Great Gott, Black Islands

We drove along, happily chatting away with an entire sunny day of paddling ahead of us when I heard a little “thunk.” My foot came off the gas. Both bows still hung over the windshield, unchanged. But one of the tie-down ropes now dangled loosely, drifting down over the hood to the underside of the car, where it had previously been attached and taut. In the rear view, the tailgating dude was still right there, seemingly unaware of the his potential of being skewered by the pointy end of a Pygmy Coho-- a kayak-kabob. There was no room to pull over, but a turn-off loomed just ahead. We coasted toward it, watching the rope flop around until I turned, maneuvering the car off the road as carefully as I could... but the rope abruptly tightened and the bow jerked downward. I hit the brakes.

The rope had caught beneath the wheel, winding around it like a power winch, pulling the kayak down with it. I backed the car a few feet and Rebecca pulled the rope out, but the boat still angled downward. The roof rail had pulled one nut right through the roof, and ripped out of another. The clothesline we’d tied the stern with had snapped. Fortunately. Something had to give, and it could have been the boat -- in pieces, all over the road. We tied it all back together as well as we could and headed down the road... carefully. At Nate’s house, we added a strap around the whole thing, running it through the doors and inside the car. That held it. We proceeded to the launch.

The irony is that I’m extremely careful and worrisome when it comes to car-topping kayaks. The bow and stern lines, which are essential on a shorter roof, turned-out to be the weak link. So we’ll figure-out a system that can’t get beneath the wheels if it fails. In the meantime, well, I installed the rack myself, so I can fix it. More holes to drill, a little Bondo: no problem.

Later, we paddled out past the Bass Harbor Head light and followed the bar toward the meadowy north end of Great Gott Island. High tide had just passed, and a mild ebbing tide pushed us west. We paddled past The Pool on Great Gott and lingered in the narrows where the current had begun increasing.

Then we splashed around a bit among the rosy pink granite slots and ledges on the east sides of Little Gott and Black. We were eager to hear details from Nate’s five-star training trip to Scotland, which he provided in bits and pieces as we made our way to Little Black Island for lunch.

Nate had an afternoon commitment, so he headed back early, catching a few rides on the mid-tide waves over the bar. We hung-out for awhile on Little Black, just walking around, looking at the rocks and the big view of the open ocean.

We meandered back, making a big “figure-8” route: north around Black, south around the Gotts. The waves had settled-down over the bar by the time we headed back across, and we drove home without further mishap.

Placentia, Black Islands

 
With a forecast for an unusually calm day-  hardly any wind and temps up to forty, Nate and I launched in Bass Harbor and paddled straight out to Placentia Island. Not long ago I read “We Were an Island,” by Peter Blanchard-  the story of Art and Nan Kellam who lived alone on Placentia Island for 35 years. In 1949 Art left his job in the aerospace industry in California, and the couple bought the 522-acre island for $10,000- a little less than what they sold their home for. They made the two-mile trek to the island in a wooden dory, and built their home from the remains of a homestead that had been abandoned for nearly a hundred years.

We landed at a gravel spit and followed a trail uphill until we came to the remains of the Kellam’s home- just a foundation marked by a bronze plaque. The Kellams donated their island to the Nature Conservancy, who is letting it return to its natural state. They left the porch swing though, in the process of slowly rotting into the ground: a good spot to sit and ponder the Kellam’s time here.

As often happens, we progressed along Placentia's southeast shore without expectations and started having fun. I'd paddled past this shoreline before, but in the getting from Point A to Point B mode. I'm finding it harder to fully enjoy that "just getting there" approach. I like to move-in closer to shore. The experience of close contour paddling close-in is an entirely different experience from paddling even a hundred feet out. You experience a bit of the land as well as the sea (as Nate is doing in the photo above- there was much more water there just a moment earlier).

From a ways out, the shore often presents a unified band, but close-up, there's often plenty of depth to that band, and that's where it get's interesting. On Placentia, we found bluffs and beaches. Off the southwest tip, as the incoming tide built-up speed, we found an eddy that curled back on itself and the incoming swell. This whole group of islands is subject to strange, tough to predict currents as the tide moves in and out of Blue Hill Bay. After a break on Little Black, we proceeded up the east shore of Black Island where we found some nice slots in the pink granite shoreline (above and below).

With minimal swell, this was a fun spot. With a bit more, it might be tough to paddle so close to shore. I've been paddling along a lot of shoreline lately. After some places I think "that was interesting enough," but I know I may never return. Others, like this, I feel a sort of urgency to get out there and discover what it has to offer. The current and the conditions obviously make it a dynamic, quickly-changing place to paddle, very different from one hour to the next. In that photo above, just wait another twenty minutes and we could paddle through that slot. The chart lists tide rips north of Black, but at mid-tide we found nothing- we'll have to try it on a falling tide.

The Kellam's two-mile trip to Bass Harbor in their dory often took around two hours. Ours was quicker than that, but if there's one thing to learn from their example, it could be the merit in slowing-down. They took the better part of a lifetime to get to know one island, and I suspect that in the end, there was still more to discover. So these are notes from just a few hours in their neighborhood. More, I hope, to follow.