Lunch on Marshall Island, Dinner on Swans

Hutch and I both had the day off and, deciding to make the most of it, planned on a full-day paddle. Since it was a mid-day high tide and heading south against the current didn’t make much sense, we decided to head east, to Marshall Island. And just before we launched we discovered Old Quarry had a boat going over to Swans Island that evening to take passengers to a music festival at the Oddfellows Hall. Did we want to meet the boat over there, go to the concert and catch a ride back? Amazingly, we hesitated for about three minutes, since it hadn’t been our plan, but…well, duh. Of course we wanted to take a one-way paddle with a shuttle back.

We chatted as we paddled over to Marshall, which made the longer stretches go by quickly. In addition to a few parallel interests, we had some similarities in our lifestyle choices. Hutch and his spouse Shari have been here at Old Quarry for the summer, where they live in their 1957 ‘canned ham’-style trailer. The trailer is pretty small – only 15 feet long… and they’ve been living in it for 6 years! 

 

We curved around Saddleback Island and crossed Jericho Bay via Southern Mark Island and Saddleback Ledge. It was warm and sunny, clear, with fairly calm seas and not much wind: the sort of day you could go just about anywhere out there. As we neared the southwest end of Marshall Island, we heard a distinctive exhalation of air and saw a minke whale surface not far off, its long back curving above the surface, glistening in the sunlight until the dark triangle of the dorsal fin appeared for a moment before the whale dove again. Since minkes can remain submerged for some twenty minutes, it wouldn’t have surprised us if the first glimpse had been all we’d see, but the whale continued to surface, multiple times. We drifted and watched, all thoughts of getting anywhere temporarily forgotten.

I think that’s when a paddle gets good: when you stop thinking about the destination and you’re just focused on the present, wherever you are, and it’s a bit of a gift, when those moments occur unexpectedly. We landed in Boxam Cove and ate lunch, admiring the pink granite shoreline, banded with dark intrusive dikes – a distinct formation found at a number of headlands jutting southward into the sea along this stretch of coast. Of course we also had to stop at the sandy beach at the head of Sand Cove, if only for a short stroll on the beach and a visit to the tent platforms. We had it to ourselves.

We still had most of the afternoon to meander six or so miles along the islands and ledges leading to Swans Island. It’s a good thing we brought helmets, since the small swell made for some perfect rock play conditions. Again, we lost track of time, trying to catch little waves through the rocks or bumping over pour-overs. We could have almost forgotten our destination. 

This relaxed quality to our afternoon would have been difficult if we’d needed to paddle the ten or so miles to get directly back. Instead, we found ourselves at the end of the day, paddling into Burnt Coat Harbor where we waited for the Nigh Duck, floating just offshore. In the late-day light, the harbor, full of lobster boats as well as visiting cruising boats, felt hushed. We ransacked our supplies for any remaining food and ate afloat, watching schooner passengers getting ferried in to the dock.

The Nigh Duck arrived and while the first passengers were shuttled to the dock, Hutch and I climbed aboard and hoisted our kayaks to the cabin roof. We got into some dry clothes and caught the last trip to the dock. Despite having lived essentially next door to Swans Island for the last fifteen years, I haven’t explored much beyond the shoreline, so it was a treat merely to walk along the road to get to the Oddfellows Hall. It was quiet, hardly any cars about, and I admired a few century-old homes along the winding asphalt.

The Oddfellows Hall is massive, a tall wooden antique of a building with the auditorium, holding well over 200 people, on the second floor. The performance was already in progress, but we were expected and a staffer ushered us backstage and into the front row before a packed hall. The Sweet Chariot Music Festival has been going on every summer for over twenty years, a three-night event that attracts performers, usually with a folksy bent, from all over. Since Swans doesn’t have much in the way of accommodations and the last ferry leaves for Bass Harbor too early, the audience is mostly island residents and visiting boaters. Before the evening performance, musicians pile into boats and visit the schooners in the harbor, singing sea shanties. According to some, some of the real musical highlights occur during the after-parties.

But we had to leave before the show was over so we could motor back across Jericho Bay, itself a dreamy experience. The stars were bright, and the moon, just past full, rose over the ocean. Occasionally, headlights flashed atop Cadillac Mountain and our re-entry into our neighborhood was made obvious by the bright lights of the Haystack school angling up the hillside on Stinson Neck.

Notes:

Hutch and Shari have a website called Freedom In A Can, where they share their blog posts, photos and helpful hints for those interested in their mobile lifestyle. They also write blog posts for The Dyrt.

