Max Weiss Max Weiss discovers the Ebb Tide Treasure Hunt token tied to a tree at the Penny Lake Preserve. Weiss said he searched a total of nine hours before finding it at about 2:15 p.m. on Friday.

The Ebb Tide 33 rd Anniversary Treasure Hunt came to a successful conclusion Friday afternoon when Boothbay Region High School senior Max Weiss found the treasure token worth three hundred thirty dollars attached to a tree near the outer trail around the Boothbay Region Land Trust's Penny Lake Preserve.

Weiss picked up the fourteenth clue at Ebb Tide just after it was posted Friday at 1:30 and drove to the Penny Lake rear entrance off Emery Lane near St. Andrews Village. Searching with his parents, Mitch and Dawn Weiss, Max crossed the bridge, walked around the outer trail to the No ATV sign, and paced off the sixty-eight steps mentioned in the clue. With Max on the trail and father Mitch in the clearing leading to the high meadow, they closed in on the four-trees-in-a-line referenced in an earlier clue. At 2:15, the token was spotted hanging midair on the back side of the largest of the four trees by the finder, who had his picture taken before pocketing the token and proceeding to the Ebb Tide to collect his winnings.

A multitude of treasure seekers descended on the Penny Lake site beginning Wednesday afternoon. By Thursday, several dozen forays into the area had been made and a traffic jam at the main entrance caused by vehicles sliding off the icy access road directed more effort to vehicle-extraction than to searching. When the treasure token was found Friday, several other searchers were in the preserve, including some near the token site.

Penny Lake was the center of attention for most of the week, although searchers were spotted on the school ball fields, at the Lobster Cove Meadow BRLT property, at the downtown Waterfront Park, on the Library lawn, at the scout camp, and along area roadways. The hunt this year featured several "firsts." In addition to the first traffic jam, Karen Roberts became the first hunter during the four-year history of the treasure hunt to find a phony token. Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Roberts located a metal ring hanging from a rope at the distance over the ground specified in clue two while searching in the area of the scout camp. After checking its authenticity at Ebb Tide, she returned to the search, only to become an integral part of Thursday's traffic jam at the Penny Lake entrance kiosk. Judy Marshall earned the title of the first treasure hunt Purple Heart Winner when she encountered a very icy stretch at Penny Lake Wednesday while bravely negotiating the trails. And many hunters vied for the title of "first person to walk right by the treasure site." The token was located five feet from the outer trail around the Preserve, and it was visible from the trail. Many veterans of past treasure hunts had walked the outer trail before the treasure was found, and several people are competing for the longest stretch of "being right by the treasure every year without quite seeing it!"

The finder intends to share some of the winnings with his family, make a donation to the Boothbay Region Land Trust, and save the remainder for college. He hopes to attend the Engineering School of the University of Maine at Orono next year. Asked whether he had endured any hardships in searching for the treasure, Weiss replied, "Numb feet." The family had begun serious searching on Wednesday. They zeroed in on the Penny Lake site nearly from the beginning and used their familiarity with the property gained while participating in geocaching in the region. Geocaching is a sport in which one finds hidden "caches" containing logs in obscure locations using given coordinates and GPS devices. One cache is located in Penny Lake. Weiss said that overall he had searched for nine hours during three days, including a foray using a high-powered flashlight late Thursday night.

The search area expanded from Boothbay Harbor's public property to include BRLT properties this year, thanks to the gracious permission of the Land Trust. Wintertime visitors to the Land Trust properties are rare, especially in severe weather conditions. But this year the Penny Lake property saw summertime levels of hikers, many seeing the rare beauty of the nearly virgin woods—right in the heart of Boothbay Harbor—for the first time. Ebb Tide owners and treasure hunt organizers Peter and Nancy Gilchrist express their thanks to the Land Trust for the opportunity to extend the hunt to the Harbor's most beautiful spots.

The hunt this year was its usual madcap enterprise. For a whole week, many people never gave the economy, everyday worries, or politics a thought as they pondered clues and their possible relationships to sites around Boothbay Harbor. People who usually brave the out-of-doors only to travel to the store, work, or school found themselves out of sight of any building, road, vehicle, or sign of the presence of humans. Dogs got unusually long walks across snowy trails. Grandparents and old-timers were questioned about their recollections of the way things were in old-time Boothbay Harbor. Dictionaries and the internet were consulted to an abnormal degree to find obscure meanings of normal words and normal meanings of obscure words. And everyone drove to places they hadn't been before to see if the clues matched the scene. They often did. In the words of Dawn Weiss, mother of the treasure finder, "Every place seems to match the clues."

One searcher informed Peter Gilchrist on Wednesday that the clues were "Messing with my mind." The sentiment was often heard, but the treasure clue writers claim, once again, that the treasure could have been found as early as Tuesday afternoon after only the first five clues—by someone who was very careful and very lucky. Buried in those first five clues were the general location (somewhere wooded and rugged with a clearing where you can see two churches and having something to do with "woodland"—Woodland Avenue— and Holy Scot—St. Andrews Village) and the specific location (hanging 3 foot 2 over the ground along a trail that runs northeast and southwest and at a site with 4 trees in a row, three small and one large). The consensus among searchers was to the contrary, however. "There are way too many places that make sense," one searcher proclaimed.

Both Gilchrists expressed their thanks for the fun to all the people who searched, their congratulations to Max Weiss for finding the token, and their heartfelt appreciation to everyone for all the support over the thirty-three year history of the Ebb Tide.