During the City League basketball season, I have commitments that keep me in town for most of the week so the only time I can get out for an overnighter is on Friday/Saturday. I was watching the weather very closely this week in anticipation of making an overnighter. But the weather Friday was just a little too iffy for me, since I mostly travel alone these days.
But the weather on Saturday looked excellent, so I decided to make a day trip of it. And since, as Forrest Gump says, "People still need them shrimps," I decided to once again drop my 2 shrimp pots. A friend had given me some spots where he had scored in Carroll Inlet, so that was my destination today.
I pulled out of Bar Harbor at about 6:30 AM, in full darkness of course. My ship mate today was my new dog Nova, a Mini-Australian Shepherd. When I run on radar, I prefer to use a split screen, with the GPS navigational chart on one side and the radar screen on the other. My Garmin device will do a radar overlay, but I have found I don't like that view.
We made our way out of town on radar with no issues, rounded Mountain Point and headed into Carroll Inlet. I found the spot and dropped the pots at the designated location. It wasn't far from the Shoal Cove dock, so we motored over there and got tied up to wait while hopefully the shrimp had time to get into the pots.
The dock had about 6 - 8" of snow on it. During the winter I carry a small snow shovel on board, so I cleared a path for us to make it to base of the ramp a little easier.
This dock is a popular one during the deer hunting season because people can get their 4-wheelers onto the road system. But the deer season ends on Dec 31st, so I was not surprised to see no other boats here on this day.
I am a firm believer that a guy can never have too many photos of his boat.
It was kind of a grey winter day, but at least it was calm. The area around the dock is quite beautiful, but more so when it's not so grey out. The fog and mist rolled in and out while we were there but never fully engulfed us.
The US Coast Guard used to maintain a Loran station that was up this road, and they had their own dock to load and unload the men & women who manned the station. It is right across from the main US Forest Service dock and is also now used by recreational boaters.
The logging road had about 6 - 8" of snow on it. This was the first time that I intentionally let Nova off leash in a remote area like this. It was a bit risky, but I felt that she was bonded to me enough for it to work. She had a blast zooming around in the snow. She has short legs and so she had to sort of bound around in the snow. I had no problem getting her back in the boat when it was time to go it.
I think Nova is starting to feel more comfortable on the boat now that she has taken a few trips with me. At first, she would mostly hide out. But now she is on the couch a lot and I think she has learned that sometimes there are interesting things to see out the window.
I pulled the shrimp pots with no issues, and no shrimp. Bummer. I was pretty disappointed since it took me 3 hours of running to get here and will take another 3 hours of running to get back to the harbor. I had plenty of sea lice though. They seemed to cover the entire back deck.
On the way back I had to take the boat off auto pilot so I could manually steer around the many pieces of ice that were drifting around. They weren't chunks of ice, but more like big flat pieces of ice. They seemed to be mostly in front of the Shoal Cove area. I guess the tide must have pulled them out of there since it's been significantly warmer these last few days.
I had tried to time things so that I got back just as it was getting dark. I was off a bit, and I got into my slip at about 4 PM and it was still light. I could have let the pots soak for at least another half-hour. Maybe I'd have gotten a few thousand more sand fleas.
I logged about 45 nm on this trip.
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