Beal Island, Maine or The Nightingale Day 1 - Friday The forecast was for 25-35 knot winds from the south and west, 7-9 foot seas and 47 degree water in central Maine, not something I'd likely have much fun in. Beal Island is owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club and nestles between Knubble and Hockomock Bays which are flanked by Westport and Georgetown Islands that in turn, separate the Sheepscot and Kennebec rivers 10 miles from Bath, Maine. Since this was my first of a four day stay, I thought I'd just take it easy so I paddled down Knubble Bay to Robinhood Marina where I admired a couple of double masted sailboats and then headed the couple of miles up Robinhood Cove against a 10-15 knot wind. At the end of the cove, I stopped for a snack as the tide was starting to come in. In Maine, much of the shoreline and islands are steep and rocky and don't offer many good landing sites. Since most of the rocks at low tide are covered with seaweed, I found a little cove and sat straddling the kayak with my feet buried in some mud. I noticed the shoreline moving back and the tide started moving up my legs. Since my feet were kinda stuck in the mud, I wondered what would happen if I just sat there. Would my feet pull free, would I capsize or what? So I sat there for another 15 minutes as the tide came in and I found my heels gradually being lifted up and I broke free from the mud quite easily with no suction at all. Ok, so I'm easily amused but I had all day. I often have moments of serious contemplation. I headed back out of the cove with a strong wind at my back and swung out into Goose Neck Passage which is a pretty narrow corridor that leads out to the Sheepscot River that can get pretty turbulent with the tides. I thought I'd just peek around the corner at the Sheepscot to see what was going on, still having the early morning forecast in mind. This river widens into Sheepscot Bay which is about 2 1/2 miles wide at its mouth and Goose Neck is about 5 miles from the mouth. The wind was blowing about 10 knots and there was only some chop so I headed on down along the outside of McMahan Island which is about a mile long and has a really nice outer coastline. About half way down I started picking up some 1-2 foot swells interspersed with 1-2 foot choppy waves. Beyond McMahan I started picking up a couple of 3 footers and the wind stiffened a little in my face. About half a mile further lie Five Islands, which appears to be primarily a lobstering community. I continued on thinking if things get hairy I'll just duck between the islands, none of which are more than a couple hundred yards long, to get out of harms way. As I pass the first island, the swells are mostly 3 footers. I see a candy wrapper floating by and think about picking it up but a swell immediately in front kinda dissuades me of that idea. As I prepare to ride up another swell, my offshore paddle seems to get stuck in the water and my butt muscles start working overtime to maintain balance. I look down and see a mass of floating seaweed wrapped around my blade. I'm halfway up the next swell so I just kinda drag the paddle along until I get over the hump when I can clear it. As I'm paddling along the next island, the swells are coming closer together and I'm digging into them more. The wind has picked up some more and there are waves on the swells. Can they do that? Some of them had two waves on them about a foot high? As I approach the last island I run into a 4 footer and decide that's enough of that. If there's 4 footers out here, I'm sure some of their bigger, badder brothers are hiding in the background somewhere waiting to pounce on me and its time to get these old bones into calmer waters. BTW, the way I estimate wave size is, if I can see over it, it's 2 feet or less. If it's eye level it must be a 3 footer and if I have to look up at it, it's a 4 footer or greater. My wind estimates are probably less accurate. A nice breeze is 5 knots, if I really notice it, it must be 10 knots, when I start to cuss, it's 15 knots and when I'm really pissed, it's approaching 20 knots. The swells are interrupted periodically with a few 2 foot waves and when they appear, I angle off between the last two islands. When the swells come back, I angle more into them and so forth as I work my way inland. And then I see a solid wall of breakers in front of me. Breakers? SH*T! And my surf zone course isn't till next month. Then I see I'm not between the islands but facing a cove. I go around the breakers and island and head back up on the inside of the islands with wind at my back. I get back to Beal, have dinner and lounge around when I see a whole herd of canoes heading my way. The AMC bought Beal to promote tidal canoeing in the area. There is a lot of protected areas and a lot of good canoe routes when the tides and wind are right. As the last canoe pulls in, the thunder clouds move in and the rain and lightning start but they don't last long. I look out across the bay from my tent and there is a gorgeous rainbow. I grabbed the camera and snapped off a couple of shots. Hope they took. Day 2 - Saturday I've pitched my tent on a small bluff overlooking Knubble Bay to the south. When I stick my head out in the morning, I see nothing but fog. NOAA informs me it will burn off by 9am and I can expect winds 10-20 knots out of the north and west which is the opposite