Category: Heron

Via deep and peaceful sleep, the drama of my survival faded. The blind boldness; the failed roll; the strain and desperation and anguish and regret of clinging to life: it was all a mixed bag of “what happened yesterday.”

Recovery of the kayak was job number one. Noreen had worked in the Park for a while, knew it well, and based on my descriptions proposed a search of the shore just north of Great Head. I didn’t know whether local conditions there would tend to push the kayak one way or another. It was sure to be tumbled and damaged in the surf, I thought. It might have sunk.

Noreen called the Park, the Coast Guard and Bar Harbor P.D. to stem their worries of a missing kayaker, if any. There were none, but she took some abuse as proxy for the foolishness of the acts I’d recounted.

My wife and son arrived from Indian Point. In the afternoon, armed with Noreen’s annotated park map, we met up with my old friend Damon at a scenic overlook near Great Head. He lived on the “back side” of the island. I hadn’t seen him in years.

We continued along the road to the small parking lot at the trailhead, where I had emerged from the woods the night before. It was easy to see now that I had walked past the trailhead at least once in the process of doubling back to Sand Beach. The short spur to the parking lot is not marked as such on the trail.

My feet stung terribly in borrowed sandals, and I was very sore and stiff. Still we needed only three minutes to reach the rocky cove. We located the same side path I had climbed the night before, and I cautiously crept across the rocks to the slope with its fortunate handholds and footholds. Caught up in re-living the scene, I had yet to process the fact that the kayak was no longer in it.

I heard a shout from along the shore, about 25 yards to the north. I looked up to see Damon pumping his fists in the air. He’d found it. The shore in that direction was so broken and rough that I required a serpentine up-and-down route to reach him. The tide was lower now and revealed plunging cliffs and slimy pits of rockweed. The kayak had fetched up on a broad round boulder, right-side-up and bent over at the cockpit.

The rear compartment was filled with water from a torn hatch cover, and the other compartments were wet. The cockpit was flooded. The plastic hull was deeply scratched. We ferried gear over a treacherous route of slippery rockweed and steep rocks to a flat area near the path. Damon and I pulled the kayak off the boulder and I pressed out the sickening hull crease by standing on it. Solely by luck we’d arrived just in time to beat the incoming tide. The rockweed would be under water soon.

Finally, we climbed the trail to the parking lot with the kayak and the gear, stowed it on and in the car, and drove off to Damon’s house for dinner.

---

I wish I had been more prepared for the recovery, because I might have found my cell phone, my flashlight and my diving mask near shore. The local chart, which I had saved at Ship Harbor, was probably swept away as soon as I capsized. My foam sandals, pump and one of the Nalgene quart bottles probably floated out of the cockpit soon after the capsize and are almost certainly lost.

Amazingly, I found the other Nalgene bottle floating loose inside the cockpit, its tether broken. But many hundreds of dollars’ worth of gear was lost. One might point out that my life — my irreplaceable life — was saved, and with it a husband and a father and a son. Sure, I see that. But it’s not in dollars that I measure the loss.

For one thing, I didn’t finish the trip. Though technically my final landing point is within the town of Bar Harbor, it’s short of what I imagined, what I wanted.

I wanted to paddle up to the dock, at the bottom of the hill by the village, at the heart of town. I arrived there nearly 20 years ago to craft a future, and left to simply find one. Why there, if not to chase the ghosts of opportunities lost?

Even if I’d finished it, what then? I might have been disappointed, though not likely surprised, that pride shall not have been won in a week’s accomplishment.

For another, I’m haunted by the thought that I should have died, that it would have been better to die than to live only a short time longer and experience the horror of declining into helplessness at middle age. Was this voyage not heroic, nor even amusing, but an indulgence borrowed against regret? Shall it only be repaid with my life?

---

When I was a boy of about 12 years, I would ride my bike around the neighborhood. One day I rode my bike into the country, past the limit of pavement, by miles of inhuman quiet, farther than ever before, all the way to the end of the road, where stood a gate.

Strangely, the pavement resumed. Beyond the gate it climbed steeply around a corner at the foot of a mountain. A sign warned of “blasting” ahead: on the sound of two whistles, take cover. I was startled. I was fascinated.

I felt, for the first time in my life, the thrill of exploration: a map unfolding in my mind, blank but for that scratch of road scaling the width of the world. Over the years it grew, up to the mountain quarry, into the woods, down to the brooks and cellar holes. It seems so vast now but scarred with routine.

Thrill would not again taste so sweetly of growing up. Only a defiant struggle now can mask the sorrow that taints it, for in grasping the moment it is smothered by a memory too anxious to be made.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

I woke at 7:00. The house was quiet. It was strange to find myself fully dressed, there on the couch, no covering to cast off. I might have disappeared in seconds, if I was in a hurry. But I remembered the shower in the bathroom (the one off the kitchen, naturally) and stepped into its cone of hot water as if into heaven.

I left a note of thanks for my gracious hosts, then hurried through town back to my kayak. I choked down a few more protein bars and changed into my wetsuit, not bothering to sniff out a more private location. It did occur to me, however, that depending solely on who was looking, I could be committing a “sex offense” or just changing my clothes like everybody else.

Warnings of high winds and seas later in the day were the talk of weather radio, once again. Is it strange how calmly and mechanically their computerized voices present us with these mortal threats? It was overcast and mild at the time, but worsening to 30-knot winds and 10-foot seas by Monday.

An old Chevy Blazer-type vehicle came around the wharf building and parked near a giant pile of wrecked bricks. A guy, about my age, stepped out. He seemed to be waiting for someone to meet him there. We got to talking about the weather. “It’s supposed to blow”, I said. I was headed for Bar Harbor today to beat the the worst of it.

“Be careful,” he said.

It might have been a seed of doubt or concern, but for the way he said it. His voice was measured, emphatic and sincere, coming from experience.

“The sea has no conscience,” he said. His eyes were remembering, witnessing again the proof of this otherwise poetic assertion; a proof won not proudly, but “foolishly”. He spoke of diving for urchins in the winter sea, many years before; of coming to the edge of what a man can survive, and finding there no quarter for regret.

He shook his head, struggling to bear the favor of fate, I imagined. His voice carried authority, but he made no prescriptions. He was, if anything, keenly aware of the limit of his influence.

He told me he was waiting for a barge. His day’s work was to make a run to Southwest Harbor, about three hours away at 7 knots. I was headed the same way and did the math. The simple fact that I was 21 nautical miles from Southwest Harbor, and would need to paddle a dozen more to reach Bar Harbor, in worsening weather, possibly in the dark, should have alarmed me. But I was stuck with my reckless shadow. I was chasing not only the end of my trip, but the limit of my power.

The man’s barge arrived and lowered its ramp to the shore. He drove on, the ramp went up and off they went.

---

Continuing east on the Deer Isle Thorofare, going buoy-to-buoy in a light fog, I came into Jericho Bay. I was headed for Casco Passage. I could see about a mile.

Near Egg Rock I spied a lobster boat a few hundred yards away, and it occurred to me to hail them on the radio. In all the time I’d had the radio (throughout the summer), I’d had no pressing need to transmit. I liked to listen, to hear how it was done, but since I had no reason to hail anyone, I really had no indication of its transmission power.

Expecting a long day, and perhaps betraying a prescient dread, I decided I ought to prove it works.

“Orange kayak to the lobster boat in the vicinity of Egg Rock in Jericho Bay. Orange kayak to the lobster boat in the vicinity of Egg Rock in Jericho Bay. Radio check. Radio check, over.”

I couldn’t read the name of the boat. I hoped that if the captain heard me he’d respond. He’s supposed to be monitoring VHF channel 16 like everybody else. And the boat was not moving at the time. I thought that, at the very least, I’d see the sternman turn around. I tried again. Again nothing.

Were they ignoring me? Or did they really not hear me? I paddled up behind the boat, which still wasn’t moving, and came along side about 20 yards away. The sternman finally saw me and immediately let out an “are you crazy?” From his manner, I couldn’t tell whether he was disbelieving in a friendly manner (i.e. “What are you doing out here in the fog all by yourself?”) or just angry about sharing the water (like I’ve got “insurance claim” written all over me).

I assumed the former, but was wrong.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he yelled. I was holding up my radio, as if to ask “did you hear me?” but was shocked into silence. The captain turned around in the cabin and seemed to regard me blankly. I heard music playing. Without answering, or indeed attempting any other gesture, I turned around slowly and paddled away.

Life was easier for the lobstermen when they didn’t have to worry about kayakers. They’re so focused on the work, even the captain, looking for the next buoy, that we’re easy to miss. Or too easy to hit, I guess. I’ve tried other ways of making myself known, even stooping so low as to beg for acknowledgement with flailing arms, from a safe distance. But apparently there is no common signal for “Yeah, okay, I see you… but I’d rather not”.

---

I landed on the weather-beaten shell sand of Long Ledge, just west of Orono Island, around 12:30. I had already come eight miles and needed only six more to reach Bass Harbor Head. From there I would paddle along the shore to Bar Harbor. I texted my wife to report the news. She replied that she would drive to Bar Harbor with our son and meet me there.

She also suggested we could meet at Indian Point, which was closer to her friend’s house (where they would visit) and much closer to me. Technically, it’s within the municipality of Bar Harbor. Taking the alternate route, on the west side of the island, I could reach the lee in a couple of hours and enjoy calm water the rest of the way: declare victory and go home.

I replied that I’d rather stick with the plan. “It’s personal,” I wrote.

I ask myself “why was it personal?” I didn’t have a ready answer then, and only uncertain answers now. It may be that I wished to confront my fear of death. Or it may be that I wished to die. When I conceived of this adventure, early in the summer, I considered it likely to be my last. I suppose it doesn’t take a sage to see it as a proxy for my appointed decline into brain death. By sheer force of will, might I endure this disease as I might endure this day? Or shall I die choking, cursing, kicking, fighting, drowning… on my own terms? ([10. See the miraculous asterisk.])

I took a vicodin. Was I really very sore? Would I be any faster or more successful within an opiate cloud? I did not ask. Perhaps it silenced my better judgment, naming it weakness and worry.

---

From Casco Passage I saw Bass Harbor Head about six miles away: a thin blue finger wedging sky from sea. The sun came out and the wind picked up to 10 or 15 knots from the south. For hours I paddled across a minefield of lobster buoys at the mouth of Blue Hill Bay. As before, I used a series of lobster buoys to stay on course, continuously adjusting to keep the next buoy in line with the headland. Each one seemed so far away at first, as if nearer to my destination than to me, and yet in crossing each range the head seemed to grow no closer. It’s hard to judge distance when you’re only 30 inches above the surface of the water.

The wind-blown waves grew to two or three feet: nothing requiring focused attention. But still it took about 3 hours to reach Bass Harbor Head. The faint blue bump grew so subtly to a lighthouse on a granite cliff, crawling with people, that I could not remember when these features were first distinguishable.

With the last significant crossing complete, I felt relieved and optimistic. It was after 4:00. With about three hours till sunset, I was confident I could round the southern shore of the island and make the eastern headlands before the dark. Needing relief, I stopped at Ship Harbor and sat in the water and peed while holding one leg of my wetsuit open. It’s an odd little harbor with a narrow entrance that mushrooms into a calm round pool. Part of Acadia National Park, it remains wild… to an extent.

