8/11-12
Merchants Row8/11-12
Merchants RowThere are approximately twenty zillion islands in Maine. I know that's not a very precise count, but there aren't a precise number of islands. Some disappear between low and high tide, others get cut in two by the rising water. Some probably hide in the fog and jump out at unwary boaters.
Fortunately, we had a clear and sunny day as we sailed into Merchants Row at low tide. Islands as far as the eye can see, and the eye can see pretty far when a cool north wind blows out the humidity haze. Big islands with houses and docks, small islands with seals and cormorants, long skinny islands, little rounded islands. Each was a variation on the same theme: pine trees and bramble patches, granite boulders and mud flats.
Ashore
on Wreck Island, we could almost convince ourselves that we were on a
high mountain lake in Colorado, not quite at treeline but close. The
dense mosses under the pines looked like alpine tundra, but on the
flat granite slabs the broken mussel and crab shells, dropped by
birds to get at the goodies within, spoiled the illusion. Grassy
meadows where sheep had grazed over the past century were thick with
raspberry bushes.
There are two secrets to finding raspberries on a popular island where every other boater goes to pick berries. The first is to wear long pants, so you can wade into the thickets; people wearing shorts are limited to the outside edges. The second is to kneel or squat every once in a while and check out the bushes from below. Raspberries like a little bit of shade, and the leaves on the lower branches of the bushes frequently hid clusters of berries underneath. The perfect berry is a lovely deep magenta just a little darker than the rest, exquisitely shaped, juicy and as sweet as sunshine. Nearly a quart of berries made it into our bucket, and a large number went straight into our mouths. We had vanilla pudding with raspberries for dessert that night, raspberry pancakes the next morning for breakfast, and raspberry coffee cake a day later.
Britt
and Clay (his brother, visiting for ten days) had a disappointing
fishing trip in Merchants Row, averaging one fish per hour, but
during a lunch stop in Frenchboro Clay reeled in one fish after
another, mostly harbor pollock with a few mackerel. The mussels are
plentiful enough that we can gather enough for a meal in five
minutes, so we supplement our fish with mollusks.
On Saturday evening we dinghied over to the granite quarry on Crotch Island. This is still a working quarry, although it was quiet for the weekend. Obsolete equipment, not worth the trouble to remove, still stands rusting and disused near the fancy new forklifts and drilling machines. Stone blocks lay everywhere, some rough-cut, some with one smooth side that needed only a little polishing to make it worthy of inclusion in some great building. The JFK memorial in Washington DC is built of Crotch Island granite.
The crotch in Crotch Island is a narrow cove which reminded us of the tidal streams we'd dinghied up on several Bahamian islands. It was low tide, and there was barely enough water to row our dinghy, motor up, into the heart of the island. Worse yet, the tide was coming in -- when we decided to head back we discovered there was no way we could row against the rapid current, and there wasn't enough water to use the outboard. Clay gallantly offered to haul us back upstream; he rolled up his pants, took hold of the dinghy painter, and stepped into the cold, mucky water. It was a yucky task, but he bravely pulled us into the deeper water, where we put the engine down and motored out of there.
With so many beautiful islands here, we've been getting off the boat and hiking whenever we can. Somehow we managed to connect a bunch of sheep trails and make it across Wreck Island, but it was pretty rough and we raced the rising tide around the island's rocky rim back around to our dinghy. We were so hot and sweaty from this excursion that when we got back to the boat, we jumped into the water.
Jumping into the water in Maine requires a lot more intestinal fortitude than doing it in the Bahamas, and brings on that feeling again of being in a high mountain lake in Colorado. We have seen our water temperature sensor read as low as 55, although on this particular afternoon in this particular anchorage it was a balmy 59. By the time I stepped down to our swim ladder's bottom rung, my feet were already completely numb. I jumped the rest of the way in, and the numbness immediately spread to mid-thigh. A few token splashes were enough. I headed straight back for the ladder and into a hot shower. Mmmm.
On Isle au Haut, we hiked up Duck Harbor Mountain, which though not a very high peak gave us a fine view from its bald summit. Most of the island is part of Acadia National Park, and it is far less developed and less visited than Mount Desert Island, where the rest of Acadia takes up a little less than half the island. While hiking, we ran into Charles and Laurel, who we met on their boat Alice at the SSCA gam. Laurel, who's from Maine, pointed out edibles along the trail: blueberries and cranberries, sorrel and beach pea.
This hike also taught us a novel use for our digital camera. At the Duck Harbor campground was a kiosk displaying a trail map and other information about the area. The box marked "Trail Maps" was empty, so we photographed the big display map using the macro setting on the camera, and then headed for the trail we wanted. Whenever we needed to glance at the map, we'd bring it up on the tiny screen built into the camera, and zoom in if necessary. Not the easiest map to use, but a lot better than none. At least we didn't get lost!
A few days later, we moved on to Mount Desert. We'd had dense fog all day, but it lifted slightly as we motored past the Cranberry islands, giving us a fantastic view of the peaks of Acadia wreathed in wispy mist. The clearing lasted long enough for us to motor to Valley Cove in Somes Sound (according to the guidebook, the only true glacially-carved fjord in the US outside of Alaska), pick up an old heavy-duty mooring in a picturesque spot just under a huge cliff, dinghy to shore, and hike most of the way up Flying Mountain. Alas, just as we got to the summit ridge, the fog began to close in again. We could still see the Narrows at the mouth of Somes Sound, but not the peaks beyond, and our view quickly dimmed behind the veil. Shortly after we returned to the boat, things got so thick that we could no longer see the shore.
The next day was so foggy that we just hunkered down and stayed there, reading books and playing games. From time to time the mist would clear a little, revealing other anchored boats, bits of shoreline, and once (amazingly!) the shore on the other side of the sound, but every time it seemed like we might actually get some sun, the fog swirled back in, denser than before. That's Maine for you.
