The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Coasting in Maine

No gasps of wonder as we pulled into East Boothbay at sunset – rather, and “ahhhhhhh” of perfect peace.  There is nothing as soul-restoring as a sojourn on one of Maine’s countless  narrow harbors-within-harbors, and tucked away on just such an eelrut (as old-timers call them) we found the airy Five Gables Inn.

“I knew I had come to the right place,” said jovial Mike Kennedy, a former Atlanta chef who rns the 1872 inn with wife De, “when I found out that the only other business on my street is a family that’s built ships since 1818” (the Hodgdons, hard at work on a a sailing yacht that looked like 125 feet of fine cabinetry).

We strolled down to the deck of Lobsterman’s Wharf – a friendly neighborhood hangout only slightly gentrified since its days as a sailors’ saloon – and dines on delicious fried calamari, oysters on the half shell and fresh local haddock.

For our final, sultry morning (we’d never broken out our sweaters, but don’t expect the same luck, even in August), we plied Boothbay Harbor on a tour sloop.  There were eight of us happily chatting as we motored out, but when the sails were hoisted, we fell quiet – as if to honor the silence of the locomotion and the vanished generations that used it.

The only sounds were the tiny squeaks and groans of ropes tightening against varnished wood, the flap of sails filling with the wind.