August 12 and 13 -- Winter Harbor to Roque Island and Return to Great cranberry Island, 36 and 43 Miles

We had visited Roque Island with Bennett in 2015 and this private island has not changed. I had recalled that the beach was covered with flat sea scoured pebbles but on this visit the pebbles were at the eastern end, with sand covering the rest of the wide beach. Maybe my pebble memory was erroneous.This is a natural crescent beach, which looks like the one at Orchard Beach, near the Harlem Yacht Club, except Orchard Beach was artificially created by New York’s park Czar of the 1930’s, Robert Moses. (Another Moses reference is coming up; wait for it!) Also, Roque’s beach is a lot bigger. I measured the straight line distance from one end of the crescent to the other, on the two nautical charts with dividers): Orchard Beach -- .52 miles, Roque Beach .98 miles.

But Orchard Beach may have 100,000 folks on a nice summer day while Roque had the people from nine sailboats plus a Giant Schnauser named Moses. We met his owners, Brian and Shelly of s/v “Aria,” a Hylas 46 while walking on the beach after dinking in. They invited us to a sing along -- and BYO communal eat along -- on s/v “Iolare”, a 46 foot Valiant, sailed by Ralf and Kelly. The fourth couple was Richard and Janis, who also had a sailboat in the 40’s range, like ILENE. It was Ralf on guitar, Brian on banjo and Shelly on vocals; and a good time was had by all. I took a good picture of the seven of them on Iolare but it came in upside down and I don't want you guys to sprain your necks. So I will send it to Ralf who can probably invert it and share it with the others.

This jaunt had the two longest passages of this cruise in Maine: 36 miles from Winter Harbor to Roque and 43 from Roque to Spurling Cove at the north end of Great Cranberry Island. I have a new method for measuring the lengths of passages, thanks to the MFD. It records the length of our "track" -- the pink line that follows the path we have taken from the stern of our boat, fairly accurately. So track length at the end of the passage minus track length at the beginning equals the length of the passage, to the nearest hundredth of a mile -- but we round.

We took different routes out and back, except when curving past the south side of Great Wass Island and its neighbors, where we kept about 800 feet from the massive rocks in over 100 feet of water. Outbound, coming from the north, we passed north, inside Schoodic Island, and through the "swash channel" in Petit Manan Island’s bar. We went south of these tight spots on the way back, because The Cranberry Islands are south of them. Here is Petite Manan Light.

We entered Roque through The Thoroughfare, the marvelous hidden entrance in the SW part of the land mass

but left through the gap between  Double Shot Island on the east side of the chart, and the island next to it, shown off the side of this chart.










We passed Red Head, dotted with hundreds of white seagulls,

(and Black Head too), the light on Mistake Island

and about a thousand toggled lobster floats. Try as I might, I could not maintain close enough attention to avoid all of then and nicked several of them with our propeller, but did not get stuck on any of them. On the way out, after heading north into Chandler Bay to reach Roque, we saw a seal, swimming nearby, a small one. His head looked like a lobster float. They floats bob under the water when pulled by current, like he did. He rolled over looking like a sleek piece of wet driftwood. That he seemed to leave a wake was not unusual because the currents cause seaweed to be caught on lobster floats so they look like trailing manes. But this guy definitely gave us the once over and then dived. Five minutes later a pod of 6 to 8 porpoises played along side for a few minutes, the first I can recall seeing so far north. On the way back, at about the same spot, we saw about 30 such seals, not swimming as a pack, but playing as individuals. I just finished reading Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf” in which most of the action, and there is a lot of action, takes place on the “Ghost” a sealing schooner, whose crew killed seals for their skins (prized by women of fashion) like Captain Ahab’s crew killed whales for their oil.

Our anchorage was peaceful and serene in 22 feet at low with 90 feet of chain out. And the geography of the Archipelago of islands that comprise Roque, which you can see on the chart, is such that there is also another large harbor on its northern side in case the winds are from the south.
Here is the whole beach from its pebbly eadtern end, followed by me on the sandy section with ILENE in the background and showing the gaps between the lesser islands through which we exited.

 

The sandy beach has a steep slope and the retreating waters during the ebb etch an interesting pattern in the sand.

Only a tiny percentage of pleasure boaters who make it to Mount Desert Island, go further, to what is called The Bold Coast -- no services and very few bots, sort of like Nova Scotia. The only problem with this particular excursion was the lack of wind. We motored the whole way, more than 12.5 hours. Outbound there was flat zero wind, no need to even put up the main to stabilize because there were no waves either. On the return trip, the wind was at our back at approximately the speed of the boat so the American flag hung listlessly. It was cold when we picked up the free guest mooring that the town of Great Cranberry Island maintains. I'm just stating the facts, not bragging to our City friends for whom some natural air conditioning might be welcome these days.