Waves & Currents

About a month ago, Pinniped Kayak hosted a two-day instructional event: Halloween at Sullivan Falls with the next day reserved for "rough water" or rocks and ledges, wherever that might take us. We had ten or twelve people each day, most of whom had traveled far- from Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island- as well as our crew of College of the Atlantic students for the second day- and were ready to get wet, despite chilly temperatures and strong winds. Nate and I had our hands full, but with Barb and Rebecca assisting the first day and Peter Brady the second, the coach/student ratio remained entirely manageable.

Much of what we do, be it rough water or flat, comes back to the fundamentals- core principals that contribute to safe and effective paddling. It may be easier to learn those fundamentals in fairly flat water, on a day devoted to stroke refinement and rescues, but at some point we bump it up a notch, get into some spots that get our adrenaline running, and see how it all works, preferably with a knowledgeable coach nearby who can help you figure it all out- and keep you from getting thrashed too badly.

We had good conditions to put all of our skills into perspective. In fact, on the second day, when the forecast called for thirty-knot gusts and six-foot seas , we worried that the conditions might, in the words of Spinal Tap's David St. Hubbins, put "too much f_ing perspective" on things. Since the wind had been out of the north, we opted for the relatively sheltered south end of Mount Desert Island, launching from Seal Harbor. We spent the morning working on boat handling in big seas until a few students developed seasickness and had to be towed-in... which was convenient, since that was on the agenda anyway. In the afternoon, we found smaller conditions where we could manage some play time around the rocks and on some beautiful waves.

It was a great finale to Pinniped's first season.

November is often not such a great paddling month for us. The weather changes, and it seems other stuff tends to come up. This November has been particularly charged with "other stuff," but sometimes that's a good time to remember particular paddling experiences as I did in my article: Zero Day: Time Out on Florida's Molasses Key, which appeared recently on the Canoe & Kayak Magazine website.

The other stuff? To make a long story short, after nearly twelve years here, we're closing the gallery and moving-out of our home here in Stonington (a small apartment above the gallery). So lately we've been consumed with going through our stuff and getting together the final show in the gallery. We've watched a few nice days go by when we would have liked to get out for a paddle, but our priorities were elsewhere.

What's next? Without the gallery, our personal priorities stand-out in sharper focus: painting, writing and paddling. We'll probably be here in Stonington until the end of December. After that we're heading down to Saint Marys, Georgia, where we will guide and teach for a new paddling outfit called Sea Surf & SUP. Our vague plan is to head back to this area in May and continue teaching for Pinniped through the summer. In the meantime, my book AMC's Best Sea Kayaking in New England should hit the shelves in April. According to Amazon, it's a "#1 New Release," which I think means that my sister pre-ordered it.

Someone recently suggested that maybe this spelled the end of Sea Kayak Stonington, but I think it is just a new beginning. I'm guessing that next summer I'll spend at least as much time paddling in the Stonington archipelago as I did last summer when I spent most of my paddling time in southern New England, while simultaneously running the gallery and writing a book. Closing the gallery is certainly bittersweet. It's sad as so many people stop by or write us to express sorrow that we will no longer be a presence here on Main Street. There has been much about the business that I have loved, but it also feels like a heavy weight removed from my shoulders. We're heading down the road without much security, but our step is lighter.

Tour de' Northern Frenchman Bay

We met Saturday morning at the College of the Atlantic pier: five student leaders-in-training, ready for a weekend trip around Frenchman Bay. The weather forecast wasn't promising: strong winds, 100 percent chance of rain, fog, the potential for big seas, but there was never any discussion of cancelling the trip. The students' stoke level was high. They'd been working hard all week on academics, but had spent Wednesday out with Nate, getting  a good look at the watery part of their neighborhood.

Nate and I have led several COA trips in the past, but this year Nate has made it one of Pinniped's goals to establish a training program for student leaders, so that students at the college will be better able to safely get into sea kayaking, led by their peers. After all, the college has an amazing location on the site of the former Turrets estate, overlooking Bar Island. The students are a great group, all alumni of a college in Victoria, BC, where they've had opportunities to get out paddling and hiking and hone their camping skills.

We headed into the fog and followed the Porcupine Islands. Along the way, we took turns leading the group and navigating, getting a sense of what it feels like to lead and be led, and the different ways to go about it. But we found ample opportunity to play along the way.

We ate lunch at Rum Cay and headed around Long Porcupine. 

The seas were fairly small- a good day to learn one's way around the rocks and ledges. But of course, one of the number one lessons to be learned is that no matter how small the seas appear, there's always a bigger wave out there, and you need to keep an eye out for it.

I'm always trying to see things through students' eyes, to try to understand how this looks to them- if I'm pushing them too hard or not enough. One of the best forms of feedback is a great big smile.

We could have kept playing, but we wanted to get to our campsite on Stave Island while the getting was good. The wind began to increase, and we were expecting steadier rain.

As with most clients, I tried to leave as much of the route-planning as possible to the students, floating an idea here and there and seeing what seemed to catch their interest. When we were looking over the chart on the beach, I mentioned the possibility of going around Crabtree Neck the next day. The marine forecast for the greater area called for 3 to 5-foot seas and 25-knot gusts, and the thought of more sheltered waters was appealing. The Crabtree Neck route would take us up Sullivan Harbor, past the Reversing Falls and into Taunton Bay, where we could wind through Carrying Place Creek to the Skillings River, back out to Frenchman Bay.

That caught their interest. The only problem though, was that it was far- close to 20 nautical miles, and we'd need to start early to catch the tides right. They surprised me and all quickly agreed that we would get an early start and go for it.

