08/13/99 >Paddling Hulls Cove:
Oh Gawd! Friday the 13th. Am I ever gonna survive this day? And I crossed paths with a skunk on my early morning walk. Does that count as a black cat?
I stayed on at Ocean Wood Campground on Schoodic Peninsula for another week because there was so much more great paddling I could have done from there. Unfortunately, if there weren't high winds out of the northwest, everything was socked in with fog so I only got two days paddling in during the last week.
On the way up Route 186 as I was leaving, I saw a lot of leaves had already changed colors. No kidding! A lot of the leaves had turned yellow. It has been pretty cold for several days at a time, 60's/70's during the days and 40's/50's at night. It's got me all confused so I don't blame the trees for thinking it's autumn. Those trees weren't the oaks and maples, probably some of the weaker trees like birch or poplar.
I'm at the Lemoine State Park just north of Ellsworth, Maine and directly across from Mount Desert Island. They have showers here so I signed on for a week. I'll have to start paying attention to Labor Day coming up as I don't want to be looking for a place to stay during a holiday weekend.
Each area I've visited this year seems to be covered with a different kind of fruit. Blueberries in one area, raspberries in another, sugar pears somewhere else. This area is full of apple trees. Johnny Appleseed must have passed through here, several times, because it has been written that God didn't make little green apples (and it don't rain in ....).
This morning was all fogged in again but I decided to go out anyway. It's been so long since I've been paddling that when I went to take to kayak off the roof rack, it was covered with cobwebs. No kidding.
There were quite a few red starfish in the 3-5 inch range at the bottom of the Lemoine State Park ramp, but no where near the number at Ripley Neck a few weeks ago.
In talking to a couple of lobster men at the put in, the indicated a sea kayak shows up on their radar pretty much the way a sea gull does. That's not a problem for me because I stay well out of their way or just sit there until I'm sure I know in which direction they're headed. If I'm in fog and they sound near I also just sit there waiting for visual contact before deciding which way to go.
Because of all the fog, I just hung a left from the ramp and headed up the coast. I passed several sailboats moored along the way and after checking out the compass direction, went out and checked each one out.
I was paddling pretty close to shore when I saw a lone Canadian goose on shore. It saw me, took the water and started paddling after me. It was really chugging away, leaning into each forward stroke like I'm supposed to do. It must have been doing about 2-2.5 knots but couldn't keep up with me.
The tide was out and I rounded a bunch of rocks and found a heron of some sort on another rock, not 40 feet away. I know it wasn't a blue heron because they take off if you're withing a hundred feet and I did see a couple of those a little later.
This guy was just sitting on the rock preening itself. I don't think it was as big as a blue heron and had some white streaks along it's head. I drifted within 30 feet of it and was able to get the camera out. I had the 90mm zoom extended and waited and waited hoping for a decent shot. Finally it looked up and stretched one leg out and I snapped that. I drifted a few feet closer and he figured that was close enough and took off and I snapped that. His long legs ed behind like a blue heron's. I don't know if I was close enough for good pictures or not. It was also pretty foggy and that may have screwed things up too. I'll just have to wait and see.
The fog lifted somewhat around 11:30 and I had a clear view of Mount Desert Island. There are 6-7 mountains all right together on the island and all somewhere in the 1,000 foot range. While that might not be very high (they may be higher, I don't know) it is certainly impressive when viewing them from more than a mile away. I was about 7-8 miles away.
My charts don't go this far inland and I'm paddling using a printout of the area from DeLorme's Street Atlas. It and the maps show the top of Mount Desert Island being pretty normal but in viewing it from different angles, I had the impression there was another long island or a long peninsula in front of it. After lunch I was sitting there looking at the point that was bothering me and decided to make the 3-4 mile passage to investigate.
I'm paddling along and I'm right dead center in the middle of the crossing when I see a fog bank moving in from the ocean. Not to worry. That's got to be more than 5 miles away. 5 minutes later I'm completely engulfed. I can't see squat. I sat there and watched that fog bank move in on all those mountains like a giant, voracious PacMan chomping away and gobbling up everything in sight. Then I watched it devour my target destination too. Then I was in the middle of it too.
But I ain't no fool. The first think I did was note that I was bearing of due south. Then I noted the shore I really wanted to me on was almost due west. I also had the waypoint of the put in in the GPS.
So I just paddled on into the fog. The wind was only 5-10 knots, mostly on the lower end of the scale but there was a consistent 1.5-2.0 foot waves right in my face. I made an estimate that it would take me 35-40 minutes to reach my target which meant that around 1:15pm I could start getting nervous if I hadn't spotted shore by then.
At times like these, when I have no real choice but to paddle on and on, I seem to go into some sort of zone. I don't hurt (no man pain), I don't get tired, I just keep paddling against wind, waves, current, whatever, churning out those miles.
About 1pm I started running into 2+ foot waves and they were steeper and a few were breaking on their own. I didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. It might be bad meaning the seas were building. On the other hand, I thought it might be because I was in shallower water. 5 minutes later, I saw the outline of trees on the shore.
When I got to the point I saw I was only a mile or 2 from Bar Harbor and the Porcupine Islands and that I was probably at Hulls Cove.
08/15/99 Paddling Bar Harbor:
Friday night the winds howled all night long. It was loud enough to make sleeping difficult, as if tractor ers were whizzing by on a highway. Saturday morning I was getting ready to go out paddling when the rains came. And they came! Torrential rains all morning long.
This morning (Sunday) I was getting ready again, and again the rains came. They weren't as hard or as heavy as Saturday but they looked as if they were going to last all day (and they did and they continue as I write) but I decided to go out anyway.
