08/01/99 Paddling Ironbound Island:
After 3 consecutive days of heavy fog, the sky was actually blue when I staggered out of my tent this morning. On the way down to my Schoodic Point put in a red (?) fox trotted across the road in front of me. He (it) seemed a little taller and a little longer than the traditional image of a fox by there was no doubt what it was.
I was trying to launch early because I figured I had a couple of hours to low tide and might be able to sneak out of my little cove before all the rocks emerged at the mouth. Wrong! My guess now is you have to catch it about 3 hours before and after high tide.
As I paddled out to the mouth a bald eagle flew overhead and I watched it land at the top of a big spruce. Looking closely I could see a nest up there but it seemed much smaller than eagle's nest, more like an osprey's. Maybe this was a young eagle just practicing nest building for next year? I would have thought this year's crop would have been pretty much grown and out of the nest by now.
I paddled out the mouth as far as I could and didn't feel like getting out of the kayak. The first time I had put in at the cove, a very fast current was pouring into the cove from a channel that apparently led from the neighboring cove. There was no apparent current this morning but I backtracked and found the channel. There was a light class II rapid leading around a bend and into the other cove. Kewel!
When I exited the cove I was met with some gentle 1-2 foot swells. A couple of the large sailboats I had seen in a cove in Winter Harbor the other day were motoring out and there was what appeared to be a large ferry crossing the mouth of Frenchman's Bay. It was moving at a pretty good clip and appeared to have 4-5 rooster tails flowing out the back and a fairly large wake.
The sky was a brilliant blue with large, white, cotton ball clouds all over. Quite a difference from recent days. I wanted to spend some time today on the open waters of Frenchman's Bay, not because I was going to see Minke Whales or porpoises but I just wanted the opportunity, if that makes sense.
I found about 100 small 2-3 inch red starfish with no apparent reason for being where they were so I'm assuming that's where they were spawned. There were quite a few sea urchins in the area too. I saw one place offering to buy them. Apparently, most of them go to Japan where they are used as an aphrodisiac.
I paddled on up past Turtle Island and past the Ned Island Lighthouse. And then I found Ironbound Island. What a gem! The east and south coast are continuous rock faces with cliffs in the 50-75 foot range. There were a couple of sea caves and a couple of vertical crevasses. With the trees growing on top of the cliffs, the blue skies and white clouds made a really impressive panorama. I paddled up to the end of the cliffs and then paddled back to the southern tip again.
I found a little tiny cove and rock beach between to rocky points and stopped for lunch. When I rounded to the western side after lunch, I saw a 4-5 masted ship about a mile or so away. I started to paddle like hell to intercept it for a picture but realized it wasv making too much headway and I was too far away for the picture so I gave up the chase.
I started thinking about heading in and turned towards Egg Rock Lighthouse, about 2 miles away. As I approached the lighthouse, I could see waves breaking over some ledges and rocks. As I neared them, I pretty much had decided to go right through the middle of them. As I was about to start forward, waves started coming in from the opposite direction. Some of them were close to 4 footers, very steep and 4-5 seconds apart. I didn't understand why waves should be going against the tide with no wind so I got my butt out of there and went all the way around those ledges.
I had about a 3.5-4.0 mile crossing from Egg Rock to Schoodic Point. For the first half of the crossing there was just a slight breeze, 2-3 foot swells and not even the hint of a ripple. Then a 5-10 knot wind from the northwest started to pick up. This created some 1 foot 'wind waves' going in the opposite direction of the swells. With 0.5 miles to go, the wind picked up to 10-15 knots and the wind waves grew to 1-2 feet. Things deteriorated pretty quickly from there and things got pretty lumpy. Nothing was going to stop those swells. They would roll in right underneath the wind waves every 4-5 seconds or so. Then a large trawler came by with a huge wake to add to the confusion. Fortunately I only had a short distance to go but it had all of my attention while I was out there.
08/05/99 Paddling Porcupine Islands:
I've been hearing about heat waves in various parts of the country… and here I sit wearing a windbreaker because it's chilly. The entire time I've been in northern Maine, there were only 2 days that were in the low 90's, and I was on the water for one of them. For the most part, the temperature has been in the 70's with the low 80's being reached occasionally.