A giant white SUV parked near the far end of the harbor flashed its headlights. At me? I don’t know. It seemed to be parked on the shoulder of a road. I didn’t see any other cars. I imagined a couple of old folks diligently hunting the most beautiful views — among those they can drive to. Maybe they have binoculars?

I forced myself to practice eskimo rolling. I had never, never capsized my kayak by accident. But the evening forecast called for 6-foot seas. I wanted to practice rolling without my diving mask. I tipped over and rolled up easily, but as I came up I saw my chart slip out from under the deck cords and slowly sink to the shallow bottom. I recovered it (with the aid of the mask), but it took me 15 or 20 minutes to find it. I had a feeling I’d regret the lost time.

I popped another pill and sprinted out of the cove, throwing the bow high over the barrier waves and then plunging it into the water. Heading east, leaning northward, I found Great Cranberry Island. I expected the wind to get behind me but it stubbornly held to the starboard. I found the lee in crossing to the east end of Sutton Island, but the sunlight had already thinned and left a great dark shadow on the sea. I had come five miles from Ship Harbor, but left twice as much to go.

A dim haze of humidity hung low over Northeast Harbor, off to my left. It was the last safe harbor before the steep, rocky and utterly dark headlands of the park: five miles of forbidding southern exposure. I was gripped by an unsettling feeling that I had underestimated the dimension of this final push. Mount Desert Island is just one island, but it’s a big one.

I continued paddling. The seas grew. I fixed my eyes to the waves on the starboard lifting me, dropping me, turning me, crashing over the deck. “Keep a paddle in the water. Keep a paddle in the water,” I reminded myself. As long as I could continue paddling, my momentum would help me to maintain balance. As long as I could anticipate the wave impact, my body would be ready to counter it.

I followed the line of the headlands but kept a margin from the pounding shore. The waves became “confused” and disordered as they bounced off the cliffs and came back. They met in unpredictable heaps, welling up suddenly to a peak and collapsing just as fast. They were 6 feet tall by then.

For hours, I slapped and knifed the waves, watching the starboard. The light of dusk drained so completely that I could not tell sky from land but for shades of black. I didn’t know where I was. But I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going, to keep from going over. I don’t know how I saw the waves.

Suddenly I was lifted up from the port rear quarter, just I was finishing a port side stroke. I felt the kayak sliding sideways down the face of a wave. I had a fraction of a second to think, to contemplate the inevitability of being turned over. It’s hard to describe what I thought or felt in that moment: not panic, nor a surge of fear. I only knew that I would have to roll up, and that I could.

I was upside down in the water, in total darkness. For a moment, I felt calm. Then I urged myself to act. But something happened that I never anticipated.

I’d practiced this eskimo roll countless times: square your shoulders to one side of the hull and push the paddle “down.” You’re upside down, so down is up, and what’s “beneath” the hull is in the air. Continue turning your shoulders, extend the paddle to the side, pull “up” on the water, flick your hips and roll.

“Where is the paddle?” It was in my hands. I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it. “Where are my hands?” They must be right in front of me, I thought. “Push the paddle.” Which side? I was stuck in neutral, suspended. When I had practiced with a mask, I’d used my eyes to coordinate my body. Even without a mask or goggles, I used my eyes.

The pieces just fell apart. I was lost. The calmness I’d felt a moment before evaporated. I needed air. So without even trying to roll, I pulled my spray skirt and pushed the kayak away with my feet. I bobbed to the surface and took a breath. How was it that I found the spray skirt release? Was it the power of instinct in desperation? My roll is too high in the brain: a performance; an artform; a study.

“Don’t panic”, I said to myself. “Think. Priorities”. I found myself holding both the paddle and the cockpit coaming. Good. Instinct.

It was not much consolation. I knew I was in trouble. The water was over 60 degrees in September, relatively warm. But it’s not for swimming — not with a thin shorty wetsuit. “Get out of the water, or you will die.”

I flipped the kayak right-side-up. I pulled up an elastic deck cord and secured the paddle, then pulled the boat forward and held the stern. To get back into the kayak, I would try a “cowboy” recovery: push down on the stern, from the side, then swing your aft leg over the deck to the other side. Straddling the rear deck, inch forward to the cockpit and lower yourself into the seat. Pull your legs in last. I’d practiced this often.

But the kayak was bobbing erratically. Waves continued to break over the side and flood the cockpit. With many gallons of water sloshing around inside, the hull became very unstable. I lost my balance and rolled off the kayak and it capsized again. I flipped it over again.

Then I tried to empty the cockpit with a different trick: hold the bow up out of the water, turn the hull over and the water will fall out at the bulkhead behind the seat. It takes a strong kick to lift it high enough. But there was too much water in the kayak. I couldn’t lift it.

I tried to climb on again and failed. I finally succeeded when the cockpit was so full and so low that the sloshing calmed down. Only the bulkheads and hatch covers kept it from sinking. Sitting in a cool bath, I was half out of the water, and that was an improvement.

I took a breath. I was breathing hard. I allowed myself a moment to think, to consider my options and check my condition. I felt a desperate urgency, but I knew I needed to question myself, to temper instinct and favor reason.

I pulled my water pump from under the deck cords and pumped furiously, but the waves still poured in. After a dozen strokes I acknowledged “this isn’t working.” I could seal my spray skirt and keep the waves out, but my “bathwater” would be sealed in. ([20. Later I learned that one can put a pump down the chest tube of a sealed sprayskirt and pump water out that way. It seems obvious now.])

I tried paddling the swamped kayak. With exhausting effort, I turned it around to face the shore. A flare of green sparks followed each churning stroke: bioluminescence, again. A sliver of my attention lauded its amazing beauty, its dramatic touch. Another burned words and images into memory, as if I was writing this even then. But the bulk of my attention rested on the choice of what to do next: paddle on, or land now.

A part of me wished to paddle on, however slowly and inefficiently, in sheer contempt of my failure, and of my life. I may exhaust myself in trying, and confront the same dilemma but with little strength to give. In that moment, the choice was no less than life or death.

“I must land,” I thought. “I want to live. I want to see my wife and son again.” The sea, of course, ignored my change of heart. In the dark I could barely discern a fleeting paleness on the rocks, of surging, smashing water, all along the rim of a shallow cove. I was struck by the terrifying thought that I would die.

I could see it happening. I felt the shape and the texture of it. “This is how it happens,” I thought. The price of my life was held in petty tokens and spent with each failing grip on slippery rock, with each saving breath denied, to the end of muscle and the end of will.

I was breathing hard and deep. I heard the sound of air rushing through clenched teeth, felt the air fill my lungs, and it calmed me. I scanned the shore slowly from left to right. Recurring paleness signaled troubled water, probably under a cliff. There were many of those.

About 50 yards ahead, I found a void that stayed black for 10 seconds or more. I paddled in to about 20 yards, unzipped a pocket of my PFD and retrieved a small flashlight. The bright beam showed a fine mist falling. Though it was hard to see through the glaring mist, I saw what appeared to be a ledge 20 feet off shore, with a pocket of water behind it, leading up to a slope of rock.

I turned off the flashlight and held it in my teeth as I paddled around the ledge. Water flooded the pocket and quickly fell away in thick streams. I would need to land on foot.

I jumped out of the kayak, grabbed the bow handle and pulled it behind me as I kicked to shore. My feet touched the bottom. I leaned into the rock and probed for a hold. It’s face was steep at the bottom but rounded over just beyond my reach. One hand and one step would do it, but it was slick and smooth.

The next receding wave yanked the bow handle out of my hand. I struggled to stay upright. The closer I came to safety, the more desperately I wanted it. A fleeting moment of reflection pierced my single-minded focus: “You need air!” I still had the flashlight in my mouth. I took it out. I considered it. My view was so narrow that it seemed at first an impediment, then a mere ten-dollar loss. I tossed it away.

I thought I could rest there, leaning against the rock. I was out of breath. I needed a break. I realized that I was approaching the limit of my fitness. The waves were not smashing me against the rock, but they were pushing me around.

Again a wave climbed the rock. Again, as it turned and fell I was pulled off my feet. Righting myself and pressing forward again, I bumped into something solid, something moving, floating. It was the kayak, now side to shore, in front of me. I pushed it out of the way.

I felt a surge of fear. Again I thought of how I might die there, how simple and easy it was. Then, suddenly, my foot gained a hold on a little dimple. My hand found another. I weighted them, and they held. I scrambled up the rock and out of the surf in an instant. Even then I felt the water reaching. I stumbled stiffly, frantically forward to where I felt safe.

I sat with my legs pulled up to my heaving chest. I was alive, but I didn’t know the meaning of it yet. I heard the ocean seething but I couldn’t see much. I couldn’t see the kayak. I found myself shivering slightly, and very tired. I didn’t want to move, but knew I must.

Taking stock, I found a pocket of my PFD was left unzipped: the one that held the flashlight. My phone was gone. The other pocket held my radio, which wouldn’t be much use. I dismissed the idea of calling for help. But it did glow faintly when a button was pressed, backlighting the buttons and the screen.

I stood to go and felt a sharp sting in my feet: cuts from trying (and failing) to climb a patch of barnacles. My shoes were in the kayak, or else had floated out of the cockpit with a wave. I stepped out of my spray skirt and draped it over my shoulders with my head coming out of the chest tube.

I walked slowly and painfully over a patch of broken rocks toward the black woods. Remarkably, I felt a dirt path beneath my feet, which climbed into the trees and leveled upon what seemed to be a wider trail. The ground was flat and empty. I held out my arms and felt nothing.

Then I thought to use my radio to light the way. It cast a very dim light, and only for a couple of seconds. I could see bushes and branches within a radius of about five feet. I followed the trail the right: counter-clockwise on the chart if you’re headed to Bar Harbor. Almost immediately I found a trail marker on my left (facing the water across the trail) which pointed, back the way I came, to “Great Head.”

It made sense. Great Head is on the east side, but with the island being roughly round I hadn’t noticed the gradual turn from the south side. It explains how a wave came from the port rear: the weather got behind me but I didn’t notice.

I continued sweeping the face of the radio from side to side and pressing the “Channel Up” button. I proceeded cautiously, remembering when I was caught out after dark, on this same island, back in the 1990’s while I was in college.

All I’d had was a lighter to guide me down the last half-mile of a rocky trail. It burned out with a little pop that knocked the top off, and everything went black. Again, no moon. I stepped lightly, but never felt the clues beneath my feet — the softness of the needle bed, the crunch of twigs — until it was too late. I’d lost the trail. I was blind. Not a good thing on this island of uncertain terrain.

Now I shuttled from side to side as I moved along the trail, surveying the well-worn rocks and roots and the soft trodden dirt between the margins. The simple tedium of the process gave me something to lean on, to distract me from the pain and fatigue. My mind was depleted. No higher function was prepared to stack up facts or search memories.

I walked an hour. Maybe two. I couldn’t see the shore for a while, then I could, again on my right. A little side path went down to a beach. Sand Beach. But how can that be? I thought I was moving away from Sand Beach. I walked on the beach. I remembered the beach, from my college days.

