Freeport, ME or Lost In The Fog, Again (And Again) Freeport, Maine is the home of L.L. Bean. If you want some pretty good outdoor equipment and have lots of money to pay for it, L.L Bean is the place for you. Delorme publishing also makes their home here (I think). They make Atlas & Gazetters, topographical maps with boat ramp, camping, fishing, hunting and other neat information. I snuck out of work a little early hoping to get to the camp grounds before the rains that were forecast. There are plenty of acceptable places to camp on the 3000 odd Maine islands. I chose a camp ground instead for a couple of reasons: 1) my navigation skills aren't that great 2) if I had any navigation skills, my trip planning skills are non-existant and I wouldn't want to be racing from site to site 3) I wouldn't want to arrive at an island to find all the sites taken or a bunch of rowdies keeping me awake all night 4) I have a concern about leaving my truck somewhere unattended for several days. I arrived at Flying Point Campgrounds around 5pm and got a site right on a 15 foot bluff overlooking Maquoit Bay. Unlike most of the coast of Maine, this shoreline was not rocky and a severe ice storm last winter toppled several trees into the water. A whole section of the bank gave way and slid halfway down along with 2 medium sized oak trees. The trees are still upright and fairly happy with their new location. I listened to NOAA and they forecast fog in the morning, thunder storms in the afternoon with 5-15 knot winds and 1-3 foot seas and 50+ degree water temperature for the next several days and that's pretty much the way it turned out, kinda. The downside to the campground, as I learned, is it's on the flight path of the jets leaving Portland airport. And for some reason they seem to save all or most of their activities between 9-10 pm while I'm trying to get to sleep. :-(. Day 1: When I woke up in the morning, the whole bay was fairly well socked in with fog. As I sat there waking up and looking out the tent door, I saw what I took to be three big white trumpeter swans out front on the bay. I got the binoculars out for a better look but they fogged up too and I couldn't get a really good look. They swans turned their heads and then they looked like pelicans with long beaks. And then they all dove under the water. Swans don't dive do they? High tide on Friday was about 7 and that was when I took off. I had a 4 hour window on the tide to get back in so that was no problem. This was to be my navigation day and I plotted a course from island to island the night before. The idea was to see how well I did and use the GPS to identify the coordinates, which I wrote down and would use tomorrow to re-trace the course with GPS GoTo commands and everything went pretty much as planned. The key for me was to make sure I knew exactly where I was at all times. I really only had one problem and it took me about 30 minutes to confirm I really was in the place I thought I was. I got down to French Island about an hour before low tide and there was a lot of exposed rocks and ledges around. I was picking my way through a rocky mess when I scared up a pair of nesting osprey. They had nested on a rock that could only have been a few feet above water at high tide. I thought they only nested in high spots. Boy were they pissed. I hurried to get away from them and bumbled into half a dozen harbor seals sunning themselves. I tried to get away from them and headed for another ledge. There were a bunch of sandy looking areas on the ledge and as I got nearer they all splashed into the water so I headed for open water. Other than that, Friday was pretty uneventful. I watched a raccoon on an island pigging out on mussels for a while and as I was paddling between a narrows a bunch of medium sized fish in a feeding frenzy erupted all around the 'yak scaring the hell out of me. I got the GPS 12XL manual out to see how to GoTo the coordinates I had written down faithfully during the day and found out you can't. I didn't save them because each waypoint is assigned a sequential number, which by themselves are meaningless. You can give each waypoint a name but that is too time consuming. It appears the only thing you can enter manually is a bearing and distance and I wasn't going to do all that. Bummer. Well, I'll know better next time. Day 2: Saturday morning things are going to be foggy again so I decide to go 3 miles up to the head of Harpswell Neck and travel it's 8 mile length to the end in hopes the fog would be gone by the time I got there. About a third of the way down, I see 2 people up ahead at the bottom of a 20 foot cliff with steep terrain all around and figure it's a couple of boys that climbed down and are fishing. As I get closer, I see it's a couple of girls and then I see they're about 8 and 10 years old. What are they doing at the bottom of a cliff in the fog? In their jammies? I was afraid to scare them, but they waved and I paddled in to ask what's going on. As it turns out, there's a path you can't see from the water and one girl lives there and the other is visiting. It sure looked strange. We chatted a little and then I left them there. The fog lightens up some and I can see island as I'm paddling along. Whaleboat Island runs parallel to the tip of Harspwell Neck and when