ROCKLAND, Maine - The day is sunny and the wind steady as the two-masted schooner American Eagle - one of the fleet of passenger-carrying windjammers that ply the Maine coast each summer - sails into the broad expanse of Penobscot Bay.

Having helped raise the schooner's sails, passengers line the rails to wave goodbye to land, other boats in Rockland Harbor, fishermen on the breakwater, and maybe to a few of their cares and worries as well. Windjammers have no fixed itinerary (that's part of their charm) and let prevailing winds set the course and dictate speed.

Finding a place to anchor is rarely a problem. Penobscot Bay is dotted with islands offering sheltered coves and protected harbors, one of the reasons it's such a popular yachting area.

John Foss, American Eagle's skipper and owner, brings the schooner around and heads up the coast, following the line of the Camden Hills that begin just north of Rockland. The ruggedly beautiful Maine coastal scenery is another reason people love to sail up here.

As the hills slip away to the stern, Foss spins the wheel, puts American Eagle on a northeasterly course and announces with casual authority, "I think we'll anchor off Islesboro tonight." The next night it could be Deer Isle, Stonington, North Haven, or wherever.

A windjammer cruise is an old-fashioned, low-tech stress beater, with a different small port to visit each day and constantly changing seascapes to enjoy. What it isn't is a trip on a luxury liner.

Cabins are comfortable but usually cramped. Meals, which are cooked on woodstoves, are generous and savory (homemade bread and muffins are the rule) but not gourmet. Entertainment is homegrown. Foss reads poems and short stories to his passengers after dinner, for instance, while other captains play the guitar or organize sea chantey singalongs.

All of the dozen or so windjammers in the fleet have a lobster bake during each cruise, usually on an uninhabited island. You'll never know just how good a Maine lobster can taste until you've eaten one cooked in a bucket of seawater on the beach of a lupine-speckled island in Penobscot Bay.

Windjammers themselves are as indigenous to the Maine coast as lobsters and a century ago seemed nearly as common. Today, the fleet is unique. Nowhere else in the world will you find such a concentration of passenger-carrying sailing ships as along mid-coast Maine.

Most of the windjammers are veterans of the age of sail and began as coastal cargo carriers. The oldest, the Lewis R. French, was launched in Christmas Cove, Maine, in 1871 and has been carrying timber and passengers along the Maine coast ever since. The Stephen Taber was built as a coastal schooner on Long Island in the same year. Both are listed on the National Historic Register.

The 132-foot-long Victory Chimes, built in 1900 to carry lumber around Chesapeake Bay, accommodates 40 passengers and is the largest passenger sailing vessel under the American flag. It is also the last three-masted schooner on the East Coast.

It's often difficult, at least for a landlubber, to tell a modern windjammer - one built to carry passengers, not freight - from a historic one. For instance, the 30-passenger Heritage, launched in 1983 at North End shipyard in Rockland, has contemporary comforts but the sturdy lines of a traditional 19th-century Maine coaster.

Although banded together in the Maine Windjammer Association, schooners are individually owned by their captains (frequently a husband-and-wife team) and have distinctive characters. Each almost always boasts an eventful history.

Ask him about American Eagle's background and Foss smiles. "She's 70 years old," he says, "and is one of the last Gloucester fishing schooners." Launched in Gloucester, Mass., in 1930, the American Eagle was a commercial fishing vessel on Georges Bank off the New England coast for more than 50 years.

Foss bought the 24-passenger schooner in 1983 and completely rebuilt and restored it at the North End yard. Although most of its sailing is around Penobscot Bay, American Eagle is an oceangoing vessel, not a coaster, and has cruised as far as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The windjammers are based in Rockland, Camden, and Rockport, but all of them, along with visiting tall ships, will pass in review during Rockland's Schooner Days and North Atlantic Blues Festival, July 7-9. Any windjammer under sail is a beautiful sight, but watching a parade of them with all flags flying is an experience.

IF YOU GO

Schooners can carry 20 to 40 passengers. Accommodations are simple but comfortable (all have hot showers), and meals are hearty. Every cruise includes a lobster bake, usually on an uninhabited island in the middle of the bay.

Prices range from $350 to $800 for two- to six-day cruises. Reservations, particularly for midsummer cruises, must be made well in advance.

The sailing season runs through Columbus Day with special events throughout the summer. For instance, there will be a windjammer parade during Rockland's Schooner Days Festival, July 7-9.

Rockland, the largest windjammer port, is 185 miles from Boston. Concord Trailways (800-639-3317) provides bus service to Rockland, and Colgan Air (800-428-4322) has daily flights from Logan Airport.