I knew where I was, though not how I got there. High above the far end of the beach was a blinding light: the parking lot. Must be. There should be a long staircase going up from the beach to the parking lot. But I couldn’t see it. Must be in the shadows?

It should be a way out, a way back to pavement and civilization. I started walking. I came to a stream: a bed of dry and jagged rocks. I couldn’t bear to cross it. I turned around and went back to the trail.

Perhaps I had walked in a circle? Most of a circle. If I continued on the trail, the way that I was going, it should take me back to where I started, I thought. It probably did. I’m not sure.

At some point, after turning inland and climbing for a few minutes, I saw a faint paleness to my right, some distance away. The path split off in that direction. I went to investigate, expecting to come back, but instead I found an empty parking lot, on the end of a dark and empty road.

It was progress, but I’d long since lost all traces of will. I was an object in motion, simply tending to remain that way.

I walked in the middle of the road, head down, following the faint double line. After half a mile I came to an intersection. I saw streetlights. I had only a moment to think of what to do when a small truck pulled up to the stop sign across the way.

It occurred to me that I must ask for help. I was still several miles from town, and I wasn’t sure I could handle another hour of walking. I entered the glare of the headlights and waved my arms over my head.

The truck edged into the intersection, turning to the right. The driver’s side window rolled down and a grey-haired man in his fifties asked me if I was okay. A woman sat in the passenger’s seat.

“Well, I was sort of shipwrecked,” I said. It sounded strange coming out of my mouth, like idle conversation. I hadn’t spoken in many hours. Was he supposed to deduce that I needed his help? I thought the urgency of the situation was self-evident, but then the truck inched forward.

“So, you’re OK then?” The truck continued to turn away.

“Well, no,” I said, now with audible urgency as I approached. I tried to explain how I had crashed my kayak and stumbled through the woods.

“My wife said I should keep going”, the man said.

What? I can see myself standing there with a bizarre black garment hung over my head and chest, shins bloodied, barefoot, with vacant eyes, casually pondering my “shipwreck”.

He offered to make a call on his cell phone. I gave him my wife’s number. He dialed and got her voicemail. He didn’t leave a message and seemed aggrieved as he thought of what to do.

“You can ride in the back. We’ll bring you back to town,” he said.

“Were you going that way anyway?”

“No, but…”

“Thank you.” I climbed over the tailgate into the bed of the truck. I put my head down and curled up. Then the man stepped out of the cab and gave me a jacket to lay over myself. I watched the streetlights fly over as we headed to Bar Harbor.

When the truck slowed down a few minutes later, I saw we were arriving at the hospital. The truck parked and I climbed out of the back. The man accepted his jacket. I thanked him again and we shook hands.

“My wife’s a little freaked out by the whole thing,” he said.

I hobbled into the emergency room entrance but stopped in the foyer, out of view of the parking lot. I thought it would make a wholesome story, for them to know that I was left in good hands, but it would have been a waste of money. I just needed to get cleaned up.

Friends from my college days lived across the street. My wife had warned them earlier that day that I might appear on their doorstep. I left the hospital (seeing no sign of the truck), crossed the street and knocked on their door. Suzanne, a professor at College of the Atlantic who had taught a biology class that I took in my very first semester there (half a life ago), was sitting on her couch, reading. I could see her squinting at the door, incredulous.

“Hi Suzanne. It’s Bogart.”

She opened the door and I began to blurt out the shipwreck story in short form. I surprised myself by concluding, with some emotion now, “I almost died.”

I took a shower and reviewed my wounds. My left lower leg was deeply scratched by the barnacles. I dug dirt out of the cuts on the bottom of my feet. I emerged from the shower overwhelmed by fatigue. It was about midnight by then, more than three hours after I had dragged myself ashore. Adrenaline spent, I drooped with bitter soreness and stinging pain.

Another old friend, Noreen, treated my wounds with hydrogen peroxide. Suzanne cooked eggs and toast. I should have been hungry, but my appetite was stingy. Within my aches and pains I felt a menacing dread, as if the fear I had shoved aside in action now quietly returned, to be felt at last. I thought I might throw up.

But a few sips of dark, sweet beer settled my stomach. I flopped on the couch. Soon I felt sleep tugging gently, and I gratefully fell in.

At 6 a.m. the moon was high and the fog was low and gathering. I packed my overnight gear and carried it back down the hill to where I’d left the kayak, at the top of the launching ramp. The general store, on the front side of the restaurant, was open now and I went in looking for breakfast.

The scene reminded me of Percy’s, being a source of craft beer, bug spray and “I was here” apparel. The actors were far less jolly, however. A stocky 30-ish woman in the kitchen appeared to have dragged herself out of bed only moments before. I ordered a plate of eggs, bacon and homefries and she seemed to slump a little in announcing “the fryalator’s down.”

While waiting, I paid up. The woman at the counter, maybe 70, was one of those formally polite but expressionless matrons who can wither smalltalk with the lightest touch.

I ate from a paper plate, at the lone dining table by the counter, then returned to the kayak to load it. I was almost ready to go when I realized my spray skirt was missing. A wary young man with a knife in his belt loped over to the store from Mosquito Island Lobster Company, across the top of the launching ramp. He regarded me intently for a moment, possibly with curiosity though not in a friendly way.

It seemed unlikely that someone would steal my spray-skirt. It’s not much use without a kayak. I was so close to the high tide line, I thought it might have floated away in the night. The lobster company’s parking lot overlooks the ramp and the wharves, and as I headed that way I stole a glance at the bed of every pickup truck I passed. Hey, nobody’s accusing anybody of anything, I thought to myself.

Carefully scanning the water again I saw it floating under the wharf near the restaurant. What a relief! Without a spray skirt fitted snugly to both the cockpit coaming and my torso, the cockpit would gradually fill up with drips and splashes. (Or, if I flipped over, quite suddenly with gallons of water).

I paddled out and recovered it from the greasy shallows beneath the wharf, none the worse for wear. I got out, rinsed it, stepped into it and pulled it up to my torso, got back in, secured its elastic lip to the coaming, and was off.

Visibility was down to 100 yards in the fog. It was easy enough to make Marshall Point by eye and merge into the sea road again, but after that were new waters. I had just enough clear air to see the ins and outs down to Mosquito Head, then the shore ran straight a few miles northeast. Outside Tenant’s Harbor the fog lifted a bit and I could see the village, a mile or two west.

Continuing northeastward, I came (finally) to the far edge of the “Cape Small to Boothbay and Tenants Harbor” chart, which I had entered by sail some weeks before. On a grander scale, I was moving from the midcoast, with its long tidal rivers and little bays, into the vast expanse of Penobscot Bay.

The east-northeasterly run of the midcoast bends here to north-northeast along the side of the funnel-shaped bay, which pushes tides as far north as Bangor, some 50 miles away, before returning south to Deer Isle and Isle au Haut, 20 miles to the east. It is, by far, Maine’s largest bay, evidenced by the notch it cuts in an otherwise undetailed coast on our world map. ([50. The map in question is printed on a shower curtain, which, despite its relatively low resolution, has the benefit of being studied every day.])

Unfortunately for me, the midcoast chart and the Penobscot Bay chart failed to overlap. I was left with a two-mile gap from the eastern edge of one to the southwestern corner of the other, and so guessed my way in between. Fortunately, I could see for miles and puzzled my way through it visually, all the while reading transoms for clues.

The sun was out by then and giving us a nice warm day. I found a mooring field of mostly lobster boats with a lot of “Spruce Head Island” transoms, and took it as a good sign. My Penobscot Bay chart showed part of Spruce Head Island. In the distance a rowboat was on its way out to one of the moored lobster boats.

I paddled up to it, chart in hand, and politely requested the aid of the man on board, who seemed to have nothing better to do at the moment. Pointing to the map, I asked “am I near this 44-degree latitude line?” Even as it fell out of my mouth, I knew it was a ridiculous question. Yes, the chart does show a line running through the island and yes, it is 60 nautical miles to the next line, but no one speaks importantly of crossing the 44.

I tried again: “Am I on this map?” He explained that I was not on the map, but would be soon if I kept the island on my left. I thanked him, he replied politely, and I went on my way.

After passing under a small bridge to Burnt Island, I came around to Muscle Ridge Channel and a bank of fog. ([100. Muscle Ridge is a shallow underwater plateau with a few dozen small islands poking through the surface of the water. And yes, it really is “muscle” and not “mussel”. I don’t know why.]) I was not far from shore, maybe a mile or two, but I could only see about a quarter-mile: time for “map and compass” work. The GPS had stayed home.

The chart showed a line of cans and daymarks leading to Ash Island and Ash Point, on the mainland. They were spaced every half-mile or so, purely by chance as they marked ledges. I couldn’t hold the compass flat and paddle at the same time, so I used the line of the wave pattern to keep my angle. One by one they emerged from the fog: green can “7” at Sunken Ledge; green daymark “9” at Garden Island Ledge; green daymark “11” at Otter Island Ledge; and green can “13” at Ash Island Ledge. I didn’t hit them dead on, but I found my way.

The sun broke through at Ash Island, briefly. I had hoped to start my crossing at Ash Point, but the fog to the north and east seemed impossibly dense.

---

I was not happy about the idea of crossing Penobscot Bay in the fog. I broke for lunch and considered my route. My goal for the day was to cross the bay. An eastern run to Isle au Haut would be most direct, but to my eyes that’s a lot of open water. NOAA weather radio called for winds and seas to build the next day (Saturday), and I was wary of raw ocean waves.

Stonington, on Deer Isle, would be a better choice, I thought: northeast today and east tomorrow, rather than the other way around. It’s somewhat more protected, especially today with a passage of the Fox Islands Thorofare (between North Haven and Vinalhaven) to split the crossing in two.

Visibility improved again and I struck out for Sheep Island. I reached it, but then the fog closed. A little unsure, I cheated north with the compass and found the west side of Marshall Island as a pocket of light showed off the mooring field at Owl’s Head Harbor.

It was time to cross. The west shore of Penobscot Bay wouldn’t get any closer to North Haven than it was now (about four miles). At least two fog horns were groaning insistently: Owl’s Head and the Rockland breakwater, most likely. My radio was chirping non-stop with securité calls, like “Securité, Securité, Breezy Bee departing Camden Harbor on a course of one-five-zero.” ([75. “Breezy Bee” is my invention, but you get the point.])

The water of West Penobscot Bay bore a glow of strained sunlight. Working within a half-mile view, I set a course of 70 degrees true and found a faraway lobster buoy to keep me on the line. With correction for leeway, it was 10 or 15 degrees off the port bow. I repeated the process at least a dozen times. After more than hour out of sight of land, I spied the outline of a headland almost dead ahead. Stand-In Point, North Haven!

I was annoyed to lose sight of it in the shifting fog, though little by little the fog was thinning. I saw a car ferry about a mile to the south, out of Rockland I guess, and I watched it for ten minutes or so as it faded away to the southeast, two or three miles away, on its way to Vinalhaven.

A sailboat was over that way, too, a little white daysailer with blue sails, reaching west. Stand-In Point emerged again and within a few minutes the fog was all behind me. The bright sun cheered me and I felt relieved. Then I noticed the daysailer had turned around and was coming with me into the Thorofare. It passed me and gained a lead of a few hundred yards.