I'm about 100 yards from the tip I think, 'Gee, too bad the fog's lifted or I could plot a course and navigate in the fog' like a real navigator. I paddle another 50 yards and glance at the island again and it's gone. It's like God heard me and said 'You want fog, you got fog'. Oops! Whaleboat is about half a mile out and about a mile long. How can I miss that? Then I decide, 'Hell, I'll try to hit the tip of that sucker dead on'. I had plotted a course of 285' the night before so got ready to paddle out into the unknown. When I lined up on the compass I saw my bow wasn't aiming in the direction where I now thought the island was. I think about that for a second and then look up to the heavens and tell God, 'Ha, ha! Good one!' So who am I gonna believe? The numbers I carefully plotted last night or my instincts? Knowing the trouble I've gotten into trusting my outdoors instincts in the past, I opted for the numbers and blindly headed out into the fog. The island is about half a mile away and if all this 3 mile an hour average stuff is sound, then I should get to the island in 10 minutes. I'm heading into a little chop and my bow is bouncing around throwing me off course, first one way and then the other, plus I keep forgetting to watch the compass. Paddle, paddle. 10 minutes and no island. :-( A lobster boat materializes out of the fog and we wave at each other. No problem here. I like paddling in the fog. Paddle, paddle. 15 minutes and no island. Uh oh! I knew I shoulda trusted my instincts. Paddle, paddle. A red nun #10 appears before me. There's a nun at the tip of Whaleboat. Alright! Dead on! But where's the island? I look at the chart and see it's not a nun but a flashing light that's supposed to be on the tip of the island. Then what's with the nun? Oh, I get it, it's a nun from God. He's still joking with me. I finally find nun #10 on the chart and see I've drifted just a little off course. So with full confidence I point off to 285' again and head off into the fog. Paddle, paddle. Nothing. Uh, oh! Maybe I should have recalculated the course from where I was, not from where I started. I'm probably in deep doggie doo now. Paddle, paddle. And then another red nun appears. Oh, it's not a nun, it's one of those clangy things and then I hear it clang. While I'm sitting there wondering if I should tie up to the clanger and wait for the fog to lift, a sailboat comes motoring into sight. We wave at each other as he passes by. No problem here. I always hang out in the fog around loud clangy thingies. This time I recalculate my course and with some trepidation head off into the fog one more time. Paddle, paddle. And the sun breaks out directly overhead and shines down on me. I look up and see blue sky (kinda). Then I look around me. Everything within 150 feet of me is perfectly clear. Beyond that is total fog. What is this, a joke? God is surely up there ROFLHAO. The sun goes away and I start off again, mumbling to myself. Paddle, paddle and a pile of rocks appears and on top of the is a little tower thing with some reflectors on it. Looking at the chart again, it says flashing every 6 seconds, 47 feet in the air and visible for 6 miles. Yeah, right! The 47 feet might be right but the rest of it...... I decide to have lunch and see if the fog will clear a little. A half hour later, 90% of the fog is gone. This is a good thing because Great Chebeague Island, my next target, is over a mile and a half away. I get over to Great Chebeague with no problem and decide to head back to camp and set course for French Island, another mile and a half away. As I'm paddling along I come to another nun near Green Island Ledges, below French Island. I casually glance at the nun as I pass by. #10? What? 2 #10 nuns within 2 miles of each other. Look at the damn chart. That's what it shows and that's what I saw. No wonder I'm confused so much of the time out there. :-(. Yes, I stayed away from the seals and ospreys when I got past French Island. NOAA has been forecasting thunder storms for the past couple of days so when the skies get dark and I hear a couple of boomers I change course to keep an island nearby. Fresh in my mind are the recent Paddlewise discussions on lightening and have a mental image me and my orange Looksha IV looking like burnt toast and marmalade. I get to the last island adjacent to where I'm camped and stop to determine if I really want to make a mad dash across a mile of open water. I finally decide to go for it and dig in real hard to get some momentum going and scare up a bald eagle with all the noise I was making. I made the dash across ok. It never even rained and I ended my second 10 hour paddle in a row. A RV had pulled in behind me while I was gone and had all it's lights on, inside and out. I finally pulled my truck in between us and that helped. Didn't stop the jets though. Day 3: I awoke Sunday morning to very heavy fog. High tide was around 9 and with a 4 hour window, I can't come back until 7pm. I leave at 7am anyway and pack an extra sandwich, crackers and water for supper. The plan is to hug the coast, cross over to Great Chebeague, travel 3 miles or so down it's length and cross over a couple of islands to Jewell Island, an island I've heard mentioned frequently. So off I go into the fog again. I hug the coast pretty