Off the Grid – Pulpit & Seal Bay

One of the good/bad things we learned about Maine is that it is really easy to get away.  Away from cell signals (because much of Maine appears to be in the 3% of the country AT&T claims not to cover), away from WiFi (because there isn’t any) and generally out of touch.  It is nice to be away from it all and not to be able to be reached, but sometimes you also miss out on things.  Like hurricanes being birthed in the Caribbean and things like that.

Pulpit Rock

Pulpit Harbor on the island of North Haven is such a place.  It is a beautiful, peaceful and extremely well protected harbor.  The entrance is guarded by Pulpit Rock, which is capped by an Osprey nest that has been continuously occupied for over a century.

There’s not a whole lot there though, which is part of what makes it nice.

Only a couple of hours sailing from Rockland, we saw porpoises and seals en route on the short trip over.  When we arrived the kids immediately lowered the Portlad Pudgy and started exploring the harbor.  Seeing a sister ship to our dinghy AND another Hallberg-Rassy in the harbor was unusual, but we had a pleasant visit from the owners of the other vessel and the kids had a good time sailing with the other dinghy.

Pulpit was only a short stay for us – one night, because there’s not actually a lot reachable there from a dinghy.  It is pretty small and fairly quickly explored; though pretty you can’t dinghy around for hours exploring all the nooks and crannies because there aren’t many!  We opted not to hoof it into the convenience store the cruising guides spoke of and spent a restive evening enjoying the quiet and tranquility.

To the South of North Haven lies the island of Vinalhaven, the name of which has nothing to do with long chain polymers.  It’s actually named after a gentleman named John Vinal.    On the Northeast side of Vinalhaven lies the entrance to Winter Harbor and Seal Bay.  If you take a left on entering you can pick your way among the rocks and channels into Seal Bay.

Sunset on Seal Bay

Seal Bay will get some more detail since we spent two nights and the better part of three days there.  Remote and secluded the bay is home to a variety of wildlife.  In our stay there we saw (as you may guess) loads of seals, osprey, bald eagles, and more more swimming and diving birds than we could keep track of.

The bay has a number of smaller islands and inlets with lots of room for exploring.  Nearby Winter Harbor is reachable by dinghy with a completely different aspect to it’s rugged natural beauty.  High cliffs and boulders instead of tall trees and shaggy shores.

Some of our adventures there included the aforementioned dinghy tours, reaching places at high tide you couldn’t go through at low (ten foot tidal swings will do that) and the reverse – climbing on places covered by the tide.  One of the islands allowed for camping, so the kids took a tent ashore and spent the night on a tiny little island, something they’d dreamed about doing and prepared for of course by actually bringing a tent.  A couple of days of rest and relaxation, sight seeing, relative solitude (except for ONE awful boatload of people that came to the end of nowhere to whoop it up like they were tailgating for an Eagles game) and quiet meals on the boat.

And seals.  Lots and lots of seals.

To Be Continued….