Why I couldn’t abide by that I don’t know. Perhaps I used it as incentive. (It was mid-afternoon already). Perhaps I refused to admit that any other mode of travel-by-water could be both faster and easier than this. That’s what I’d wanted from windsurfing but failed to get.

I stroked furiously for about 10 minutes and caught up to it. The two on board seemed unaware of our race. Then in the stillness of the Thorofare near North Haven village they slowed and I relaxed.

The cottages on the Vinalhaven side were spacious and well-groomed and delicately aged. Many had private docks and clusters of moorings. I stopped for a moment to gawk at a beautiful Morris yacht, a pristine and perfect and impossible thing, all tied up and lonely and innocent, like it never tasted salt spray or shouldered a gust.

Coming through the narrows I saw Waterman Cove, and above it an old house and barn at the top of a broad green field, acres and acres of field. A float plane flew over. I sensed a flavor of rare wealth. From a musty lake cabin to a beach condo, to a stony island hideaway, to a fly-in fly-out saltwater farm, the scale is broad and deep.

I was bothered by a predilection for contempt of these precious gems taking the form of places and people and things. Since my cancer diagnosis I’d found it easier to relate to all kinds of people, knowing more surely that we’re equal in death, if nothing else. Still instinct pokes at reason: despite my respect for civility and the nominal fairness of our varied shares, I struggle sometimes with their phantom judgements, as with my guilt of judging them.

---

Around Calderwood Point, the Thorofare opened to the east. Finally, the end was in sight: dead ahead Mark Island light and the passage to Stonington; the rest of Deer Isle on the left; and the profile of Isle au Haut off to the right, ribbed with its wild hills.

But first I stopped at Widow Island, where a mixed rank of gulls and shags held the long pier railing. All departed on my approach, with four or five of the birds dropping chalk-white guano bombs on take-off. I was specifically forbidden to enter the island, according to a sign. As a kayaker, I except myself on the theory that I can not be expected to handle my gear on the water, as most things are packed away where I can’t reach them. It’s just one of those kayaker “facts of life.”

I also took the opportunity to swallow a pain-killer: not ibuprofen but vicodin. I still had a few pills left over from the first days after my brain surgery, more than a year before. The sun would set within the hour, and I was facing the task of crossing East Penobscot Bay in the dark. I could use some relief from the pain in my arms and upper back, I thought. I also carried with me a vision of paddling through the night: an idea of stubborn endurance, partly borne of my rush to beat the weather, but also of a reckless shadow.

This is what puts you in the newspaper: “Drugged Kayaker Drowns on Night Crossing.” I understood the frustration, even the anger, of the safety-conscious kayakers who might read such a headline. I understood that even if I was successful I would be setting a bad example. But I pressed on, with my reckless shadow, into the gloom.

The seas and winds were calm and the lighthouse was clearly visible, so despite an early nervousness the crossing was easy. I kept a flashlight ready to warn off any boats coming my way, but there were none. ([125. You are correct to point out the woeful insufficiency of this plan. If for some reason I don’t hear a boat that’s coming behind me, I could be crushed with an ugly “thump”. I believe I did have one of those 360-degree safety lights shining, at the time, but it’s a handheld model and I never secured it in an upright position. Really, I would need one at each end.]) Once I passed Mark Island, I looked for the flashing light on Crotch Island, inside the Deer Isle Thorofare.

As I paddled I noticed a faint light on the edge of my wake as it spread from the bow. At first I saw it as a reflection of light from somewhere else. But where? There was no moon. There were no lights nearby. Then I saw that each of my paddle strokes made a swirling orb of green light in the water. Bioluminescence! I’d heard of these tiny single-celled creatures that glow when disturbed, but I thought they were tropical. Wow, what a sight.

Coming in to Stonington harbor, a lobster boat chugged by me from astern. Despite its practical form, the chorus of frothy voices said “booze cruise.” As it crossed before me toward a slip, someone turned a blinding spotlight on me. I squinted. I waved. Sounds of amusement and bewilderment followed, then they docked and stumbled away.

As usual, I looked for a public landing, in the form of a paved ramp, but found none so obviously marked. I settled for a somewhat rough incline at the far end of the waterfront, next to an old wharf building. It was quiet and desolate at this time of night, about 8:30. By the time I hauled my kayak and gear safely above the tide mark and changed out of my wetsuit, it was past 9:00.

I headed for town, about a five-minute walk, looking for dinner. The “Fisherman’s Friend” restaurant had just closed and the staff was mopping up. I continued walking along the main street, found another just-closed restaurant, then suddenly ran out of “town.”

I saw three people walking in the street ahead of me, coming my way: a man and two women. I supposed that, like me, they were travelers. “Are there any restaurants open at this hour?” a woman asked me.

“I was going to ask you the same question,” I said.

I walked with them, back the way I came. At Fisherman’s Friend, one of the women pounded on the door audaciously. The man who answered explained, with generous sympathy and regret, why it was not possible for him to serve us dinner. But he did offer to go “next door” to the store (part of the same enterprise, apparently) and pick up some beer. “Cash only,” he said. As I was the only one among us with any cash, I paid for two six-packs of Geary’s with a $20 and took $3 in change.

In the interest of following my beer, I accompanied them to their lodgings. It turns out they were three parts of a string quartet that had played the Stonington Opera House that very evening. I shared my beer (there was more than enough) and they shared what was left of their food, plus frozen dinners they found there.

They offered me a couch, which I gratefully accepted. But before I thought of asking for a blanket, they’d all gone off to bed.

---

NOTES:

For the sake of a proper accomplishment, I’d planned to resume my voyage at Christmas Cove. My wife and I had driven as far as Damariscotta when she found a tourist map that offered otherwise. It was a glossy, cloying sort of map, high on ads and low on detail, but it did show what appeared to be a public launch at Pemaquid Harbor.

It’s across Johns Bay from South Bristol, a few miles east but also a few miles north. Instead of crossing Johns Bay I would follow the shore three miles and, in either case, go around Pemaquid Point. Six of one, as they say. ([10. The phrase “six of one, a half dozen of the other” is often used to describe a choice that is not expected to have much bearing on the outcome. See also: “same difference”])

I found it to be a worthy trade. It was a spacious and barren sandlot, unhindered by self-important fuss. I carried my kayak down the gravel launch into the glassy shallows and packed it there. Woolly clouds shrouded the sky.

With hatches tight and spray skirt secured, I was moments from pushing off when I noticed that my footbraces were out of place. With adjustments for contact points in the feet, knees and hips, one doesn’t sit in a kayak so much as wear it. A good fit puts the full power of a stroke into the paddle.

I’d kayaked in the surf at Crescent Beach a day or two before. Swells from a southern storm were pushing up the coast. I practiced some rolls and surf landings and flipped over a few times in the shore break, which was brown with a churn of fine sand. The footbraces had both been knocked out of their appointed notches and pushed down the adjustment track, and were now jammed tight with tiny grains.

They wouldn’t budge. I had to take out the thru-hull bolts and remove and submerse both units to work the sand out. I didn’t shove off till 2:30.

Outside the harbor, Johns Bay sloshed with small waves. Miles ahead, Pemaquid Point appeared to spray gaily. But up close it was hammer-and-anvil. Swells in the gulf were six feet tall and broke on the shoals with a terrible power. I paddled through a blanket of sea foam nearly a foot thick that gathered off the western side, and then straight out past the point another 100 yards, a safe distance, before turning east.

I was awed by the crashing waves, by the crushing blows of tons of water collapsing on jagged rock. It reminded me of Thunder Hole on the shore of Mount Desert Island, a tourist-preferred sheer-walled pocket of booming surf, and of why, if you fall in, you should swim away from shore. It has claimed more than a few lives.

The sun came out.

Back on the sea road now, it was time to line up a target. Nine miles away, ([20. When I’m out on the water, a “mile” is a nautical mile, because that’s how the charts are scaled. A nautical mile is equal to one “minute” of latitude, about 6,000 feet.]) across the mouth of Muscongus Bay, a line of islands broke from the main and spread south toward the solitary hump of Monhegan. Allen Island, outermost of the pack, was just north of east of my position. If I could step back along the chain I would find Thompson Island and the way to Port Clyde.

It was all a hazy blur at the moment. Riding up and down the swells, I would lose sight of it often. A couple of seabird roosts, Western Egg Rock and Eastern Egg Rock, should be visible, I thought, since they’re miles closer. But they were hidden by the swells or maybe just faded into the background. For an hour or so the scene seemed little changed.

A fishing boat came chugging from the south. It was about 150 yards off but coming my way. It’s exactly the kind of situation that leads to a collision. Except for a second or two on the crest of a wave, I would be almost invisible. I grabbed a paddle blade and lifted the rest of the paddle straight up over my head, and rocked it back and forth. He (or she) changed course.

Far to the northeast I saw a burst of white on the surface of the water, which faded into blue and then burst again. It must be a sunken ledge, I thought. Landing can be hard enough in tall seas: it misbehaves to froth and snarl where there’s no land to be seen. “Boomers”, they’re called. You might be going along minding your own business, no warning, and BOOM a high wave (more to the point, “a low trough”) comes out of nowhere and blows up in a boil of foam.

Gradually the egg rocks dropped out of the background and stood on their own. The lighthouse tower on Franklin Island appeared in a coat of evening gleam. I faded north a few degrees and headed that way. It took another hour or more to reach it, while the misty horizon thickened and darkened and the Georges Islands broke apart.

I sprinted for the notch between Thompson and Barter and covered two miles in about 25 minutes. By the time I got a look at the Marshall Point light at Port Clyde, the sun was down. But the seas had settled and I didn’t feel a wind. I paddled the last few miles at a relaxed pace. When I pulled up to a wharf in what seemed to be the “busiest” part of town, relatively speaking, the sky was full black.

A couple of young waitresses were serving diners on the wharf, under a tall tent structure opened to the night air.

“Excuse me,” I shouted up. “Is there a public landing near here?”

Being hailed from the darkness far below did not seem to unnerve them at all. They directed me to the other side of the wharf. I landed there, unpacked the kayak and carried, separately, the kayak and the gear up the long concrete ramp to the high tide line.

It was, as far as I can remember, my first look at Port Clyde. It’s off the beaten path, so to speak, 10 or 12 miles from Route 1 at Thomaston. It seemed sleepy at that moment, about 7:30 on a Thursday night in early September. Again I was reminded of the idea that every little village has its own flavor.

So Port Clyde kept a “Popham Beach” tempo in the evening, it seemed. Across the street, a sign outside a big old white building (a barn, maybe) advertised “taco night”. I walked in. The decor was rough, but the grey-haired diners brought an air of earnest seriousness to the place, the worldly bearing, perhaps, of a vigorous retirement from New York or Washington.

The woman next to me at the bar, similarly advanced in age, rambled more colorfully. The bartender nodded on cue but the woman seemed to be speaking mostly to herself, about being an unwelcome Ron Paul delegate in Tampa, and her inevitable brushes with the great painting Wyeths who long summered nearby.

The story of the taco bar came out in bits and pieces. The bartender’s retired Navy, fifty-something, upright, trim and a bit unnerving for a guy handing out beer. I gathered this was not a living. His wife cooks (quite well, it must be said) and their daughter helps.

