It wasn’t intentional, but our day started early. We woke up at around 5:45 AM, early enough that the sun wasn’t up, so we decided to head outside to watch it rise over the bay. It was a very peaceful and quiet way to start off.
It was a lot colder than we were expecting so early in the morning, but a warm drink and every layer we had brought up to Maine made it manageable. I don’t know why, but I always feel like sunrises have the best color. We had a really nice time taking that color in and watching it give way to a beautiful blue sky day.
Once we had a chance to get some breakfast and pack a lunch, we packed the paddle boards on to the motor boat and headed to Fort Georges. The fort was built in the late 1800s in order to help defend Portland. It sits on a tiny rocky island right across the main shipping channel from Portland harbor. The ride down from Mere Point is about 15 miles, but it went by quickly. The perfectly calm water made it comfortable too. Once there we anchored and hopped on the paddle boards for the short trip to the fort.
We spent about an hour wandering around the inside of the fort. The main structure is in surprisingly good shape for the age. Clearly solid granite makes a durable building material. Many parts of the fort were open to explore, including some of the living quarters, gun batteries, and powder magazine. The many tiny gun windows all had great views of the channels and boats around Portland.
The highlight of the fort itself was probably the roof view. From here you had the perfect view of Portland itself, as well as the inside of the fort. This was also the home of the only remaining gun that we saw. Once we had our fill of the city view, it was back down the stairs and out of the fort.
At this point I wandered around the small portion of the island that was not part of the fort itself. Like most islands around here it is mostly rock and seaweed, but it was also home to a small sandbar. The sandbar is clearly the most popular place to hang out, and there were a couple of small motor boats pulled up on it while we were there. I had to pay attention though because the sandbar ended up completely under water while I took my photos. Fortunately it wasn’t too deep when I headed back to the paddle board.
We ended up relaxing on the boat for a while and had a nice floating picknick lunch. With the wind starting to pick up a bit we made our way back towards Mere Point. Compared to the morning we had a low key afternoon, and even managed a nap to make up for the early morning. To close out the day we had a classic Mere Point sunset. All in all it was one of my favorite days of the summer.
