Southport Island, Maine Sat Oct 10 Options

[bazzert]

This was a great trip combining excellent company, stunning Maine scenery and some exciting conditions. I joined Gary, Roger, Laurie and Ellie for the saturday paddle around Southport. The forecast called for strong northerly winds so Roger made the call to head north first to avoid the slog up the exposed side of Southport. Laurie and Ellie wanted to scout out the MITA islands in the sheepscott to stay on on Saturday night. If you get a chance to spend some time with them, do it; I'd love to have had more time to hear the stories. Check out their website, especially the kayak sailing videos.

We landed first on Ram island, a really nice MITA maintained island which would make a great camping spot on a future trip. We parted way here with Laurie and Ellie and continued accross the sheepscott to just north of MacMahan island. By now the wind had stiffened from the north west but the conditions were mild. Laurie demonstrated the versatility of the sailing rig by easily catching us (despite a 15 minute lead) on a beam reach. We continued on the inside of MacMahan, past Gotts cove and on to Five Islands where we stopped for a very welcome lobster roll.

From here we set a bearing for Lower mark island for the approximately 3 mile crossing to the tip of South port. The wind had strenghened and we barely had to paddle to achieve 4 knots. But I had a sense of foreboding that as the fetched lenghtened we would be dealing with some significant seas. Sure enough within a mile we were in the thick of it, surfing down the following waves, mostly stern ruddering to stay on course. Roger, in his beautiful strip built night heron, was thoroughly enjoying himself. A porpoise made a brief appearance and surfed down a couple of waves with us, as if to say "dont worry, look at me!". We decided to change course and get closer to the Southport shore, but there was only brief respites in a couple of coves before we made the left turn at the tip of Southport into the mill pond like conditions in the lee. We landed at a small island there to catch our breath and contemplate the impressive conditions on the Sheepscott. From there it was an easy couple of miles north back to Gray's.

The total distance was ~ 16 miles; my GPS shows that at some point we hit 7.5 knots while our moving average was 3+ knots. Pictures and chart here.

Barry.