A Messy Tumble of Boulders

It starts at Sparrow Island. We’ve taken a break on the beach, with the seals swimming increasingly closer, poking their heads up for a look before splashing away. We’d stood on the grassy top of the island, enjoying the feeling of apartness that this treeless bump on the ocean inspires. Sparrow is one of the more “out there” islands with only open ocean between it and Saddleback Light, a bump on the horizon six miles away.


But we’re headed back into the archipelago, with all afternoon to explore. This is Nate’s first visit to these islands, and we hardly knew where to begin. We start paddling toward Ram Island, but something about the rocks just offshore seems worth checking out. It’s high tide and when the swell rolls-in, narrow passages appear among the rocks. If you time it just right you can glide right through. Or not. Nate makes it through a slot in the rocks, and I just have to follow. In fact, maybe I could fit through that even narrower slot: no room for a paddle, but if you get going and the swell takes you...

And look at that little wave that forms over the reef... almost surfable. When we drag ourselves away and point toward Ram Island, there’s eight or more seals gathered around, poking their heads up. I won’t assign them human expressions, but they’re suddenly very interested in us.


The distance we paddle along the shorelines of Ram, Hardwood and Merchant Islands only adds-up to a couple miles, but if you’ve ever taken a bird dog for a walk in a meadow, you know how they go back and forth, sniffing everything, and the dog probably walks three miles for every one of yours. That’s how it is when you’re compulsively looking for the next feature among the rocks. The shores of these islands are strewn with glacial erratic boulders, and at high tide, it’s a playground.

The glacier left a messy tumble of boulders beside Hardwood Island, and here we find a four-way intersection that can be paddled around and around, a different passage through the rocks each time. You have to try to time it with the swell, but inevitably, it sometimes catches you in an awkward position and you lose as much gelcoat from the sides as from the bottom of the hull. That scraping sound becomes a recurring theme.


Beside Merchant, Nate gets tossed about and left high and dry between two rocks, leaning heavily upon his paddle until another swell comes in... and lands him higher. I’m torn between wanting to take a picture and getting myself into position to help. There’s not much for me to do though, and the next swell removes him from his perch.


By the time we get to Gooseberry Island, we’ve become aware of the time and we have to cut down on all this dilly-dallying. The hour or so it takes to get back to the ramp feels like a bit of a slog... all that straightforward paddling you need to do to get somewhere. Sometimes, the distractions along the way are the best part.

Solo

Steves Island, 3/15/09

Lately, most of my paddling excursions have been solo. I would like to have companions, but the number of paddlers here is greatly reduced from October through June, when the water temperature stays below fifty, and especially in these winter months when it stays near freezing. To paddle in the winter, a kayaker needs adequate skills, gear and motivation. It isn’t for everyone.

When variable weather and schedules are added to the mix, it becomes obvious that I wouldn’t get out much if I didn’t go alone. Admittedly, I started paddling solo long before I had good self-rescue skills. Maybe I felt impatient when I couldn’t get others to go along, or maybe I just knew I would like it. My job sometimes requires me to chat with people from morning well into the evening, and at times I have become extremely worn-down by it. If I got out for a couple of hours in the morning by myself, pausing occasionally to listen to waves or the drip from my paddle blades, or to just drift and well... look at rocks, I discovered that I carried that calm with me through the day. I hung charts in the bathroom, and found myself lingering there, staring at the places I’d been, evoking them in my mind.

John Island, 3/10/09

I remember one of those first tentative trips out by myself. I hate to admit that I didn’t even have a chart. Or a compass. It was early on a summer morning, calm and warm. Because it was low tide, the stretches between islands seemed smaller. I paddled along the shore, keeping islands on my left, continually drawn on by the next island. I didn’t know the names of the islands or which ones were privately-owned or public. Maybe the newness and the lack of proper names in my mind added to the elemental feeling, the simplicity of it. I hardly thought about it, didn’t know where I was going; I just enjoyed it.

Then I heard waves breaking on the shore, and felt the lift of a swell beneath me. I had come to the end of the interior islands, and found myself beside a steep granite shore, strewn with glacial erratic boulders. Little stood between me and the bold open ocean. The swell lifted me up again, and I wasn’t sure if I should be nervous. I was nervous, and unsure of myself. The swells broke upon the shore harmlessly, but there was a lot of power in them.

