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| Dawn in Somes Harbour |
It felt like a very early start on Thursday 20 September, but it was actually quite a reasonable 0705, when we started the engine and noted, with considerable pleasure, that the alternator was charging the domestic batteries at 30A. A far more satisfactory state of affairs than after the previous couple of starts when, if we were lucky, the batteries were getting just 3A. Clearly the previous day’s alternator change had been the right thing to do. The early start was to allow us to carry the tide west for the maximum possible time for our 30-odd mile journey to Isle au Haut, the tide having started going westwards at about dawn.
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| Departing Somes Harbour |
But by the time we got the anchor up we were feeling positively tardy as 2 of the other 3 transient yachts in the anchorage had raised anchor and got away ahead of us. Still, we weren’t the last to leave and it wasn’t a race……., really?
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| Valley Peak, one of the hills we had climbed the previous day |
It was a somewhat overcast morning but much brighter than the previous day when we had been out walking. As we left Somes Sound we admired the scenery from sea-level and enjoyed trying to identify the hills we had climbed the day before.
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| SY Rebecca on a mooring close to Southwest Harbour |
Having motored out of Somes Sound and past the beautiful SY Rebecca, we set full sail somewhere off Southwest Harbour and sailed gently through the shallow passage between Mount Desert Island and Great Cranberry Island, enjoying views of places we had seen from the bus the day before. From time to time the wind failed and so, to keep up speed we ran the engine but once we were clear of the islands we were able to run downwind to Isle au Haut with the genoa poled out. We didn’t make blistering speeds but, with the tide under us, we made a good enough pace and arrived off Duck Harbour, towards the southwest tip of Isle au Haut at around 1300.
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| Duck Harbour |
Duck Harbour is a small inlet and the pilot book warns that in high summer it is very busy with yachts, so much so that you may need to anchor fore and aft or risk colliding with other yachts as your boat swings. In late September, however, we found it to be empty……………except for the infernal lobster pot bobbers. We arrived at low water, convenient for gauging swinging room towards the rocks, and immediately discounted going any further into the inlet than the ferry dock. Outside the jetty we found a gap in the pot bobbers in around 8m of water, which would become about 10.5m by high tide. Happily, the bobbers were sufficiently well spaced to permit us to lay out 40m of chain and the gap we had found was also sufficiently well displaced from the shore to allow us to swing on that 40m of chain without colliding with the rocky shore. The planets had aligned.
Isle au Haut (pronounced like Idaho but with an ‘L’ rather than a ‘D’) is part of Acadia National Park, so after a swift lunch we inflated the dinghy and went ashore to make best use of our National Park permit (and to try to get a picture of BV in the inlet). We left the dinghy on the inside of the ferry dock, as instructed by the signs, and walked up to the National Park welcome sign where we found sketch maps of the island and its footpaths and an information board warning us about ticks and Lyme’s Disease.
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| Duck Harbour Mountain with views down on Duck Harbour and BV |
We followed the sketch map up the inlet and then found the marked trail to the top of Duck Harbour Mountain [Ed: Mountain? It’s only a couple of hundred feet high!]. From here we had a lovely view down on BV at the edge of the inlet and views along the coast towards the north.
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| Woodland paths and fun scrambles – a great walk |
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| Route across the bedrock |
In all, the route took us a little over two hours and in that time we met just 10 people in 3 groups. In comparison to the number of people we saw on Mount Desert Island on either of the 2 days we walked there the place was empty.
The final part of the route brought us back to Duck Harbour via the coastline, where we met a group of 6 people, based, we think, from the campsite close to where we had gone ashore, going the opposite way. Given the light levels at the time that we saw them we didn’t think that we would have cared to have been going away from ‘civilisation’ but maybe they turned back again soon after we saw them. We had a quick look at the lean-to huts with sleeping platforms in the campsite before we returned to the jetty and BV. It all looked rather attractive but there was nowhere to hide from the mosquitoes and the shelters all had one side fully open, so you had to hope that the one you had been allocated was not open to the day’s prevailing wind (and rain).
