One of my many volunteer efforts is to manage the City League Basketball program here in town. The season starts in early November and runs until mid to late March. I always look forward to the start of a new season, and I always look forward to the end of the season. While I enjoy it, it does tie me down somewhat since we played on Tuesday & Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoons. That really limited when I could get out for overnight trips. Our season ended on Tuesday evening March 19, and the weather was looking good for the next 2 or 3 days, so I decided to make a trip of it.
I'm not usually a spur of the moment type of guy. I usually make a plan and stick to it. But for this trip I did not do that. I intended to make it a simple one night overnight trip but ended up extending it to a 3-day 2-night trip. I had my cat "Luna" and my dog "Nova" with me for this trip.
I pulled out of my slip in Bar Harbor at about 6 AM while it was still dark. I had recently had my radar set upgraded and was eager to test that out to see how it worked. It turned out that it worked extremely well, even though Garmin support said that my GPS chart plotter was not technically compatible with the radar.
Here is a little map snippet that shows my track for this trip. I spent the first night at Marguerite Bay in Traitors Cove, and then spent the second night at the Naha dock, which seems to be my second home. There were some "extra" travel segments in there as I ran out to check my pots and then went back to Loring to hang out and clean the boat for a while.
I got to Traitors Cove about 9 AM and dropped 1 very large shrimp pot out in front of Marguerite Bay. A friend had lent me two of these "condo" shrimp pots, but they were so huge I thought my pot puller would have difficulty pulling two of them, hence the reason for only dropping one.
After getting the huge shrimp pot into the water I had enough space to bring down my two crab pots and get them baited and ready. I dropped them in about 65' of water to the right of the dock as you enter the bay. I have done well there in the past.
I got tied up to the dock at about 9:45 AM. There were no other boats there, and the weather was just stunning.
This is a beautiful area at all times, but when the weather is like it was on this day it is even more beautiful.
I was wandering around the dock checking things out and I came across this pile of old rope, with a crab sitting on top of it. He looked pretty dried out and I assumed he was dead. I came back a couple of hours later and I noticed his claws were in a different position. I touched him, and he moved! He still had a spark of life left in him, so I tossed him back in the water, but I have no idea if he survived.
Nova and I took a long walk up the logging road and I let her run off leash. She is always a couple hundred yards ahead of me, but she does stop and look back at me fairly often. Once in a while she will follow her nose off to the side of the road to chase a squirrel or a bird, and I might lose track of her for a bit. I'm looking into a GPS tracking collar which would help me locate her if she does go off into the brush.
There is a US Forest Service cabin just a little way up the road from the dock. They recently added solar panels for power (as well as the generator they've always had) and now they have a real nice outhouse directly across the road from the cabin. It makes me wonder how they handled their sewage needs before they had this outhouse.
The generator shed is on the right.
Just a little way further up the road is now an empty clearing off to the side of the road. This is what it looks like now.
And this is what it looked like in that very same spot back in 2003. They had a regular little city there. I guess someone at the USFS made the decision to close out that camp and just make do with one small cabin.
They get their water from a stream that comes down off the hillside that is at least 500 or 600 yards from the cabin. There is a small cistern there and they run a water line all the way back to the cabin, some of that run is up hill. Looks like it was disconnected when I was there because there was no one in the cabin.
It is apparent that they are still doing some maintenance on the road as there is heavy equipment parked alongside the road in different places.
Margaret Lake dumps out into Margaret Creek at the first bridge, which is about a mile up the road from the dock. It is one of my most favorite places in the world. I know that I have posted many photos of it in previous posts, but I cannot pass up posting a couple more.
That evening there was a stunning sunset, but it was brief. I raced out of the boat to try to get some photos as soon as I noticed it. To a large degree this is why I come to these remote places.
I may have mentioned that I now have both a cat and a dog. I've had many dogs in my life, but this is the first cat I've had. I have to say that I clearly don't understand cats. When I put Luna in her carrier to bring her to the boat, she complains quite loudly the entire time she is in transit. But if I leave her carrier in the cabin with the lid open, she many times climbs right in and hangs out there for a long time. Go figure!
Luna would typically hide out whenever we were underway. She has apparently discovered hidey-holes all around the boat because she basically disappears, and I don't know where she is. But she comes out when we stop. One of her new favorite hangout spots is on the ledge above the lower helm station. She likes to hang out there and "supervise" all our activities in the cabin.
I donate my time to manage the City League Basketball program and it take a tremendous amount of time. This season, as a total surprise to me, many of the teams gave me envelopes of cash as a token of appreciation. I had been wanting to get a new pot puller as my old one seems to be losing steam steadily. The amount they gave me almost equaled exactly the cost of the new puller. Thanks guys!
On Thursday morning we pulled out fairly early and headed for my two crab pots which were within sight of the dock. The new pot puller worked wonderfully, and I got a total of 14 crabs in the two pots. But only 6 of those were legals males that I could keep. I dumped them into my cooler to keep them alive until I got back to town.
Next it was on to pull the shrimp pot. The crab pots have 150' of line on them but were sitting in only about 65' of water. They could easily have been pulled by hand. The shrimp pot has 600' of line and was sitting in about 400' of water, so pulling that by hand would have been a challenge.
I got a pretty decent haul of shrimp in the one pot, and I counted them later and had 78 shrimp. There was also one little rock crab that was crawling up the side of the tub trying to escape. I don't keep rock crabs, so I tossed him back in the water.
These are called rock crabs because when they fold up their legs they look just like a rock.
After securing the pots I set course for the Naha USFS dock. Before arriving there at about 11:15 AM I dropped the shrimp pot again, but not the crab pots. To my surprise there was already one other boat there, a pleasure cruiser named the "Sea-Comber." As far as I could tell there was no one around when I got tied up. Later on, in the afternoon the owner of the Sea-Comber came down from the hiking the trail and we had a nice chat in the sunshine on the dock. He pulled out about 4:30 PM heading for Marguerite Bay.
Nova and I took a little hike up the trail, but I did not trust her enough to let her go off leash on this winding trail. I was concerned that she would head off into the woods after a squirrel and I'd never see her again. I did discover that she likes the water. I think if she had not been on the leash she would have gone swimming.
On Friday morning we pulled out early and ran out and pulled the shrimp pot, but it was totally empty. Then we back tracked a little and came back to the dock at Loring. I wanted to hang out there for a few hours and start getting the gear put away and organized.
You can see how stunning the weather was and perhaps understand why I made the decision to stay out an extra night and a day.
We pulled out a little after noon to head back to town, but I didn't want to get there too early, so I ran extra slow the whole way back. Luna came out for a rare appearance while we were underway. She only stayed out for a few minutes and then disappeared again.
Nova on the other hand had gotten more exercise on this trip than she usually gets at home, so she sacked out on the couch for most of the trip home.
I made a stop at the fuel dock to pay the piper before heading into my slip. I had one of my buddies meeting me there to help grab my lines and to give him some crabs.
It was a great trip in some great weather, and I logged a little over 66 nm.
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