I had a Corona and two tacos. After 8:00, the tables began to clear. By 8:30 the place was closed and I was out on the street again.

On advice of the bartender, I slept in the grass at a school playground up the hill. It turns out that while the evenings in Port Clyde are quiet, the wee hours of the morning are not. First a skunk appeared. Then a fleet of pick-up trucks came roaring down the hill: time to start fishing, Popham Beach needs lobsters.

---

NOTES:

Sailors, raise your hands.

You might have noticed, in Part 1, my contempt for the entitled laziness of some skippers. On reflection, I must hedge. My portrait of a pampered “yachtsman” would apply unfairly to the larger group of “those who sail,” as was suggested by a recent visit to Portland Yacht Services.

At the end of November, I joined my neighbor Luke in examining a 25-foot sailboat at the PYS yard. Luke and his wife already own a sailboat, but he knows of my interest in sailing, and thought it would make a perfect “first boat”. He knew the owner. And the price was right: free.

It taught me a little about the yachting world and a lot about myself. No facade of grim formality received us at the PYS office: just some friendly grey-haired guys with calculators. It was a refreshingly capitalist exchange. I was never so delighted to be an anonymous consumer.

Of course, the numbers they crunched did not sum to zero. First of all, there was a winter storage fee of more than $1,000. Shrink-wrap was a few hundred more. Spring launching, more. And the cutlass bearing is going to fail at some point…

So, even if Luke’s friend did give away his sailboat, I’d be knee deep in commitment before it ever touched the sea. It was a frightening thought, and it struck me that while I often pined for the comforts of a sailboat, they weren’t worth the headaches.

My acceptance of windsurfing as a cheap alternative to (traditional) sailing is, I realized, actually a preference. Though a year or two of sailing might cost no more than my $4,000 investment in windsurfing gear, I’d rather have the versatility of windsurfing than the comfort and range of a sailboat.

How much is it costing me to store my windsurfing equipment this winter? Zero dollars. Spring launching? Zero. Take it to the lake? Zero. There is something deeply gratifying about its human scale. I carry it to the water. Then it carries me. We can travel on either side of the water’s edge. It seems almost magical.

That is why, in planning my resumption of the trek, I opted for kayaking. While it lacks the alluring promise of a free ride, it fits perfectly with my freshly acquired “amphibious” mandate: to travel by water “with my bed on my back”, and, at any moment, take to shore and disappear.

---

“Roll or Die.”

So said the bumper of an old Volvo wagon that just pulled in to the East End landing with two kayaks on top. A short, athletic young woman bounded out of the driver’s seat. She wore a braid of jet-black hair, from which many wily strands had drifted. She walked, I thought, like a tomboy.

It was early September. The parking lot was full of kayaks, including mine. I was going out paddling to practice “eskimo” rolls. Everyone else, it seemed, was part of a class. She was one of the instructors.

I told her I was heartened by the sentiment of “Roll or Die”. For the Inuits who first developed the kayak (and the roll) in icy northern waters, it was literally true. In our warmer waters, and with modern gear, it’s easier to get back into a kayak. But any such “recovery” is a poor substitute to rolling. In rough conditions, it could come down to “Roll or Die”.

I had learned to roll last summer by watching YouTube videos. I didn’t even have a spray skirt yet. I flipped over, thrashed around a little bit, failed a few times, and then, to my great surprise, succeeded. Some days later I tried again, but failed completely. Not even close. The required movements seemed impossible to imagine from an upside-down point-of-view, with water all around and air underneath.

In late August of this summer, we visited my in-laws on Shelter Island, New York. I brought my kayak and a book on eskimo rolling and practiced in the pool for hours. I wanted a “bomb-proof” roll, a dependable, instinctive roll. I studied techniques, variations and drawbacks, and gradually it became easier. I wore a diving mask so that I could see what I was doing, and to keep water out of my nose.

I was confident, I dare say “prepared” for the second leg of my trip.

I slept in my bivy sack, on the sand, quite peacefully till first light. A buzz of mosquitos woke me, but I pulled the hood over my head and fell back to sleep. Some time later, after sun-up, I woke with some discomfort. Mosquitos were inside the bivy sac now. I hadn’t secured the velcro closure well enough. Strangely, the mosquitos all seemed to be trying to get out: full of blood already, most likely.

I was unnerved by a crawling sensation on my scalp, face and neck, which was accompanied by tiny bursts of nerve pain here and there. Desperately scouring myself with my palms, I felt many tiny grains of soft matter being smeared across my skin. On the underside of the mesh, I saw a tiny insect crawling. It was not only smaller than the voids in the mesh, is was smaller than the threads!

They were everywhere.

In despair I re-fastened the velcro, covered my head and squirmed uncomfortably. I couldn’t remember what time Percy’s was supposed to open. Six, I hoped. But, apparently not. I danced around my board for a while, trying to get things organized. At seven sharp I went back to Percy’s and entered behind a young woman who appeared to be about 17 years old.

She went behind the counter, where I recognized an older waitress from the night before. I reported my overnight, briefly, while scanning the menu board. It proved to be a naive mistake, as an elder gentleman swooped in behind me and ordered his usual before I could say “two eggs”.

“Hi, Paul,” they greeted him. As he opened his wallet to pay, I glimpsed an out-of-state driver’s license. (I’m secretly nosy, in that way). I ordered and sat down at the dining room. Within ten minutes the booths were all taken.

Yet the room was remarkably quiet. All the booths appeared to be occupied by just one man each. They were all reading, mostly the Portland Press Herald. A stout man in a threadbare Yankees tee shirt and matching cap, about 50, noted a Burmese Python was discovered in Florida with a huge clutch of eggs. Scores of eggs. Paul turned back a page, announced “87 eggs” and then resumed his research.

Talk turned to baseball. A man in jeans and a white T-shirt, tanned, with quiet blue eyes and a John Deere cap (with a feather in it), also about 50, looked up from his Men’s Health magazine. He’s a Tigers fan.

“How are they doing this year?” asked Yankees fan. “Two games out of first? Is that all?”

“They’re in a weak division,” said Tigers fan.

I got the idea that this dining room, this forum, while not dissimilar from other lobster-roll joints up and down the coast, must have its own flavor of sociability: a sum of back roads, beaches, bare feet, regulars, old cottages (and those who can afford them), sleepy summer-town habits, local news, parking (or lack thereof) and Percy’s Store. Is such character invested in the place by its environment or by its people? Or is it the indivisible cause and effect of both?

---

The young woman brought me a mug of coffee. I was wondering why it didn’t come with the meal. Turns out they fill it at the counter, then you’re supposed to bring it in to the dining room. After the meal, you bus your own dishes to the counter. And no one leaves a tip, or so it seems. These conventions were not explained. Day-trippers, be advised.

She asked me about my encounter with the sand fleas or no-see-ums or whatever they were. I recounted the horror and she was politely amazed, possibly even genuinely impressed. Should I deny that I was delighted to have her attention for a minute? The inappropriateness of feeling attracted to high school girls did not occur to me until my late 20s. To cultivate now a disinterest was warranted, even urgent, though also vaguely absurd. She was unusually beautiful.

On my way out, the older woman grabbed a can of bug spray from a shelf and gave it to me. Then, nodding at the younger, she said “It was her idea.” They both smiled. I hadn’t used bug spray for years, but the “thought” was moving. It was “Ben’s” brand bug spray, which I’d used in my teenaged years of scrambling over hill and dale. Our re-acquaintance was amusing, as I noticed the formulation had changed from 100% DEET to 30% DEET, while, of course, the bottle was three times bigger.

The more things change…

---

I didn’t shove off till well after nine, taking time to re-arrange some gear, make things more accessible and shift weight aft for better trim.

It’s almost a mile across the mouth of the river from Percy’s east to Kennebec Point. The tide was running in hard. I reached at first, more or less square to the wind, but had to point up well to the south to gain on the current. At about the middle of the crossing I fell and lost so much ground to the boiling rush that I didn’t think I would make the cape. But the wind picked up just enough to throw me over the top.

Percy’s disappeared behind the rocks with the morning’s sun. Ahead, Sheepscot Bay was shadowed by a dense, cold cloudy sky. I ran down north awhile by the rocky shore of Georgetown Island and hopped the mouth of Little River to the beach at Reid State Park. It was similar to Popham in being almost surrounded by tidal marshes, but lacked the backdrop of dense forest.

I stopped there, just offshore, but it was hard to shake off the chill. I donned my lycra hood and ate a couple of protein bars. Suddenly a huge olive-green fish leaped straight out of the water about 30 feet ahead of me. It was four feet long, slick and somehow knobby along the spine. ([10. My unit of measure was a standard “fisherman foot” of nine imperial inches.])

From the east end of the beach, it’s about 3 miles across the bay to Cape Newagen on Southport Island. The cloud cover dropped and dispersed into a thin fog, which seemed less oppressive with a few rays of sun sprinkled in. My horizon in the fog was perhaps a quarter to a half mile. This would be my first crossing of unknown waters through fog. Thus my GPS was useful.

Have I not mentioned the GPS before? That’s probably because it had been useless. It’s an old Garmin model, maybe eight years old, with a base map so lacking in detail that most islands on my route are simply missing. But Southport Island is large enough to appear as a rather elementary triangle. With wind and waves steady in the south, not to mention my compass, I could have succeeded without it. But I did use it, and that was the first (and likely last) time it came in handy.

The wind was light, my pace was slow and again I felt the tension in my shoulders of “holding up the sail”. But I was also determined to complete the crossing without a dunk, and finally managed it after an hour or so. Cape Harbor was a glassy little pond of a harbor at that time, a surprisingly cozy cove walled off by Cape Island and its ledges.

I stretched out on the board for a drink and a rest, watching some “goings on” at the Cape Island landing. It’s one of those solitary dominions, relatively abundant on the Maine coast, though no more affordable for it. A host of visitors knotted the path to the one big house. I couldn’t tell if they were coming or going or a little of both. They seemed stunned by contrast to Manhattan or whatever distinguished urb they called home.

I thought of Troy’s camp (where this tale began) and its moderate contrast to his parents’ homestead. It’s only 20 minutes or so from one to the other. Both are rural, though not secluded. One’s got a snow-blower (or a plow, maybe) and the other’s got a beach, that’s the key difference.

Does a rule apply? Is the toil and bustling and elbowing of city life inversely proportional to the seclusion, space and leisure one requires for balance?

A current swept me slowly to the back of the cove, where a tiny passage (of about 20 feet) opens onto Booth Bay. It was sunny there. New bay, new weather. And new wind. It was past noon and about time for a sea-breeze.

The route turned northeast to Ocean Point on Linekin Neck. With the wind turning westerly I reached along the east shore of Southport Island, toward Boothbay Harbor. But it picked up quicker than I would have liked. I tried running downwind to Squirrel Island but I was overpowered. Playing tug-of-war with the rig, even for just a minute, was enough to exhaust me.

I sat on the board to recover my breath. The wind wrinkled the water into a sky-eating deep blue. I was politely offered assistance, more than once. Sailboats majestically plied the waves. One passed nearby, carrying a man and, I guessed, his son. They seemed relaxed, contemplative, safe and in control. I felt, in that moment, utterly deficient: alone, worn out, muddled and unskilled.

“Just wait.”