I know that paddling in the rain is no big deal. The big deal comes in getting ready to launch. I'm not a big fan of putting on wet, cold, clammy and soggy stuff on my warm, delicate little bod. I solved part of that problem by putting most of the paddling gear on at the campsite. That way I could put a little on at a time and let the ol' bod adjust to that one thing before putting on the next thing. This way, when I got to the ramp, all I had to do was unload and pack the kayak and off I went.
Lamoine State Park is directly across the Narrows, a 0.5 mile bay, separating Mount Desert Island from the mainland. As I paddled out into the rain, I stopped to check out a Hunter 27 and another 27 foot sailboat moored nearby. They allowed me to daydream about the day I would get my own and go sailing off into the sunset. It won't be long now.
Visibility was pretty good but I headed across the Narrows to Mount Desert Island anyway just in case the fog moved in. Halfway across, a large seal burst to the surface about 100 feet away. We stared at each other for 30 seconds or so and then we both got tired of that about the same time and each of us went our separate ways.
Low lieing clouds (or high rising fog) were playing tag with the mountain peaks of Mount Desert Island as I made the crossing. The clouds would come down and cover the top of one mountain and lift itself up off the top of another creating an interesting show.
I was wearing a synthetic T-shirt and a Polartec 100 sweater under my farmer john wet suit. Then I had a winter wind breaker on (the temperature was in the 60's) with the life preserver on over that. I got to thinking about conversations about wearing proper gear and realized that if I went in the water, I would probably have a problem. The jacket lining has air holes for breathing but the pockets and the hood would certainly fill up with water. This would add substantial weight and make everything that much more difficult to perform during a self-rescue.
I could take the wind breaker off but in order to do that I'd have to take the PFD off first and there are many who would frown on that process. So, when I stopped for a break, I put the coat on over top of the PFD. That way, if I found myself in the water, taking the coat off would be a viable option without disturbing the PFD.
The northwest shorline of the top of Mount Desert Island is mostly flat with the occasional stretch of small 5 foot cliffs. The exception to this is the extreme northwest corner where the Ovens are found, where I took my first break.
The Ovens are a set of 50+ cliffs that run for 75-100 yards or so. These cliffs are being eroded from the bottom where the waves have carved out a series of caves. There are half a dozen of these caves that are roughly 4-5 feet high and deep and 10-15 feet wide. At high tide, seen from a little distance they look like a series of pizza ovens all in a row. Unfortunately, people have built little dinky houses on top of some of the Ovens.
There were a number of red starfish, some in the water, some clinging to rocks as the low tide left them stranded. There were also clusters of sea urchins in different areas.
My vague goal for the day was to paddle down to Bar Harbor and maybe swing around a couple of the Porcupine Islands. I had been told there were a number of mansions from the early 1900's directly above Bar Harbor and I thought it would be interesting to see how some of you live while some of us homeless people live out of tents.
Most of the way down to Bar Harbor (6-8 miles), were mostly what I would call large houses, 15+ rooms? I wouldn't call them mansions. In my opinions, Hugh Hefner lives in a mansion. If there aren't peacocks on the lawn and bunnies in the pool, it's just a big house.
As I got closer to Bar Harbor the big houses gave way to things that looked more like mansions to me. There was one that was entirely of stone (granite?) with spires, really steep pitched roofs and everything. As it came into view from behind some trees I thought, that's a mansion. A few of them looked like people lived in them. I presume many of the others have been converted into one thing or another.
There was also one boat somewhere between 100-200 feet long. People walking around on deck looked like little ants. As I paddled by, I guessed it to be about 30-40 feet from the water up to the tip of the bow. This wasn't a tour boat or a ferry. Her name was Lady M and may have belonged to a corporation but more likely to some obscenely rich guy. At least that's what I choose to believe. I saw about 10 people on deck and on shore as they were raising the anchors (one on each side of the bow). There were probably some more crew elsewhere. (A little red squirrel is driving me nuts, climbing up and down on the picnic table looking for a handout and screaming at me. Tuff nooties squirrel. I don't feed the wild life). A couple of little yachts, probably under 100 feet, were also tied up to the dock nearby. (8/16 Ok, maybe the little guys were ferries since they were all tied up at the Nova Scotia Ferry dock. It's possible they may have had a car deck but I didn't notice. I find it hard to believe the big one was a ferry too. There did not appear to be anyplace to load cars onto it. There is a brand new ferry that is supposed to be super fast but the big guy ain't it. I can't see it going exceptionally fast).
Bar Harbor is the tourist trap of Acadia National Park. It's not really a harbor per se'. A couple of the Porcupine Islands and Bar Island kinda enclose it so it seems like a harbor. I assume it gets its name from the large mussel bed or bar that isn't very deep even near high tide. I guess it's not really a tourist trap. It's made up mostly of quaint shops, restaurants and inns.
Surprisingly, this is mostly a working harbor with lobster boats (feeding the piers and restaurants) and a couple of trawlers (for scallops?). The Margaret Todd, a large 4 masted schooner type boat I had seen sailing a few days earlier is docked there. A half a dozen transient moorings were filled with 35-40 sailboats. I went over to check them out because several had wind vanes and solar panels for generating electricity. I didn't want to get to close because most of them also had dinghies tied up to them indicating the owners were on board.
Two groups of sea kayaks came by, almost certainly part of a local tour package as I had lunch on one of the Porcupine Islands (Sheep Porcupine Island, I think) and then headed home. It rained with varying degrees of intensity the entire time and is still raining. That hot shower sure felt good.