The Sweet Chariot Music Festival happens around this time every summer. What a cool event: check it out!

Each act in the festival gets about fifteen minutes on stage. One group I particularly liked was a college-age trio from Camden called The Push Farther Project. They play a variety of instruments, including cello and other strings, and create unusual harmonies to sing what they call “documentary” songs that incorporate stories gleaned from other people’s experiences.

Trip #13 in my guidebook, AMC’s Best Sea Kayaking in New England covers Swans Island. Buy this book. Buy this book. Buy this book. Repeat after me… I will buy this book…

I've been posting fairly frequently on Instagram, using it like a photo journal, and of course gradually accruing visits to MITA islands for the 30 In 30 challenge.  

Ah yes, the MITA 30 In 30 Challenge- info here. 

Sunday Paddle to Fog Island

On Sunday, we had an unusual convergence of friends with a free day and nice weather, so six of us gathered at Old Quarry and, hoping to find a few watery bumps on an otherwise calm day, headed-out along the east side of the Stonington archipelago. It was great just to see friends, and as we paddled-out, often found ourselves in pairs, chatting about how our summers had gone and what our next plans were. As we rounded the corner of Spruce Island and the broader expanse of Jericho Bay came into view, we found a very mild swell washing-in along the glacial erratic boulders, and instinctively, we gravitated toward the places where the waves rose and fell among the rocks. It was a nice warm-up exercise, since as we proceeded southward, the swell - and the challenges among the rocks - gradually increased.

This kind of progression, from flat calm onward,  feels pretty nice. We start the day not knowing what we'll find out there, but we bring along helmets, just in case there's a chance for some play. When you first encounter these waves hitting the rocks it might feel a bit mystifying... 'what am I supposed to do with this?' you might wonder. But you figure-out a safe way to get in there- bow seaward so you can see what's coming and get-out if need be, and get your stern up close and see what happens.

We lingered along the outer shore of No Mans Island. Nothing was too big or imposing, so it was a good spot to refine some skills. A lot of paddlers might never get a chance to try-out a brace if they didn't get into a bumpier spot like this. It's good to see what works well and what doesn't- an effective reality check.

We pointed out to Southern Mark Island and then onward to Fog Island where we ate lunch. By the end of lunch, our group of six was down to only three, since other priorities beckoned for some. For the remaining three, Popplestone Ledges had been beckoning the whole time we ate lunch. Exposed to open ocean and subject to the current squeezing in and out of Jericho Bay, this can be a lively spot. We found some small pour-overs, but mostly just found waves hitting rocks in spots where we really didn't want to end-up. Around the last ledge though, the swell wrapped around it and the waves reared-up nicely, and we all got a few nice rides.

We took our time getting back, stopping at Gooseberry Island, enjoying the warm air, the nice light- all seen through a somewhat nostalgic lens with the feeling that this would probably be our last time paddling together for awhile. Rebecca and I will continue onward soon - to New Hampshire and then Newfoundland, and we don't have particular long-term plans. Gooseberry is a favorite spot: the erratic boulders sprinkled like giant marbles, the backdrop of Isle au Haut and just enough swell to keep things lively. We savored it for awhile and headed back-in.

Notes:
This area is covered in Trip #14 in my guidebook AMC's Best Sea Kayaking in New England. If you don't have this book yet, you really ought to get it. Since I've been at Old Quarry, I'm often astonished at the lack of research done by many of the paddlers heading-out here. They may hope to get 'local knowledge' from whomever happens to be at the front desk in the office, but that's a pretty hit-or-miss proposition. When I'm advising people, I often find that one tiny piece of information could make a crucial difference in their trip planning- in their enjoyment of the trip and their safety. Why not educate yourself as well as you can before leaving it all to chance?

The trips in this book are more than just lines drawn-over a map, and often they're more overall background information than just a route. In addition, the introduction to the book contains very condensed background information that would be useful to most paddlers, regardless of how experienced they perceive themselves to be. I'm usually a bit hesitant to suggest my book in such a way, or to make public observations about paddlers, but you don't have to watch people launch from a place like Old Quarry for very long to understand that most paddlers could have a better, safer paddling experience with a wee bit of guidance.