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| Sunset from the Duck Harbour jetty |
We admired the sunset from the jetty and then retired back aboard BV and hid from both the mosquitoes and the chilly air, a luxury not afforded the campers ashore. We were in the middle of preparing dinner when we heard a voice outside. Nicky assumed that it was someone in the campsite, perhaps singing too loudly, but I thought that it was closer than that, and so it was. Much closer. Several hundred metres closer. In fact, about half a metre off out port side! It turned out that Stella Maris, a ~30ft sailing yacht, had had engine failure and had sailed into Duck Harbour just after sunset, ghosting alongside us with the very last puffs of the dying evening breeze. Could they come alongside us whilst they sorted out the problem? Well, of course. We put out fenders (lots as they appeared to have none), helped them with their line (yes, line, not lines) and left them to it. Half an hour or so later they said that they had sorted out the problem sufficiently to move in further under their own steam and anchor. As an aside they said that they were planning an 8 hour walk the next day.
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| SY Stella Maris drifted from the middle of the harbour off the jetty onto the area close to the rocks shown by the pink arrow (top). The underwater rocks she lodged on were like the boulders on the shore (bottom L). Having moved her off the rocks, we leftStella Maris secured to the ferry/dinghy pontoon (bottom R) |
At 0930 the following morning we had just got the engine going prior to raising the anchor when I realised that Stella Maris was no longer at anchor where she had been, a little further up the inlet from the jetty, but was drifting inexorably towards the shore. We sounded the foghorn, hailed them using the radio’s loudhailer function and called them on the VHF radio, but to no avail. So we switched off the engine and got the dinghy ready to launch (not a fast procedure). Part way through this evolution the US Coastguard piped up on the radio wanting to know what was going on. Nicky explained the situation as quickly as she reasonably could and then, as the questions continued, told them that we were really rather busy and that we would get back to them in about half an hour with an update once we had got the boat off the rocks. They took the hint.
By the time we got to Stella Maris she was pretty firmly lodged on the rocks but, happily, the tide was rising [Ed: which is the most likely reason that she had dragged her anchor, particularly as the anchor cable was virtually vertical, even in the relatively shallow water close to the shore]. I secured our dinghy alongside Stella Maris’ starboard quarter with the aim of using our dinghy as a tug to move the yacht away from the shore. Nicky jumped on board and rolled away all of the half-furled genoa to reduce windage. With the dinghy on the starboard quarter I could make no progress in moving the yacht off the shore and towing from the bow, of course, had no effect. So I tried pushing the bow off the shore, which did work, but we had to work pretty quickly to tie the dinghy alongside to motor Stella Marisclear once I had pushed her off the rocks. But we succeeded, only to find that Stella Maris’ wheel had been locked and Nicky couldn’t work out how to unlock the wheel. Nightmare! It looked as if we would end up being drifted into BV. But then Nicky found the autopilot clutch lever and unlocked the steering system and, with her steering the yacht and our dinghy providing the motive force, we got Stella Maris alongside the jetty where an interested group of campers, attracted by the noise of the loud hailer, helped us to secure her. And then they mentioned that the ferry would be wanting that side of the dock in an hour and a half………..So we used their manpower to help us manhandle the yacht around to the dinghy side of the pontoon where we secured her with the 2 fenders and one mooring line that we could find, supplemented by some anchor cable and a halyard.
Interestingly, we got back to BV about half an hour after Nicky had hung up the radio on the Coastguard, so she was ‘on time’ when she reported back to them. After another session of ’20 Questions’ we finished prepping BV for sea and headed off about an hour late on our original timing. But that was no particular problem. We had planned to depart Duck Harbour at around 0930 so that we reached the bottom of the St George River, 30nm further down the coast, no earlier than slack water as the tide began to flood into the river. Delaying our departure to pull SY Stella Maris off the rocks just meant that we might arrive later than planned and so would have more tide to assist us up river (though we might also have some tide against us for the last part of the passage along the coast). But we were heading up the St George River, to a nice, safe, well-protected anchorage because of a forecast strong southwesterly that coming night. We could only hope that the crew of Stella Maris were not planning to remain in Duck Harbour, which is open to all points west and which was likely to become rather unpleasant over the next 24 hours or so.
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| Duck Harbour, ME, USA |
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