I'm still on Schoodic Peninsula at the same campground. This area has too much to offer for me to leave just yet so I signed on for another week after spending a night in a motel so I could take care of some internet business and update the website.
My charts don't cover the northern part of Mount Desert Island and the surrounding waters for some reason. When I was at the motel, I printed out the missing areas from Delorme's Street Atlas CD and am going to use the printouts for substitute charts.
This morning was bright sunshine as I launched from the public ramp in South Goldsboro. I was simply going to up the coast for as far as I felt like it and then turn around and come back.
As I looked across the bay at Mount Desert Island however, I could see a dense fog rising off the water about a third of the way up Cadillac Mountain, with the rest of the mountain in bright sunshine. The fog seemed to undulate up and down some hills and valleys, forming a really pretty and interesting view. So I paddled over in that direction and got a quick picture.
As I was paddling around trying to get a better picture, I saw a wall of fog approaching up the little bay I was on. It was pretty eerie because there was perfectly clear areas on either side of the fog bank and bright sunshine overhead but here comes this wall of fog heading directly for me. And it was moving fast and in a couple of minutes I was completely surrounded and couldn't see a thing. Fortunately I had check my heading before I became encircled so just kept paddling on that course. 10 minutes later I was back in sunshine but it took a while longer for MDI to reappear.
Since I was headed in this direction I decided to keep on keeping on. Another island appeared and looking at the map/chart I couldn't identify it. Well, I had to use a moderately high level view of the area to get everything on one piece of paper so maybe that island didn't get included. Then another and another appeared, none of which were on the chart. At last I saw a couple of islands that identified by sight as some of the Porcupine Islands and was finally able to orient myself on the map.
These islands are another keeper. They're gorgeous! Legend has it that an Abenaki chief got PO'ed during a tribal meeting on top of Cadillac Mountain and grabbed several porcupines and threw them off the mountain into the water, creating the Porcupine Island group just off of Bar Harbor.
All of the islands have steep cliffs up to 100 feet on the southern exposed coast and then slope gently towards the north. The cliffs are made up of layered rock formations of various colors and present a very striking contrast to the rest of the island. I spent a couple of hours just paddling around these southern shores admiring the majestic cliffs, riding the swells as the poured into sea caves and deep clefts in the walls.
The other day I had seen a 4 masted schooner but didn't get close enough to take a picture. Today I saw it anchored outside of Bar Harbor about a mile away and as I watched I saw them begin hoisting the sails. In a few minutes they were underway and I set an intercepting course and was able to get a couple of decent pictures (I hope). It had a total of 7 sails, 3 of which were foresails? I assume this is some sort of tour boat and people probably pay $100 for a 2-3 hour trip.
I saw more kayaks today coming in and out of Bar Harbor than I've seen in all my other years on the water. ( A rabbit, the size of a mid-size dog just went through my camp site? Sounded like a horse as it thudded through). I guess they were half day tours provided by the local outfitters. There would typically be 6-10 doubles with 2 singles acting as outriders. There were 3 or 4 groups, several doubles out on their own and several singles either on their own or in groups. The other day I met the first kayaker on the water I had seen all year and he said pretty much the same thing. We both commented on the fact that there were 100's of cars with kayaks and canoes on roof racks but we never saw anyone on the water. There must be some secret spot they all go to that I don't know about. Either that or carrying a kayak on a roof rack is some sort of new status symbol to show how cool you are?
Anyway, I'm sure I'll be reporting on the Porcupines again. They are well worth doing again and when I get over on MDI, I'm sure I'll visit them again when launching from Bar Harbor.
08/05/99 Paddling Porcupine Islands:
I've been hearing about heat waves in various parts of the country… and here I sit wearing a windbreaker because it's chilly. The entire time I've been in northern Maine, there were only 2 days that were in the low 90's, and I was on the water for one of them. For the most part, the temperature has been in the 70's with the low 80's being reached occasionally.
I'm still on Schoodic Peninsula at the same campground. This area has too much to offer for me to leave just yet so I signed on for another week after spending a night in a motel so I could take care of some internet business and update the website.
My charts don't cover the northern part of Mount Desert Island and the surrounding waters for some reason. When I was at the motel, I printed out the missing areas from Delorme's Street Atlas CD and am going to use the printouts for substitute charts.