of yesterday. This is the 3rd time I've been to Beal and I think I know my way around pretty well so I take off around 6am with the intent of heading down the Sheepscot with a vague idea of rounding the tip of Georgetown Island to the Kennebec River. I want to avoid running into any crazy power boaters in the fog, so to avoid making any channel crossing so I head down the right side of Knubble Bay and around to Robinhood Marina. I find a boat I recognize and know I want to cross the cove directly to the other side of the cove and thereby avoid crossing the Goose Neck channel. I point the bow towards shore, see I'm aimed due west and figure I want to go due east. Wrong! Now I'm wandering around in the fog, knowing that for some reason, the tide is going in the wrong direction. Then I remember the GPS. I was playing with it yesterday and set a waypoint at the confluence of the Sheepscot. I don't have a 'Take Me There" button so settled for my "GoTo" option and got myself straightened out but I'm on the wrong side of the channel. The fog miraculously clears (thank you Lord) and I make a mad dash across before any maniac can run me down. Then the fog comes back in. The trip out was pretty uneventful. I got a mile or so from the Kennebec but decided to turn back because the wind was picking up at my back and I knew I had a 3-4 hour paddle against it on the way back. Nothing but paddling against the wind until I get back up to Five Islands where the incoming tide is causing some 2-3 foot swells again. There's nothing at all between the Atlantic and the islands to slow the ocean down any. Watching the surge against the rocks is always facinating to me. I was watching from about 20-30 feet out when all of a sudden I start raising 2-3 feet up and then start moving towards the rocks on a swell. Oh great! I'm going to get crushed against the rocks, smash my head wide open, the seagulls will come and pluck my eyes out and eat brains while the crabs get the rest of me. Fortunately, a couple of strokes get me off of the swell. I get back to Beal at high tide and circumnavigate the 62 acre island. This is a gorgeous island, with a rocky, hilly shoreline, entirely wooded. The inside passage is as beautiful as any area you'll find anywhere with a couple of coves and tiny islands. There are a couple of osprey nests and I get scolded pretty loudly for getting too close. The outside passage includes Lower Hell's Gate with 6 knot currents, a small ledge with a class II hole and a lot of confused and swirling waters at mid-tide. Last year I had worked my way up to the ledge and thought I was going to power my way around it to calmer waters above it. Wrong! The current caught my bow as soon as I poked it out from behind the ledge and I got to resurrect some ferry techniques out of my memory banks from a bygone era. Day 3 - Sunday The forecast was for 15-25 knot winds from the South and East (I think) with rain later in the day. They were talking about hail and wind and stuff coming into eastern New Hampshire/western Maine from the Great Lakes region but that can't impact me. I decide to head across the Sheepscot, head through a cut above Southport Island into Boothbay Harbor, do that, then come back up Southport with the wind at my back and all that went pretty much as planned (surprise!). As I headed out into the Sheepscot, a seal popped its head out of the water at me. I headed for a large rock island in the middle of the river that's about a mile wide at this point. As I near it, I see another seal in the water, then another and another. They were all over the place. I tried to back paddle away from them but they were everywhere. As I'm back paddling, one seal kept following me. His/her head would pop up, I'd back off, the head would disappear and reappear several feet closer. I worked my way to the other end of the island but there were more of them there too so I made a wide sweep around the island. Boothbay itself was pretty ho-hum. Not many boats, really crappy motel looking buildings, houses along the shoreline with a couple fair sized islands in the middle of the bay. The tide was out and there really wasn't any place to land for a break so I kept going. The wind was blowing pretty good and I started getting chilled so I put my heavy wind breaker on. I got all the way back up Southport Island to Gooseneck where there's a little beach before I could take a break. 7+ hours without a break is a bit much for these old bones. The sun disappeared and the wind picked up and it started raining so I paddled the rest of the way back in the rain which is ok. I had dinner and the wind just kept blowing and I was still chilled so I went up to the tent and watched as a fog bank started at the far end of the bay and just ate the entire bay up in 10-15 minutes. I turned NOAA on and they said winds 20-30 with gusts to 50 knots off shore. Sure glad I'm not out there. Then I hear thunder. Then I see lightning. Lightning and thunder and fog? Then it starts to rain. Then the fog goes away. And the wind picks up and it starts to pour. Darkness sets in and I sit at my tent door watching Mother Nature's show. And the wind picks up some more and it rains harder and there's more lightning, much more. I start counting the seconds and most of the ones that light up the entire sky are 8 seconds before thunder. Some of the duller ones are 4 seconds??? Why am I counting