Spruce Island, 3/17/09

Maybe that was the first time I consciously did what I now do automatically: ask “what if I capsize?” There would be no landing on that steep shore. Looking back, I know I should have turned around, because I didn’t have the skills to be there. But man, I wanted to be out there, paddling in that swell alongside that bold coastline. I went, and of course, it was magic. I returned home knowing that I had a lot to learn.

Gray's Cove to Stonington

Our pool sessions in Bar Harbor continue, but yesterday was Mark Schoon’s last session with us for awhile. He’s headed to Norway for three months to continue the Norway expedition that he began last year with Jeff Allen. On our way home, after the Thai food, which I start hungering for half-way through our practice, we stopped at a gas station. I got talking with a guy who told me he paddles out to the Cranberry Islands with a surfboard strapped on his back deck to get to a distant reef break. He also mentioned that a kayaker had been lost at sea just a week ago, at Isle of Shoals, a seven-mile crossing he’d attempted solo.


So of course I looked it up when I got home, and found the story, which raises as many questions as it answers. As is often the case when someone is lost at sea, we can only look at the clues and guess what happened. We look at reports of kayaking mishaps hoping to find several things, perhaps foremost, we want to know what separates this person from ourselves; what was he doing wrong that I’m doing right? In this case, as far as I can tell, the answer is nothing.


Reports indicate that he had made the trip many times, that he was experienced and wore adequate gear. I won’t repeat the whole story here, but it sounds as if the conditions dramatically worsened on his return crossing: 2 to 6-foot seas, gusts to 40. The Coast Guard began searching only two and a half hours after his last communication, when it was discovered that he hadn’t returned to his car. His kayak was found at seven the next morning, floating upside down, the paddle still tethered to it with the paddle float attached to one end. The Coast Guard later suspended the search without finding the kayaker.

After such incidents, you can’t help but carry it with you in the back of your mind, especially when you head out alone in the winter. It’s a good thing. One should always be asking those questions, evaluating circumstances, not taking anything for granted.


Yesterday we had northwest winds, and since the kayaks were still on the car from Saturday’s pool session, I thought it would be a good opportunity to launch from Reach Beach (Gray’s Cove) and paddle back to Stonington. It was the first time I’d launched there, and it began with a long carry over the mudflats. The area would be better at higher tides. I paddled into Greenlaw Cove, and went around Campbell Island, only to turn back when the water gave way to mud. Despite the 10 to 15 mph wind on the other side of Deer Isle, it was fairly calm in the cove. I headed out around Stinson Neck, and as I’d predicted, the stretch from the Lazygut Islands to Sheep Island, which has some fetch to the northwest, looked a bit bumpier. I tethered my paddle, and headed out.


I only had a mile to go before I’d be in the lee of Sheep, but the wind picked up right away, and I turned into it. The waves came tightly spaced, not too big, but as I proceeded, whitecaps formed, and the wind roared in my ears. Now and then a gust hit, forcing me to crouch as I paddled. I told myself it was just a gust; it wouldn’t last, but they were lasting longer. I looked back to the shore I’d left, but I was committed, and because of my angle, I would end up upwind of Sheep. And of course, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking of that poor guy down at Isle of Shoals, who probably didn’t think he was in over his head until it was too late. This wasn’t the kind of solo winter paddling I really wanted to do, but here I was.


But you tell yourself that the roar in the air around you is more of a psychological obstacle. Just pay attention to what’s ahead, focus, and you slowly get through it. And what if I did get knocked over? The day before, in the pool, I’d rolled and braced many many times. I’d cowboy rescued, re-entered and rolled, come up with a sculling brace. Sure, it’s all easier in the pool, but if you don’t lose your cool, it’s basically the same, only the water is 34 degrees and there’s wind and waves.

When I made it to the western shore, I looked back at the water I’d crossed: it hardly even looked rough. Okay, whitecaps here and there, but still, nothing that would hold me back. I checked the GoMoos buoy history later on, which recorded 25 mph gusts at that time. By the time I got home, I felt like I’d been on the paddling equivalent of a treadmill.