We were rowing our two pulling boats through a thick fog, up a bay between two islands on the West side of Vinalhaven. We were looking for a pass to port about 4 miles North, marked by a can. I was 14, the designated captain because I knew how to DR navigate. Our watch officers laid back and let the mistakes or successes happen. In the fog, I needed to know how fast we were going and I asked Bill, our senoir officer, how that might be accomplished? I told him, I had no experience with crew rowing and no idea how fast we might be going. He told me how to time the wake bubbles from bow to stern to calculate speed through the water. The tide was going out so we were not making the speed indicated by our travel through the water.
I set our time and watched the progress through the water. 12 kids were rowing, I was at the tiller and one kid was in the bow. There were two watch officers on board. We couldn't see the islands to either side of us. I started to feel impatient and anxious when I thought we should have found the can. I told the watch officer that we should be at the can. Bill said, to give it a little more time. He didn't think we were making the speed I thought we were. I went back to watching the compass and 20 minutes later I called a stop. I was convinced we had passed the can. Bill didn't agree. I looked at the chart. North of the can was a small anchorage, there was a sailboat anchored just barely visible through the fog. Bill explained that one sailboat at anchor did not make an anchorage. I looked at the chart again. Bottom depth! The bowman reported 12'. The anchorage was between 8' and 15'. Bill insisted that wasn't enough to know for sure. I said, pointing NE, just a few yards more and we should see land. Bill said there was another way to tell. We didn't have any potatoes but we had an air horn. "Sound the horn and if there is land there, you should hear the echo." There was an echo.
We turned about, 180 deg. and rowed for twenty minutes and ran three feet to the East of the can we were looking for. It was a good thing, because the tide running through that pass had that can under water half the time.
We turned West and rowed out into Penobscot Bay, looking for a nun out in the middle of nowhere. Just where I told Bill we should be near the nun, there it was. It was like GPS, GP- what? We had a compass in a box, paper charts, a watch and ssb radio. Oh, and an air horn and a lead plumb.
I was very proud of myself and excited that I'd learned to judge the speed by our wake, identify location by depth and see land with sound, all in one foggy trip.
- Will (Dragonfly)