I waited. I deployed the sea anchor, but without unbundling the line. Still it had enough length in it to drop under the surface and catch water. It works! Not much of a consolation, at the moment. After some time of feeling no less beaten by the continued force of wind (but not knowing or caring how much time) I broke down the rig. I could paddle the rest of the way to South Bristol, meet up with my wife and end the trip there.

---

Well, another thing I forgot to mention is that I was ending the trip. Giving up, in other words. At least for a while. My body was broken. My skin was burned, grimy and caked with salt. My fingertips were nearly worn through from gripping the boom. I could only grit my teeth and groan and snarl.

The night before, at Percy’s, having a couple of hours to think about it, I decided that since I wasn’t going to make it to Bar Harbor, there was no particular reason to punish myself in trying. “Windsurf touring,” as I suppose it should be called, is hard. At least, it’s hard for me. Weeks earlier, I’d heard from a friend of a friend that a couple had once windsurfed from Cape Cod to Bar Harbor. It’s surely not impossible, but in my case I’m either less skilled, less tough or not equipped as well. Perhaps my route and my choice of weather were off the mark, too. ([20. “Choice of weather” is meant to be funny, but with experience one can adapt an area forecast to local variations and tendencies, I suppose.]) I don’t know. There is probably a good reason why “touring” is not in the established windsurfing vocabulary.

So I had texted my wife and worked out a plan to meet in South Bristol. It was still miles away, maybe four or five. “Just gimme a paddle and I’ll beat the water for a few hours and be done with it” is what I wanted to say. In a diversion from my normal de-rigging process, I tried stowing the whole rig forward. Then I could lean back on the stern box and stretch my legs forward, heels in the water. But the board was unbalanced and hard to control.

I was frustrated to the point of self-pity as I passed south of Squirrel Island. From there it was another mile to Ocean Point. The wind had softened. The idea of rigging up again disgusted me. I almost drove on, swaying and splashing, for a lack of will to change. I commanded myself to stop. STOP! Breathe. Think. It was an emotional command to outdo my emotions. Some hidden reserve of higher reason took over. I let go of the frustration. Ill-advised de-rig? Immaterial now. I began to feel calm and calculating. I weighed options, formulated strategies.

It was a shocking transformation, as if I were suddenly possessed, but the result was not unfamiliar. It’s how I often feel at the beginning of any project: focused, intense, in control. It’s just… exhausting. After a rest, it’s hard to restart. Too often I’d yielded to the weight of what was promised but undone.

I pulled into a tiny cove of great cloven rocks and rigged up, patiently, precisely. Sailing away, into the softer light of a late afternoon, I saw a pod of small porpoises swimming out to the gulf. One jumped out of the water a few times: playfully, it seems.

The current at Card Ledge pushed me inward of the point and I needed three or four long tacks to get around it. A scattering of people, sitting on porches or walking along the water, in the western glow, watched me zig and zag.

Then around the point, the sun disappeared behind Linekin Neck and, true to the form of the day, the weather changed. The mouth of the Damariscotta River was dusky under a quilt of cloud. I could see a flag on Fisherman’s Island puffed up, out in the gulf behind me, but it was dead calm in the lee. Upriver a couple of miles the white triangles of daysailers were paused in their course, utterly becalmed. After waiting 10 or 15 minutes for a breath of air I finally de-rigged. Evening had arrived.

The scene was morose, but soothing, against the bustle and striving of the afternoon. Gong buoy “DR” was struck with a soft rolling swell to shiver a moody song, while vees of black ducks skimmed the water on a flight south. ([30. Unlike the more common “bell buoy”, a gong buoy has multiple tones.]) They seemed to be proclaiming the end of summer, though it was still mid-August: the beginning of the end, I suppose.

I pulled desperately on the paddle, growling in contempt of pain. I’d arranged to meet my wife at seven, and I raced upriver to the finish but came in late. I also, in my haste, came in wrong. I was heading for The Gut, where a swing bridge joins Rutherford Island to the mainland. But I had mistaken a mere humble indent for Christmas Cove, and thought I was approaching The Gut. The boats in the harbor corrected me one by one: “Christmas Cove, Christmas Cove”. It seemed too late to back out and go around.

My cell phone was packed away. I expected it would work, though back at Ocean Point I’d found “No Service”. I saw no indication of a public landing in the crowded harbor. By default, I continued and landed at a private dock. After a moment of rest and consideration, finding again “No Service”, I tied up and climbed to a path in tall grass. It emerged at an old white house black-eyed in the dusk and unattended by cars, at the end of a dirt road.

The next house on the road was equally dark and lonely, and also had a dock, but with a more convenient passage between the water and the road. I returned to my sailboard, paddled it to this other dock and began unloading it under the deepening cover of darkness. After four or five trips I’d staged all of my gear in a corner of the yard, by the road.

The road turned up a hill from there to what seemed like the island’s main road. A street sign designated my dirt road as “French Lane.” I continued, to the highest point I could find, outside a spectacular show-house named “High Harbor.” One bar flickered intermittently in the top corner of my phone’s display. I texted “French Lane”, then “I’m on French Lane”, to my wife. I had no better way of describing my location, having no land route to retrace.

The texts seemed to go through, but I received no reply. It was then that I regretted having texted her, shortly after landing, a message indicating that I would probably relocate to the public landing if I could find it. It had quickly become too dark for that. I wasn’t sure which texts, if any, she had received. She could find French Lane, I was sure, with help from locals, if she ever got the message. Or she could be wandering all over the island looking for a public landing, which might not even exist.

I stood there in the dark, beside the road, wetsuit peeled off of my upper body, swatting mosquitos, begging the phone to speak. Cars flew by, seemingly all silver Volvos with Mass plates and gangs of teens howling insults over a thumping bass.

I walked back to my pile of gear and waited. After nine o’clock I unpacked a fleece and laid myself down on the porch. I surrendered to the thought that she wouldn’t find me. Flat ground still counted as home, until she did. I was too tired to feel much disappointment.

I must have been asleep. I heard gravel crunching and saw a beam of light moving. It might have been a mission to defend a neighbor’s property. I might have been a pirate, or a fraud, or just a bum. I was too tired to care. But it was my wife. She’d found me.

We packed my gear and she told me her story of driving all over the island, looking for a public landing, then knocking on the door at High Harbor looking for help, and speaking to someone there. I could see a figure in the window of the huge house, peering down. Whether alarmed or amused or otherwise we may never know. I don’t plan on repeating those events.

My wife hadn’t received my texts until after she gave up looking. She was headed for home and suddenly they came in a flood, and she turned around and drove back to French Lane. She had seen the road sign earlier but dismissed the road as a driveway.

She drove us back to Portland, spanning in 75 minutes a distance that took me four days to sail and paddle. Near midnight, I went to bed. I was almost delirious with fatigue. No hint of regret troubled my sleep. I had struggled, achieved some and experienced more. My voyage remained incomplete. But I had a feeling that I would get the chance to finish it.

---

NOTES:

Third day of the trip and I was still on the first chart, “Casco Bay”. I was still of the first side of the first chart. The “midcoast” ranges, the big islands and long peninsulas packed tight in a maze of tidal rivers, where coastal driving (on Route 1) is separated from coastal sailing by 8 to 12 miles, were yet to come. Then the Penobscot Bay chart and its open-water crossings. From Deer Isle to Bar Harbor is a network of waterways 30 miles square with islands and bays of all shapes and sizes, inshore to offshore, bridge-bound to bluewater.

My heart sank, counting the miles. I had completed one tenth of the 120-mile route and would need perfect conditions to catch up. A constant eight miles-per-hour southerly breeze would do it, but the odds were against it, along with the forecast.

But a shiver in the poplars there on Bailey Island gave me some hope. I unfolded my charts to dry on the gravel beach and chased a crew of brawny earwigs out of the dry-box, which had failed to live up to its name. I laid out shorts and T-shirts to dry in the sun. With disgust and a hint of shame I chastised myself for bringing cotton clothes. I was seduced by visions of “going into town” at night and having a beer or two and assuming an air of leisure.

I departed around nine o’-clock. Out in the bay a soft swell was rolling. The winds were so light that I had to “hold up the sail” again. The sluggish pace was demoralizing. At one point I tried a quick alternative to de-rigging by tying the boom down to two of the board’s rear pad eyes. But of course the weight of the rig and the leverage of the boom were too much for the deck hardware. I had no sooner climbed on the board than a loud pop signaled trouble. The bolt holding the pad eye had jumped its threads and was hanging loose.

By the time I replaced the bolt with a back-up (which skipped, but held) the wind was picking up again. Cape Small was about six nautical miles east-southeast, thin and hazy. If the wind held south, I’d have a nice close reach over open water. I hooked into my harness lines and tried to remember the basics: look forward, not at the sail; keep your weight in the harness, not in your hands; if you’re being pulled over, sheet out and spill air.

I was desperate to take advantage of the friendly wind, to sail with a relaxed, calm-but-determined focus and a light-but-sure touch. That’s how I’d imagined the trip: mile after mile enchanting the wind, bidding it carry me. I was reminded why I chose to sail instead of taking my kayak: I covered five miles in an hour (rather than three to four) with little effort.

I came up to Cape Small’s Bald Head just after noon. I skirted a patch of loose rockweed about a hundred yards off the rocks, lost my angle to the wind and had to tack back. I should have gained on the wind while I had the chance. Then I’d have a buffer to peel off, if I needed it. “Let this be a lesson,” I said to myself.

Still, I was exhilarated to round the cape. The weather-beaten hump of Seguin Island dominated the eastern view, with its short squat lighthouse almost 200 feet above the water. The shore turned in north for a mile, then northeast along wild sandy beaches and tidal marsh, on to Fort Popham and the mouth of the Kennebec River.

Turning northward, off the wind, put me in a broad reach to the northeast. It’s not the most comfortable position for windsurfing, for me. Downwind sailing in a light breeze, one must open the sail. Compared to a close reach or beam reach, the force is more forward. The diminished angle of thrust to the course effectively narrows the board, making it harder to balance. As you approach a dead run, the sail acts not like a wing but a parachute, blocking the wind and spilling it unpredictably. Better windsurfers (which is most of them, I think) have the touch. I do not.

After an hour of fierce concentration in reaching the cape, I suddenly lacked the will to struggle with the sail. I felt exposed, far from shore. On the crossing I had seen a black fin, maybe 500 yards ahead of me. I figured it was not a shark, by the way it arched and dived. It might have been a large porpoise, maybe a small whale. But a brief moment of uncertainty, an instantaneous reaction, had touched a fear of the deep dark water. Shelter appealed. I needed lunch, and a rest.

I turned toward the beach, still a downwind course but easier. In contrast to Maine’s more southern beaches, it seemed unblemished by the friction of teeming crowds against private property. Two tidal marshes wrap its flanks and Morse Hill plugs the gap with a forested brow. Maybe a house or two sneak in, but it’s given to the bathers.

I picked up speed approaching the shore, suddenly realizing I was riding the crest of a wave. Only rarely before had I landed on a beach. “Get Down!”, I urged myself. Though a small wave, maybe two feet, it was going to break and flop me on the sand like a sac of beans. I dropped the sail and sat on the board with my legs dragging in the water as the wave rushed on ahead.

