Testing limits
The idea came from my brother. I thought I might do it with him someday, but someday never came. Nor was I able to find another interested paddling partner. So on a cool and misty July morning, three months after my sixtieth birthday, I climbed into the cockpit of my seventeen-foot Perception Eclipse at the bottom of the boat ramp in South Blue Hill and set out for the southern tip of Long Island, alone.
It was a route I had never paddled before, but it would take me up through Bartlett Narrows where I had paddled before, a quarter-mile wide passage between Mount Desert and Bartlett Island where the wind always blows strong and seal sightings are plentiful. I reached the Narrows after rounding the foot of Long Island and making the long open water crossing across Blue Hill Bay north of Harwood Island, passing Dogfish Cove on my left on the southern end of Bartlett Island where Lynne and I always stop when we do a circumnavigation of Bartlett. We time it to reach Dogfish Cove close to low tide so I may go diving in the cold waters of the cove for sand dollars.
I have timed the tides for this trip, too. After reaching the northern end of Bartlett Narrows, I will paddle some six miles across the northeastern arm of Blue Hill Bay into Mount Desert Narrows where I will cross under the Route 3 bridge between Trenton and MDI. Unless I want to wade through mudflats dragging my kayak behind, I need to be under the bridge at high tide.
My timing proved good. I paddled under the bridge and took out at the Thompson Island picnic area. I had come fifteen miles and four hours since leaving the South Blue Hill boat ramp and this was my first stop. I stretched my legs and enjoyed lunch, but was soon eager to get back into my kayak and complete the expedition.
I navigated my way around Thomas Island and the Twinnies before rounding Hadley Point and passing by a young girl and her father enjoying the waters off Hadley Point Beach. Another two and a half miles of paddling brought me to one of the highlights of this quest, The Ovens, a series of sea caves carved into the gabbro cliffs of the island’s northern shores. I did not take many photos along the way, only forty-one shots in total, not wanting to break the steady rhythm of paddle strokes, but here I paused long enough to capture more than a dozen images with my waterproof camera.
Soon I rounded the point and headed south past Hulls Cove. This was an area I knew well from many trips to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor, though not from this perspective. And this proved to be the toughest segment of the entire expedition, not merely because I had already paddled twenty-two miles, but because I suddenly faced a strong headwind fighting me all the rest of the way to Bar Harbor.
Stroke, stroke., stroke, stroke. Keep up the rhythm. Slowly, but surely, making progress. I reached Bar Island, but the tide was now low enough that the bar was exposed and I could not paddle straight into the harbor. Instead, I had to make one more circuit around the north side of Bar Island before heading into the harbor and making landfall on the pebbled beach, where my wife, Lynne, awaited me.
I made it. I had tested my limits, checked off an item on my bucket list, and made it: seven hours, twenty-six some miles, the glorious wonders of sea and shoreline, a body feeling tired but satisfyingly strong too.
I would make this trip again, this time in my new Current Designs Caribou, and later I would complete a circumnavigation of Deer Isle, at twenty-eight miles the longest day trip I have done. But that day thirteen years ago was the first time, my first attempt at something I had never done before, while still uncertain whether I could actually do it or not. It is an accomplishment in which I take pride, but more so an experience I cherish simply for the doing, simply for those hours of being there, my boat and me and the extraordinary world round me, just the kind of moment I treasure, just the kind of moment in which I feel most me.