the seconds anyway? I probably won't see the one that hits me anyway. An hour passes, then another. My gas lamp runs out of fuel and goes out. Is that an omen? Are my lights about to go out? I lay listening to the rain pounding on the tent till about midnight when I finally popped a sleeping pill. Not 30 seconds later, I was in the Nightingale. Get it? A night in a gale. The wind hit. If these weren't gale force winds, they were sure a good imitation. I have no idea how hard it was blowing but it caved the front of my tent in almost immediately. Fortunately, in addition to the normal stakes, I had partially tied the tent to a couple of trees. The ropes kept the tent from collapsing completely. Once it started, the wind did not let up. It was continuous and relentless. It was as if someone or something was out there constantly pushing on the door to get in. A half hour passed, and then another. And water is leaking in from somewhere. I finally decided to get dressed and pack the most important (expensive) stuff together in case the tent finally gave way. I had a pocketknife ready to cut myself out if I had to. I had no idea what I might do. There was a strongly constructed outhouse. Go there and breathe that till morning (barf). Maybe if my life depended on it but things had settled down to a dull roar. And then it was gone. An hour and a half of wind and then nothing. Total stillness. I unzipped the tent and stepped outside and stood there looking around in amazement. I tried to straighten out the bent tent poles as best I could, went down to check on the kayak and just walked around for a few minutes. I got back into the tent and was preparing to lie down when it came back. You could hear it coming, like a big truck. And then it hit. But it didn't hit as hard as before. The tent held up and didn't buckle again. And after 5 minutes it went away. But then I heard the truck come roaring down on me again. And again. And the sleeping pill finally took hold and I drifted off. Day 4 - Monday I awoke at 5am with a pretty fair wind blowing from the south but nothing like last night. I suspected it would drop to nothing pretty quickly and it did. I was pretty damp and chilled and ate a bran muffin and drank a lot of water to get some fuel burning inside me. Today is my last day and I start reviewing my options and there is only one priority. Get off this freakin' island, now! I brought a larger tent than normal plus a couple of luxuries this time so I would have to make two trips to get all the stuff off. I loaded up, kayaked about a half a mile to a base camp area on the mainland where the truck was parked and lugged my stuff up 27, yes 27 steps. I tried to the start the truck and it wouldn't. And I'm the only one here. I had less than a eighth of tank of gas when I got here and I had parked on a hill and it wasn't getting any gas. I finally gave up and went back to the island to get the second load. Hopefully it's flooded now. When I got back it started right up. I lugged the rest of my stuff up those 27 steps. It was starting to turn into a nice day and I considered a half day paddle but decided I had had enough fun and excitement for one trip and brought the kayak up those very same 27 steps and got the hell out of there. But there was one more little surprise for me. I stopped for gas and headed south on route 1. Every time I came to a small hill, the truck seemed to be laboring and I thought, gee, maybe something really was wrong with it. The bow and stern lines appeared normal to me as I edged up towards 65 mph on a flat stretch and started to pass a tractor trailer. And then I thought, "I don't remember tying the kayak down to the rack". I pulled in front of the tractor trailer and right over to the side of the road. The driver must have thought I was some kind of nut. I got out to look and sure enough, there were the tie downs, flapping in the breeze. Gawd knows what kept the kayak from going crazy on the rack. The bow and stern lines were loosely tied to prevent it from moving back and forth, not to keep it from moving side ways. Well, I'll be off for another 4 day weekend starting the June 19. Hope things are a little calmer then. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
Hi Clyde! Looks like you gave an really good airing to your tent... > And then it was gone. An hour and a half of wind and then nothing. > Total stillness. I unzipped the tent and stepped outside and stood > there looking around in amazement. I tried to straighten out the bent > tent poles as best I could, went down to check on the kayak and just > walked around for a few minutes. Thanks for your story, but btw - how did you secure your kayak? Cheers, Ari Saarto Beyond the Horizon - Kannaksenkatu 22 / P.O. 92 15141 Lahti - Finland - Europe GSM +358 - 50 - 526 5892 fax. +358 - 3 - 828 2815 e-mail: asaarto_at_lpt.fi *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
> Thanks for your story, but btw - how did you secure your > kayak? > No big deal. I was taught to stow everything away or lash it to the kayak which was tied to a tree above the normal high water mark. I had heard severe winds can cause tides to rise higher than normal and that was my concern. It may have been a little higher but not much so I was ok there. Have you been out paddling amongst the icebergs up there? *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:50 PDT