Jason Tilton Jason Tilton, who won Ebb Tide's 32nd Anniversary treasure hunt on Friday, receives his prize of $320 from Ebb Tide owner Peter Gilchrist.

Boothbay Region High School junior Jason Tilton was the lucky, and persistent, token-finder in the Ebb Tide Restaurant's 32nd anniversary treasure hunt.

Searching alone in the secluded area behind the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library and the Used Book Store early Friday morning, Jason found the token wrapped in tin foil and tacked underneath the bottom rail of the picket fence that separates the area from the library parking lot. Several other hunters had scoured the area after the 7 a.m. clue was posted, but all had left to go to work or to seek shelter from the cold by the time Jason made his find. The temperature had just crept above zero after a sub-zero night.

Jason had been looking outside for about thirty minutes when he began his systematic search of the bottom rail of the picket fence. The foil packet in front of picket number 115 attracted his immediate attention and he was not surprised to find the treasure token hidden inside.

This successful search was not a one-person effort. Jason's mother, Lisa Tilton, had been on top of the clues all week and was spotted searching for the treasure near the hiding place late Thursday night. Jason was the first to attribute his success to her help. He plans to share part of his $320 prize with her in gratitude.

The Tilton family was part of the team that successfully found the first Ebb Tide treasure two years ago when Lenny Foss, Jason's uncle, located the treasure in the woods above the elementary school ball field. This year's treasure finder was not sure if deciphering clues and putting effort and diligence into searching run in his blood, but he was quick to give credit to his family. While clearly proud of being the person to find the treasure, though, Jason's most viscerally articulated admission about his Friday search was that he got very cold.

Many other treasure hunters who searched outside on Thursday and Friday morning would share his sentiments. Thursday was the coldest day of the winter in Boothbay Harbor, and yet several dozen people put in time canvassing the library grounds looking for that exact spot where the clues would resonate. By evening, the search area of choice had migrated to the secluded area behind the library. At times, there were more people searching than the area could reasonably contain. Flashlights were flickering every which way, people bumped into each other, and the scene looked bizarre from a distance.

Ironically, the weather Thursday stood in stark contrast to that of the Thursday of the previous week, when a freak rain shower created puddles over the ice—the very night Ebb Tide owners Nancy and Peter Gilchrist were hiding the treasure token. At exactly the wrong moment, a police cruiser passed slowly down Howard Street, forcing Nancy to hide behind the library and Peter to lie down for several minutes in two inches of ice water. Several of the hunters were only too happy to hear that the treasure hiders had also suffered in the cold darkness and felt it was poetic justice that the agonies of figuring out the clues and searching in the cold was balanced by Peter Gilchrist's lying in a deep puddle of ice water in the middle of the night.

In all, over three hundred clues were picked up at the Ebb Tide during the hunt. Many more people read the first nine clues in the Register. Early in the week, theories abounded about the likely location of the treasure. Hunters were spotted on the footbridge, near the tennis courts, on the high school athletic fields, near the cemetery on Pear Street, and at the Fisherman's Memorial on Atlantic Avenue. As the search area focused on the library, the grounds saw a conglomeration of people rarely witnessed in the wintertime, subsequent to the Harbor Lights Festival. One hunter, Lisa Burnham, was observed getting reference answers to questions about the clues from a librarian—out the back door of the library! Another, Max Weiss, interpreted the clue correctly requiring the searchers to line up the North Star with the peak of the library roof and to sight from there toward the leftmost firehouse door, but he did not realize his line of sight was directly toward the treasure's hiding place. Dale and John of the water department, searching during off-duty hours, extended their streak to three years of being right at the treasure site well in advance of the find, only to miss that last glance that would have brought the treasure token into view.

Once again, the hunt brought young and old, long-time locals and those newly arrived, and hearty outdoors people and wood stove huggers together to scour their memories of old-time Boothbay Harbor, puzzle through the clues, figure out the meanings of obscure words, scope out possible hiding spots, and then get right in to thoroughly check out a possible location. And they all did it with respect for others, concern about the beauty of public venues in the region, good humor, and a great sense of fun.

Nancy and Peter Gilchrist and the entire crew at Ebb Tide thank everyone for making this year's hunt so spirited and fun—and for the fine community support throughout the Ebb Tide's thirty-two years of operation.