Yet Another Way to Paddle Frenchman Bay

Yesterday morning I had one of those “how long can I keep doing this?” moments as I rolled out of bed. I ached in all the usual places, but at the end of a long season of teaching and guiding sea kayakers, it felt like my age was catching up with me. I hate to admit that – to blame it on age. It immediately makes me think of some of my coaches, maybe ten years my senior, still hard at it, more so than I. They’re either just tougher than I am, in more pain than I am, or maybe they’ve adapted in some ways to sustain their ability to keep at it. Or maybe a little bit of all of the above.

         After rolling out of bed though, I spent ten to fifteen minutes on some stretches, and started feeling better. I’ve done those stretches nearly every morning for probably a decade, and they help. Maybe I need to do more. Maybe it’s time for an update of the yoga classes I took thirty years ago.

I’d spent the last couple of days with M, who’d come from Tel Aviv and wanted to work on a few things you can’t find easily along the Israeli coast, like rocks and ledges and tidal currents. We told him he’d come to the right place. And since Rebecca had errands in Ellsworth, we had the perfect opportunity to plan a shuttle – get dropped-off at one place and picked-up at another. Nate dropped us off in Bar Harbor and helped us get our gear together while his golden retriever ran on the beach. Nate looked out at the Porcupine Islands: damp spruce beneath a gray, overcast sky. The wind had dropped to almost nothing, and the air temps had risen into the fifties – warmer than they’d been lately. “Looks like you’ll have a good day,” he said.

            I might have suggested that Nate come along, but I knew he was looking forward to getting stuff done around the house and returning to his winter projects in the wood shop. Still, he had that wistful look that we get when we launch someone else and kind of wish we were going.

M and I headed-off into the Porcupines, and it was a good day out there, with just enough swell to create a few challenges. We got into the Keyhole and made our way among the tall chasms on Long Porcupine around high tide. We ate lunch on The Hop, the island barred to the west end of Long Porcupine, where you can sit atop high, meadowy ledges and take-in a view that encompasses much of the south end of Frenchman Bay. M asked me if I went there often and I looked around and nodded.

            “You’re lucky to have this in your backyard,” M said, and I agreed.

We went through the gap between Jordan and Ironbound – the “Halibut Hole” and followed the cliffs of Ironbound's eastern shore. The tide was still high, so we managed to paddle deeply into the caves. I’d started the day demonstrating places that M could get into, but by now he knew the drill. He’d start paddling-in while I waited, keeping an eye out for any jumbo waves. 

When introducing people to rocks, ledges and cliffs, one big concern is that, no matter how much I point-out the need to work on that 360-degree awareness, that hypersensitivity to everything around you, and in particular everything that can go wrong- where the waves are coming from and where they’ll take you, it takes some experience to develop this awareness. There’s always a bigger wave coming and you need to anticipate what that will do to the stretch of water you’re about to enter.

So after M paddled deep into the longest cave, I almost didn’t take a turn – after all, he wouldn’t be getting anything more from my demonstration, and while in the depths of the cave I wouldn’t be keeping an eye out for potential close-out waves. And I knew what to expect. But it would be crazy to not go in; the tide was perfect, waves weren’t too big, and when would I get there again?

I backed most of the way to the rear of the cave, from where the entrance appeared as a massive mouse hole in the cliff face. In the dim chamber, the outgoing waves dragged the rounded cobbles over each other, tumbling them like bowling balls in a giant’s popcorn popper, and then the wave would come, driving into the undercut, bored-out back of the cave and erupt in an explosion of mist that shot all around you. You could feel the booming in your chest, this release of energy contained by a vault of stone, like a bomb going off underground, just behind you.

        It put a smile on my face. I paddled out of the cave, and we headed onward, checking-out every stretch of shoreline, looking for whatever surprises it might offer. 

At the end of Ironbound it just seemed natural to continue southward, across a stretch of open water to the Egg Rock lighthouse. From there it wasn’t much more than a half-hour to the take-out at Grindstone Neck, where Rebecca waited for us as the sun set behind the mountains of Acadia.

We spent the next day at Sullivan Falls. Another day, another story, but probably a big part of why I woke-up feeling beat-up after a couple days of this. I know. Tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

 

The places on this route are covered in Trips #8 and #9 in my guidebook, AMC’s Best Sea Kayaking in New England. As illustrated here, there’s no end to the ways you can approach these routes and mix them up.

The take-out is not really a boat launch and not listed in the guidebook since there isn’t  much dedicated parking, but it can be a useful spot. Just drive down to the south end of Grindstone Neck in Winter Harbor. There’s a wide spot in the pavement to turn around or park, and an old stone bench that overlooks the shore, which is a mix of rocky slabs – probably not an easy landing in rough conditions. No facilities.

