Friends air drop food to biologist stranded on island

FRIENDSHIP, Maine — A marine biologist who is spending the winter on an island in Muscongus Bay has been stranded there for more than a month, so friends chartered a plane to deliver her some food.

Diane Cowan, 54, has spent the previous 15 other winters on Friendship Long Island, about 50 miles northeast of Portland, Maine, where her nonprofit Lobster Conservancy has a six-acre lobster pond, two buildings and a wharf, but she said this season is one for the record books.

"I've been iced in for 32 days," said Cowan, who founded the conservancy in 1996. "The longest I've been trapped on the island before was two weeks."

Friendship Harbor was iced in for about three weeks, but the ice finally opened up and started moving out Thursday. Cowan said she now can see some open water, but the island's coves and dock are still frozen in, meaning she can't leave by boat.

Crossing the roughly milewide stretch by foot or in any sort of vehicle is out of the question, and she said she doesn't need to be rescued. She has heat, food, telephone and Internet access.

"I still don't know how much longer I'll be stuck here," she said.

The island has a few vacation homes and no grocery stores. The entire town, which encompasses about 14 square miles mostly on the mainland and more than two dozen islands, has fewer than 1,200 residents.

Cowan, who does research and enlists volunteers to catalog juvenile lobsters and where they live, said she had enough supplies to last another month but was out of coffee and missed fresh fruit and meat.

Last week three friends loaded two boxes with food and hired a pilot to fly over the island, about 2½ miles long and a half mile wide, as they checked out ice cover in the area. It was minus 12 degrees when they made the air drop.

"The pilot was awesome," said Bob Lary, who tossed the boxes out the window. "He did a couple of flyovers and got his bearings, (then) opened the window and said, 'Chuck it.' And I did, twice."

"It worked perfectly," said Pam Cabanas of Friendship.

Cowan was waiting on the ground, finding that the first box hit the roof of a building before falling to the ground. The second one landed gently.

Meat; treats for her dog, Sula; fresh oranges; and coffee all were safely delivered.

"I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled," Cowan said. "And I also like the idea this could be done because it gives a whole new dimension to getting stuff out here longer term."

She heats with wood, plentiful on the forested island; cooks with gas; and uses solar panels for electricity. She told the Bangor Daily News that because the island has no running water she hauls by the bucket from a well; her bathroom is an outhouse.

She said she always stocks up before winter with two months of food.

However, she's thinking of trying a new strategy for next winter: A special box of little luxuries labeled "Don't open until February," just in case of another deep freeze.