Wadsworth Cove to Fort Point

It isn’t always easy, on a cold morning, to have faith that once you get on the water, you’ll be glad you’re there. That’s why, despite my intentions of getting an early start, Rebecca and I took our time meandering to the put-in.

We cranked the heat in the car while we drove to Castine, and parked above the beach in Wadsworth Cove. We untied the boats a bit reluctantly. Still, the sun shone, and the lack of wind made for glassy water. By the time we launched on the falling tide, we were observed by people taking their lunch breaks in pick-up trucks facing the cove.

After a spin around the cove, we headed-up the coast, and the sky began to pale as wintery clouds moved-in. Despite the occasional numb finger or toe, we felt mostly warm. Or at least not mostly cold- as long as we kept moving.

We admired the architecture: a large old shingle-style home between Perkins and Turner Points, as well as some of the humbler cabins as we proceeded north. 

Far ahead, a puff of exhaust hung in the air above Bucksport, and eventually the bridge and the paper mill’s smokestack came into view. In Morse Cove, we lingered for photos with the Squall, the rusted hulk of an old trawler, beached there as a breakwater for the marina at Morse Cove Marine. 

The Squall, built in 1937 at Bath Iron Works, did time as a patrol boat during WWII, and later returned to fishing. Now, she’s a good photo op, as well as a point of reference, easily visible from the west bank of the Penobscot... which is where we headed next.

We aimed for the lighthouse at Fort Point on Cape Jellison, and ate a quick lunch at the point. It had taken us well over two hours to get there, and we had about an hour before sunset, but the current was with us now. It’s tough to pinpoint where the Penobscot River becomes Penobscot Bay, but it starts feeling more bay-like as the gap between Cape Jellison and the Castine peninsula widens. We headed straight for the middle, to catch what current we could. 

Those pale wintery clouds made for a moody sunset as lights around Belfast began to twinkle-on.  To the south, the water and sky reflected the same pale tone, with hardly a horizon line, and as we proceeded, distant islands emerged beyond Cape Rosier, as well as a mysterious array of blinking red lights that we later determined were Vinalhaven’s wind generators- only Vinalhaven and North Haven were still below the horizon. 

The full moon rose and we were tempted to continue-on for awhile, but the thought of the warm car and some hot gas station coffee proved too enticing, and we loaded-up on the beach in the moonlight. It took awhile, as we drove home, for the numbness to dissipate from our toes, but it did and we were glad we’d gone.

Verona Island

One thing that keeps me exploring in my kayak is the nearly unlimited spots I’ve driven past and wondered “I wonder what it’s like to paddle there.” Among these locations, a few stand-out to the extent that they’re almost iconic, that it might seem a required Maine sea kayaking rite of passage to get your photo snapped in front of them. Perhaps it was that impulse that brought us, on a warm day this last week, to Verona Island.

On the chart, Verona Island is a four-mile chockstone where the Penobscot widens from its riverine origins north of Bucksport, transforming, as its channels converge south of Verona Island, into Penobscot Bay.

 Most of us in Downeast Maine have driven across a short stretch of the island many times as we’ve followed Route One over the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, as well as the smaller bridge connecting the island to Bucksport.

It takes about ten miles of paddling to circumnavigate Verona Island, and as far as I can tell, there's no perfect formula to get the current pushing you the whole way, especially if you put-in from the ramp on the north end of the island, as we did. After all, the Penobscot is a river, with fresh water continually flowing down from Bangor and beyond. Rebecca and I launched mid-cycle on a rising tide. I could probably put a lot of effort into theories about the best approach, but my guess is I'd be wrong half the time. To keep it simple, some of the time we had the current behind us, and sometimes we didn't. When we didn't, we adjusted our position between the edges and middle of the river, looking for eddies, or lack of them, and sometimes it helped.

 
We took a clockwise route, only because the current seemed favorable that direction at the time. This took us down the Eastern Channel at mid-day, which is surprisingly undeveloped. A big shallow bend in the river surrounding Porcupine Island (which appears to be non-private) is shallow and muddy- maybe not prime real estate. And I'm just guessing that before the Penobscot was cleaned-up, living downstream from the paper mill might not have been so pleasant. (This is merely conjecture- I'd love to hear if this wasn't the case).

Maybe it works well to go clockwise around the island because you save the real highlight- paddling beneath the bridges- for last. The east side was fine, and the southern end afforded a spectacular view down Penobscot Bay, but I think our pulses quickened the most as the bridge came into view and we progressed toward it, finally passing beneath, just before dusk.

And right now, as an added bonus, there's still two bridges to pass beneath. The Penobscot Narrows Bridge was built to replace the old Waldo-Hancock bridge. When the new bridge opened in 2007, the old one remained. Finally, it is being taken-down. As we approached, a pair of workers high above paused to let us pass. Just beyond the bridge, we pulled to the side to watch them work, torch sparks shooting in the dusk. 

I don't know how long the deconstruction will take, but there will be a little less of the old bridge each time we see it. Eventually it will be lowered onto barges. I'd like to be around to see a bit more of the process- whether I'm in my kayak or on the shore. It will only happen once.

The man-made wonders continued as we finished the paddle, passing before the paper mill. However you want to look at it, the mill is a spectacle. As I've driven past, I've often admired the billowing clouds lit by Bucksport's lights, and the reflection in the river. A few days later, as we visited a more pristine island- the sort that most sea kayakers come to Maine to visit- we had to appreciate its wildness, since it wasn't so far from these man-made spectacles. But it also made me appreciate the diverse environments we can paddle in around here. Shaking-up the scenery every once in awhile helps us keep our eyes open.