I gained my feet and pulled the board and rig against the backwash, up onto the beach, and sat down for an overdue meal. There seemed to be miles of deep soft sand, and not your typical ribbon, either, but broad acres of sand beside shallow tidal washes. No lifeguards, no rangers, no decrees of behavior. I wouldn’t know, of course, arriving from the sea. Perhaps there is a parking fee, a residency restriction, or a grave warning of some kind administered at the “front” entrance.

Returning to the water, I continued sailing along the beach to the mouth of the short, marshy Morse River. It crept down the beach in a wide sheet, barely an inch deep, an amphibious zone confounding the cartographer’s palette. Land? Sea? Both?

I pulled out there to de-rig. I was tired of sailing, more mentally exhausted than physically. A deeply tanned, short old man in a soft cotton bucket hat asked me if I wanted help carrying my gear out of the waves. He seemed to be alone. It’s a beautiful but quiet stretch of beach, about halfway between the earlier beach and Popham Beach State Park. I accepted his offer, with what warmth I could find at that moment. People like to be helpful, they feel good about it, so why not?

He dropped his tote bag on the board and we each lifted an end. “Ready?”, I asked. I should have waited for an answer, but he seemed to have a grip on it. I stepped forward. “No!”, he squeaked, almost falling backward.

We chatted for a bit, then he wandered off and I broke down the rig. I might be like him, an odd sort of beach bum hermit, if I ever get that old. I rolled the sail and secured it to one side of the dry box, then the two mast pieces on the other side. The long, eye-shaped boom went on top, and together they stretched to the stern box and enclosed a small space to kneel in.

With the rig stowed, I pushed out into the water. The bottom there fell off so sharply that I had to pull myself up onto the board, over the stowed boom, with nothing to stand on. Somehow a fishing charter had snuck up to the shore about 50 feet away, with a dozen people quietly watching as I attempted this maneuver, this stunt. I threw one leg over the boom and kicked desperately with the other, dancing on the edge of pulling the whole kit upside down. I made it, barely.

They went on watching and fishing. I imagined their curiosity: what is he doing? Some kind of sit-down stand-up paddleboarding? Self-torture? Performance art? It was late afternoon and I had come only 10 miles. It now seemed impossible to reach Bar Harbor within the allotted seven days. More to the point, my body ached to its core.

Dinner dangled like a lonely carrot far away. I knew I could find it at Percy’s Store, one of the few provisioners so convenient to my route. I just didn’t know exactly where it was on the beach, which stretched a mile or two past the state park to the mouth of the Kennebec River. I remembered the photograph on the web site, of a long low-slung building settled in dune grass.

I reached the state park first. Hundreds bathed in the shallows under three giant white lifeguard towers. The water’s body turned green under a suddenly cloudy sky. The bald dome of Fox Island was bridged to the beach now, at lowish tide, and I paddled out around it as a crown of people looked on from above.

Up the beach I saw the modest old cottages of Popham’s village. The historically important Popham Colony was established nearby in 1607, before even the Plymouth Colony, but abandoned in 1608 and rediscovered only recently. Those earlier colonists managed to build a 30-ton vessel to get them home to England. Judging by the current relaxed quality of the place, nothing of such effort has been attempted here since.

Before leaving the park, I paddled up to the nearest bather and consulted her local knowledge of dining opportunities. Turns out she was from New Hampshire. Like me, she’d heard of a store on Popham Beach but didn’t know where it was, exactly. Nothing in sight seemed to fit, but the beach makes a northern run at the river mouth, so it might be around that corner, we agreed.

I found it, eventually, near the end of the beach, near the old stone hunk of Fort Popham with its commanding upriver view. Strange, to think of British warships menacing this tranquil scene of steep green islands and headlands; and of the great six-masted schooners and Navy destroyers, built in Bath, born of this rivermouth and bound for foreign seas, briefly looming large above the sleepy row.

A path in the dune grass brought me up to Percy’s Store. With my wetsuit still dripping, I was relieved to see a hand-written sign on the door: “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem”. I ordered a hamburger and a grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich, with two bottles of beer. “Are you the guy from Portland?” asked the man behind the counter. I was startled. Was my wife trying to reach me? My phone had been dead all day.

“Somebody from the park called and said you were headed this way, said to keep an eye out for you.” He introduced himself: Dave Percy. I supposed the woman I’d met at the park had called ahead for me. After the shock of being expected wore off, I felt at ease — even a bit friendly. I undid my typical polite-but-wary public face, established myself in one of the unoccupied dining rooms and enjoyed devouring my dinner, while my cell phone and marine radio recharged at a nearby outlet.

I stayed a couple of hours, till closing. “You can sleep out there on the beach if you want. Nobody will bother you,” said Dave. “If they give you any trouble, tell ’em Dave Percy said it was OK.”

I remembered the small jar of sea glass I’d carried from Portland. Other than serving as proof the dry box was too big, it was to be a gift from “back home” for anyone particularly helpful or charming. I ventured into the kitchen, where Dave was sweeping, and presented it with descriptions of its varied colors and shapes. He was politely thankful, though opinions on sea glass are known to vary widely, from “unique works of weathercraft” to “worthless at best”.

I left at 8:30 with my two bottles of beer and batteries charged. It was dark and moonless outside. Dave called after me, “See you in the morning!”

Down at the water’s edge, near my rig, several long fishing poles were propped up in the sand. The light of a headlamp bobbed and dashed along the row, flooding a scene of two men in folding chairs, then suddenly plunging to the sand, where two small hands were seen digging. A boy, his father and the father’s friend had come from New Hampshire to fish and camp for a week, I later learned.

They were able drinking companions. (Dave’s only warning on the subject of public drinking on Popham Beach was that people were likely to join us). Our conversation inevitably turned to questions of personal background. The dad and son were from Alstead, New Hampshire, where my mother and step-father have lived for many years. That we could not establish, following such revelation, a link between the parties seemed to strike Mr. Dad as improbable, even unjust. But we did succeed in comparing, fondly, our favorite driving routes from Alstead to the Maine coast.

Is driving to Vacationland a more intimate experience than flying? or sailing? or hiking? Not necessarily. I’m thinking, rather, of a mindset that may be engendered by one’s mode of travel, and how it may or may not promote a “sense of where you are”. It would be unfortunate to pass this way as if through scenery, as if even the human elements of a place were glued down, in diorama, as surely as they were walled off from everywhere else.

“See how you feel, eating candy all the time.” A mother might propose so, in the old days, hoping to demonstrate the foulness of such a diet with the inevitable tummy-twisting sickness. Then dad would put you in the closet with a pack of cigarettes.

Judging by my cache of food, I’d yet to learn my lesson: three dozen protein bars with appetizing names like “Vanilla Toffee” and “Chocolate Peanut Butter”; enough Gatorade to drown a gator; syrupy sweet Starbucks canned espresso; and of course the Irish cream. I sat up in my nylon bivy sac, pounded a coffee (caffeine… check!) and choked down a few protein bars. It was like eating sugared clay, but I would need the protein.

A generator roared to life nearby, signaling start of business. It was some kind of aquaculture operation: a floating shack and a couple of platforms anchored in shallow water, with a miniature plumb-stem Novi tied up aside. ([10. A “Novi” is a motor boat typically used for lobstering, of the type manufactured in Nova Scotia, with a nearly plumb stem, sharply upswept bow, a cabin which is well-forward and covered but not enclosed, and a broad stern deck with low freeboard and a wide, square rail for staging traps. But mine is not an expert assessment.]) You can see it from up on the Eastern Promenade, though like this island it’s easy to miss, small and far away and inconspicuous in a sweeping 15-mile view of island-dotted sea.

He’d be raising clams or mussels or who knows? Another boom-and-bust in the vein of urchins and elvers, maybe. They’re farming seaweed now, too.

I was up at 7:00 and ready to go at 8:30.

I paddled southeast in a sunny but stuffy morning calm, past yesterday’s collision site, past the aquaculturist’s man-sized gamble. Little Chebeague Island and my passage to the outer bay were a couple of miles away in a bank of fog. The surface of the water settled into a bulging black mirror that doubled the blinding sun. I was already thirsty and dripping sweat. Pins and needles pricked my feet where I sat on them. (I had intended to craft a foam seat, but ran out of time).

I dug in hard with my paddle. The fog was burning off now and baring the shoulders of Little Chebeague. I was desperate to get around it, through the gap of Great Chebeague and Long, and see the broad flat horizon of the Gulf of Maine.

I was nearing the edge of those “new waters” I had promised myself, at the northern tip of Long Island, when I saw a few people on the beach there. It reminded me that I had not entirely committed myself to self-sufficiency in bearing supplies. Fresh water I could beg. I needed more, and this was the last best place to get it. The beach-combing woman and her grandchildren did not know of a handy water source. They were only visiting for the day. But she pointed up the beach to where the paved main road came around.

This is the kind of island that just barely tolerates anonymity. It’s served by the Portland ferry, and has a few stores and restaurants. ([20. Other islands on the “mailboat” run, like Little Diamond Island, suffer strangers uneasily. The absence of paved roads and commercial enterprises seems to coincide with a reputation for insularity. (That may be changing. The island’s clubhouse is said to be a casino now).]) When a convoy of bicyclists passed by, I asked to be pointed to a water source. I was directed, pleasantly (and apparently without suspicion), to a nearby garden hose. With water for a day or two, I paddled across the channel to Deer Point, at the south end of Great Chebeague Island. A gulf wind stirred the surface into shadows with electric seams. It folded chips of water into strands of blue sky and spread a fine twinkling fabric to the horizon.

“She’s rollin’ now!” came a radio voice, firing my desire to sail. The waves and wind were building, out there in the gulf. I rigged up. I wanted to go straight out, southeast, into the wind, just to feel the sail-filling freshness of it, but of course sailboats can’t do that. So I had either to go south and tack back in open water or, more directly, go east behind Hope Island. I cautiously chose the latter, suddenly feeling small before the ocean. But Hope was tall enough and close enough to effectively block the wind, and the next mile cost an age.

In good wind I can “sit back” and balance the pull of the sail with my body weight, thru the connection of the boom to my seat harness. Without a counterweight, the sail is top-heavy and keeping it balanced is frustrating.

---

But alas, new waters. There ahead east was Broad Sound and rows of skinny ridge-backed islands all going northeast and southwest, the way this bay was built. Cliff Island rose steeply to my right. Beyond it, Bates Island and Ministerial Island blocked my view of the next cape. It was 2:30 by then. The breeze of noon had proved a tease, but the sun never let up. I tan well, but it was too much for one day. My arms were tender. I knew I was in for a burn. Belatedly I slopped on sunscreen.

A couple of nice white sailboats came behind on the same route, gleaming majestically, passed by and turned north toward Freeport. How they carry sail! It is said the two happiest moments of a man’s life are: when he buys his boat; and when he sells his boat. Use it or not, it grows old eating your money. But on a day like this…

Now the wind was gaining strength: a real sea-breeze. I rounded north of Stave Island and turned east again, with all 7.5 square meters of sail puffed and working. I hooked in with my harness and picked up speed. If I could stay upright, I’d make Bailey Island within the hour and go for Cape Small.

