07/16/99 Paddling Rogue Island:
I've moved back north a little to Sunset Campgrounds (not in Delorme Atlas), just north of Harrington, Maine off of Route 1 near Cole Point on the Harrington River. I've been putting too many miles on the truck and realized I had moved too far south and there was still areas I wanted to paddle up here.
The past few days before I moved involved a couple of quiet, uneventful paddles. Nice, but nothing really to report on. When I moved back north a little, that put me within striking distance of Rouge Island and I just had to do it again yesterday. The last time I had gone around the island counter-clockwise so this time I went around clockwise.
I put in at the same clammers launch on the other side of Rouge Bluffs at a couple of hours into the flood tide. I thought I'd take my time and get around to the outside of the island around high tide again.
It was fairly warm for around here, in the low 80's, there was no wind at all and the seas were like glass. I made the 1.25 mile crossing to Great Head on Rouge Island and then aimed for Marsh Island and a couple of smaller islands off of Rouge another mile or so away.
As soon as I got away from the immediate protection of Rouge Island, it was like walking into a freezer. There was a slight breeze but it was blowing on shore and bringing a lot of air in the 60's. Brrr.
I was watching an eagle soaring overhead as it made repeated passes over a channel. Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention to anything else and scared about 15 seals that were basking on a nearby rock. They all hit the water and one guy was so pissed, he rolled up on his side and really smacked the water hard with his flipper and tail. I said 'Sorry guys' and headed away.
I glanced out to the ocean, looked, and looked again. I swear I saw a submarine out there. A long skinny thing with what looked like a conning tower and a flag pole. My depth perception wasn't working and I couldn't tell how far away it was. And then the conning tower kinda drifted away from the rest of the submarine? What?
I got the binoculars out for a better look but it was still too far away to get a good look at while bobbing up and down. Now it looked like a flag on a very low lying island. But the island was too low with the tide still coming in. Anything that low would have to be submerged at high tide and why would they have a flag on a submerged island. Therefore it must be floating. What could be floating around out there with a flag on it. A diver's platform? I dunno but it works for me.
I crossed back over to the outer coast of Rouge Island in dead calm seas. As I started up the coast I'm wondering what happened to the 50 foot cliffs. I know I'm in the right place. Am I crazy? Did I exaggerate everything in a previous report? Did a little bit of wave action during the last trip get the adrenaline flowing enough for me to distort everything? The coast is extremely rugged and pretty, but 50 foot cliffs? No way. More like 20-30 feet.
And then after 0.5 miles the coast seems to end. What's going on? I thought the coast was more like 1.0-1.25 or something?
Then it starts to make sense. There are a series of small islands, maybe 1-5 acres each. These are the guys with some of the taller, perpendicular cliffs. You sure get a different perspective when you're going the other way. One of the things I learned early on when leaving an area you'll be coming back to. Always turn around and look where you've been so you'll know what it looks like on the way back. I spent the next hour or so just cruising amongst these islands. There's about 5-8 of them with narrow channels and you they present a mini-fjord type setting.
I scared up another group of seals and as I rounded the far end of the island the wind picked up and the temperature dropped again. It was blowing at my back and I got to surf 1.5 foot waves the 5 or so miles back to the put in.
With the difference in the seas between the first and second trips, I'm starting to think it might be worth the trip back up to the Cutler Coast. That is a trip I'd really like to do. However, I think that would be a 10 mile or so round trip up a rugged coast with little chance for a break or a landing if things go badly. I'm still thinking about that one.
07/18/99 Paddling Dyer Island:
Well, I finally did it. My Yakama racks make an ideal place to hang a wet suit or spray skirt to drip while I pack the rest of the stuff away and throw the kayak up on the racks. This morning, while checking things over before today's paddle I couldn't find my spray skirt. I distinctly remember (as well as I can remember anything, anymore) hanging it on the far side rack after taking out the other day. Today, nothing! I guess I won't do that anymore.
