Maine Island Trail - Day 7 - June 23rd

Despite waking up early, it took me forever to get on the water. The first day back had taken more out of me than I expected. By the time I was finally moving, it was around 8:30. The water around MDI is big, and I had been hoping to avoid some of that by getting an early start. No such luck.

I covered the first few miles to the shore of MDI pretty slowly, enjoying the views. Acadia from the sea is even better than from land. I worked my way up the coast, dodging lobster boats and (for the most part) sections of chaotic water. The sheer cliff faces were reflecting waves back and causing problems, so I moved a bit further off the shore hoping to avoid them. Only a few minutes later a huge whale watching ship came blasting around the corner, close enough that I probably could have held a conversation with the people on board. The huge wake thoroughly soaked me. Hooray, just how I wanted to start my morning.

As I kept going up the coast, I passed otter cliffs, and got to watch some new climbers struggle. Hopefully when I got around to doing some climbing later this summer, I would look slightly less clueless. Past otter cliffs I started moving out further, avoiding thunder hole and the usually tourist filled beach.

I decided that I would cross frenchman bay further south than I had initially planned, hoping to make it around schoodic point in decent weather. The ever shifting weather forecast was now predicting rain and possible thunderstorms in the afternoon. My route put me out in the middle of nowhere with only a few buoys to really navigate off of, in huge swells, but saved me a few miles(yes, Karen, I can hear you cringing at my route already).

I made it to schoodic point without incident, and was reminded (again) why points suck for kayakers. I had done my best to keep far off the shore, but somehow found myself in crazy water anyways. A few breaking waves around me got me to pick up my pace and sprint around most of the point. Thankfully, it looked like there was an island just after the point that I could stop for a break on. As I rounded the island into a small cove, I spotted a sign: closed due to nesting eagles. Oh well, I guess I wasn't getting out of the boat today. I paused in the cove for awhile to stretch what I could in my boat before heading off to finish up the last 7 miles of the day.

I made it to the campsite, avoiding all the rain, but unfortunately not the wind. With nowhere to stake down my tent, I had to stick rocks in it to prevent it from blowing away as I set it up. At one point it tried jumping off the island, rocks and all. As I finally got it set up and anchored down with some bigger rocks, I heard a loud pop. It took some searching, but I discovered that one of the grommets for the rain fly had ripped out of the fly. Oops. Thankfully it doesn't look like I'll encounter any more rain, so it should be fine. That said, I think this is the last trip for this poor tent.

154 miles down, 69 (ish) to go.