A Thousand Islands
Several tense hours later, we boxed into foggy Birch Harbor. Engine whining, we gained steerage just before that collision. As the bow came around, we passed within 15 feet of shore, in water so shallow I could see bottom. A couple minutes later, my heart still palpitating, we dropped anchor. Just like that, it was over. Jared and I sat there in the fog looking at each other, and then we high-fived . . . hard.

We cooked dinner on the swinging alcohol burner. With the chart book spread between us, Jared and I studied the route to Bar Harbor, 17 bold nautical miles that would take us around the exposed tip of the Schoodic Peninsula. The boat tossed us around all night, but I slept soundly up in the V-berth. When I poked my head out the next morning, the view was depressing. A sea of white surrounded us, and a cold drizzle came down. “We” decided to sail anyway.

Two hours later, we rounded Schoodic and set off down Frenchman’s Bay in a no-man’s land of fog. Slowly but surely, we detected a hint of blue, and then a towering thunderhead inland near Bangor. Finally, the vapor dissolved. The Egg Rock lighthouse lay to port, with a half-dozen other islands shimmering under the sun. Jared hoisted the jib, and we killed the engine. For the first time, we were properly sailing.

Frenchman’s Bay is about 10 miles by five, and is bordered on its north by mainland Maine, on its west by MDI, and on its east by the Schoodic Peninsula (its tip is a satellite area of Acadia). Here, as all along the Maine coast, the sailing is so classic because of the ubiquitous little islands. Almost every isle has a rocky outcrop or two, and a few have properly good-looking cliffs. Besides MDI, the most interesting to climbers by far is Ironbound Island, a few nautical miles east of Bar Harbor. Ironbound takes its name from its south shore, a 100-foot-max, quarter-mile cliff band iron-stained red, orange, and yellow. A few people have climbed here, and each has a story of getting run off by a gun-toting caretaker. Jared and I motor-sailed right below it, pointing out arêtes, faces, and dihedrals on road-cut-sheer granite. The routes in Acadia climb similar stone, and we motored on, not wanting to take our chances.