It didn't take me long to realize I couldn't very well go out without a spray skirt. In reviewing my options I thought of going over to Bangor because someone was telling me about a fairly big kayaking/canoe place there. I also thought of Mainesport in Rockport. Without making a decision, I started out thinking the whole day was shot only to realize I had a spare spray skirt with me. It was my good neoprene skirt that was gone but I still had an older nylon type Perception skirt I had brought along.
I didn't paddle yesterday and hung out with some people I met for the day. The temperature was in the 90's, the only hot day I've had since I've been up here. I got the salt water rod out and went fishing for a couple hours in the evening just to get some of the sea breeze.
Today, (Sunday) was supposed to be another hot one so I wanted to get out on the water fairly early. I drove to a public ramp down near the end of Ripley Neck at pretty much low tide. This is a really steep ramp and I was afraid to take the truck down for fear of getting stuck at the bottom of a ramp at low tide. I have a 'thing' about that.
Looking in the water I saw a herd of red starfish. What? What do you call them? A gaggle of starfish? I looked around a little more and decided there must be a hundred of them right there on the shore, some in the water, some out. Then I saw there were hundreds of them. No, more than a thousand. No sh*t! They were all over the place for a couple of hundred yards of the ramp. What were they doing there? I dunno, just hanging out I guess. The only thing going for them might be all the baby mussels right there. I don't know if that accounts for the number of them because there were plenty of mussels in the entire area and there were only a few of starfish there or none at all.
I paddled out into the Harrington River with the wet suit in the forward hatch, the PFD bungied on the rear deck and the spare spray skirt on, but not fastened around the cockpit. It was already hot and there wasn't a breath of wind anywhere. The water was like glass.
I paddled up the Harrington which was mostly mud flats on both sides with the tide out. There were a couple of 25-29 foot sailboats moored on the far side and I spent some time checking them out, wishing and sighing and stuff. After an hour of leisurely paddling I turned around and headed back out the river since it was mostly mud flats up ahead.
As I neared Dyer Island, outside the mouth of the Harrington, a 5-10 knot wind picked up bringing cool breezes from the ocean and I said 'Thank you very much' to whoever was in charge. There were a couple of small, pretty island on this end of Dyer. Dyer's outside coastline was fairly rugged with 15-20 foot rock formations 2/3rds of the way down the coast then it changed over to a series of meadows.
When I got to the end of the island, the wind picked up some more and I found myself in some 1-1.5 foot waves. There was another island, Flint, I think, not far off of this end of Dyer. There were several, of what I took to be fish pens along Flint's shoreline but they didn't show up on the charts.
The air temperature was in the lower 70's now, the water was much colder, the waves were a consistant 1.5 feet and the wind was 10-15 knots. I thought it might be a good time to break out the safety gear and landed on a rocky beach in 1.5 breakers.
I got the wet suit and PFD on and got ready to launch back into the waves. One thing about those waves, they're relentless, they just keep coming and coming. If you think you're going to wait for a break in the action, you'll be old and gray before it happens (older and grayer?). And, the amount of force in just a little breaker is amazing. If the kayak gets sideways and a breaker catches it, it can slam the kayak into your shins with enough force to send you off reciting the alphabet (or whatever you like to recite in situations like that).
The main thing to do is get the bow of the kayak pointed directly into the waves. Then straddle the kayak with the paddle placed across the rear deck behind the cockpit. Then you put your hands on the paddle behind you for balance, lower your butt and try to get your feet into the cockpit as quickly as possible before the waves have a chance to knock the kayak sideways. I've gotten myself side ways a couple of times. That's when you pull yourself up out of the water and look around to see if anyone was watching. Once I'm in, I just paddle out a little so I'm away from the shore. Then I can take a little more time to get the spray skirt around the cockpit.
Not 20 seconds after I had the spray skirt secured, a wave caught me from my aft quarter. If I hadn't gotten the spray skirt on I would have had a cockpit half full of water.
After coming full circle around Dyer Island, I used the GPS to get a bearing on the put in and had a nice tail wind and following waves for the 2.5 mile paddle back. Thunderstorms had been forecast and the clouds started to move in during the crossing. I made it back and loaded up before the first raindrops fell.
