Yesterday began overcast and grim but grew into a brilliant, sunny day by the time we reached the mouth of Blue Hill Bay. The wind, mostly from the west, was light to moderate, but by the time we had to turn east and make our way around Bass Harbor, there had been some stiff gusts that prompted us to reef the main an douse the Genoa.
Normally, we wouldn't have shortened sail. But we had to cross a stone bar only 13 feet deep right off the point east of BassHarbor,and we didn't want to place ourselves in the position where we could be overpowered in tricky waters.
There are two buoys, one to the west and the other to the east of this bar -- red and white buoys which normally mark the entrance to a body of water. In this case, they marked the entrances to the shallow channel across the bar.
As we approached the western buoy, we sailed Robin to a point where, when the buoy was a couple of hundred feet away, it lined up with the eastern buoy. At that point, as we had planned, Monica hauled on the main sheet and I steered Robin into a gybe (or jibe. I've seen it spelled both ways.)
Now we were on a run, the wind behind us, the reefed main out to starboard, the staysail out to port.
As we approached the bar, a Catalina 30 fell in line behind us. It looked to me as though the skipper was taking advantage of what he supposed was our superior local knowledge. Of course, we had never crossed the bar before, so he was following us with misplaced trust if that were the cdase.
The distance between the two buoys was about a quarter of a mile, and the water, rising up from the depths on one side to wash across the rocks, was choppy. We made 3.5 knots the whole way, watching the chart plotter and the depth guage intently as a ticket holder on a long-shot horse watching the race.
The bar is just off the coast from one of the most popular light houses on the Maine coast.
Tourists were scuttling over the brown, rust-stained boulders and ledges as we passed. A large seal surfaced to visit near the eastern buoy.
The passage was otherwise uneventful, and the Catalina made it through without incident, just off our stern. It was another two-mile sail to the green buoy that marked the entrance to Western Way, a passage between the mainland of Mount Desert Island and Great Cranberry Island, to the east. Ledges come out from either shore when you turn into Western Way, with waves breaking over them and thundering like surf on the New Jersey shore.
Now we had about three miles to go to reach the mouth of Northeast Harbor, our destination, and we were on a reach in moderate winds, making about five knots. Our hope was to find Lou and Astra, our young friends, in town. We had called Lou and knew he was busy all day sailing the Friendship Sloop with tourist passengers and Astra was working at the little museum in Bar Harbor.
But when we cleared the end of Great Cranberry, I saw the destinctive sail shape of a Friendship Sloop a mile ahead off our starboard bow. It was aiming away from us and for the harbor.
I got on the radio on Channel 16 and tried to hail "the Friendship Sloop entering Northeast Harbor." No answer, so I tried channel 9 and channel 68. Still no luck.
It was clear as the distance to the harbor shrank that we wouldn't catch the Friendship, whether it was Lou's or not.
Then the sloop came about, and when the sails luffed, I thought they were dousing them to enter port.
But no! The sails trimmed themselves and the sloop headed directly toward us.
It was, of course, Lou, who had recognized Robin, although he had only seen her before in photographs. He sailed past our starboard beam as we took pictures, then came about and, as we stalled our sails, passed us close by to port.
Later, we took Lou and Astra to dinner and had a wonderful time learning about their lives in Maine.
But that sail-by! That made my whole cruise to Maine.