The students set-up our dining fly in an old cellar hole, where we ate lentil curry, comfortably sheltered as the wind bent the trees overhead. I have to admit that I like guiding people who cook for me- and we ate well. After dinner, instead of ghost stories around a campfire, we listened to kayaking tales of woe from "Sea Kayaker Magazine's Deep Trouble." Later, in my tent, I listened to the wind whip the fabric and the waves washing onto shore. 

We were all up in the dark, eating oatmeal as the rain pattered on the tarp, and launched at a decent hour. We followed the islands that circle the northern stretch of Frenchman Bay: Stave, Calf, Preble, and onward past the shore of Sorrento to the mouth of Sullivan Harbor.

Not a bad way to start the day at all, but it took a little longer than we'd hoped, so as we made our way up Sullivan Harbor, we began paddling against the current.

Our desire to catch the tides kept us in our boats longer than usual, and just short of Sullivan Falls it had already been awhile since breakfast. I had to ask myself if I was maybe pushing them too hard- if my desire to get around Crabtree Neck was overshadowing the needs of the group. But Sullivan Falls was just around the corner- a good place for a break since everyone wanted to see the falls and have a snack. Plus there was water and a bathroom. It was a big day at the falls. Only an hour after slack, the waves were big and meaty with sharp fangs- not something we wanted to get into right then. After a break, with energy levels revived, we carried past the biggest waves and made our way along the edge, below the Route One bridge and into Taunton Bay. Somewhere in there the rain and dark clouds went away and the day turned sunny. We found the entrance to Carrying Place and headed downstream.

It was good that we hadn't dilly-dallied; the creek was draining and in a few spots we bumped along over a rock or two, finally emerging in a stretch of mudflats around a ledge where we ate lunch.



By the time we made it back to Frenchman Bay the day had turned brilliant, fairly warm- still a bit of wind, but we tucked into the shore along MDI as we made our way back to Bar Harbor.

Machias Bay

The shores of Machias Bay are home to the largest concentration of ancient rock carvings on the east coast, and for awhile I’d wanted to check them out. One of the challenges is spending a day in the tamer, more sheltered areas at the head of the bay, forsaking the wild and exposed paddling just a few miles seaward. As it gets cooler though, having a few such semi-sheltered trips on deck makes it easier to get out.

 
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Rebecca and I launched from the Gates House on the Machias River at high tide and paddled straight for the first site, just south at Birch Point. I’d done a bit of research, but anyone writing about the petroglyphs tends to be a bit coy: a tradition of protecting what are thought to be sacred sites. So we had only a general idea of where to look. Maine Coast Heritage Trust and the Passamaquoddy tribe own the sites at Birch Point and Long Point, but there are a total of 19 sites in Machiasport with carvings as old as 3,000 years. You might imagine that you’d just paddle along the shore of Machias Bay and see numerous rock carvings. Not so.

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What do you look for when hunting petroglyphs? You could ask yourself “if I were an ancient stone carver, where would I go?” I think they favored the same places that we sea kayakers like to land: smooth rock surfaces just above the tide line, good landing spots nearby, usually a pretty view. So you follow your gut: we all like to hang out in the same gorgeous stretches of shoreline. I had that feeling about the first place we landed to have a look: a nice cove with meadows above, plenty of smooth, ledgy rocks. We looked and looked again, but saw nothing.

We got back in our boats and continued around the point, repeating the search process at every rock outcrop. We turned around and paddled past the same places, looking at ledges that were now uncovered by the tide. We stopped at our original landing again, but found nothing. Finally, after a couple hours, as we continued around the point, we saw a pair of men on shore, walking with a black cat. They said hello and I asked, maybe a tad exasperated, if they knew where to find the petroglyphs. They did.

 
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We went back to our original landing spot and took a closer look. There, right where we’d looked before, camouflaged by lines in the rock and wet areas, were pictures on the rock: animals, antlers, a cross. It’s subtle. If you’ve been to places like Newspaper Rock in the Southwest, where bold lines are carved in the sandstone and further enhanced by desert varnish, you might need to reduce your expectations for these northeast petroglyphs. They’re created by pounding the rock face with a harder rock, which creates a texture. Since some of them are very old, they’re worn down by time, and they may be easier to see in direct sunlight, when there's shadows. But you can run your fingertips along the surface and feel them: a message left in the rock.

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We had some lunch and headed across the bay to another site.

 
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Speaking of leaving one’s mark, I’ve neglected this blog for awhile. It isn’t that I haven’t been paddling or writing; I’ve been doing plenty of both. I’m working on a guidebook: AMC’s Best Sea Kayaking in New England, due out from Appalachian Mountain Club Books in the spring of 2015. It has kept me extremely busy, and will until next fall.  I’ll also have an article in the March/April issue of AMC Outdoors magazine- a feature on an overnight trip to Steves Island that Rebecca and I took with Nate and his family.

Among other news, because of time constraints, I won’t be on the schedule at Old Quarry for the next year. But Nate Hanson has started his own company, Pinneped Kayak, which specializes in the kind of instruction and adventure that we love best, and I’ll be helping out there occasionally. We’ll start with pool sessions at the Ellsworth Y, probably in January. Nate launched his new website with an excellent blog post about paddling the southeast corner of MDI, a welcome addition to the Maine paddling blogosphere.

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We found more faint petroglyphs on an island, but we’d used up our daylight and headed back to the river at low tide. It was the evening of the full moon, and this was an especially low tide, so for awhile, we paddled in only inches of water above mud flats, hoping that the tide had turned. We found the channel and made our way from one shadowy buoy to the next, arriving back at the launch as the moon came up.