07/20/99 Paddling Great Waas Island:
On the way north a few weeks ago I stopped off at Jonesport, simply because it looked like a neat place on the map. Beals Island is right off the coast and is connected by a bridge. A smaller bridge connects Beals to Great Waas Island. I drove around for a little while but wasn't overly impressed so I left with no real intentions of returning.
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a local artist who got to talking about Great Waas Island, the hiking s there and how he'd done a number of sketches there.
Fast forward to the present.
Looking at Delorme's and the NOAA charts a little closer this morning, I saw the outer coast of Great Waas Island looked interesting with several contour lines on it indicating cliffs along the shore as did several of the nearby islands, so off I went.
There was a brisk wind blowing from the northwest and the temperatures were probably in the 60's when I launched near low tide. The tail wind felt good but previous experience told me the northwest wind would hang around all day and I'd have to fight it on the way back.. Sure 'nuff.
There are several large and small islands on the Great Waas east coast and a couple of small islands on the west coast. I had vague ambitions of going up the east coast, around the exposed southern coast, fiddle around the islands on the west coast, come back and fool around the islands on the east coast before heading in.
Beals is a functional rather than an attractive location as is the north side of Great Waas with haphazard houses, several lobster piers and a goodly number of lobster boats as well as a couple of trawlers in the little cove. No pleasure boats.
The east coast is a couple of miles of undeveloped forest with relatively low rock formations along the shore. As I neared southern end, it became almost one solid piece of pink granite looming as high as 20-25 feet.
These rocks looked like they hadn't been disturbed by the glaciers. Whereas other areas have been twisted and upheaved by the glaciers, causing some of the their rock formations to be pointing straight up into the air, these seem as though they had never been disturbed. Most of the contours of the rock were nice and smooth, indicating (to me) this was the result of natural wind and water erosion and not some major natural event.
I passed a couple of groups of hikers on the way out and saw a colony of about 20 seals soon enough to avoid scaring them off their rock.
Now I'm paddling along the exposed southern shore with no problems, no wind, no waves, not a care in the world, just enjoying the scenery. Then all of a sudden it seemed as if a landslide was occurring on a point a hundred yards ahead. The whole side facing me and then the point just seemed to be sliding closer to the water and then stopped. What a weird sensation. Then I realized I was scaring up a lot of seals, and I mean a lot of seals. The entire point was wall to wall seals.
I immediately headed out to sea to avoid disturbing them further. As I'm paddling out, I'm trying to get a rough count of how many there are. I came up with around 200 on the side facing me and the point and when I went passed the point I saw about another 50 on the other side. That's almost 3 times my record number of about 80 before. About half of them hit the water but when I got about 150 yards off shore, the rest calmed down again. Those that did hit the water just seemed to disappear. I could see a few of them but most seemed to have just disappeared. My guess is they were hanging close to shore and I couldn't see them because of the seaweed in the background.
I got around the southern shore around noon so started looking for a place to have lunch. There are no beaches and most of the coast is steep rock formations. There are a few places with low laying rocks covered with seaweed at low tide but that's about it and even they had many steep drop offs. So I made a little seal landing.
This is where you watch how the waves surge up on the seaweed covered rocks. You'll see how the waves pile up on the rocks and then flow outward leaving the rock dry again. So, you pick a likely looking more or less flat rock, wait for a good wave and then ride the wave in and up on the rock. When the wave flows back out you're left high and dry. Of course you have to secure yourself in some manner so other waves don't smash you around or drag you back out again. I picked a nice low group of rocks and let a small wave push me up on them, then got out and pulled the kayak up a little further, out of harms way and had lunch.
After lunch I turned around and started back along the southern coast. There were a bunch of these little miniature gull things with forked tails dive bombing into the water after small fish on the surface. They'd build up a real head of steam and then go crashing a couple of feet into the water after a fish. It's a wonder they didn't break something. I had seen a few of them before but now there were 20-30 of them all working the same area. Made me wonder if there were some larger fish down there chasing the smaller fish to the surface.
