graced us with her talent for many seasons and we marvel at how we became the chosen spot on the map for her “retirement”.

Rumors is a very funny play about what happens when upper class New York suburbanites attend an anniversary party in which nothing seems right and everything goes wrong. Mystery gunshots, missing persons, crashed BMWs,  and domestic squabbles give rise to a full spectrum of rumors and lies, all designed to protect and prop up an over-privileged and under-worked  group of “friends”. Watching their attempt to evolve false explanations and how they crumble is the fun of it all, and the ending is the twist which gives an added zing. So impressive was this ending that, I completely missed my cue to dim the lights in rehearsal. I hope to do better on Friday, October 29, when the first performance happens at 7 PM. Three other performances are scheduled for 7 PM on Saturday, October 30 and Saturday, November 6 with a final Matinee on Sunday, November 7th at 3 PM.Here in rural coastal Maine it is sometimes difficult to find cultural activities we may have had access to in large cities, especially in the cooler months. The solution for most of us is to create our own. In Lamoine we all try to help when people care enough to put a production together; by volunteering for food, set construction, advertising and of course, showing up to see the play. So get on over to Lamoine Corner (where Rt 184 makes a sharp turn east) and get ready for some laughs. The play is free but donations are accepted. 

This dormer had to have all the trim and siding removed and ice and water shield installed. Rain blew in and dripped from the first floor ceiling.

This post is for anyone considering building or buying a house on the shore along the Maine coast. It may well apply to any windy, water exposed location. I work on mistakes made by builders and homeowners. First, save your heating/cooling money for heating only; or rather for heating and more insulation. Air conditioning really isn’t necessary unless climate change drops on us like a bag of rocks. Look at the historical weather data here and compare it to where you live. The few uncomfortable summer days (2 days over 90°F in 2010) can be dealt with by closing up the house or at most, a single window unit. Heating systems are marketed to be elaborate and expensive, but the more you insulate, the smaller and less complex your heating system needs to be.

Next, I suggest covering the whole ocean side with ice and water shield, not just Typar or Tyvek. Especially important is to use it where a second floor is recessed from the first floor roof like on a dormer. Imagine standing with a power washer and spraying your ocean side, that’s what a November or December storm is like. Horizontal rain.  This happened to me while I was building my house, I was lucky to see the effects before any damage resulted. The water shot right through my Typar housewrap.

I have not had a problem with ice dams on the roof, but I have seen quite a few on other houses. A friend had to install ice melting cables on a brand new addition because the builder didn’t use ice and water shield all the way up to the skylights. Again, I would use as much of the stuff as I could afford, especially on the ocean side and especially around any heat-leaking penetrations, right down to the eves. Don’t forget the valleys.

Windows: Don’t skimp. Andersen 200 series isn’t meant for shore exposure, 400 series is. I heard this from an Andersen representative. Friends with 200 series have leaks.  Also, look for a window company which warrants it’s windows against seal failure for as long as possible. This is the seal between the two panes of glass, and is especially important for skylights.

Siding: I loathe vinyl, but I can’t claim it underperforms if ice and water shield is used underneath on the ocean side. We have red cedar bevel siding and keep it up with Cabot solid color stain. The stain was applied before installation so the back side is protected. One coat lasts 5 years, 2 coats last 15. My next paint job is scheduled for 2024, I painted last year. I expect the south side will last maybe 11 years while the north side will go for 18. If you are considering cedar shingles, make sure you like the look of curly, discolored shingles. It may not be for you. Finally, avoid like the plague finger-jointed primed pine trim. The lumber yards still sell it, but it is a disaster waiting to happen. It will begin to rot out in 4-5 years. Builders still use it.

Architects love to get creative on the ocean side. They like huge windows and lots of dormers and intersecting rooflines. I like to tell people to imagine an overturned bowl and to try to build a house as close to it as possible. Think of the surface to volume ratio. Think of a big roof area toward the south for collectors or photovoltaics, with an ideal slope. Minimize windows on the north side. Build double walls to get in more insulation. I did double 2X4′s and filled the space with 8 inches of fiberglass. Put your garage on the north side. Consider three season rooms and porches that can be closed off in the heating season.

Some day you might do this

Not heating in the winter may be thought of as an option for vacation home owners. Realize, there will be consequences if you turn off the heat for the winter. The dew point will move inward, meaning that moisture will condense on interior walls, on clothing in closets and other confined spots like on the backs of couches. You will arrive in the spring to a strong mildew odor. Vinyl flooring will shrink and pull away from the walls in low temperatures. Plastic tubs will do strange things too. A little forethought would remedy this. Avoid plastic. Open closets and pull stuff away from walls. Keep a dehumidifier set to keep the air dry. Tell the plumber to slope pipes for easy drainage.

Finally, plan on a variety of energy options. If the price of heating oil becomes outrageous that pellet stove in the parlor will be welcomed. Will your heating system work if the power goes out for three days? It happens. Consider a standby generator. It needn’t be the automatic variety, just enough to run the fridge, the water pump, heating system and a few lights. I have a battery power back up for my computer that will last for two days. Our heating options include oil, solar, propane, wood and electricity.

I don’t mean to make it sound like living on the Maine shore is a struggle for survival, but there’s a certain satisfaction to having prepared for the worst, especially when the November gale is howling outside and you are warm and cozy on the inside.