Cleaning Up One Bottle at a Time

        We’ve always  been very conscious of the imprint we leave on the places we visit.  As a den leader, I had my scouts walk single file down the road armed with gloves to pick up trash and bags to place it in.  When Dan took schooner passengers ashore for lobster bakes, he reminded them of our roles as stewards of the island.  They often gathered up a trash bag or two of the inevitable flotsam and jetsam as well as whatever previous picnickers had left behind.  Our cruising life has been no different.  In the Bahamas we were appalled at the amount of detritus washed up on those beaches - you can’t name one thing made of plastic that we didn’t find.  We took what we could use but had to leave most of it behind.  We are dismayed to find similar circumstances here in Maine, although here a good 98% of what we find is due to the fishing industry.  Buoys, toggles, line, parts of traps, bait bags… these things are washed ashore after a storm or after the lines are accidentally (or deliberately) cut.  We also find styrofoam coffee cups or just their lids, empty Clorox bottles, empty potato chip bags, and plastic bottles.  LOTS of plastic bottles.  Water, soda, Gatorade - these tend to tuck in amongst the rocks and tree roots, sometimes half-full with whatever they originally contained.  We gather it all up in piles, carry what we can manage, and leave the rest for some other like-minded volunteer to remove. 

On this trip down East we’ve had a Man Over Board drill at least once a day to retrieve a plastic bottles, and once, a plastic bag.  Today, as we entered Moosabec Reach we had three M.O.B.s for bottles.  We added them to the collection of trash we removed from the rocky coastline of Bois Bubert island that we gathered this morning.  Two days into this trip and we’ve nearly reached our garbage-hauling capacity!

Just some of the trash...

We love cruising down East.  The anchorages in the islands off Jonesport have great names like Mistake, the Mud Hole, and the Cow Yard.  There are so many places in the Roque Island archipelago to tuck in for the night a cruiser could spend a week here and not travel more than thirty minutes.  Today we are anchored off the crescent beach, a popular place for cruisers to picnic, swim, or just walk.  Tomorrow, if the tide and wind and sea are favorable, we are considering a run out to Machias Seal island, where puffins, razorbills, and grey seals hang out.  We debated back and forth today - yes, go now?  The weather today was sunny and calm - typical July morning - but the Southwest winds started to come in just as we thought we’d take a chance, and after watching the seas build as the building winds blew against the tide, we turned around and headed for Rogue, plucking our last plastic bottle out of the sea before dropping the anchor.  Maybe Machias Seal tomorrow.  No doubt there are other bottles out there waiting for us.