Instead of going back up the east coast I made a mile or so crossing to the Moose Peak Lighthouse on Mistake Island which sits on a bluff. As I was passing the lighthouse a baby seal surfaced right in front of me, took one look at me and dove again. It was about 3.5 feet long and probably weighed about 15-20 pounds. I was kinda surprised because I thought all the pups would have been just about grown by now.
As I rounded the point, I started seeing some swirling action in the water, then I saw one of those forked tailed birds hovering and swooping. Then I saw it was the seal pup in the water. The pup would float just below the surface and the bird would hover around for a few seconds and then dive on the pup. When the bird dove, the pup would come up out of the water after the bird.
I don't know if they were playing or what. They looked kinda serious. If they were they both need a little more guidance from the older folks. The bird would have been in big trouble if he caught the pup and had to lift it out of the water and I doubt if the pup would have been happy with a mouthful of feathers.
I watched them for 5 minutes or so and snapped a couple of pictures that I know won't turn out. The pup seemed to be having a real good time rolling around, splashing and trying to catch the bird. It wasn't very observant though. It surfaced and rolled around a couple of times, not 10 feet from the kayak and never knew I was there. Unfortunately I had already put the camera away.
I don't know if the are any natural predators for seals in the area. The only ones I know about are sharks and orcas and I don't think either of them are around here. The pup was all alone and would be easy pickings for something hungry. I hope it made it back to it's colony ok.
After that, it was a 3 mile paddle against a 10-15 knot wind back to the put in. I got a bearing from the GPS and kept it on for a couple of minutes to see how fast I was going. It said 1.7 knots but I knew that had to be wrong. In fact, it took me a little more than an hour to get back.
All in all, I'd say this trip was a keeper. If you're ever down east, stop by and check out Great Wass Island in Jonesport.
07/22/99 Paddling Pleasant Bay:
I t appears I'm sitting here in the heart of blueberry country and it's the beginning of the blueberry harvest. I've seen a number of cars pulled over to the side of the road and people out picking roadside blueberries. Now the migrant farm workers are moving into the campgrounds to begin the harvest.
The ones here now are mostly from Florida and West Virginia. There are a couple of families but most of the cars & vans arrive with 6-8 men who then crowd into a small cabin or campsite. I get to listen to a lot of Latin music but there's no drinking or rowdiness and everyone seems pretty serious about getting to work. For the most part, everyone is quiet and friendly.
I put in at the ramp with all the starfish again and got to talking to a lobsterman about them. He thought the adults had moved in to feast on the baby mussels and then spawned there and that was the reason for so many of them. Most of the starfish were only 3-4 inches. I don't know how fast they grow or how long they've been there but that might be the answer for their large numbers.
I paddled the mile or so to the end of Ripley Neck where there are several small islands clustered together fairly closely. I had been down here before when I was supposed to be heading for the Harrington Bay and ended up in Pleasant Bay instead.
I had recharged the batteries in the GPS the night before. When the batteries go dead (or you take them out) you lose all the data that had been stored in it. I forgot to set the position for the ramp so I'd at least know where I started the trip from and again when I got to the end of Ripley Neck.
I paddled in and around the islands for a while which are very rugged and quite pretty. I was rounding the far outside of the last island, ready to head into Pleasant Bay when the far side of the bay disappeared as a fog bank moved in. As it came in from the ocean, I watched it just eat up the far shoreline. I'd heard of the Maine fog moving in like that but hadn't experienced it myself before. I was sitting in the sunshine under blue skies and it was kind of spooky.
I had planned on making the 1-1.5 mile crossing now, under known conditions but then decided there was no real reason for me to do so and turned down the near shoreline of Pleasant Bay. As I did so, I felt the southwest wind start to pick up at my back. As I'm paddling along, the thought starts going through my mind that the farther the wind pushes me, the farther I'm going to have to fight it on the way back. Do I really want to do that? Nope!