Otter Cove to Bar Harbor (or Riding a Giant, Salty Fart)

The southeast shore of Mount Desert Island encompasses the western mouth of Frenchman Bay, which, even on a calm day, rolls some swell into the bold, cliffy shoreline, creating the iconic features that make a national park feel like a national park: postcard-worthy, selfie-inducing roadside attractions like Otter Cliffs, Thunder Hole and Sand Beach. The first time I paddled this stretch, the crowds of people on shore and the stench of diesel wafting-down from tour busses on Ocean Drive made me glad to move-on to less-celebrated, but perhaps equally stunning shores.

 

But now when I get a chance to paddle this stretch, I just try to get used to the fact that we’ll be appearing in the vacation albums of visitors from around the world, that, having paddled around the corner at Otter Cliffs, we’ve stepped onto a stage extending to Great Head, that we’ve become part of the entertainment.

Wednesday was a lively day out there, with strong west winds and big enough seas to create all kinds of thunder when the waves crashed into shore. Nate, Rebecca and I had a rare day off together, and plenty of time, so after launching in Otter Cove we meandered slowly around Otter Point… and then Otter Cliffs, looking to see what opportunities might arise. 

Aside from all that, we were joining the zillions of leaf-peepers visiting to see the gorgeous colors of autumn; the colors really were spectacular, and you get a pretty good view of the colorful hills from the water.

 

On calm days there are usually few other boaters out there, so on a bumpy day in October, it’s no surprise that, despite the masses of humanity on shore, we were the only ones on the water. Oddly, I felt a little shy of the audiences. Nate and Rebecca would swoop-in for their plays among the rocks while I took pictures, and by the time my turn came it seemed like we’d had enough time on that particular stage and I wasn’t sure I’d look as impressive. 

Not only that, but I didn’t want to screw-up in front of a crowd that we began to expect might have been secretly hoping for blood, the sort of thing that might play well on You Tube: “Watch these idiot kayakers get plastered to a cliff.” Of course, some of the liveliest spots lay just beneath those watchful eyes and cameras and phones, but visible only from the water.

I was relieved to see both Nate and Rebecca, after seeming to consider the slot at Thunder Hole where the railings above were thick with camera-wielding visitors, move-onward. Surely there must be plenty of anonymous, but equally thunderous holes out there.

We landed at the less-populated end of Sand Beach, and after a quick lunch, continued out around Great Head. From here to Bar Harbor, we would see almost no one on shore.

A blow hole occurs where the base of a steep cliff is undercut, so when a big enough wave rolls-in, there’s an explosion of water, sometimes a strong, directed burst of wind, and a rebounding wave. The nature of these dynamics changes by the moment with the tide height and the direction and sizes of the waves coming in.

If you’re game, you can get yourself into a spot in front of the cliff and hope for the best. It might look scary and intimidating, but if you stay seaward of the breaking wave, it can be relatively safe, since you’re getting pushed back out toward open water, albeit you might be pushed in a rather chaotic way. Spewed might be a better word than pushed. The cliff spews you seaward. It’s as if the bowels of the island are farting you back into the sea. It’s exactly like riding a big, juicy fart.

You never know quite how it will play out. Sometimes the spray feels more like a wall of water, hitting your back with almost enough force to knock the wind out of you. Sometimes it’s a refreshing slap in the face. Often, the explosion of water is so enveloping that you have a moment or two of no visibility, when you’re not even sure if you’re still above the surface. For someone watching, the paddler completely disappears in the burst of spray, which might shoot some thirty or forty feet skyward. You might get knocked over, or you might find yourself atop a steep wave, surfing back out toward open water.

I took a lot of snapshots on burst mode, and many of the sequences end in a completely white frame as we viewers were also enveloped.

Looking back over my description, I realize that this might not necessarily look like fun, and that it wouldn’t be much fun if you lacked reliable skills (rolling, surfing, bracing, etc). It wouldn’t be a good spot to swim or try to perform a t-rescue. But we had a good time, going back for the ride again and again.

The rest of the paddle back to Bar Harbor, where we’d set a shuttle, was relatively mellow.

Bois Bubert, Jordan's Delight

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One tactic for beginning a narrative about a trip is to choose a highlight, perhaps something from the middle of the trip, or maybe the event that felt like the climax, and start there. Paint it in vivid detail and then explain briefly how you got there and maybe a nod toward how the trip will proceed. And you could even return to that special moment to end your narrative. It makes it less likely that you’ll get bogged-down in tedious details, and hopefully gets you quickly to the good stuff. But this quick trip to Bois Bubert Island was mostly good stuff.