tightly with only 20-30 yards of visibility, dodging docks, boats and buoys along the way. A couple of hours later I get to Wolf Neck where there are a string of buoys marking the channel and a couple of islands across the entrance to Harraseeket River. I can barely see anything but hop across the islands ok, or at least I thought I did. There's another set of buoys marking another channel to the Royal River a mile or so farther on. After an hour or so of paddling I haven't found that channel but I have run out of water. I figured that I hugged the shore too tightly and missed the crossing and headed up into the Cousins River which looks like it dead ends so I head back. On the way back I avoid a second river which I take for the Royal. I pass a very large marina which has a Strouts Point sign on one landing but I can't find it on my chart. I hit another dead end in a cove and as I head back out, the fog starts to lift. I see a green can up ahead and as I get near it I recognize one of the islands by Wolf Neck. I never made it across that little passage but headed up that river somehow, instead. I saw a couple of white egrets (I think), smaller crane-like birds and what a took to be some sort of king fisher, a large gruesome looking bird with no neck and a top knot on its head. With visibility restored, I head to Great Chebeague, about 2+ hours behind schedule (assuming I really had a schedule) and now with a 15 knot wind in my face and a 1 foot chop. My back is kinda tired and once I get to the island I have to make a decision. Do I continue on or head back? Going back doesn't make sense because I can't go in until 7pm so I head down the 3 mile island figuring I'll take more frequent rests. On the way down I come across some very large (to me) mussel beds and run aground a couple of times. It's low tide when I get to the bottom of the island and I see there are ledges between Great and Little Chebeague Islands so I get to paddle another mile or so around Little. As I round it, I see the fog starting to come back in with the tide along with some dark clouds and decide not to continue on to Jewell, which is about 2 miles away (with another 2 miles back). Once I start heading up the other side of the Chebeagues, I run into another 15 knot wind and some more 1 foot chop. I'm about 8 hours into the paddle and figure I'm going to be another 5 or 6 hours fighting the wind. Halfway up Great Chebeabue are some more mussel beds and Crow Island which I think is another MITA island. I pulled in for a break, some body fuel and to put on my wet wind breaker because I was getting chilled. When I got up to the top of the island, the wind shifted and was behind me the rest of the way. I didn't want to deal following seas so, like a wuss, a lowered the rudder for the rest of the way. The fog had not closed in, but I would have liked to have gotten over to the coast just in case. That way looked like an hour longer so I headed up the middle of the bay towards French Island again thinking I'd take a break at the ledges right before there (the location of one of the red nun #10's). As I neared the ledges I spooked 4 or 5 seals that had been out drying themselves or resting or whatever it is seals do before I realized they were there. I apologized profusely to them but said I had to rest too. Then I saw the pups and knew I had to get out of there without a rest. There were 3 or 4 that I saw, kinda gray with black spots. Little fat guys. So I paddle around to the other side and find a spot to take a break. Apparently in a gulls' nesting area. They didn't like that at all but I stayed anyway. They kept circling and swooping and screaming and I had visions of Alfred Hitchcock's old movie, the Birds, and having my eyes plucked out and my skull pecked open. That didn't happen though and I left in 5 minutes. When I got within a couple of miles of camp, I stopped for one last rest and spooked the bald eagle again. Continuing up the final string of islands, I happened to notice a pile of sticks on a ledge an wondered if that might be an eagle nest. I thought they only build nests on the top of tall, dead trees. I got into camp about 7:30pm, loaded the kayak on the truck, dried off and cleaned up. I knew that after a day like that I wouldn't want to go out again before I left the next day. I took it easy the rest of the evening and drifted off to the sound of those damn jets again. Day 4: Broke camp, loaded everything up and headed up to L.L. Bean where I managed to spend $40 on a couple of odds an ends. They've got a lot of construction going on. Looks like they might be expanding their home store by 25% or more. That should be interesting in a few more months. Summary: I thought this was a really great area to paddle. Lots of islands of various sizes from an acre to 3+ miles long. A lot of islands were unpopulated or only had a couple of houses. Lots of wildlife, including more herons than I've ever seen before. I paddled for a total of about 34 hours in 3 days and didn't come near covering it all. There were no PWC's, a few fishing boats, of course many lobster boats, a fair number of sailboats and less than 10 kayaks. If it weren't for those damn jets.... *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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