As we stood on the waterfront of Camden Harbor one day in August, a 60-foot schooner with sails furled was motoring into the harbor with her paying crew of tourists aboard after a couple of hours sailing on Penobscot Bay. Pretty and traditional. An Alerion 28 sloop, sweet and trim, was tacking out the harbor between the moored and anchored boats bound into a light fog bank that hung over the bay and who knows where beyond. Two salty looking cruising boats with windvanes, solar panels and wind generators were unmooring and setting off for a run down east to places like Winter Harbor and Rocque Island, the wilds east of Schoodic Point. The international cruising set. One flew a Union Jack, the other the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron burgee. Before us was a microcosm of the Maine Coast in summer. Having sailed all over the world, I, like many veteran cruisers, still consider Maine to be one of the very best cruising grounds. With a thousand crooked miles of coastline, hundreds of islands, hundreds of coves and anchorages, and wilderness all around, the Maine Coast takes a lifetime to know. Here you will meet locals with distinct accents and the solid natures of a people who are fiercely independent and hard working. You will meet summer folks with their yachts and artists with their paint boxes and easels. You will dodge a million lobster pots and anchor in coves with 10 feet of tide. You will see whales offshore, porpoises in the bays and osprey feeding on smelt. You might even see a bear and an eagle. Camden is a gem. But there are similar gems scattered all along this remarkable coast, which is a cruising paradise. It’s one place Rosie and I will always come back to. (The Cruising Club of America is creating a useful and attractive online cruising guide to the coast that is available to the general public. Check it out here.)