A bad start in the morning after a chat with our neighbors who rowed over for that purpose. His were the first words I have heard not praising the sailing in New Brunswick; my plan remains for us to go there to see for ourselves.
But that was not the bad start. It happened after breakfast. We had anchored near underwater rocks and facing them. Upon retrieving the anchor and while stowing it, I had asked Lene to back away from some lobster trap floats and then go into forward and turn to starboard, away from the island and its rocks. She did so while I was up on the bow washing off mud and storing the anchor and snubber line. She made the turn but not quickly enough. Suddenly a few jolts as our keel became trapped among the rocks. Fortunately we were going slow, at perhaps one knot, so the knocks were small gentle ones. When you hit a rock at speed, the watertight integrity of the keel-hull joint is threatened and people get hurt but the sudden stop. And there was no wind or waves, so no bouncing around on those big round underwater boulders. If it was a sandy bottom we would just back out with the engine or kedge off, but with rocks such maneuvers would aggravate the damage. We turned the wheel and the relatively delicate rudder was free, not touching rocks, only the keel. The cause and the solution to the problem was the same: it was low tide - lots of seaweed showing on the shoreside rocks. But for low tide we would have been in deeper water and not touched the rocks but have passed over them. The only solution was to wait for the tide to rise, six hours from low to high, during which time we would float off. I lowered the dink with the intent to put out a kedging anchor so that when we did float free we would not drift further into the rocks and prepared the port anchor for kedging. This took about fifteen minutes, at which time I noticed that we were moving. The tide had risen enough already. We turned the engine back on and gingerly motored away until the water was quickly 30 feet deep instead of six. Hauled up dink, pushed the anchor rode down into its storage provision and we were underway. Whatever nicks in the boot at the bottom of the keel there are will be seen when we haul ILENE in the fall. No photos of the exciting parts of the cruise because we are too busy ending the danger.
We passed some interesting boats of various sizes during our passage.
The kayakers were among the small islands before crossing Jericho Bay, transiting the York Narrows (north of Swan’s Island), Blue Hill Bay and the passage off Bass Harbor Head (the southernmost point of Mount Desert Island. [Add Pic later]
The excursion schooner was out of Mount Desert Island as we passed its south coast.
[Add pic later.]
And the huge fast thing (a ferry?) crossed our bow while we were crossing Frenchman Bay which has Bar Harbor on its west side and Winter Harbor on its east side — closer to Canada.
Our only prior stop at the Winter Harbor YC, a few years ago got us an unexpected bonus: we stayed a lay day and enjoyed the lobster boat races and the annual Lobster Festival. Reported in detail in this blog. This time the surprise was less pleasant: it being Monday, the restaurants were closed. We were given rides by kindly strangers in to town (about a mile) to visit the small supermarket and back to our boat
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