My first thought was to begin when three of us sat watching the moon rise over the sea, lighting the granite shoreline, outlining the nearby islands where we would paddle the next day. The red lights atop the array of antennae at Cutler twinkled in the distance, and a few very bright lights shone from Great Wass Island, some eleven miles across the mouth of Pleasant Bay and Western Bay. It seemed a minor miracle that Barb and I had been able to get away at a moment's notice to join Nate and Melodi on this learning journey, and even more so just to be sitting there together, gazing at the moon over the sea, feeling the warmth still emanating from the granite beneath us.

I could just as easily choose the moments the next morning when I returned to the same spot to do my stretches, warm in the lee of the island with the early sun on me and I wanted to point my camera at pretty much everything because it all just seemed so perfectly gorgeous (but knowing that my photos would not convey it). 

Or I could start with the last stretch of ocean before we arrived at Jordans Delight, a craggy island with sheer cliffs dropping straight down into the sea from bright green hilltops, splotchy with purple wildflowers. We’d slipped out of the lee of Bois Bubert and cruised downwind, arriving quickly at the island where we spent the next hour and a half exploring the near-shore rocks, finding a few splashy challenges for ourselves in the process. Since this was a class for Melodi, she and Nate worked on developing skills, while Barb and I ... worked on developing skills with a slightly less structured approach.

If I wanted to hit a different note, I might instead focus on the lobster boat that apparently motored out of its way to check us out (it was pretty windy and a little wavy) passing first one way behind us and then returning the other. Nate and I guessed that all the hub-bub since the accident, two months ago now, had reinforced some fishermen’s views about kayaks not belonging on the ocean (an article had inevitably quoted a fisherman saying just that). Of course we were fine; we were more than fine.

Barb Todd photo

Or I could even just revel in the feeling, after I'd first launched, of paddling alone again in a less familiar environment and how great it felt, both the aloneness as I pointed toward the vertical exclamation of the Petit Manan lighthouse, which tends to look somehow ominous from a distance, and the knowledge that friends awaited in camp. 

Or maybe that moment before falling asleep in my tent, the night so clear I’d left the fly off, waking every now and then to track the moon’s arc across the sky. 

Or how after we’d all landed back at the launch and loaded-up, Barb and I took a hike up Pigeon Hill to look out over the stretch of ocean we’d paddled, laid-out below us like Google Earth. Or even the drive home, listening to the radio, eating cookies, feeling good. Or the bear I saw lumbering down the roadside embankment in Sedgwick. Or the beginning of the trip when I left Old Quarry, having just guided a morning trip and hurriedly loaded my gear, and realizing the moment I’d left that I’d forgotten a few things, but deciding not to go back for them, that it wasn’t worth one more delay. 

Every trip has a story, the beginning, middle and end that we might expect – I suppose, but in a way, from the moment I started the car to my return a day and a half later, the trip was a series of moments, all of them held together by a route traced over a chart, possible in a vessel that enables us to paddle side by side with our peers- in this case Barb, Melodi and Nate, and experience the overall same trip, but a different series of moments. 

Then of course there’s the information, the ways that so many people measure their trips, be they statute or nautical miles, the speed of the wind, the height of the waves, time departed, calories burned, food consumed, etc. You can find more information about this trip and the different ways to approach it in my guidebook AMC’s Best Sea Kayaking in New England. Trip #7. 

Our upcoming opportunities include a 4-day trip around the Swans Island archipelago, August 8-11, and a 5-day Journey up the Downeast coast, September 6-10 (in which we will very likely visit the Bois Bubert/Jordans Delight area). We have plenty of other opportunities as well, both through Pinniped Kayak and Old Quarry Ocean Adventures.

South of Bar Harbor

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Nate and I had a meeting in Bar Harbor, but by mid-morning it was done and we had the rest of the day to ourselves. We grabbed a coffee and a pastry at the Morning Glory bakery and soon enough found ourselves down at the town pier, looking out over Frenchman Bay, wondering where we might go. With the wind from the northwest, we didn’t expect much swell, and we figured that following the southeast shore of Mount Desert Island south of town might keep us in the lee of the wind for awhile, so we headed that way.