But I could not. Windsurfing is not easy, not for me anyway. I simply did not have the technique, the balance, or the strength required to keep control in higher winds. The sail (which looks and acts like a wing) stalled and then pitched forward violently, throwing me into the water. It’s striking to see a windsurfer fall, from a distance, because what might at first appear to be a sailing dinghy seems to disappear in an instant. The slim board may be obscured by waves, the sail is flat on the surface, and the sailor, for a moment, is probably underwater.

It’s no wonder other boaters are concerned by the sight. It seemed only seconds later that a little motorboat puttered up with an offer of assistance. It’s hard to explain, to someone who is not familiar with windsurfing, that man overboard is a natural state of being. A wetsuit is standard dress. We expect to be soaked.

Fortunately, the sail in the water effectively anchors the board so it won’t blow away. The trade-off is “uphauling”, an exhausting struggle to pull the sail up to sailing position. The rig is not terribly heavy, but it’s tall and poorly leveraged by the short uphaul line. With the wind flagging the sail and the waves rocking the board, it’s not uncommon for me to lose my balance and fall in again.

Compare it to log-rolling while weight-lifting. It can, and now did, result in a downward spiral of fatigue and frustration. After half an hour of trying and failing, I was exhausted. I sat down on the board to reassess. The wind was still too strong. I’d had maybe 10 minutes of good sailing as the wind speed climbed from “anemic” to “sporting”. There’s not much you can do to adapt a sail made for windsurfing. You can’t reef it or roll it on the mast, nor easily carry an alternate size.

I came back to the mantra that summarized my personal collection of wind wisdom: “just wait”. ([30. Mark Twain is popularly credited with saying “if you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes”. His Dec. 23, 1876 speech on the subject of New England weather could be summarized as advising so, but lacks the wording.]) Conditions change. Rest a while. In the meantime I drifted north with the tide and the wind. I thought of deploying my “sea anchor”, which is like an underwater parachute, but the fuss of coiling 50 feet of line put me off.

I had made the sea anchor thinking I wouldn’t use it, then when I needed it I just didn’t bother. When did such sloth become acceptable? I thought of Merlin and the terrifying allure of shedding one’s cares, of finding oneself propped up by others’ labors. How do graceless infants grow to command themselves and then, in middle age, so readily deny themselves the will to proceed?

---

Everyone knows the afternoon sea-breeze settles down in the early evening, but I tired of waiting. Wind or no wind, I could gain ground with the paddle, starting now. Almost now. By the time the rig was stowed, it was past 4:00. I had drifted about a mile. I still couldn’t see Bailey Island. All day I’d imagined sailing into the marina there, stowing the board in some secret corner of water, under a pier, and arriving for dinner as if out of nowhere. Like much of the route, I’d never seen it before.

I passed north of Upper Flag Island and headed for Haskell Island. The wind softened in its stages, with another period of good sailing wind giving way too quickly to light air. The pain and numbness in my feet, together, were disturbing. Haskell Island was like a kingdom, guarded by granite cliffs. A few palatial houses rose from bold slopes of emerald lawn. I paddled under a fanciful observatory perched on the northern tip. It was a tidy, upright sort of island not suggestive of leisure, and at the moment appeared deserted.

Finally I caught a glimpse of the southern tip of Bailey Island, across Merriconeag Sound. I expected to see the marina and its restaurant but there was nothing of the sort. Then I thought it must be on the other side of the island. I paddled across the sound chasing an old dog of a sailboat. It headed south and tacked east, and I almost kept up with it on my side of the triangle. Either it’s slower than it should be or I’m faster than I thought.

I followed it into Jaquish Gut, past the famous “Land’s End Gift Shop”, which, at the very end of Route 24, fairly earns its name. On the other side of Bailey Island, the remainder of Casco Bay stretches to Cape Small. Swells rolled in from the southeast, as if to highlight the difference. I still expected to see the marina. I remembered seeing it on a snippet of a Google map on a search results page. I remembered the shape of it, sticking out into the sea, with a crescent-shaped cove on one side. But I hadn’t marked it on my chart.

The sun was very low. It was almost 7:00. Time to find shelter. I saw a break in the rocky shore, up ahead. It revealed a rocky cove choked with seaweed, and nothing that looked like a marina. A man by the shore at the Driftwood Inn, who was preparing for an evening swim, said he knew of no marina nearby.

“Dolphin-something, it’s called, I think,” I said.

He was not from around here, but thought it sounded familiar. “Yeah, I think it’s over that way”. He motioned westward.

I took out my phone. “No Service”. I suspected the marina was actually located at the end of Harpswell Neck, which I had passed a couple of hours ago. It appears similar in shape and orientation on the map. Uggh. Instead of making the sea anchor, the one I figured I wouldn’t need and declined to use when I did, I might have informed myself a hundred times over. Why so carelessly cast off a good sense of priorities, for a crafty distraction?

Maybe it’s adaptive. “Under-informed” is a state of mind I’m learning to live with. I don’t know when my cancer will come back ([40. Insert miraculous asterisk.]). My doctors don’t know how to beat it. So what if I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight? Let night come, I’ll find a place.

---

Turns out the place was nearby. At the inner end of the cove was a gravel beach, backed up to weeds and bushes. It didn’t offer much visual privacy, but with rugged, rocky shores on both sides I didn’t expect any foot traffic. Finding a fire pit sealed the deal. But on the question of dinner, “protein bars” was not the answer I preferred.

A little poking around revealed a path leading up from the beach to a green lawn and a white house on a paved road. The paved road. Across the street I could see the sunset over the opposite shore. I found a little ice cream shack, down the road a bit, and bought a hot dog, root beer and pie a-la-mode on special. The kindly silver-haired matron of the place made a generous comparison to Florida sunsets, of which she’s seen many: this one made the grade.

Mosquitos chased me back to the beach. I changed out of the wetsuit and ate quickly. A fire seemed just the thing, if only for the smoke. With the paper plate and a few handfuls of driftwood twigs and a couple half-burnt logs I managed to build a fire in a few minutes. It lasted about an hour, into the moonless dark. The sky was radiant with stars, shooting stars, airplanes, satellites…

I felt blessed. I wanted to bottle it up and save some for later. That I could not recover feelings like these, from memory alone, has caused me regret at times. But I’m learning to let them go.

---

NOTES:

I picked a good day to be alone, if that’s what I wanted: a foggy, rainy, calm, dreary sort of day. Inner Casco Bay seemed empty. A dying breath, a slumping air too soft to feel, drew me down the bay at a crawling pace. Some trick of the tide had scattered rockweed and I struggled to avoid it from fouling the centerboard.

Noon struck. The current was pushing me north and I was making northeast, but my route was southeast, into the wind. I tacked south but only made a southwest course. I didn’t have enough wind or enough sail to point a sliver higher than a beam reach.

With Clapboard Island a mile ahead, across a rallying wind, I thought I might squeeze by to the south, but I couldn’t gain an inch to the wind in all that way. Finally, I thought I would make it, but a boulder in the shallows stood in my way. Point up: stall. Slowly, 20 yards, 10, five… Stall. Crash.

I fell into the water while the sail pitched forward. I regained myself unharmed but sensed something was wrong with the rig, some deformity. I peeled up the sleeve of the sail and found the aluminum tube at the base of the mast had cracked and collapsed like a broken leg.

The trip, for now, was over.

---

A dismasting would ruin most sailing trips. The kind of weather that cracks masts would threaten your life, too. But I’m a light-weight man with light-weight gear and flexible commitments. Fight small, fail small. It’s a 70-dollar part. It could be here tomorrow.

I resigned myself to paddling back to East End. But before de-rigging I texted my windsurfing buddies: anyone got a spare 19-inch mast base extension with a U.S. cup? Dave did. He offered to meet me in Falmouth, about a mile away. Trip on!

I’d like to pretend I’m self-sufficient, but it’s a delusion. I never did build the sailboat that so captivated my fantasies for many years. Cancer finally pushed me to a ready-made solution: windsurfing. With Dave’s help, I resumed my journey.

We met on the shore at the Handy Boat marina. To avoid the appearance of freeloading I ignored the private dock and paddled up to the rocks by the parking lot. Dave and I exchanged parts at the edge of the water. It was about 4:00. I still had time to cover some miles.

To my delight, the wind picked up. But it was blowing straight in and I was penned in by docks and rocks. I decided to paddle out into Handy Boat’s sprawling mooring field, tie up to a mooring and rig the sail on the water.

---

The contrast of “my way” with the way of the modern yachtsman was never so clear as then. Yachts have engines now, of course. When Skipper tires of sailing, he employs his engine. When I switch between sailing and paddling, the whole rig (sail, mast and boom) must be put together or taken apart.

A sailboard is one of the few sailing craft that can’t hold up its own mast. A rig in the water slows you down, and since you can’t paddle and hold the rig at the same time, you’re forced to remove the boom and mast, roll up the sail and stow them all in pieces. Starting my “engine” might take half an hour, and stopping it just as long.

A fresh breeze was knocking me into the yacht whose mooring I now “shared”. The current swept my sail under the hull. I had to leave the board and swim with the sail to straighten it out and insert the mast. The marina’s little motorboats whizzed by, ferrying the yachtsmen to and from their yachts. The young drivers, in white shirts and khaki shorts, eyed me curiously. Yachtsmen don’t swim.

When I finally stood and sheeted the sail, the seabreeze was gone. A fresh sun-capped fog settled on the mooring field. My little fog-bound world shuttled in shallow tacks, creeping like a mouse in the stable, for miles, back and forth through ranks of slumbering yachts.

Finally the wind just quit, and I sat down. Twenty yards ahead, at the far edge of the mooring field, a man in a motor yacht peered over my shoulder, into the fog, in the general direction of the marina, and spoke into his VHF radio, asking for a pick-up. He seemed to doubt his chances of being found.

I thought of a conversation I’d heard earlier on my radio. It went something like this:

YACHTSMAN, sedately: Handy Boat this is Merlin requesting a pick-up.

DISPATCHER: Merlin, what is your location?

YACHTSMAN, sedately: It’s the green one near your dock.

DISPATCHER: Okay… There’s a double-ender with green trim, and there’s one—

YACHTSMAN, sedately: It’s the green one near your dock.

The discussion ended there. The yachtsman had dismissively declined to assist in his own cause, and the dispatcher understood. I shivered with disgust. But maybe we’re not so different, he and I, each filling the day with our own whims. “Please” and “thank you” never bought him a boat. Stubborn independence never bought me one.

---

I paddled out of the fog toward Clapboard Island, chasing my long-lost shadow. A man set out from the landing there in a little motor skiff, toward Falmouth, after securing the grounds (or so I imagined). One token lamp lit the wood-shingled mansion, said to be a fabulously expensive weekly rental.

Just off the southern tip of Clapboard Island is a very small island, unnamed by charts. It’s a fraction of an acre, barely enough for two white oaks, low bushes, moss and a patch of soft stringy grass. Last year’s ospreys didn’t come back, so I had it to myself that night. Well, except for the mosquitos.

The city cast a dome of orange light into the humid sky. I hadn’t come far, maybe four or five miles from East End — not far enough. I settled into my blankets. A few generous pulls of Irish cream whiskey marshaled my fatigue. “Tomorrow, new waters,” we agreed, and I surrendered.