Maine Kayaking August 2020
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Sarah found us this unexpected gem in Friendship, Maine as a break from the Covid-19 stay-at-home blahs. She also found Vault Health who will do fairly quick turn-around testing at home. That gave us the required negative (yeah!) result which Maine requires for visitors. Gil and Sharon's apartment, 11 Bayberry Drive, is the third building from the left (as seem from the water) or second from the right. You enter through the garage, which seemed odd at first but turned out to be a great deal: we had plenty of dry space to pile our daily boating gear. The deck had a great view of the cove, and Robert enjoyed having the loft to himself. |
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| The deck was also the perfect place to work on our boats. Robert leveraged the soda bottles (recycled to fit the found / recycled requirements) for buoyancy while Sarah took advantage of birch bark weaving to win style points. I had an idea for a simple design that just might have worked, had my birch bark been a bit bigger and my rock a bit smaller and smoother. |
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| And the cove and dock turned out to be a great place to put "Clawbautaman" into the water. Somehow an inflatable lobster makes perfect sense in a lobster-rich cove. |
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A view of the cove at high tide versus low tide as seen above. Sarah also arranged for Midcoast Kayak to deliver kayaks as we drove up Saturday and then pick them up as we drove home the next Saturday. That was great and we loved getting out in them every day we were there. We found lots of fun areas to paddle around our Friendship Cove. Including a cool cut through between Wolsgrover and Wharton Islands (zoom in on the map and look a bit north of the middle) which turned out to be an excellent place to launch our reused / recycled boats. |
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| Robert's design did work best as a boat. |
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Sarah's was best for style points: the woven bark was extremely cool. Mine, well... The bark was a bit small and the rock a bit big... There was little to photograph... That personal disappointment did not detract from the beauty of the environment at all. And I have to add a shameless plug for Wallace's General Store in Friendship. Their Boston Italian hoagie kept Robert and me going all day; we picked up two of those and a chicken BLT for Sarah every morning before heading out. They fit fine in our small dry bag, in the back of the boat and there were plenty of good beaches and rock outcroppings for lunch. |
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| The next day, Monday if you are following along (we drove up Saturday took our first paddle around Sunday), we pretty much did it all again. This time we spent some time at the northern end of Hungry Island. At low tide, there was a great tide pool to check out; we watched the water rise over our feet there. And it was warm enough — a surprisingly warm week for Maine — to enjoy spending some time in the ocean off the rocks. |
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| It was foggy Tuesday morning. Another beautiful version of the cove. |
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| We decided to try our hands at improving our boat designs. And we allowed duct tape because... why not. Robert went with triple bottles, I ditched my rock idea and embraced the duct tape and bottle approach. Sarah remained pure to her aesthetic (with a bottle added for more bouyancy). |
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This time we launched from the dock, and Sarah volunteered to retrieve the boats. My boat worked much better this time around (but that's not saying much). Sarah had an over abundance of bouyancy on one side. Robert's three bottle design was an improvement on his previous two bottle design. |
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| The water proved too enticing for Robert; he got back on "Clawbautaman" and this time talked Sarah into a tow... |
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| Wednesday, we headed back to Hungry Island. Our hosts had given us a map and connected us with the local keeper of the island. Mark volunteers for Chewonki and maintains the trails on Hungry Island, and he happens to live two doors down. As we headed out, he called us over and gave us some tips on finding the trail head. His advice, coupled with the map, made it easy to find to the eastern trail head. The trip east to west is pretty short. It was hot enough we decided that was enough and returned to the boats (and our sandwiches) for lunch. |
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| We went through our favorite cut through on the way back and enjoyed another beautiful evening. The weather really did treat us well. I know if was hot for the locals, but so much better than the month of 90+ degrees we left in DC. |
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| On Thursday, we drove around the inlet to Pemaquid lighthouse. The lighthouse was closed to visitors due to Covid-19, but the rocks were open. And the museum was open and enforcing physical distancing rules. While we were there we saw sailboats, fishing boats, and two dry-suited divers. |
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| The week we were in Maine happened to be the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. We went out most nights to lay on the dock where there was a lot of sky to see. We saw meteors every night we looked. Not rapid fire but two or three in the 30 - 45 minutes we lay out looking for them. For folks in Alexandria, there were a lot of stars! The meteors were an extra bonus. Robert and I saw one huge, bright yellow and orange one that broke into two fireballs before blinking out. (To get a sense you likely need to click on these to see the larger version of the pictures. Or try the big versions: 1, 2, 3.) |
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| Of course we got in the kayaks before checking out the stars. Having hiked across Hungry Island the on Wednesday, on Thursday we circumnavigated the island and looked for (and found) the western trail head. |
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| We were sad to realize that Friday was out last day in Friendship and on Delano Cove and environs. Our kayaking on Friday took us along the western shore of the isthmus we were staying on down to Floods Cove. The tide was low (as it often was for our week of kayaking there) and we couldn't cross the high tide channel and go around that island. |
| Such a great week! We had a blast, Sarah's plan worked out perfectly and we really enjoyed our break from the Covid-19 reality. I am sure we'll be back. And Robert has a project: he may be working on a music video for Old Town Loon to the tune of Old Town Road; we shot a bit of video for that project. |
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Vacation notes:
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