Life eddies around the village of Carver's Harbor, home to Maine's largest lobster fleet. Summer visitors way outnumber the 1,200 year-round residents, but there's no yacht club or golf course, and, even in August, this is still clearly a working island, not an island resort. By contrast, North Haven is half as big, with just 325 year-round residents. It's rolling and open, spotted with idyllic farmhouses, summer homes for some of the country's wealthiest and most influential families. Pastimes include wagon rides and golf.
Many children sail in the same distinctive North Haven dinghies their grandparents sailed.
It was the British explorer Martin Pring who named the Fox Islands in 1603, ostensibly for the silver foxes he saw on both. In Vinalhaven, people actually look at and talk to you. Within a day or so they may ask you home to dinner. But the mention of 'tourism' makes them shudder,'' I wrote in these pages 26 years ago. It's still true.