The first stretch of shoreline curves below a hotel and a popular pedestrian path. Just to the south, a rock jetty stretches most of the way from Bald Porcupine Island to the shore, buffering this part of the harbor from the biggest swell. We were in no rush to get anywhere though, and found pleasant distractions in the small waves among the near-shore rocks.

It occurred to me that I had paddled this stretch in one of my first classes with Mark Schoon, probably about ten years ago when he’d gauged my poor edging skills and led me and Todd though an obstacle course of rocks to get us turning better- probably my introduction to contour paddling. 

As Nate and I moved down the shore, playing in one rockweed-cushioned spot after another, watched over by pedestrians above with zoom lenses, we started to realize what a great progression it made, the waves getting slightly bigger until we got past the jetty and you start to feel the unfettered open ocean swell rolling in. But just as the stakes start to raise, there’s a perfect opportunity for a little calm water or a break in Compass Cove, where the National Park owns a beach and a rocky outcrop that shelters it.

Right off of this outcrop we found a sometimes-exposed reef close to shore where the incoming waves built up and poured-over the rocks- a perfect spot to position yourself to catch one of those waves as it spills over. We did this again and again… and again, longer than most people would probably find interesting, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that helps hone skills. And it was just fun in a mesmerizing, childlike way.

We pulled ourselves away and continued south along the shore and found that there are a number of such pour-overs along here. We also noticed the seas gradually building, and our level of care increased with them. In some slots and cave-like undercuts that we’d explored in calmer conditions, we opted to pass by outside of the breaking wave zone.

Just past a spectacular cliff-top mansion called High Seas, Nate ventured close to the overhung cliff and discovered a small roundish indent in the rock that, when the waves hit it just right, ejected a massive eruption of spray and wave. The waves came in and rebounded like a bumper pool shot, and if you positioned yourself just right, you could catch a thrilling ride, enveloped in a thick cloud of spray. In some of the photos we took of our best rides, all you see is water, the paddler completely consumed.

It began to occur to us that the seas were getting much bigger than predicted, and it wasn’t just the near-shore anomalies. If your level of vigilance hasn’t ratcheted-up a notch, it certainly should here. We later spoke of how, when the conditions really build and turn chaotic, we get into a state of hyper-awareness, always on, constantly making a systematic check of all the possible things that might go wrong… looking for that next big wave and anticipating what it will do, inventorying the possible exit plans… where’s the nearest landing? Where’s the route out to open water. Where do we want to position ourselves when the other is trying-out a feature?

In addition to being fun places to play in pour-overs, the offshore reefs can provide places to seek temporary shelter from the incoming waves, but beginning back at Compass Harbor, this stretch of shoreline is thin on shelter or bailouts. We started looking for a spot for lunch, paddling around Schooner Head and into a cove, where we provided entertainment for some homeowners in the telltale binocular-gazing position on their deck. We checked-out one spot after another, and each time a bigger than usual set came-in and pummeled the shore. We even thought about swim landings, but every spot we considered would get wiped clean by the tallest waves. So we paused for a granola bar and turned back, hitting some of those same features a second time on our way north.

One That Got Away

Just offshore from High Seas, a green can marks the edge of the deeper channel, as well as Newport Ledge just inland. We glanced out there just as a monstrous wave reared-up and rolled toward shore. As we paddled toward the spot, we gauged the biggest waves at 8-10 feet. It seemed like a good enough spot to catch something like that; as long as you’re past the ledge there’s plenty of space between there and shore, and the waves seemed to settle-down fairly quickly. If we’d watched longer, we would have realized that a primary swell was followed by a secondary swell, and occasionally they stacked-up on top of each other, creating… well, a really monstrous wave.

Often Nate goes first, but I seemed to be in position as a good-looking wave built behind me… then another good-looking wave built upon that. I can’t say I’ve seen anything like it before, but suddenly I had what was... a very tall wall of water rising right behind me, starting to break. I’ll admit, it was a lot bigger than anything I wanted to try to surf, and it felt creepy. I straightened my boat and took a deep breath, aware that just about anything might happen in the next moments.  The breaking crest hissed, a sound akin to lightning ripping across the sky, and I felt my stern rise. I took a couple strokes forward… and it passed beneath me. It was like looking off a cliff. I felt a little disappointed that I didn’t catch it, but also certainly relieved.

 

We hung around there for longer than we should have, trying to catch a wave without much luck, finally heading back along shore, stopping in Compass Cove for a long-awaited break, and tooling-about the near shore rocks between there and town, in waves that felt far more manageable than at the beginning of the day.