Thanks to Rebecca for some of these photos.

Practice Students

Nate and I were headed south on Route One well before sunrise. A couple of hours later we pulled off at a gas station, puzzling over the map when a car with a familiar kayak on its roof passed by; "There goes Ed." We followed him to the AMC cabin on Knubble Bay, where we met the others- a dozen of us in all. We were there as practice students for several candidates assessing as ACA Level 5 instructors. For the next two days, we would be their guinea pigs.

Sometimes, practice students are referred to as teabags, since getting dipped repeatedly into the ocean is usually part of the drill, but I'm told that various other connotations have brought this term out of favor. Practice students are needed for ACA assessments, and if possible, you want to get real students- not someone just pretending that they've never heard of torso rotation. We've had practice students for Instructor Development Workshops, and I had them for my L3 Instructor assessment.  Some were great; others were challenging in the way that any student can bring along their own hurdles. The challenges usually involve ego... not accepting that you might have something to learn from the instructor candidates.

Why be a practice student? The short answer is free instruction. The long answer...

At the AMC cabin, we separated into two groups. Our instructors, Mark and Danny introduced themselves and we got some sense of how the day would go. I'd paddled with both of the other students, Ed and Jenna. Todd Wright would be the assessor that day and would switch with Josh Hall (recipient of the ACA 2012 Excellence in Instruction Award) for Day 2. In a way, I think we all just wanted to get onto the water. Until then, we would be sussing each other out, wondering how skilled the others were, how we would fit in- or if we would be wet, cold and out of our element for the next two days. If I were an L5 candidate, I'd worry that the students are either too skilled and I'd have nothing to teach them, or that they're not proficient enough. Either way, you try to figure out what your students need to learn and how you'll make that happen.

We spent the first day in the mouth of the Kennebec River, practicing in the surf on Popham Beach and in the current out toward the middle. For Level 5 students, the day might involve more coaching than lessons, our instructors observing and getting us to understand how we might paddle better. If you count the assessor, the instructor to student ratio was 1 to 1: not bad.

The next day, we launched in Knubble Bay and used the current around Goose Rocks and Lower Hell Gate. I'd hoped for some rock gardening out at the Thread of Life or Damariscove Island, but conditions looked a bit small. So, while you can't always count on swell and wind, tidal current is fairly dependable, and it's tough to teach L5 skills in L2 conditions. We didn't have a lot of current, but in a way, the mild flow is almost better for coaching.

In addition to working on our personal skills, we watched the candidates to get ideas for our own styles of instruction. Whether it's a warm-up exercise or the subtly different ways we try get concepts across, getting exposure to other teachers is priceless- one of the best ways we can develop our own teaching skills.

And then there's the "just soaking it in" factor. After our first day, we all sat around a long table in the AMC cabin, trading stories, having a laugh or two. I mostly listened, impressed by the camaraderie among paddlers who have been at this for awhile, who, among a revolving cast of characters, show up at these paddling events, whether they're on the East Coast, West Coast, Scotland or Wales, and share their love of the sport. It's not something they're doing to get rich, and it isn't an easy lifestyle, but paddling has obviously pointed the way.

So I soaked it in. I had a good two days. Nate had a good two days. Pleasantly exhausted, we had a lot to talk about during the drive home. We felt fortunate and grateful for a lot of things: that we've had good teachers along the way, that we've found peers to share it with- including our wives who paddle their own boats and make it possible for us to go off on some of these trips.

Long Cove

This time of the year, we start having more time for paddling, which means that we compulsively monitor the weather and the tides, watching for windows of opportunity that don't always come. There's a few places I've wanted to get to before they get iced-in for the winter. The other morning, when air temps suddenly soared into the fifties but a stiff breeze blew from the southwest, it looked like a good day to paddle in Long Cove.

Located roughly in the middle of Deer Isle, the cove is the end of a long, twisting inlet reaching up from the southeast. The Indians followed it to "The Haulover," where they carried to where Deer Isle village is now. (That's a route I'd like to try some day, although it is on private property). The cove feels a bit more like a big pond with tides. It's only about a mile and a half long, but if you stick to the shoreline at high tide, you can wring about five or six miles of good paddling out of it. Rebecca and I launched a little after high tide from Mariner's Park on the north side and began following the shoreline.

The road to Mariner's Park is closed to vehicles for much of the winter and spring- yet another limitation, although you could probably also launch from the carryover into Greenlaw Cove on the east end. Rebecca considered a swim- after all, the water is still just a few degrees colder than it was in warmer months, when she swam regularly. Whatever the temperature, it felt icy- the sort of plunge that will take your breath away.

Except for Mariner's Park, the shores of the cove are privately-owned and mostly forested with an occasional house tucked into the woods. Pastoral, gravelly shoreline on the north side angles gradually into areas that flat-out almost completely at low tide. The south side is lined with stretches of boulders, and the mudflats reach toward a couple of small islands.

We were just happy to be on the water. Every now and then, a gust of wind blew in the treetops- just a hint of the winds elsewhere. Every day we can spend paddling our kayaks on the ocean feels like a privilege, but there's also satisfaction in having a mental catalog of all the places to paddle on days that might feel a bit nasty elsewhere. When we returned to Stonington, the harbor was fogged-in - and windy.



As it is every autumn, I'm not sure how committed I am to paddling as it gets colder; I just take it a day at a time. Odds are, over the next few months we'll investigate some of the more sheltered areas, as I have previous winters. But every time we get out there, I always have a sense that I need to make the most of it and enjoy it, because you never know- the weather could turn rough and cold for months at a time. We just try to have our gear ready and recognize those good days when they come along.