Seal Bay

Two days of peace, (mostly) quiet, and solitude.  With seals.  Lots of seals.

Just coming in to the harbor you could see them popping up to look at you when you went by.  At low tide many of the rocks and small islands had regular residents.  Needless to say the kids were thrilled and on constant lookout for them.  When we first came into the harbor the tide was high and you couldn’t see all the favorite basking and sleeping spots that are exposed at low tide.  So we saw seal heads popping up and seals swimming, but we didn’t really get a good feel for just how seal infested these waters are.  It wasn’t until we took a dinghy tour closer to sunset that we discovered the truth.

 Our favorite Maine Cruising Guide suggests that you enter new harbors at low tide.  The reason is straight forward – with the relatively large tidal swings (10-12 feet in most of Maine) at low tide most of the hazards are exposed.  A glance at the chart for Seal Bay (see below) shows you that yes indeed, there are many hazards that are covered at high tide.  However for us the timing didn’t work, so we carefully plotted an approach into the instruments and in truth it made picking our way through here seem more like a video game than scary navigation.

But there are definitely some spots that make you shake your head when you see them at low tide, like the ridge just South of Davids Island that is completely hidden at high tide and you will see in a picture below quite clearly at low.  But it’s a great spot for the seals, and we discovered in the evening that when the water drops the seals come out to rest.  In particular there was one rock that was a local favorite, and after our first evening there I set an alarm to get up at low tide the next morning and head out with the camera.  It was well worth getting up for, and this particular spot was pretty clearly Seal Central when the tide was out.  This rock can not even be seen at high tide.

Apparently THE place to chill if you are a seal.

With all of the little nooks, crannies and islands you can see in the chart above there are a lot of places to explore.  The channel between Penobscot and Davids Islands is dry and exposed at low tide, but deep enough to take the dinghy through it at high tide and is a cool little trip.  Hay Island is open for camping.  It is small, and the brush is dense but that is where the kids found a spot to pitch a tent and spend the night.  We anchored between Hay & Penobscot so we were in visual sight from the tent but it was still a cool night on their own and a change from pitching a tent in the back yard.

While here it was a non stop parade of wildlife.  The eagles we saw were too far away to make a decent photo but where sharp through the binoculars.  The ospreys were constantly out hunting.  More varieties of ducks, grebes and other aquatic birds were always swimming and diving around the boat.

As it turns out it my timing was good the morning I went to shoot my seal photos.  The next day as the tide was falling, we saw to our horror that a boat had found it’s way onto the big rock the seals favored.  A number of boaters in the bay took our dinghies out to try and help them but there were pretty firmly on and the tide was falling so fast that there was little that could be done after a very short time.  If you are running aground in fair weather, doing it when the tide is heading out is pretty much the worst time you can do that since you will be stuck through the whole tide cycle.  Even if the boat is OK it is a long and ego bruising wait for the boat to float again.

Fortunately they didn’t seem to hit hard and did not puncture the hull or cause any apparent serious damage.  But I am certain they spent a long night because when this picture was taken there was still and hour or two more tide to go out.  My guess is that some time around 2:00 – 3:00 in the morning the tide came in enough to float them free, because the next morning they were floating and anchored a few hundred yards from the rock and seemed fine.   Although I can not imagine they were well rested.

I wish there was more we could have done to help them, but those tides really move fast up in Maine.  The object lesson – if you MUST come to a new harbor when the tide isn’t low, at least do it when the tide is coming in, not out.

The seals on the other hand seemed a little puzzled by this new occupant of their favorite resting place.  The next morning they were scattered all over the bay and their favorite rock was empty.