Boothbay to Rockland

Or “Seals and Puffins and Porpoises, Oh My!”

Our last morning anchored in Linekin Bay was foggy, our first real Maine fog.  We’d had it roll in a little earlier in the week, but never when we wanted to BE somewhere.

Our plan was to catch up with some family in Rockland for the Maine Lobster Festival, while this wasn’t a MUST since we had time to change the location it sounded a lot more appealing than dragging the dingy back through the mud with seven people instead of four.  So in what we hope will be an atypical situation, we found ourselves thinking that it would be really, really good to travel Thursday, in order to have some time to get settled in and get the boat ready for company.

Fog can be tricky, sounds carry strangely and youd can very easily get disoriented and off your course.  You need to keep a sharp lookout for boats, lobster pots, and of course rocks and land.  To help you with this you have electronics, and you make a lot of noise so other boats can hear you.  Our new electronics are superb and performed really well in the thick fog, this post isn’t really about the fog.  Or the lack of wind that had us motoring most of the day.

It’s about the wildlife.

En route to Rockland from Boothbay you can choose to plot a course near a small island called “Eastern Egg Rock”.  By the late 1970’s the Atlantic Puffin had virtually disappeared from North America, mostly as a result of hunting in the last century, and encroachment from a population explosion in Herring and Black Backed Gulls which compete for nesting space and prey on the eggs and young of the much smaller Puffins.  In 1973 Audubon Society teamed up with scientists on Project Puffin, which was an attempt to reintroduce Puffins to several of their original nesting areas around Maine.  Eastern Egg Rock was the first island where this was tried, and it was successful,

Eastern Egg Rock in the fog.

Our route could be plotted to pass right by the island, so why not take a chance at seeing a bird that is still quite rare in North America.  And pretty cute and interesting as well.

As we headed off into the fog though, with visibility rarely exceeding a couple of hundred yards we had our doubts on how worthwhile the diversion would be.  Our spirits were soon lifted though, as we were greeted by seals on our way out of Booth Bay, and later by a pod of porpoises.

In spite of the poor visibility and the need to thread our way through some creepy shoals and narrows in the fog it was well worth it.  On arriving at the island, shortly after it loomed out of the fog at us we were greeted by a Puffin swimming not ten feet from our cockpit!  He was our closest sighting, but we saw others through the binoculars swimming and flying with with distinctive rapid wing movement.

Sadly I compensated in the wrong direction with my camera and didn’t get great photos, but the children got some decent ones with their more fool proof devices!

Harbor Porpoise

We did get a bit of sailing in on the way when the wind finally filled in, but the currents were so poor that we decided it wasn’t worth the slow progress and gave it up.  While sailing though we did get a glimpse of what appeared to be an Ocean Sunfish of some size.  Although we could not see the beautiful Owl Head Light as we passed it this time for the fog w did get a final sendoff from another pod of porpoises just outside of Rockland Harbor.