So I get the chart out, get a bearing of almost due east and head off towards the fog and in a couple of minutes I can't see either shore. Now that can be spooky. Kinda like sitting in a big white room with no doors or windows. You don't realize how much you rely on your line of sight until you don't have one. Now all you can rely on is your compass. I could've also relied on the GPS if I had remembered to take a position before heading off into the fog, but I didn't.
This wasn't a very big deal. The far shore extended much farther out to sea than mine so it would be almost impossible to miss it. If I got nervous I could always reverse course or head due north, inland, and hit something eventually.
I'm paddling along and find a red nun (buoy). After locating it on the chart I see the wind has pushed me inland farther than I would have expected but I'm still happy so off I go into the fog again.
Soon, I hit what can only be an island. There is only one group of islands in the area but they're much farther inland. I got the GPS out to see exactly where I was and matched that up with the chart and they matched. So the wind had again pushed me farther than I thought or I can't maintain a compass heading worth a damn.
I paddled amongst the islands a little and then decided to stop on a nice beach for an early lunch and wait the fog out. This whole time, the sky overhead was clear and blue and the sunshine was shining down on me (as opposed to that dark cloud that usually follows me around).
I started dozing off and when I'd awake, sometimes I'd be able to see the far shore and sometimes it would be gone again. Before I knew it, it was 2pm and the southwest wind was really blowing and waves were starting to stack up. I double check the chart for a heading to my original shore and it's pretty much due west. I paddle away from my island and start turning the kayak due west but it's in the exact opposite direction I would have thought. I've already learned that the compass is more likely to be right than I am so I headed in that direction with a few misgivings.
When I got around the islands I could see the western shore and conceded the compass was correct and my sense of direction might not be infallible. If I'd gone my way, I'd probably still be paddling, about half way to France by now.
The wind is blowing directly in my face at a steady 15 knots, no doubt. The waves are a steady 2 foot high and about 2 seconds apart with a lot of whitecaps. Taking a wave, even a fairly high and steep one, head on is no big deal as the kayak just rides up and over it, pretty much on its own. Your job, for the most part, is to just keep the bow pointed into the wave. Things get interesting, however, when the waves are close together and 2 seconds is very close together, one right after another.
I'd go up one wave, bellyflop off of it, plow into a second wave, water would come crashing up and over the foredeck and up my chest and face and this goes on and on and on.
The red nun is less than half a mile directly ahead and it takes me 40 minutes to get there and I had great fun all the way. From there, to head for the islands off the end of Ripley Neck, I would have had to take those waves off my beam which is not really a good idea so I took them off the bow quarter after dropping the rudder for better control, paddled past the islands and ran with the wiind and waves back along them.
Turning back into the Harrington River to the put in, the waves were off my stern quarter and this is where I sometimes have problems. The occasional wave will come along the side of the rear deck and water will hit me in the back and along my side. If the spray skirt isn't on securely, water can flood into the cockpit. This can obviously present problems because the next wave can dump even more water until you're ready to turn over.
The wind and waves let up for a while but by the time I got back to the ramp, they were back and this was the most exciting part of the day. I've got to pull up to this steeply sloping cement ramp, get both feet out of the cockpit, get myself stabilized so I can stand up and get control of the kayak. And I have to do this with 1-1.5 foot waves crashing the kayak into the cement ramp and I have to overcome and control the 'man pain' which is still with me.
Well, it was interesting. I've got the stern into the wind, get one foot out, the pain hits, the waves push the stern side ways, I'm leaning on the kayak into the waves, one wave comes up and into the cockpit, I fight through the pain and get upright with one leg in and one leg out of the boat and stabilize the boat a little. The waves are now pushing the kayak into the ramp and I'm starting to do a split as all this is pulling my legs apart and really helping the pain (not!). I'm leaning on the paddle and finally hop around on one leg, cursing my butt off, until I get close enough to the kayak to get my other foot out before the waves smash the boat to a pulp against the ramp. Once I got the pain under control, lugging the kayak up that steep ramp was a piece of cake. At least there wasn't anyone there to witness this disaster for a change.
A good time was had by all.