Into Somes Sound
30 July 2022 | Somes Sound Anchorage East of Squantum Point
Mike
Bass Harbor Light
July 30, 2022 Saturday
It was a beautiful morning in Mackerel Cove with calm water, clear skies and a light breeze from the south-west. We relaxed in the cockpit and read books while admiring the views all around us. A few seals popped their heads up to say hello, the seabirds squawked a racket as they searched the seaweed for breakfast and the ducks dove for their breakfast under the water.
Around eleven we decided it was time to make a move and catch the ebb tide at the Bass Harbor Bar that we would try crossing on our way to Desert Island. We made our way out across Blue Hill Bay headed east and dodging numerous lobster traps. There were lots of boats out on the water passing in both directions but all crossing the Bass Harbor Bar at the dredged channel near the north end of the bar despite the chart showing plenty of water on the bar itself. I decided to cut the distance and cross the bar to the south of the channel to see why it was not used by the other boats.
The water on the other side of the bar is the open Atlantic Ocean and a lot of water flows into and out of Blue Hill Bay and crosses the bar causing a lot of violent chop on the bar. We crossed near slack on the high tide when it should have been calm but still Monarch got jostled pretty well by the moving waters as we made it from the fifty-foot water on each side to the shallow water of the bar.
Once we turned past Long Ledge we turned north and put out our sails for the ride up the Western Bay past Great Cranberry Island, Southwest Harbor and Northeast Harbor and finally into the narrow Somes Sound. The wind was very blustery fluctuating between zero and twenty knots with the direction effected by the numerous hills and mountains of the island.
The shoreline held some of the most beautiful old estates with lots of land around them. The island once had numerous mansions from the Golden Age but many were destroyed by the introduction of income tax and then finished off in the massive fire of 1947 that swept most of the island. But old New England money and the nuevo rich like Martha Stuart have rebuilt more “modest” places to overlook the sound.
I finally had to give up fighting the sails in the squirrely wind and put on the engine when I was in the narrowest part of the sound and we went to the northern end of the sound. Somes Harbor looked a little crowded with weekenders so we chose to anchor outside in front of a couple of homes to the east of Bar Island and Squantum Point. The view down the sound was magnificent with the mountains coming out of the waters practically straight up.
Sharon made a wonderful dinner with her supply of fresh vegetable including carrot greens which I had never had before. We enjoyed reading in the long twilight before heading to bed.