This morning was bright sunshine as I launched from the public ramp in South Goldsboro. I was simply going to up the coast for as far as I felt like it and then turn around and come back.
As I looked across the bay at Mount Desert Island however, I could see a dense fog rising off the water about a third of the way up Cadillac Mountain, with the rest of the mountain in bright sunshine. The fog seemed to undulate up and down some hills and valleys, forming a really pretty and interesting view. So I paddled over in that direction and got a quick picture.
As I was paddling around trying to get a better picture, I saw a wall of fog approaching up the little bay I was on. It was pretty eerie because there was perfectly clear areas on either side of the fog bank and bright sunshine overhead but here comes this wall of fog heading directly for me. And it was moving fast and in a couple of minutes I was completely surrounded and couldn't see a thing. Fortunately I had check my heading before I became encircled so just kept paddling on that course. 10 minutes later I was back in sunshine but it took a while longer for MDI to reappear.
Since I was headed in this direction I decided to keep on keeping on. Another island appeared and looking at the map/chart I couldn't identify it. Well, I had to use a moderately high level view of the area to get everything on one piece of paper so maybe that island didn't get included. Then another and another appeared, none of which were on the chart. At last I saw a couple of islands that identified by sight as some of the Porcupine Islands and was finally able to orient myself on the map.
These islands are another keeper. They're gorgeous! Legend has it that an Abenaki chief got PO'ed during a tribal meeting on top of Cadillac Mountain and grabbed several porcupines and threw them off the mountain into the water, creating the Porcupine Island group just off of Bar Harbor.
All of the islands have steep cliffs up to 100 feet on the southern exposed coast and then slope gently towards the north. The cliffs are made up of layered rock formations of various colors and present a very striking contrast to the rest of the island. I spent a couple of hours just paddling around these southern shores admiring the majestic cliffs, riding the swells as the poured into sea caves and deep clefts in the walls.
The other day I had seen a 4 masted schooner but didn't get close enough to take a picture. Today I saw it anchored outside of Bar Harbor about a mile away and as I watched I saw them begin hoisting the sails. In a few minutes they were underway and I set an intercepting course and was able to get a couple of decent pictures (I hope). It had a total of 7 sails, 3 of which were foresails? I assume this is some sort of tour boat and people probably pay $100 for a 2-3 hour trip.
I saw more kayaks today coming in and out of Bar Harbor than I've seen in all my other years on the water. ( A rabbit, the size of a mid-size dog just went through my camp site? Sounded like a horse as it thudded through). I guess they were half day tours provided by the local outfitters. There would typically be 6-10 doubles with 2 singles acting as outriders. There were 3 or 4 groups, several doubles out on their own and several singles either on their own or in groups. The other day I met the first kayaker on the water I had seen all year and he said pretty much the same thing. We both commented on the fact that there were 100's of cars with kayaks and canoes on roof racks but we never saw anyone on the water. There must be some secret spot they all go to that I don't know about. Either that or carrying a kayak on a roof rack is some sort of new status symbol to show how cool you are?
Anyway, I'm sure I'll be reporting on the Porcupines again. They are well worth doing again and when I get over on MDI, I'm sure I'll visit them again when launching from Bar Harbor.
08/10/99 Paddling Flanders Bay:
I've only paddled once in the past several days. There have been pretty heavy winds from the northwest bringing in cold air (60's/70's during the day) and choppy water. There was heavy fog the one day there wasn't a northwest wind. Unlike weekends and vacations, I'm not on a limited schedule and don't feel a sense of urgency in having to be out on the water every day.
I did paddle the first day of the northwest winds. On that day I put in at South Gouldsboro and when I got out into open water I felt how strong the winds were. Knowing northwest winds are likely to last all day, I headed into them. I'd much rather fight winds at the beginning of a trip while I'm still fresh than at the end of the day when I'm likely to be really tired.
I paddled up into Flanders Bay between West Goldsboro and Sorrento averaging about 2 knots and got a pretty good workout for 2.5 hours or so. This is a pretty paddle with a couple of islands to investigate and Schoodic Mountain sitting in the background the entire time.
On the way back, the Cadillac & Champlain Mountains were in sight most of the way as were a few of the Porcupine Islands. All in all, a pretty trip.