Sunday Morning on Hells Half Acre

There’s usually a few moments in a trip that I could focus on – some episode or revelation that just seems to stick-out and perhaps act as a shorthand for the whole experience, and when I’m leading others on overnight trips, that moment often seems to be the space of quiet time in the morning before everyone else gets up. That’s what grabs me from last weekend: Sunday morning on Hells Half Acre, the sky turning light and wind in the treetops beginning to build, but the rain yet to begin.

 
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We made a point of waking fairly early so that we might beat the predicted wind and rain and get back across the Thorofare and Webb Cove to Old Quarry. The group, a college leadership class I was coaching through Pinniped Kayak, had been concerned about the dire forecast, but fortunately they still appreciated the value of spending the night out on the island. I would have been disappointed to miss this- this view out my open tent flap: the sparse forest defining itself in the dim morning light, the wind shadow in the cove and beyond it the seas beginning to build out by Bold and Grog Islands. From the comfort of my sleeping bag I could even see our destination at Old Quarry.

 
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With the poles for my MSR tent sent back for repairs, I was using our old Moss Starlet, a sweet little tent from the early 1980s – one of the first to use the open netting design for the roof so that one might lie-out and look at the stars. Of course, I rarely do this, since I’m usually camping at times when I need whatever heat that the thin rainfly might retain, not to mention protection from dew and rain. Still in my sleeping bag, I got the stove in the vestibule going and made myself some coffee, which I sipped while reading a novel, and after a bit, I began to hear noises from the other tent platform, and my day began in earnest. But that was a good interlude- perhaps good enough to make it worth whatever trouble we needed to go to in order to wake-up in such a place. And Hells Half Acre is so easy – less than two miles from the launch at Old Quarry.

 
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There were other moments as well. We saw two other distant parties of kayakers. One was Joseph Mullins (above) whose blog I’ve been following with a sort-of concerned curiosity after he was rescued by the Coast Guard off of Baileys Mistake on the first day of a trip down the east coast. 

The other was another, larger college group that passed Little Camp Island while we ate lunch there and continued without pause, nearly single-file and strung-out over some distance, as they went straight across a wider stretch of the Thorofare. Both of these sightings prompted useful discussions among the future sea kayak leaders in the group.

 
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I dropped the group off at Old Quarry and had a cup of tea with Finn, who is running things there this summer. For the most part, Rebecca and I won’t be working there this year, since instead we’ll be spending a couple of months paddling the Maine coast. I’ll elaborate more on that in another post. Some people tell us we should have a website for it… essentially a marketing scheme, but I think a few updates on this blog ought to be sufficient. We’re just going on a paddling trip, for fun, for two months.

 
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I had a five-mile paddle home to Greenlaw Cove. The previous day I’d paddled out Stinson Neck and portaged over the Sunshine Causeway. On my return trip on Sunday though, the wind and rain picked-up considerably from the east, and I was really happy that I had a rising tide to take me up through Hatch Cove and up through Inner and Southeast Harbors into Long Cove (offshore from the house where we spent the end of last summer) where I again carried-over to Greenlaw Cove: all amazingly sheltered paddling for an otherwise rough day. I even managed to paddle past my dream house (above).

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The cool rain felt good on my face, especially knowing I would have the luxury of a warm home from which to watch the storm build through the afternoon.